What is Amazon DSP?

What is DSP and Why It’s Important 

A DSP (or Demand-Side Platform) is the technological stepping stone between advertisers and agencies, and publishers offering placements and inventory for digital advertisements on websites, mobile apps, and streaming devices. Through automated, programmatic advertising, machine-learning algorithms will allow a DSP to auction, buy, and place ads across the web, according to the targeting levers set by the advertiser or digital marketing agency. 

While DSPs are not new to digital advertising (other DSPs include big names such as The Trade Desk or Google Display Network (GDN)) the 2018 rebrand of Amazon DSP is the company’s first venture into display advertising outside of its highly successful, on-site PPC solution, the Amazon Advertising Console.

Through Amazon DSP, advertisers can now expand their advertising reach beyond Ad Console and utilize both on-Amazon and offsite placements and drive traffic not only to their Amazon pages, but to their direct to consumer sites as well.

Much like the way display ads through Facebook Ads work, Amazon DSP advertisements are able to place both on Amazon-owned properties (including Amazon.com, the Amazon app, IMDb, and others) and on thousands of leading publishers and sites — including Huffington Post, ESPN, The Weather Channel, Buzzfeed, and many more.

While Amazon DSP is a wildly popular and powerful tool, it’s availability is still limited compared to Amazon’s other advertising solutions. As of early 2021, access to the platform is limited to two avenues: the first through Amazon’s own Managed Service — a fully-managed offering through Amazon Advertising Solutions, with a dedicated Amazon representative with Amazon packages starting at a $35,000 per month advertising spend minimum. 

The second and final solution to DSP advertising is through an agency partner. While access to the Amazon DSP is limited to select agencies and not yet available to individual brands, Power Digital is excited to offer complimentary audits of your business and provide your brand the opportunity to unlock the potential of Amazon DSP. With no minimum investment required, Power Digital provides the best-in-class management solution to meet your business goals with the help of Amazon DSP.

Keys to Success: What You Need to Get Started

As Amazon’s DSP is not widely accessible to advertisers, you’ll need to partner either directly with Amazon or an agency with access to the DSP, like Power Digital. If you are a brand selling on Amazon, ensuring that your product listings are optimized and your Amazon storefront is built out are the first steps to ensuring that any traffic sent in via Amazon DSP is met with a solid foundation. This is a great way to get a competitive edge when it comes to new Amazon strategies. 

Search Advertising — This is a strategy to catch lower funnel traffic generated by on- and off-site Amazon DSP ads.

Clear Goals and KPIs — Amazon’s DSP provides advertisers the opportunity to run truly full-funnel advertising campaigns — from introducing new users to expanding subscriptions. It’s important to have clear goals for each campaign strategy set forth, including KPIs that make sense for the strategies. 

Insights: What Data We Can Extract 

One of the greatest benefits to Amazon’s DSP is the wealth of metrics, data, and insights provided — many that are exclusively accessed through the platform. Amazon’s DSP provides in-depth campaign measurement, including performance by website, app, and device. For each campaign element, the DSP provides extensive reporting not only for advertised products, but for brand halo performance across the brand’s catalog. In addition to the advertising metrics found in the Amazon Advertising Console, Amazon’s DSP also includes new-to-brand and Subscribe and Save metrics for all ad types and placements.

Amidst hundreds of detailed reporting metrics, access to the DSP also gives advertisers exclusive access to Audience Insights — a data-fueled platform providing an in-depth look at a brand’s audience across all interactions with the brand on Amazon. Looking beyond ad campaigns, advertisers can learn more about their audiences’ demographics, purchase timing, and user interactions across all users interacting with the brand. With these insights, advertisers can take a more strategic approach not only to their advertising campaigns, but their presence on Amazon and beyond.

The DSP Funnel: Top, Middle, and Bottom

What Brands Should Use DSP?

Brands selling on Amazon: If you currently have products being sold on Amazon, then DSP is a must. There is no better way for a business selling on Amazon to acquire customer data than by utilizing DSP. DSP will help you better understand your traffic funnel and lead to an increase in total sales, new to brand sales, and repeat customer sales. 

Brands that do not sell on Amazon (D2C): Even if you aren’t selling Amazon, that doesn’t mean you can’t use DSP. The main reason to use DSP is to better understand customer data, and Amazon has the most online retail customer data of any platform. Furthermore, you can send traffic to your website (not just Amazon) by utilizing DSP, so the opportunity is still wide open for businesses not selling on Amazon. Using it as an advertising platform will increase brand awareness and help bring a potential customer to purchase your product.

Services: If your company utilizes a lead generation or B2B model, you can still use DSP to blanket the internet and enhance your brand presence. Just like with brands that do not sell on Amazon, service-based businesses can leverage the DSP data to better understand their customer. 

Non-profits: With 50% of online shoppers checking out at Amazon, there is no reason a non-profit wouldn’t want to advertise through Amazon’s DSP platform. This is the best way to get better data and build an audience around people who want to know about your non-profit. Targeting Amazon shoppers with an Amazon ad will allow you to capture a larger target audience and raise brand awareness.

DSP is for Everyone! 

The amazing thing about Amazon DSP is that any business looking to boost its presence online can leverage this network to do just that. Working with an agency with a seat at the DSP table will provide unlimited opportunities to better understand your audience and lead to success regardless of your business’ goals. 

Contact Power Digital for a Free Marketing Audit and to learn more about how Amazon DSP can help your business take the step!