BREAKING: All the latest Amazon data and AI news from unBoxed 2024

Hot off the press from unBoxed: Amazon Ads has announced several new features, including a generative AI Creative Studio and more powerful data tools for advertisers.

Its new innovations, announced today (15 October 2024) at unBoxed in Austin, Texas, include a genAI tool for audio, joining its existing image and video tools. 

AI Creative Studio gives ‘fresh, trend-driven content’

The Audio tool, just like with Image and Video generator, allows advertisers to input their Amazon-listed product and automatically create a voiceover script based on the product information.

You select the voice, tone and background music, and get a 30-second interactive audio ad that can complement a brand’s display, video, and sponsored ads campaigns.

Ads also include an interactive element, such as “Alexa, add to cart,” with more options to come. 

Available now in beta, U.S. advertisers can access Audio generator via the Amazon DSP.

These self-service AI tools mean brands of all sizes can easily, quickly create engaging content across all media types and ad formats, using “little more than the information on their Amazon product page”. 

Amazon Ads says that on average, brands who used Image generator between October 2023 and June 2024 saw almost 5% more sales per advertiser.

Amazon Ads’ new AI Creative Studio, also announced today, allows advertisers to explore and create unique ads all in one place. 

Amazon Ads promises that AI Creative Studio will make it easy to build and scale campaigns in innovative ways, from turning a simple product shot into videos, to, in the near future, converting a TV commercial into online sponsored ads.

Jay Richman, Vice President of Creative Experiences for Amazon Ads, says: “We’re excited to introduce these new AI-powered creative tools, which have the potential to transform how brands connect with Amazon customers.

 “By reducing the complexities of working across multiple formats and placements, these innovations empower advertisers to more easily reach their target audiences at every stage of the marketing funnel. They can also easily update creatives seasonally, generate fresh, trend-driven content, and tailor ads to different use cases.”

New Product Launch service to drive success from the start 

Amazon used unBoxed to launch New Product Launch (NPL), a fully-managed service to help brands boost their new products to customers.

According to a 2023 Harvard Business Review study in the US, 30,000 new products launched in 2023 and only 5% succeeded.

With NPL, Amazon promises to help brands introduce new products to customers within the first 90 days of their launch, through advertising placements across Amazon’s retail network, including leading broadcasters and publishers – ensuring customers see their messaging wherever they’re spending time. 

To boost full-funnel advertising impact, Amazon Ads has also expanded the ability to re-engage audiences reached on streaming TV through Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products ads. 

Advertisers using Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) can now adjust their Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products bids specifically for audiences who have seen their streaming TV ads and also visited their website, for example.

New AMC solutions just dropped

Amazon also announced the launch of new AMC solutions, including no-code capabilities to allow more brands of all sizes to easily use AMC to get advanced audience and measurement insights, and optimise their campaigns. 

It has launched two new AMC analyses: high value audience and optimal frequency. 

Brands can use the high value solution to instantly visualise how their customer base is distributed by total spend over time. 

With the optimal frequency solution, advertisers can monitor how KPIs like conversion rate and return on ad spend evolve as ad interactions increase, and from there, determine the most efficient frequency caps for their campaign.

DSP just got easier to use

Also at unBoxed, Amazon launched a new user experience for its Demand Side Platform (DSP). With simplified workflows, advertisers can now create ad campaigns in just a few clicks. 

In early tests, the new consolidated display line-item feature reduced campaign set-up time by 75%. This feature brings desktop, mobile, and app display inventory into a single line item, making it easier to launch and monitor reporting.

When advertisers visit their campaign health overview page, they will now see new insight cards and machine learning recommendations that help them quickly audit their campaign performance and make adjustments. For example, an advertiser may see an insight card that shows their campaign is currently underdelivering; they can review the accompanying recommendation and click to automatically optimise. 

Amazon DSP will centralise and expand these cards within a new campaign management hub in 2025. 

Amazon DSP enhancements also include new frequency cap controls and simplified frequency management. The frequency groups feature allows advertisers to manage their frequency caps across multiple campaigns, channels and devices – for example, capping ad frequency at a household level. 

Advertisers using these frequency cap controls have saved up to 26% of their campaign budgets from spending on duplicate impressions, and drove up to 21% incremental reach. 

Integrated data across Amazon Ads 

Amazon Ads is also launching an ads data manager. This easy-to-use interface enables advertisers to securely upload their signals once, and then use them across Amazon DSP and Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) to engage relevant audiences, measure conversions, and optimise campaigns.

