More than 2.5 million active sellers compete on the Amazon marketplace every day. With this kind of competition, distinguishing your brand is paramount to success. One of the most powerful ways to reach a massive audience of Amazon shoppers is DSP, a demand-side platform that enables advertisers to reach existing customers both on and off Amazon via programmatic advertising (the automated buying and selling of advertising space). DSP advertisers can buy display, video, and audio ads to reach audiences across the web on Amazon sites and apps as well as through their publishing partners and third-party exchanges, including:

• Amazon Website
• Fire TV
• IMDb
• Freedive (IMDb Streaming)
• Kindle
• Apps
• Published Partners

DSP allows advertisers to reach Amazon shoppers across various devices via a variety of ad formats, including:

• Desktop and Mobile Browser Display Ads
  Amazon DSP includes standard sizes for display on Amazon and other sites around the web
• Mobile App Banner Ads
  Amazon DSP Mobile offers display advertisers the ability to reach and target mobile users on high-quality third-party mobile applications on Android, Kindle Fire, and iOS platforms
• Mobile Interstitial Ads
  Amazon DSP Mobile publishers can choose to display full-screen interstitial ads in their app, instead of or in addition to banner ads
• OTT, OLV, and Video Ads
  Advertisers can serve 5+ second in-stream and out-stream video ads in MP4, WebM, or FLV format using the Amazon DSP

Creating DSP Ads

Advertisers can choose between enterprise self-service DSP and managed-service DSP. Self-service advertisers run their campaigns themselves or, more commonly, through an Amazon agency. The managed-service option is fully automated and controlled by Amazon, and typically requires a minimum spend of $35,000 to get started.

As a DSP advertiser, you have the flexibility to use your own custom ads, Amazon’s e-commerce templates, or their video creative builder. E-commerce creatives can include an image you provide or a product image found on your product detail page. Various elements are automatically generated to drive the best performance for your e-commerce creative and the end customer. Amazon’s video creative builder allows you to create an engaging video free of cost by selecting one of the existing templates and using product images found on your product detail page.

One of the reasons DSP is so powerful is because it utilizes Amazon’s vast collection of consumer behavior data to help you segment and target specific audiences. For example, DSP allows you to reach shoppers who have already visited your product pages, but have not yet made a purchase. If your objective is to promote brand awareness, you can target new customers offsite with a video that introduces your brand and best-selling products. DSP enables advertisers to segment audiences through six unique targeting options:

• Behavioral Targeting reaches customers who have shown behaviors such as browsing around your category over the past 30 days
• Contextual Targeting shows ads in real-time that relevant to the web content they are currently browsing
• Lifestyle Targeting shows ads relevant to people who repeatedly shop in specific categories, such as auto supplies or health and wellness
• Remarketing shows ads to people who have previously searched for, purchased, or viewed your products online
• Audience Lookalike shows ads to people who share various similarities with your current customers
• Advertiser Audiences leverages information from a brand’s data, such as CRM data, a hashed email list, or a web page with a tracking pixel

Channel Key Client DSP Campaign Results

Advertisers typically use DSP campaigns to either drive sales or promote brand awareness. As an example, Channel Key is helping an advanced seller in the Pet Food category by managing two sales-driven DSP campaigns. One is designed to retarget people who have previously seen one of our client’s ads, but have not yet converted. The other is built to target new customers. Below are the actual results for each campaign from July 26 to August 30. As you can see, the conversion retargeting campaign is outperforming the acquisition campaign, although both are reaching a significant number of people and generating sales.

Channel Key Takeaway | Is Amazon DSP Right for You?

DSP can be an effective way for advertisers to reach Amazon shoppers. Unfortunately, it’s not for everyone. Achieving results via DSP requires a significant investment that may be cost-prohibitive for some businesses. For brand owners with a strong online presence, a healthy sales volume, and the budget to campaign effectively, DSP can be a powerful mechanism to reach a massive, targeted audience. In the example above, our client’s conversion campaign achieved more than 3.3 million impressions, which generated $216,232 in sales on a $20,760 ad spend. If reaching as many potential customers as possible is your goal, DSP is worth considering. Of course, there are other factors that contribute to the performance of a DSP campaign. To learn more about them, contact us today for a free consultation.