Latest / Retail Media Breakfast Club / Amazon Unboxed 2025 - Fresh Off The Press Announcements from Nashville
Transcript
- Amazon Unboxed announcements === [00:00:00] Kiri Masters: All right. I'm gonna show my age here. I remember back in my day when Amazon ads were limited to exact match, broad match and phrase match. Do you remember those days? Well, today I'm [00:00:15] feeling my age because it's clear that Amazon's ad ambitions aren't limited to sponsored search, aren't limited to retail, and are not even limited to reality. [00:00:29] [00:00:30] Today I'm at Amazon's unboxed event in Nashville where the company is unveiling a whole raft of product upgrades to Amazon ads. In this episode, I'm gonna share some highlights from the announcement with [00:00:45] you, and I'm gonna have more commentary based on conversations with actual advertisers over the coming days to see what their reactions to all of these updates really are. [00:00:57] So I'm gonna run through some of these [00:01:00] updates and also preview an article that I've written for my column at the drum about transparency within Amazon's new ad ecosystem. [00:01:10] [00:01:11] Kiri Masters: So product announcement, highlight number one, the [00:01:15] unified campaign manager. Amazon is collapsing. Its two separate buying interface into a single cross format platform with shared real time signals. This is [00:01:30] actually really fantastic. They are bringing together the Amazon DSP with the sponsored ads campaign manager tool, and it means that. [00:01:41] All of those full funnel activation and measurement [00:01:45] things that advertisers previously had to go to two separate places for now can be in one single place. [00:01:50] And that is one more efficient and effective for advertisers, but two for Amazon's benefit, it blurs the line between [00:02:00] bottom of funnel and upper funnel media and it positions Amazon as a one stop ecosystem, not just an e-commerce ad network. [00:02:09] Now on a more meta level, I wanna call out all those comparisons that have been made between the [00:02:15] Trade desk and Amazon as competing DSPs. Now, since Amazon's brought together the DSP and the ad manager, it shows Amazon is playing a completely different game here. [00:02:27] Take away number two Ads agent. [00:02:30] This is Amazon's AI powered natural language campaign orchestration tool, and it means that advertisers can now query and command campaigns conversationally, just like you talk with [00:02:45] chat GPT. Something like show me underdelivering campaigns and Amazon's ads agent will translate those requests. [00:02:54] Into SQL queries within Amazon Marketing Cloud, and bring you those results back. [00:02:59] [00:03:00] So the takeaway here is that this shifts Amazon from a traditional DSP to an AI co-pilot model reducing manual work for brands of all sizes. It also gives smaller advertisers access to data [00:03:15] science capabilities that were previously only in reach. For those with a data science team, we don't all have. [00:03:20] People on our team that can write custom SQL queries, and now Amazon kind of gives that access to all [00:03:30] types of advertisers. This is really gonna level the playing field between large advertisers and small advertisers who had vast differences in what technical prowess they had in house. So very interesting and just [00:03:45] overall, this will come into the next highlight too. [00:03:48] Amazon's really displacing a lot of this, this third party software that, , has been developed by companies to bridge the gap here. [00:03:57] , I really wonder for these [00:04:00] companies that previously they had this capability they built for, uh, advertisers. Amazon is now bringing those capabilities in-house within the tool. So I wonder how these third party software companies are going to [00:04:15] fare, um, from a competitive standpoint. [00:04:17] So that leads into highlight number three, the creative agent. This is generative AI for display audio and video assets. So this is a build on something that Amazon has [00:04:30] had in place for a while now in that you can create new creative within the Amazon ads platform. You can resize assets, you can create new lifestyle images and things like that. [00:04:44] But [00:04:45] what is new here is. That these new creative assets, particularly the video assets that you develop from product data, [00:04:55] The outputs here are good enough for prime video inventory. [00:05:00] So I did watch a preview of an ad that was created entirely generatively, , that was suitable for prime video ad inventory. It was for a, um, a table, uh, a Crockery [00:05:15] brand. Not a super inspiring, , video. [00:05:18] A little bit bland, Not too much. I was interesting about it, but quality wise. I certainly couldn't complain. The quality of the video itself was very [00:05:30] nice. It was just a little bit boring, but you know what? That probably comes down to the prompt itself. And the example that Amazon is, is