Latest / Retail Media Breakfast Club / Unfiltered Thoughts From Amazon Unboxed 2025
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- Amazon Unboxed 2025 Recap === [00:00:00] Kiri Masters: What is unboxed? Is that a packaging event? This was the question that was asked to me by a fellow elevator companion at my hotel who caught sight of my lanyard this week. Well, packaging is [00:00:15] one way to describe Amazon's flashy advertising event this week. While Amazon held its upfront event earlier this year, spruiking their content lineups across their media properties primarily. [00:00:26] TV Unboxed is [00:00:30] arguably the more critical media buying event for the company with various advertising features announced to a huge audience of agencies, some big spending brands and tech vendors in the ecosystem, [00:00:45] ostensibly Amazon Partners. More on that later. An Amazon spokesperson told me that the attendees on site this week here in Nashville numbered in the thousands and many more were streaming the event online. [00:00:59] [00:01:00] Earlier this week I dashed off an overview of the major announcements from the event, and I also did a deeper dive for my column at the drum about the company's approach to their automated ad algorithm endearingly framed as a crystal box [00:01:15] versus the black box systems of their big advertising platform competitors. [00:01:21] Now I've had some time to percolate and get POVs from other attendees. Today I wanna share some more [00:01:30] reflections on what Amazon announced this week and what it means for advertisers. [00:01:35] [00:01:36] Kiri Masters: Take away. Number one, reinvention is not just lip service to give credit where credit is due. Amazon has [00:01:45] built an amazing advertising product and despite the company's extreme dominance in the retail media ecosystem, they just keep on reinventing their ad product, making it easier to use for a larger [00:02:00] range of advertisers. [00:02:01] Creating more owned and operated media properties and extending their tentacles to ever further reaches of the web. [00:02:11] I had a few minutes with my old boss, Jared Belsky, [00:02:15] CEO of Acadia, who told me that the Amazon ads console is markedly more accessible and simple to operate than competing DSPs like Google's DV 360, the Trade Desk, or meta [00:02:30] advertising. Advanced tactics like ad tagging are less necessary, and this simplicity allows Amazon to tap into the budgets of all kind of ad buyers regardless of their sophistication. [00:02:42] Here's a comment from Ash McMullen, who is the head [00:02:45] of e-commerce at the brand Advantis Health. She told me ~there's a real accessibility. She told me there is a real accessibility advantage that Amazon has, which seems to be keeping.~ [00:02:49] ~There is a real accessibility advantage that Amazon keep. ~There is a real accessibility advantage that Amazon seems to be keeping, and that's what's really interesting. Meta has grown significantly and gotten more complicated. [00:03:00] Google has grown significantly and gotten more complicated. Amazon has grown. [00:03:05] But they're simplifying it. They started with SQL queries that made it impossible unless you were a data scientist, but now they're simplifying what the [00:03:15] data looks like, making it more visual, more readable, and easier to act on. [00:03:20] So to me, and I kept saying this to people at the event, it just seems like Amazon advertising keeps pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and it is really incredible [00:03:30] to see. Interesting fact. Relentless was one of the favorite names that Jeff Bezos came up with before eventually being convinced of a better name for the company. [00:03:41] And I think relentless to me, really [00:03:45] describes Amazon's ad business, this sense of paranoia and continual improvement that persists today. At all levels and the ability for the company to grow their advertising revenue at an incredible [00:04:00] clip, despite coming off a very, very high base at this point and having extreme dominance, it is truly remarkable. [00:04:10] So with all those compliments out of the way, I'll share a little bit more [00:04:15] of my, uh, candid observations from the event. So highlight number two, the open web is for us, but not for you. Amazon isn't content with building one of the largest, strongest, tallest double brick [00:04:30] reinforced walled gardens in the industry. [00:04:32] They now wanna go. After the open web, and it's a clear shot across the bow at Rival DSP, the Trade Desk. I saw an interesting stat from the [00:04:45] advertising newsletter ad Habitat a couple of weeks ago where they claimed that Amazon's DSP now charges four to 8% in platform fees and sometimes waives them entirely just to prove a point. [00:04:57] Meanwhile, the trade desk still sits in the [00:05:00] 15 to 20% range. That is quite the difference. And in fact, my old colleagues at Acadia suggested much lower tech fees on media buyers on open internet. . Media buyers [00:05:15] versus what's typical elsewhere. Essentially, the open web media buyers that Amazon is offering might be kind of a loss leader for them. [00:05:24] And to me, this irony is very interesting. The most powerful walled garden [00:05:30] wants to enable the rest of the web, while of course, keeping its own walls intact. Highlight number three, a distinct absence of rufuss. I noted halfway through the keynote announcements [00:05:45] that Rufuss hadn't been mentioned once, and then by the end of this hour long. [00:05:52] Raft of announcements that spanned performance ads. The Neogen features connected [00:06:00] tv. Amazon's doubling down on live sports. Rufuss still hadn't been mentioned. [00:06:06] And this was perplexing to me as Andy Jassy made fairly big deal about the scale and performance of Rufuss in the [00:06:15] company's Q3 earnings call. Now, a few fellow attendees, when I mentioned this to them, pointed out there was a passing remark about sponsored questions as an upcoming feature. But that wasn't ever [00:06:30] mentioned as a feature within Rufuss. [00:06:32] I think it could even be something that is built in to the main search and browse experience because Rufuss wasn't shown or mentioned in the context of this sponsored [00:06:45] questions feature at all. So to me, something is not adding up here with Rufuss Rufuss. According to Andy Jassy in the Q3 earnings call is a beloved customer feature. [00:06:58] It's driving so [00:07:00] much volume and product purchases. Ads