Amazon DSP is Amazon’s new advertising platform for programmatic campaigns, managing programmatic advertising across Amazon Marketplaces (Amazon Ads), Amazon Music, Amazon Stores, Twitch, Amazon Kindle ads, Prime TV ads, and also ads on other Amazon-owned and external channels.
From the advertiser’s perspective, it is the most efficient way (so far) to automate the purchase of online advertising spaces. Thanks to Machine Learning, big data, and artificial intelligence – terms that have been very trendy in recent years – it is now much easier to reach the right audiences at the exact time and place.
How? Thanks to a more traditional concept: supply and demand.
How does Amazon DSP work?
On one hand, SSPs (Supply Side Platforms) offer the inventory (advertising spaces) of different publishers; on the other hand, DSPs (Demand Side Platforms, in our case Amazon Demand Side Platform) facilitate the purchase of these spaces through an automatic bidding system (real time bidding).
Located in the middle is the Ad Exchange, the marketplace where the interaction between the two occurs. Thus, the Amazon DSP is part of the Amazon Marketing tools offered by Amazon.
Programmatic ads will allow us to reach a broader audience when launching new products as well as generate dynamic digital advertising campaigns, segmented campaigns, impact existing audiences, and re-engage them.
According to Alberto López, a digital marketing specialist, “Amazon DSP’s ability to integrate Amazon consumer data with browsing and purchasing behaviors allows campaigns to be extremely precise and effective, marking a fundamental shift in online advertising” Source.
Who can use Amazon DSP?
To start, the Amazon DSP service is available to advertisers who sell products on Amazon and also to those who do not. Indeed, it can be used to promote products even if the brand does not have a store on Amazon.
Additionally, users have two options:
- Self-service: where the client has total control over the ads and campaigns.
- Managed service: preferable for companies that want access to Amazon DSP inventory or need specific advice for programmatic ads. This option requires a minimum investment that varies by country.
What sets Amazon DSP apart?
There are several points where Amazon DSP differs from other existing programmatic buying platforms. Let’s look at some of them:
Exclusive Audiences
To begin, Amazon is the leading online Marketplace in Spain with consumer penetration at 80% (far above other Marketplaces, which range from 19% to 50%)*.
Moreover, Amazon is a complete ecosystem that contains user data throughout the entire customer journey: from when they begin browsing, the times they visit a specific category, study reviews on different articles, add products to their wish list, make a purchase, and even subscribe.
All this information is organized and classified into hundreds of audiences available to advertisers, allowing not only to optimize the relevance in the targeting of their campaigns but also to track user conversion if the advertiser sells on Amazon. This is not possible through other DSPs. Not to forget, Amazon is not just E-commerce: its audiences also benefit from Prime Video, Twitch, and likely soon more environments like Amazon Music will be included in the DSP.
Audience Builder and Overlap
In addition to the hundreds of categorized audiences found on Amazon DSP, it also provides a self-service tool to create custom audiences. We can compose them based on the products we want, brands, similar products, visits to Amazon Stores, interactions on Amazon Prime Video, even audiences on Twitch of specific streamers, channels, or categories.
To add to this, it also allows us to discover new ones through the “overlap report“: from a specific audience (for example, the one that works best for us), we can download a report with other similar audiences sorted by level of affinity and size.