sharing out here might be, you know, something that's gonna be universally appealing, which to my [00:05:45] taste, again, not super interesting or compelling, but quality wise, it did look really, really good. [00:05:52] so The takeaway here for large brands, a great way to localize and version [00:06:00] creative efficiently resizing things, deploying ads for sort of long tail products was a use case. When I spoke with the Amazon advertising team, they mentioned for large brands they might have, you know. In-house [00:06:15] developed creative for their top 20% of products. [00:06:18] But AI developed, creative is great for the long tail. 80% products, uh, that large brands have. And then for small advertisers, it's a creative department in a [00:06:30] box. So I think what we have to watch for is low grade AI slop everywhere. Um, eroding perceived quality and differentiation and the fact that it can now be everywhere. [00:06:42] This is gonna create, you know, [00:06:45] a sort of a sea of same, same content, but it also means if you are truly creative, you'll probably be able to rise to the top just as you always have. Miracle [00:07:00] Ads is the only retail media solution designed for both one P and three P Marketplace brands. Why does that matter? Marketplace sellers demand a seamless advertiser experience that still offers full [00:07:15] funnel ad formats, and retailers need a flexible solution that allows you to scale your media business. [00:07:22] Learn more@miracle.com. That's M-I-R-A-K l.com. [00:07:30] Takeaway number four, crystal box positioning and transparency as a brand promise. This is super interesting and it is the subject of a much longer deep dive that I have done in a [00:07:45] column for the drum today about this black box positioning versus the crystal box that Amazon is contrasting with. [00:07:53] So if you recall earlier this year, mark Zuckerberg talked about, Hey, just give us your [00:08:00] budget. Give us your bank account and we will run the ads for you on meta. Um, just trust us essentially. And, um, that got a, a quite a bit of pushback as you can imagine. People also have, uh, Google p max ringing in their [00:08:15] ears as a particularly opaque way to buy advertising. [00:08:20] And Amazon has sort of stood back a bit from that. They haven't announced a fully autonomous black box type advertising model. [00:08:30] Now they sort of have come out with this positioning around a crystal box where there will be more. Transparency in the ecosystem and they're sort of making a bet that advertisers that have been burned [00:08:45] by these opaque systems will prefer a show us your work type model. [00:08:50] Now whether this amounts to general interpretability or just better documentation remains to be seen, but I, um. A [00:09:00] fan, at least, of the positioning that Amazon has here amongst advertisers, particularly as they're trying to go after all types of advertisers, not just retail media. Takeaway number five, full funnel campaigns. [00:09:13] Now, this is a preview of [00:09:15] something that's coming in 2026. Which is where Amazon will launch a full funnel optimization campaign capability that uses signals from media exposure through purchase powered by real-time data from the unified platform. What does [00:09:30] this mean? Well, if executed well, it closes the loop between top of funnel branding and performance media buying on Amazon surfaces. [00:09:40] So a little bit of a preview there of what's coming down the pipe. [00:09:44] And [00:09:45] again, it's going to really rely on that crystal box transparency of understanding why certain creative or audiences perform And takeaway number six, AI native analytics. I mentioned this a little bit before, but marketers can [00:10:00] now use conversational prompts to trigger Amazon Marketing Cloud analysis without writing any technical queries or code. [00:10:09] What does this mean? It democratizes data exploration for non-technical [00:10:15] marketers. This is a excellent evolution of the Amazon Marketing Cloud, where small, medium, and large advertisers can now understand more of what is driving customer behavior, what can they [00:10:30] tap into, where are the opportunities to exploit. [00:10:32] So I think that is a really great development. Now, as I mentioned, I have a new post out for my column at the drum today, sharing more about how Amazon is positioning itself against Meta and Google's black box [00:10:45] automation with this crystal box approach [00:10:48] Showing advertisers how algorithmic decisions get made rather than hiding them. Definitely check out that full post. We'll link up to it in the show notes. I hope you've enjoyed this recap of the [00:11:00] major. Announcements add on box today. As I mentioned, I'm going to be gathering POVs and what this sort of really means for advertisers on the ground this week, and I'll be sharing those back with you as well. [00:11:12] So stay tuned and I'll catch you [00:11:15] tomorrow. [00:11:15]