Dive Brief:
- Amazon’s Publisher Services group is introducing a new cloud-based header bidding product called Transparent Ad Marketplace, according to The Wall Street Journal.
- The product will allow publishers to have multiple ad buyers bid on ad units simultaneously. Header bidding has been widely adopted across most digital ad platforms and exchanges.
- Another new product from Amazon is its Shopping Insights Service, an analytics product that uses Amazon’s first-party customer shopping data to give publishers more information on people who visit their websites. Amazon is offering both new products to marketers for free.
Dive Insight:
Amazon isn’t well-known as an advertising company but, as it has expanded beyond e-commerce into a multi-faceted digital platform and technology company, better digital advertising options are an intuitive and arguably necessary next step.
Like ad competitors Google and Facebook, Amazon has a unique set of data on a large number of people for ad targeting purposes, and its internet services division has wide-ranging capabilities. As offerings like digital assistant Alexa become more widespread via IoT devices like the Echo, Amazon's role as an advertiser platform could grow quickly in this regard.
The new header bidding product helps publishers because it’s cloud-based and speeds up page loads on publishers’ ad bidding pages, per the Journal. Time magazine is an early tester of the new insights product and Kavata Mbondo, the publisher’s vice president of digital revenue strategy and operations, told the Journal that the tool is providing insights into website visitors that will inform conversations with brands about ad buys.
