The shift to data-fueled ad buying is likely to have some unlikely results. One might be an ad world with completely new entrants. Amazon is now a candidate.
The e-commerce giant has dabbled in advertising previously, selling ads on sister site IMDB.com for example. It has also been a large online advertiser and a big player in affiliate marketing and seach ads. But now, it’s branching into the world of audience targeting with a deal to use Triggit’s data management platform.
What this means is Amazon can essentially move up the funnel for brands. It can start with its enormous trove of sales data, which it uses to personalize recommendations on its site, then go out through ad exchanges and direct to sites and find those audiences elsewhere for brands. This was a scenario Luma Partners CEO Terry Kawaja predicted in his sciencification of video presentation.
Of course, the question is whether Amazon is truly committed to being a big player in advertising or is just dabbling. If it commits fully — buying a demand-side platform, for instance — it could set off others in similar data positions, like eBay, of trying to become a new-style media company that doesn’t monetize audiences on its property but with its audience data.
LinkedIn and Ziff Davis are going this route on the publisher side. They can tap into their audience information and extend buys on other sites. Sites like Amazon and eBay, however, are working with transaction data, which is the most valuable. Amazon wouldn’t be limited to e-commerce data, however, considering it also owns movie site IMDB — retarget movie goers — and Soap.com, a trove of valuable customer info for consumer-package-goods brands.
That is, if the benefits outweigh the costs. Companies like Amazon, which has direct financial relationships with tens of millions of consumers, could easily come under fire for using customer data in this way — even if such coop marketing is common in the analog world. EBay, for instance, pulled back its data from BlueKai earlier this year citing privacy concerns. Others say the real issue was the money it was getting for the data. EBay could easily jump back in the game, particularly now that it owns GSI Commerce.
-
How agencies adapt as bots evolve
Social media bots may represent just a sliver of an app's total users, but it turns out they may be generating more content than we were previously aware. The challenge is separating the good ones from the bad.
-
Publishers feel the crunch of cookieless browsers like Apple’s Safari
Bid enrichment provides publishers the means of sprucing up their cookieless impressions to improve their value in advertisers’ eyes.
-
Why Hearst is building a commerce marketplace
Publisher commerce marketplaces aren't always successful, but Hearst's Sheel Shah hopes his company's new marketplace will capitalize on the natural evolution of its readers' online shopping habits.
-
Sponsored<strong>How marketers are responding to shoppers’ wants this holiday season</strong>
Matthew Tilley, executive director, marketing, Vericast With the holidays right around the corner, the economy may force some consumers to adjust their plans and stretch their dollars even further. While some shoppers may rein in their spending, others will still go all out despite a cloudy economic outlook. Given the current economic climate, consumers are […]
-
‘Death by a thousand paper cuts’: Publishers fret over alternative ID overload hurting site performance
Publishers lack the data to know which IDs they can afford not to support and are worried a surplus of IDs can slow page-load speeds and lower sites' search rankings.
-
Member ExclusiveMedia Buying Briefing: Separating agency progress from posturing around carbon reduction and sustainability
Could it be that the media world is finally taking concrete steps toward decarbonization — or will many of the efforts underway become the butt of a joke (or worse, the focus of an upcoming John Oliver segment)?
