Amazon Ads launches new full-funnel advertising capabilities

Amazon Ads unveiled innovations at unBoxed 2024, introducing a series of enhancements to its Amazon Demand-Side Platform (DSP), aimed at driving precise, full-funnel audience reach with streamlined campaign planning and optimisation for advertisers.

Kelly MacLean, Vice President of Amazon DSP, highlighted the platform's growing significance in a shifting digital landscape. “We’re inventing ad tech that makes it easier for all advertisers to navigate this evolution with precise reach, deeper insights, and direct measurement,” MacLean said. She emphasised that Amazon DSP uniquely drives outcomes across Amazon properties such as Prime Video and leading streaming apps.

Improved usability is a major feature of the updates, with a simplified user experience allowing for faster campaign creation. Early tests show a 75% reduction in campaign setup time, consolidating desktop, mobile, and app display inventory into a single line item.

New insight cards and machine learning recommendations have been introduced to enable advertisers to quickly assess campaign performance and apply optimisations, such as resolving under-delivering campaigns. These features will be centralised within a new campaign management hub launching in 2025.

Frequency cap controls have also been enhanced, allowing advertisers to manage frequency across multiple campaigns, channels, and devices. The platform noted that using these controls can save up to 26% of campaign budgets and drive up to 21% incremental reach.

The platform introduced an ads data manager, facilitating secure uploading of advertiser data to be used across Amazon DSP and Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) for more effective audience engagement and campaign optimisation. This tool will fully integrate with Amazon DSP and AMC by 2025.

Enhanced interoperability across Amazon’s ad tech ecosystem enables advertisers to create custom audiences tailored to their business goals, with the combination of Amazon DSP, AMC, and Amazon Publisher Cloud delivering stronger collaboration with third-party publishers.

AI-driven campaign optimisation is a core aspect of the enhancements, with the Performance+ feature automating audience relevancy and campaign optimisation. Performance+ has shown an average 51% improvement in customer acquisition costs, with new remarketing and retention tactics now in open beta.