Amazon Revolutionizes Retail Media by Turning Competitors into Customers
Amazon Ads took the prize for “Most Important Advertising News At CES” this year. The business recently unveiled the Amazon Retail Ad Services at CES, marking a transformative step in the retail media landscape. The service empowers other retailers to utilize Amazon’s advanced advertising technology to deliver targeted ads on their own e-commerce platforms. By leveraging Amazon’s two decades of expertise and machine learning models trained on trillions of shopping signals, the service promises to revolutionize how retailers engage with their customers.
Built on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the platform allows retailers to showcase ads on search, browse, and product pages. Retailers maintain control over the ad placement, creative formats, and post-click actions, such as adding products to a cart directly from an ad. Importantly, retailers manage their data securely within their AWS accounts, ensuring strict separation from Amazon’s own retail operations.
The Amazon Retail Ad Service also facilitates seamless integration for advertisers already on the Amazon Ads platform. This enables advertisers to extend their reach to third-party retailer sites while benefiting from consistent reporting and campaign optimization tools. The service is currently in beta with brands like iHerb, Oriental Trading Company, and Weee!, and more retailers are expected to join soon.
Amazon’s move positions it as a competitor to retail media giants like Criteo and Publicis Groupe’s Epsilon, as well as emerging players like Instacart. By offering this service, Amazon not only expands its advertising ecosystem but also gains potential access to broader market data, enhancing its ad prediction and recommendation capabilities.
With this launch, Amazon continues to blur the lines between commerce and media, demonstrating its commitment to innovation in retail media and underscoring its ambition to remain a leader in the global digital advertising market.
Amazon Unlocks 5 Years of Shopper Insights with This New Ad Tool
Also at CES 2025, Amazon Ads announced an important enhancement to Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), allowing advertisers to analyze up to five years of historical purchase signals. This enhancement significantly expands the previous 13-month lookback window, offering brands deeper insights into customer behavior and advertising performance.
AMC’s clean room provides advanced planning and measurement capabilities by integrating advertisers’ first-party data with Amazon’s extensive shopping signals. The five-year lookback capability enables advertisers to calculate vital metrics such as customer lifetime value and “new-to-brand” acquisitions with higher precision. For instance, brands selling long-lifecycle products like laptops or seasonal items can now track customer engagement over extended periods, unlocking richer insights into the effectiveness of their marketing strategies.
This update is especially useful for brands managing diverse product portfolios or seasonal categories, such as allergy medications or holiday decorations. By leveraging a broader dataset, marketers can conduct year-over-year comparisons, better understand cross-category purchase behaviors, and refine their strategies to drive both immediate and long-term growth. Additionally, the feature empowers advertisers to identify key entry-point products that generate downstream impact across their portfolios, enhancing their overall marketing efficiency.
Paula Despins, Amazon Ads’ Vice President of Ads Measurement, highlighted that the extended window simplifies understanding of the consumer journey, enabling advertisers to make data-informed decisions that optimize awareness, acquisition, and retention strategies. Available in limited beta as part of AMC’s Flexible Shopping Insights, this expansion underscores Amazon’s commitment to delivering powerful, user-friendly advertising tools.
Amazon’s five-year data lookback not only sets a new standard in retail media measurement but also reinforces its position as an innovator in leveraging big data for smarter advertising. This enhancement equips brands with the tools to make transformative decisions, deepening their connection with customers in an ever-evolving digital marketplace.
Meta’s Fact-Checking Exit: A Playground for Misinfo And A Minefield for Advertisers?
Meta Platforms’ decision to replace its fact-checking program with a community-driven “Community Notes” system marks a pivotal shift in its content moderation and advertising ecosystem. The move, inspired by a similar feature on Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter), reflects CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s ambition to prioritize free expression and simplify platform policies (and to make good weather with the incoming Trump administration).
For advertisers, this shift poses both opportunities and challenges. On one hand, a reduction in perceived censorship could enhance engagement by attracting users who favor less restrictive content environments. On the other, the risk of misinformation spreading unchecked could erode trust in the platform, complicating brand safety measures. Advertisers might need to invest more in monitoring ad placement contexts to ensure alignment with their values and messaging.
The introduction of Community Notes fundamentally changes the way misinformation is addressed on Meta’s platforms. While fact-checking was managed by vetted third parties, the new model relies on community consensus to highlight misleading posts. Critics argue this approach risks bias and ineffectiveness on divisive topics, as users with differing viewpoints must agree before notes are published. This could make Meta’s environment less predictable and potentially chaotic for advertisers.
Meta’s competitors, including X, will watch closely as this policy unfolds. While X has found some success with its Community Notes system, Meta’s larger user base and global influence may amplify both the benefits and pitfalls of this model. Platforms with stricter content policies, such as YouTube, might position themselves as safer alternatives for brands wary of reputational risks.
Ultimately, Meta’s shift could redefine the social media advertising landscape, forcing advertisers and competitors alike to navigate an evolving landscape of free expression, community moderation, and brand safety concerns. This bold move reflects a broader trend toward decentralizing content oversight, with unpredictable consequences for the digital advertising industry.