have been populating within Rufuss for the better part of the year in beta, and advertisers still don't have the ability to target those placements [00:07:15] specifically. That leads me to believe. That those placements within Rufuss don't perform well enough for Amazon to split them out as their own ad unit. [00:07:26] Just like those offsite sponsored product ads, which [00:07:30] many advertisers are thoroughly unimpressed by and wouldn't knowingly bid on all of this Rufuss inventory is being packaged up. And sold in a bundle , where you can't see the actual performance. [00:07:45] So to me, the fact that it's, you know, it's been tested for the better part of a year and still not available to buy separately suggests to me the ad units within Rufuss aren't working out that well. [00:07:57] And the lack of any [00:08:00] mention of Rufuss at this event was also quite telling to me. Miracle Ads is the Ad Tech solution trusted by Rakuten and over 50 global [00:08:15] enterprise retailers. That's because Miracle Ads was built with both three P Marketplace sellers and one P suppliers in mind. Both advertiser audiences demand a seamless advertising journey from onboarding to [00:08:30] reporting. [00:08:30] You can offer everything from sponsored products to video ads all in one solution. Learn more@miracle.com. That's M-I-R-A-K l.com. [00:08:42] Highlight number four [00:08:45] partners are back in vogue, or are they [00:08:47] According to a number of old timers in the space, just a few years ago, Amazon would never have used the word partner to describe agencies and tech. [00:08:58] Companies that [00:09:00] operate in the Amazon ecosystem and now it's everywhere. I was grateful to attend the Amazon Partner Awards on the first night and see my old team at Acadia pick up the Challenger Award. [00:09:12] And there's this whole program that exists [00:09:15] today for partners where the best of the best, or at least those with the strongest stomachs for delivering high effort case studies as award entries. They're celebrated on stage by Amazon as enablers and champions of the [00:09:30] ecosystem. And Amazon talks about how they couldn't do what they do without all of these partners. [00:09:35] ~So I got a little bit of.~ [00:09:35] ~And I was reminded and I was reminded by my old colleague, Ross Walker, head of retail media at Acadia about some of the historical roots of Amazon's relationships with agencies. He reminded me how when Amazon moved from a managed service model to more of a self-service model around 2019, they shifted a lot of that.~ [00:09:35] ~They shifted quite a bit of revenue off their own books and into partner and agencies, and that created a wave of growth for independent agencies that understood the Amazon ecosystem. Cool. Those with strong relationships in the right positioning caught that demand. You know what, sorry, I'm not gonna include this.~ [00:09:35] So I was reminded of a little bit of history from my old colleague at Acadia, Ross Walker, who is their head of retail media, uh, [00:09:45] services, he reminded me how Amazon, once upon a time had quite a robust managed service business for advertising, but they shifted a lot of that demand onto agencies, both the hold [00:10:00] cos and independent agencies like my old agency, bobsled Marketing. [00:10:04] , And for Amazon it was a great play because. It shifted headcount and spend risk to agencies while still [00:10:15] allowing Amazon to capture all of this demand from brands. So what began as an efficiency move for Amazon, ultimately professionalized and scaled an entire sub-industry of Amazon focused agencies.[00:10:30] [00:10:30] And I could make a very similar argument for tech companies. Amazon provides basic. Media buying tools to enable brands to buy media on Amazon and through its, content [00:10:45] partners and developers, software developers rushed in to fill some of the gaps and solve for specific use cases around reporting, creative targeting, [00:11:00] measurement, things like that. [00:11:01] So this ecosystem is very valuable to Amazon because it helps to bring in more demand, keep headcount in check, and they don't have to spend as much time [00:11:15] developing their ecosystem, with all of these third party partners in place [00:11:20] fast forward to today. When I first previewed the ads agent and the creative agent that were announced at Unbox, I [00:11:30] thought of all of these software companies that I'm personally familiar with, whose business models and value props would conceivably be eroded by these new features. So things like. The tools for enhanced reporting, automating and [00:11:45] optimizing ad campaigns, even AI led creative development. [00:11:49] These third party tools in the ecosystem all seemingly become unnecessary in light of Amazon building these features into their core ads offering [00:12:00] so I've got sort of mixed. Reactions from software developers at the event. Not everyone is worried. A lot of developers just see it as part of doing business in the Amazon ecosystem. [00:12:14] Sometimes they're [00:12:15] gonna develop capabilities that make yours irrelevant, and certainly not all partners are worried. I spoke with Adam Epstein, founder of Ad Tech Company, Gigi, and he told me the announcements haven't phased me at [00:12:30] all. In fact, Amazon has validated the agent approach. [00:12:34] They're raising the floor for advertisers, meaning Amazon's enabling a greater variety of advertisers to be able to access these tools. [00:12:45] Different levels of sophistication. But at Gigi, he says they're raising the ceiling and creating enablement tools for the most sophisticated media buyers out there. [00:12:56] All right, wrapping up here. I've gone a little long, I'm [00:13:00] sorry. It was a really incredible event. It was sort of like a high school reunion, so many people in the agency world and tech enablement space to meet up with and see. And of course in this ecosystem, people watch [00:13:15] very closely. [00:13:16] They're curious about what Amazon's doing. Balancing that curiosity with skepticism. Amazon's efforts to democratize data and make tools more intuitive are generally [00:13:30] celebrated, but there's still this quiet sort of, we'll see thought about how this plays out in practice. It's a fine line. Amazon needs its partners to thrive, but the more it simplifies and internalizes capabilities, [00:13:44] the [00:13:45] closer it comes to competing with them. That's a wrap for today. I'll catch you next week. [00:13:50]