Until now, Amazon’s advertising efforts have been relatively low key. It looks like that’s all about to change.
Amazon opened up the curtains on its advertising initiatives at the annual Advertising Week and Ad Age spoke with Amazon’s global head of advertising, Lisa Utzschneider, to discuss the company’s new wide-scale advertising strategies.
Amazon has some serious plans in an area they haven’t fully tapped into. Utzenschneider said that the company has been building out an advertising ecosystem over the past few years consisting of three “buckets:” display ads on the website, ads on Amazon’s connected devices, and Amazon’s advertising platform that gives marketers the opportunity to connect with customers on the web.
She added that Amazon isn’t just focusing on companies that sell products on its site. For example, Chrysler’s Town & Country reached out to them wanting to know more about moms who spend their time on Amazon. The car company is now an Amazon Moms sponsor.
Amazon also shares important and valuable shopping data to advertisers. That targeting data, which is information derived from not only Amazon.com but also sites like IMDB, Zappos, Diapers.com, can be extremely valuable to brands who want to know more about their target market.
No wonder that Google, which derives most of its revenue from online advertising, has set its sights on Amazon.com. As The New York Times reported last month:
Behind the scenes, the two companies are waging a war to become the pre-eminent online mall. And e-commerce sites large and small are caught in the cross-fire. As for consumers, the question is whether they will see a full range of products available online.
Google is a search engine, not a store, but it is increasingly inching into e-commerce with products like its comparison-shopping service, Google Shopping. At the same time, more people are using Amazon, a retailer, as a search engine to look for what they want to buy.
