What is Amazon DSP?

Amazon DSP, or Amazon Demand-Side Platform, is an advertising platform that allows advertisers to buy and manage video and display advertising inventory not only on Amazon properties, but also beyond, across other websites and apps. Offering a robust set of targeting solutions, this platform uses Amazon data to help advertisers reach their target audience more precisely based on their purchasing behaviors, browsing habits, and interests. Through the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, Amazon DSP offers a programmatic advertising experience, allowing brands to automate the process of buying ad space and optimize the reach of their campaigns.

What is the Amazon DSP console used for?

The Amazon DSP Console serves as the platform's primary dashboard for advertisers. It offers a host of features essential to running programmatic advertising campaigns, including:

  • Planning and Buying: Advertisers can plan and buy advertising campaigns in an automated manner, choosing from a wide range of inventory available on Amazon and its network of partner sites.
  • Precise Targeting: Using Amazon's comprehensive data, the console enables precise ad targeting based on parameters such as purchasing behaviors, product preferences, and demographics.
  • Analytics and Optimization: The platform provides in-depth analytics tools, helping advertisers track campaign performance in real-time and make adjustments to improve ROI.
  • Automation: Aspects such as real-time bidding and ad space purchases are automated, maximizing campaign effectiveness and reach.
  • Brand Building Strategies: The console provides access to effective branding strategies using eye-catching graphic and video ads, personalized for various audience segments.

In short, the Amazon DSP Console is a centralized tool that helps advertisers easily navigate the programmatic advertising process, enabling them to actively manage and optimize their campaigns efficiently actively, maximizing their advertising investment and improving brand visibility among relevant audience segments.

How does Amazon DSP work?

Amazon DSP (Demand Side Platform) is a programmatic advertising platform that allows advertisers to buy, manage, and optimize ad campaigns at scale using powerful data and machine learning technology. Here’s how it typically works:

Purchase of Advertising Space:

  1. Advertisers use Amazon DSP to buy ad space in an automated, real-time manner, bidding on available spaces based on campaign targeting and objectives.

Targeting:

  1. Amazon DSP leverages Amazon's detailed consumer and behavioral data to precisely target ads to specific customer segments.
  2. Advertisers can target users based on their purchasing behaviors, browsing behaviors, and demographics.

Advertising Formats:

  1. Advertisers can create campaigns using a variety of ad formats, including display, video, and audio ads, on Amazon and partner sites.

Real-Time Optimization:

  1. The platform uses machine learning to analyze campaign performance in real time and adjust bidding and targeting to optimize ROI.

Analysis and Reporting:

  1. Amazon DSP offers advanced analytics and detailed reporting to help advertisers understand their campaign performance and make data-driven decisions.

Benefits of Amazon DSP

Amazon DSP offers a robust programmatic advertising solution, with unparalleled access to consumer data and massive reach across various channels and platforms, enabling advertisers to create highly targeted advertising campaigns optimized for various campaign objectives.

Access to Unique Data:

  1. Amazon DSP provides access to rich, exclusive consumer data on the Amazon platform, enabling precise and relevant targeting.

Precise Targeting:

  1. The wealth of data enables advanced demographic and behavioral targeting, allowing advertisers to reach the right audience at the right time.

Extended Scope:

  1. With Amazon DSP, advertisers are not limited to the Amazon platform and can reach users on other partner websites, apps, and platforms, significantly increasing their reach.

Multichannel Advertising:

  1. Advertisers can run multi-channel advertising campaigns, including display, video and mobile ads, while managing all of these campaigns centrally.

Automated Optimization:

  1. Using machine learning helps optimize campaigns in real-time, ensuring advertising budgets are spent efficiently to achieve campaign objectives.

Campaign Flexibility:

  1. Amazon DSP offers the flexibility to create brand-driven or performance-driven campaigns, depending on the advertiser's goals.

Performance Measurement:

  1. Advertisers can closely monitor the performance of their campaigns thanks to the detailed analytics tools available on the platform, facilitating ROI assessment and data-driven decision-making.

Amazon Ad Console vs Amazon Demand Side Platform (DSP)

The Amazon Ad Console and the Amazon Demand Side Platform (DSP) are two distinct platforms offered by Amazon, each with its own set of features and objectives to meet the diverse needs of advertisers and brands. While both platforms deal with advertising, they do so in different ways and are optimized for varying advertising objectives.

