Dive Brief:
- Amazon is going to offer marketers a paid search ad format, according to reporting by AdExchanger.
- The overall Amazon strategy was described as e-commerce marketing by Seth Dallaire, VP of global ad sales at Amazon Media Group.
- “There’s an expectation from people who visit Amazon [that] they’re going to find anything they want. If you have the confidence that we’re going to meet that expectation, you might just come to Amazon to start that search,” Dallaire said at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview conference.
Dive Insight:
Consumers are already using Amazon for product search. A survey from PowerReviews last summer found that Amazon beats Google as a starting point for product search, with 38% choosing the e-commerce giant and 35% the search giant.
As Amazon's digital platform continues to extend beyond commerce, there are a growing number of engagement opportunities throughout the day, something the company could monetize through paid search.
One reason why the company would want to get into the paid search business is the growing popularity of its Echo and Dot devices and other personal digital assistants powered by Amazon’s Alexa artificial intelligence technology. Marketers are already looking for ways to leverage those audiences, and Amazon is positioned to offer an easy route to accomplish that through a familiar marketing tactic in paid search.
If Amazon is able to marketers used to spending budgets on its ad platform, and find success with paid search via voice searches on Alexa, they are more likely to further expand into Amazon’s ecosystem such as by creating a branded skill for Alexa such as Campbells’ Soup, Patron and other brands have already done. Daillaire told AdExchanger he expects more brand-side business on branded skill creation since most agencies and brand marketing teams don’t have in-house developers for that work.