It’s integrated with providers like Treasure Data, Salesforce, and Tealium, so advertisers can import their first-party data from wherever they store it. 

Through the combination of AMC, Amazon DSP, and Amazon Publisher Cloud, advertisers are now able to create custom audiences tailored to their business goals, then overlay them with signals from Amazon Ads and third-party publishers to increase their efficacy. 

This collaboration creates a new way for advertisers to launch enhanced deals with third-party publishers using their custom audiences – enriched with precise signals from the publisher and Amazon Ads to increase relevancy and campaign performance. 

Kelly MacLean, Vice President of Amazon DSP, says: “The digital advertising landscape is rapidly evolving, with streaming TV becoming mainstream and full-funnel, cross-channel reach and measurement taking centre stage. We’re inventing ad tech that makes it easier for all advertisers to navigate this evolution with precise reach, deeper insights, and direct measurement.

“Amazon DSP can uniquely drive top-to-bottom outcomes on Amazon’s properties, such as the store and Prime Video, as well as across leading streaming apps and premium publishers. We look forward to seeing advertisers leverage the capabilities announced today to fuel their business growth and engage more customers.”

DSP Performance+ enhanced by AI 

Amazon Ads also announced enhancements to Performance+, the always-on, automated optimisation capability within Amazon DSP. 

Performance+ uses advertiser-provided signals and predictive AI to automate audience relevancy and campaign optimisation for conversion and customer acquisition. It sets up campaigns, builds custom audiences, and continuously optimises toward the advertiser’s KPIs. 

Results show that Performance+ drives a 51% improvement in customer acquisition costs on average. 

New Performance+ tactics, now in open beta, expand advertiser campaign strategies to include remarketing and retention, in addition to the prospecting tactic that was already available. The entire workflow has been streamlined to as few as four clicks, while still providing flexible optimisation controls and transparency. 

Advertisers simply choose their campaign goal, such as conversion, awareness, or consideration; choose their KPI, such as cost-per-acquisition (CPA) or return on ad spend (ROAS); and choose their Performance+ tactic: prospecting, remarketing, or retention.

Fiverr, the platform that connects businesses with freelancers, used the Performance+ prospecting tactic to drive automated performance. 

Within a month, Fiverr saw a 66% reduction in CPA vs. goal target and a 72% increase in click through rate vs. campaign average benchmarks. 

Multi-touch attribution to be rolled out next year

Finally, Amazon Ads announced a new multi-touch attribution model that helps advertisers understand how their marketing works to drive conversions. It goes beyond last-touch attribution to consider the relative contribution of each marketing touchpoint leading to a conversion. 

Multi-touch attribution determines the relative impact of ad interactions along the path to purchase. It uses advanced techniques like hundreds of thousands of A/B tests to establish impact.

For example, if an advertiser uses streaming TV, display, Sponsored Products, and other ad types in their campaigns, multi-touch attribution will show the relative contribution of each tactic to their sales. Amazon Ads will start to test multi-touch attribution later this year, with a full roll-out planned for 2025. 

To help advertisers understand the insights from multi-touch attribution, Amazon Ads is launching conversion path reporting to show brands their top-converting paths to purchase from the previous 30 days. For example, advertisers might see their TV ad is showing in their top-converting paths and learn how it helped drive conversions through lower funnel channels. 

Conversion path reporting is AMC’s most popular insight report, and it will soon be available self-service in ad console and Amazon DSP reports.

‘Amazon’s thinking outside the box’

Paula Despins, Vice President of Ads Measurement at Amazon Ads, says: “Our mission is to be the most customer-obsessed advertising service by giving all brands the measurement and data-driven, machine learning optimisation capabilities they need to drive business growth through simple, easy-to-use tools.

“Today’s launches put our most sophisticated full-funnel measurement and optimisation capabilities into the hands of all marketers from small businesses to major brands.”

e-Comas CEO and Founder Jérôme de Guigné, who is also an Amazon Ads Ambassador, says: “We’re thrilled and excited to be here at unBoxed and see these developments being launched. We’re hugely invested in the power of data, and in awe of the way Amazon is making it easier and easier for brands to leverage their customers’ data, in the most privacy-minded way possible, to drive efficiency in advertising and improve the shopper’s journey. 

“By giving advertisers more tools to not only advertise more smartly, but also to ensure their content is compelling and converts, Amazon is making itself the obvious choice for brands that want to sell their products globally online.”