Amazon Ad Console

Amazon’s advertising console offers three different ad types: Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Product Display Ads. These are a suite of cost-per-click (CPC) ads that brands can use to market their products to Amazon shoppers. Advertisers who invest in Amazon’s advertising console bid on keywords for the right to show their ad to consumers who are actively searching. With the CPC model, brands only pay when a shopper clicks on their ad.

With the Amazon Ad Console, you’re reaching consumers who are further down the marketing funnel (i.e., closer to the point of purchase), so your total audience size is limited. Search advertising is a great solution for brands looking to grow sales on Amazon, but if you’re looking to consistently increase your sales by 100% or more year over year, you should explore the Amazon Demand Side Platform (Amazon DSP) suite.

Amazon Demand Side Platform (DSP)

Amazon DSP is an advertising platform for advertisers that enables brands to advertise to potential customers efficiently and at scale. Amazon’s unique advantage is that it allows advertisers to programmatically buy display and video ads using customer targeting data only available on Amazon.

Ads created and managed by Amazon DSP can be configured to appear not only on Amazon.com, as is the case in the Amazon Ad Console, but also on websites, social media sites, mobile apps, and/or online video channels. Amazon DSP is the only way to access ad inventory that is exclusively available across Amazon’s collection of online properties and devices, such as:

  • Kindle
  • Fire TV
  • IMDb
  • Properties owned and operated by Amazon

Most of the advertising options available on Amazon DSP use a cost-per-mille (CPM) model instead of the cost-per-click model we see in Amazon Ad Console. Instead of buying clicks, the focus is on paying to reach a targeted audience and serve them a relevant ad. A cost-per-view (CPV) model is used for video ads. This is similar to CPM, but it is designed specifically to ensure that advertisers pay for the views of their video ads. A DSP media buy is the only way for brands to accurately and effectively target Amazon shoppers outside of Amazon. This type of advertising helps advertisers build awareness of their brand and products and increases the likelihood that customers will consider purchasing their brand and products when they shop on Amazon.

Targeting Options with Amazon DSP

With Amazon DSP, you can reach shoppers at any stage of the marketing funnel, including consumers who have recently expressed intent to purchase your products but haven't yet done so.

Amazon DSP allows advertisers to segment their audiences through six unique targeting options:

  1. Behavioral segments include audiences that have shown specific behaviors such as purchase intent in a specific Amazon subcategory in the previous 30 days.
  1. Lifestyle segments include audiences who have search and purchase behaviors associated with a common lifestyle, such as paleo dieters, outdoor enthusiasts, and environmentalists.
  1. Contextual segments target audiences based on what they are searching for in real-time to show ads that are contextually relevant.
  1. Remarketing segments re-engage shoppers who have searched for, viewed, and/or purchased your products or similar products.
  1. Lookalike Audience segments include audiences with similar purchasing behaviors to other specific audiences such as your current customers.
  1. Advertiser Audiences segments leverage a brand's data, such as information from a CRM database, a hashed email list, or a web page with a tracking pixel.

Amazon DSP uses these segments to target specific audiences. This means that if someone viewed your Amazon page but didn’t purchase, or researched your product on your brand’s website, or even looked at your competitors’ websites – you can show them an ad that directs them to your Amazon listing to complete their purchase.

Should I invest in Amazon Ad Console or Amazon DSP?

Amazon DSP campaigns are ideal for brands that want to create increased demand for their branded products and drive consistent year-over-year growth through new customer acquisition. Amazon Ad Console campaigns are valuable for businesses that want to capture existing demand for the products they sell and maximize their ad spend.

Amazon Ad Console and Amazon DSP are both great platforms on their own, but together they create tremendous value. When you invest in both, you’re covering the entire sales funnel: re-engaging interested shoppers, reaching more high-intent customers, and accessing new creative formats. According to Amazon, search and display ads combined increase demand for a brand’s products by over 100%, increase total sales by 30%, and increase ROAS by 160%. Are you currently using Amazon Ad Console and wondering how Amazon DSP could impact your bottom line?