Remember that phrase – “Follow the Money?” With over 300 million worldwide active customer accounts, Amazon has a deep understanding of how shoppers engage with products and brands as they discover, browse, and purchase online. Advertising through Amazon’s targeting data can help businesses reach customers at every stage of their journey, and Amazon allows for several different ways to target consumers while showing them different types of ads, in various locations. So, let’s go ahead and unpack this Amazon advertising box.

The real power of Amazon is being able to use the massive amount of data that Amazon has accumulated about its users, and then target those same Amazon users while they’re off Amazon. Think of your own consumer behavior. When you know what you are looking to purchase, you go to Amazon and search for it, add it to your cart, and then you’re done, so you’re not spending too much time on the actual Amazon.com website. With Amazon targeting, you can reach that same user when they visit other Amazon owned properties such as IMBDb.com, Amazon Freevee, and Fire TV, and also on thousands of other websites and apps that Amazon has partnered with, called Amazon Publishers.

Along with the different places where ads can be served when utilizing Amazon as an advertising platform, Amazon allows for different types of ads to show to consumers such as display ads, video ads, and OTT ads. Not only will your ads run on Amazon-owned properties, but most will run on what we call Amazon Publishers – thousands of websites and apps that Amazon has partnered with to reach their users (CNN, TBS, A&E, fuboTV, AccuWeather, US Weekly, reddit.com, to name a few) These can be display, video, or OTT ads.

OTT has really taken off because the way that people consume TV and video content is changing. Nowadays, you can watch your favorite show on your time compared to 15 years ago when you had to drop everything you were doing and be parked in front of the TV if you wanted to catch your favorite program. More and more US households are becoming “cord cutters” and those households are growing while traditional pay TV households is now below 50% and declining. With Amazon OTT, because you are targeting by behaviors, products, or from your customer list, a lower frequency of seeing an ad has the same effectiveness because it’s a targeted audience. Linear TV is more of a shotgun approach where you are reaching the masses, where Amazon OTT targeting is going to be a rifle approach because you are targeting people more closely.

Speaking of targeting, lets break down the different ways that a business can utilize OTT ads through Amazon:

• Amazon Behavioral Targeting- Showing a display, video, or OTT ads to specific consumers based on their Amazon purchase history, searches, and browsing, across Amazon.com (display only), Amazon owned properties, and across Amazon Publishers.
• Amazon Product Targeting- This targeting strategy is a little more precise than behavioral targeting we are building audience of people who have searched, browsed or purchased specific products on Amazon.com and then show them a display, video, or OTT ad on Amazon.com (display only), Amazon owned properties, and across Amazon Publishers.
• Amazon Custom Audience Matching and Lookalike- Utilizing a list of customer emails or addresses, we match them to Amazon users and show a display, video, or OTT ads across Amazon.com (display only), Amazon owned properties, and Amazon Publishers.
• Amazon Retargeting- Following people after they leave a business’s website and showing them a display, video, or OTT ads across Amazon.com (display only), Amazon owned properties, and Amazon Publishers.