Comcast’s Universal Ads Unleashes SMBs, Challenging Ad Giants in Premium Video
Comcast unveiled Universal Ads, a platform designed to simplify premium video ad buying and empower advertisers of all sizes, especially targeting small and medium businesses. Planned to launch in early 2025, Universal Ads promises to democratize access to premium media inventory, making it as seamless as purchasing ads on social platforms like YouTube or Meta.
Powered by FreeWheel technology, Universal Ads unites industry giants, including NBCUniversal, Warner Bros. Discovery, Fox Corporation, Roku and others, offering advertisers direct access to premium, brand-safe content across multiple publishers. This collaborative approach addresses a major pain point: the complexity and fragmentation of CTV and traditional TV ad buying.
For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), Universal Ads marks a game-changer. Historically limited by resources and complexity, these businesses can now leverage the reach and impact of TV advertising. Features such as a free self-service Universal Ads Manager and plans for automated AI creative production remove barriers to entry, enabling SMBs to compete on a level playing field with larger brands.
This move reflects a broader industry trend of traditional media vying for ad dollars traditionally dominated by digital platforms. As ROI from social media diminishes, a 2024 Comcast study revealed that 50% of advertisers who minimally used TV ads expressed interest in expanding their budgets to premium video.
Universal Ads also poses a strategic challenge to tech giants. By offering a brand-safe, performance-driven alternative with cross-publisher reach, Comcast positions its platform as an attractive option for advertisers disillusioned by social media’s limitations in targeting and safety.
As the lines blur between traditional TV and digital streaming, Universal Ads represents a significant evolution, redefining how advertisers engage with audiences across premium video. This initiative not only strengthens Comcast’s leadership but also reshapes the competitive landscape for digital and TV advertising alike.
LiveRamp and Perplexity: Redefining AI-Driven Advertising, Shaking Up Competition
LiveRamp unveiled the latest on its recent partnership with Perplexity, which integrates AI-driven capabilities into marketing and data collaboration. This partnership, announced in October 2024, focuses on leveraging Perplexity’s AI-powered “answer engine” to enhance personalized user experiences and improve marketing strategies across platforms like Meta and YouTube.
Through this collaboration, advertisers using LiveRamp can personalize AI-powered searches on Perplexity, delivering tailored brand messages and content alongside search results. Additionally, Perplexity’s authenticated inventory can be activated to create AI-driven custom audiences on social platforms, starting with Meta and YouTube. This is further strengthened by Chalice Custom Algorithms, enabling marketers to identify and target high-performing audiences.
This partnership amplifies LiveRamp’s ecosystem by adding AI-powered touchpoints that enhance connectivity and personalization. It positions the company at the forefront of AI-enhanced marketing, boosting its competitiveness and reinforcing its reputation as a leader in privacy-compliant data collaboration.
For marketers, the partnership unlocks improved audience targeting and new advertising channels within Perplexity’s search environment. These advancements offer advertisers innovative ways to engage audiences, increasing both precision and reach while tapping into real-time data-driven strategies.
Competitors in the ad tech and data collaboration space may need to respond with similar AI integrations to stay competitive. Meanwhile, users can expect more relevant and personalized search experiences, although privacy concerns around AI-powered advertising remain a discussion point. LiveRamp’s focus on data privacy should help mitigate such concerns.
This partnership exemplifies how AI is reshaping marketing, creating opportunities for advertisers and setting a new standard for personalized, privacy-conscious consumer engagement. LiveRamp’s alliance with Perplexity is a forward-looking move that redefines how brands connect with audiences in an increasingly AI-driven landscape.
Glance TV Turns Your Smart TV Screensaver into a Goldmine for Brands
Glance, part of the InMobi Group, has unveiled an interesting innovation in the connected TV (CTV) segment with the launch of Glance TV. This platform reimagines idle screens on smart TVs and set-top boxes (STBs) as dynamic, AI-powered surfaces that deliver personalized, real-time content.
Launched in India in partnership with Airtel, Glance TV is integrated into Airtel Xstream devices, leveraging the Android TV OS. It aims to redefine how users interact with televisions by transforming passive moments into engaging experiences. When a TV is idle, Glance TV comes alive with curated content ranging from breaking news to sports updates and entertainment. Early user engagement has been impressive, with average viewing times of 200 minutes across three sessions daily. Plans are already underway to scale this offering to over four million devices in India by mid-2025 and expand globally, including the U.S. this year.
The platform offers unique features, including real-time updates like sports scores, detailed weather widgets, and live interaction capabilities. It sets a high bar for personalized user experiences, thanks to its AI-driven content recommendations. This interactivity extends beyond traditional media consumption, enabling users to participate in polls, quizzes, and even live commerce sessions.
For advertisers and retailers, Glance TV opens new horizons by providing targeted advertising opportunities in a relaxed, living-room setting. Its innovative use of AI not only boosts user engagement but also equips advertisers with actionable insights for more effective campaigns.
Piyush Shah, Co-founder of InMobi and President of Glance, highlights this initiative as a “groundbreaking step in redefining televisions as intelligent, AI-powered platforms that engage, connect, and inspire users.” Glance TV stands poised to reshape how we perceive TV screens—not as idle surfaces but as vibrant canvases for interaction, entertainment, and commerce.
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