Hearst puts its audience data to work — through Amazon

The test is still in early stages, and Hearst’s svp of ad product and data Jen Dorre, offered only limited detail last week at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Miami.

Still, the early signs are promising. 

When advertisers buy Hearst ad inventory through the Amazon DSP, Dorre’s team is seeing noticeably stronger completion and click-through rates compared to other buys. No, it’s not a direct view into ROI — only Amazon and the advertiser get that — but it does give Hearst a directional read on how its audiences perform. 

“We’re really happy with the results,” said Dorre. 

Those gains stem from a deeper integration between AURA, Hearst’s AI-driven audience tool, and Amazon’s clean room product for publishers, the Amazon Publisher Cloud. 

Here’s how it works: AURA builds audience segments by combining behavioral signals from browsing habits with contextual cues from the content readers consume. Until the summer, these segments were only available via Hearst’s direct sales team. Now, under the new partnership, advertisers can access them through the Amazon DSP. 

Neither Amazon nor advertisers can see exactly who’s in these segments — only what those audiences tend to care about. That privacy boundary is one Hearst won’t cross, said Dorre. That said, the publisher is exploring how to give Amazon advertisers more granularity — without compromising user anonymity or giving up too much control. 

As Dorre explained: “It’s up to us how granular we want to go, or if we keep our audiences more broad.”

For now, these audiences are limited to private marketplace deals, where a select group of advertisers bid against a fixed floor price. That could change, eventually, mused Dorre, but currently the focus is on these curated, one-to-many deals. It’s what advertisers are asking for, she continued.

They’re also asking for more precision. And that, Dorre said, is where the value of integration really starts to show, surfacing overlaps between Hearst’s audiences and Amazon shopper behavior that might not have been obvious before.

Take Hearst’s “globetrotter” audience, for instance. Is there overlap with someone browsing travel books on Amazon? That matching process happens inside the Amazon Publisher Cloud data clean room and is privacy-protected through encryption, Dorre added. 

“At this point, we’re just finding the overlap with [Amazon’s] retail signals and testing what works for which advertisers,” said Dorre. “The goal with these combined signals is to drive greater reach and better performance for advertisers.”

Looking ahead

The timing isn’t accidental. The partnership is rolling out ahead of the critical holiday season, a moment when advertisers are most willing to spend.

The hope, naturally, is that deeper integration with Amazon will drive more ad dollars into Hearst’s ecosystem. But it’s not guaranteed. 

Push the partnership too far, and Hearst risks cannibalizing its direct-sold business. Move too cautiously, and valuable ad dollars may get left on the table. The sweet spot — where those deals add to, not subtract from one another — is still being determined, said Dorre.

Nevertheless, there’s confidence this model can deliver, especially given rising demand for more controlled, curated forms of programmatic buying. It doesn’t hurt that buying through Amazon often comes with steep discounts compared to other DSPs. As Dorre noted, Hearst hasn’t had to offer any incentives of its own. 

What it is doing, though, is trying to better understand what would motivate an Amazon advertiser to specifically buy Hearst inventory. Unlike standard deals on Amazon DSP, Hearst’s inventory isn’t bundled with other publishers — it’s offered as a standalone package. That’s what both sides are focused on now. 

“There’s a dedicated [Amazon] team, with everything from sales, operations and account management, to help us,” she continued. “We can talk to an advertiser together or they can talk to an advertiser directly and open up a deal.”

The Amazon effect

For Amazon, partnerships like this are part of a broader push to extend the reach of its advertising business beyond its own ecosystem. The company brought in $15.7 billion in ad revenue last quarter. But it wants more. And publisher inventory — more specifically, performance-grade publisher inventory — is a key part of the strategy.

While Amazon has long let advertisers use its data to target users off-site, those ads haven’t historically performed as well as the ones within its own walls. The fix? Smarter, cleaner signals from publishers like Hearst. Get those, and Amazon can close the performance gap, and in the process, strengthen its case for routing more ad spending through its DSP over rivals.

“Amazon’s growing investment in advertising beyond its owned platforms reflects a wider industry shift towards greater interoperability and more seamless commerce experiences,” said Sarah Lawson Johnston, md of, EMEA, ad tech commerce business Vudoo. “Amazon’s O&O is a known-known of engaged consumers, whether that’s on the Amazon site or on Prime, but their recent DSP partnerships with Netflix and SiriusXM Media’s streaming portfolio mark a great leap forward in the convergence of premium content and retail media.”