Amazon recently held its annual unBoxed conference for 2022, and throughout the event, the company announced a number of exciting new advertising products and features.

Over the last year, Amazon has been focused on growing its ad offering, and it’s paying off. In Q2 of 2022, Amazon beat Google and Meta with 18% ad growth over the previous year. During the same time period, Facebook reported declining YoY growth for the first time ever.

With that in mind, these new additions to the Amazon Ad landscape are intended to secure that position moving forward. Let’s take a closer look at what the company announced and how the changes may affect your ad strategy. 

1. Sponsored Display Video Ads

As a video production company, we have to kick off with the most exciting update for the video space: a bespoke video creation tool that will allow advertisers to create their own video campaigns and measure performance. If you’ve already been using the video builder feature within Amazon’s interface, this iteration is expected to be even more robust. 

While we don’t know much about what this feature will look like or exactly how it will work, it does represent an exciting opportunity for video marketers. Smaller organizations that are currently struggling to prioritize video may be able to create content more efficiently with the tool, and larger organizations can test another video option that may perform well in the Amazon ad landscape. It’s also a great way to refresh your video content more frequently at scale.

Stay tuned for more on exactly how this feature works, but we’re looking forward to brands embracing this offering to put out more video ads. 

2. Expansion of Sponsored Display Ads

Up until now, Amazon Sponsored Display Ads were only available for brands that actively sell products through the site. With this update, businesses that don’t sell on Amazon can use Sponsored Display to place ads on Twitch. Notably, this includes entire industries that don’t lend themselves to Amazon product sales, like the restaurant industry or the hospitality industry.

Hopefully, we’ll see this feature expand beyond Twitch ad inventory into other placements within the site. But, if you’ve been left out of the Sponsored Display Ads landscape in the past because you don’t sell on Amazon, this is a step in the right direction.

3. Rewarded Sponsored Display

Next, Amazon announced that it’s going to offer the inclusion of an Amazon shopping credit directly within Sponsored Display Ads. When a potential customer clicks on the ad, the credit will be automatically applied at checkout. 

This is one of the most innovative features Amazon announced at the conference, and it may help boost sales for price-focused consumers moving forward. If it performs well, we may ultimately see an expansion of this concept into other Amazon ad placements.

4. Digital Signage Ads in Amazon Fresh Stores

In one of the more limited announcements of the conference, Amazon shared that in-store Digital Signage Ads can now be purchased programmatically through the DSP. 

While advertisers may appreciate that they can set parameters including store location, location within the store, or time of day, this feature only currently applies to the 39 Amazon Fresh stores across the US. But, for brands that sell through Amazon Fresh, this may be a helpful update.

5. Presets for Sponsored Products Campaigns

Amazon’s recommended campaign settings are called “presets,” and they’ll now be available in the ads console for all new products. 

Many larger organizations have internal data that points to best practices among their audience, but for smaller organizations or those that are new to Amazon ads, these presets are helpful. They often lower the barrier to entry of creating the campaign itself and may boost performance results.

If you’re constantly Googling “Amazon ads best practices” or waiting for the company to release new performance data, this update is for you.

6. Performance Recommendations for Sponsored Products Campaigns

Similarly, Amazon will offer moment-by-moment recommendations within the ad console to adopt best practices for Sponsored Product campaigns. It’s unclear how this feature will differ from the performance recommendations that Amazon has already been providing for advertisers, but the feedback is helpful nonetheless.

7. Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) Enhancements

Finally, Amazon announced a number of improvements and additions to the Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) interface. These enhancements include Sponsored Display and digital subscription events, additional pre-built instructional queries, and the option to manage DSP audiences in the platform. 

These smaller tweaks will primarily affect users that already used AMC, but they represent a solid step forward for the ad tech experience. 

Our Key Takeaways

The major theme through many of the updates? Amazon is focused on making its ad landscape more accessible to small and mid-sized businesses.

By expanding ad solutions and placement options, enabling on-demand video creation, and making it easier to apply Amazon’s tried-and-true best practices to each campaign, these updates have the potential to make Amazon ads more lucrative for smaller marketing teams.

What happens next? Some of these updates are already available to many US-based accounts, while others are expected to take a bit longer to officially launch. Keep an eye on your campaigns over the coming weeks and months to put these new features to use!