Kelly McGuigan
Director of Product Marketing, Skai
Amazon Advertising impact. The power of Amazon Advertising extends well beyond the walls of Amazon.com. Retailers must understand this new dynamic and embrace the holistic value of the channel to maximize business impact.
For brands, Amazon represents more than just a marketplace. It is now one of the most important consumer tools for researching product purchase decisions. According to eMarketer, “a number of consumer surveys have shown that more US digital shoppers now start their searches on Amazon. Nearly half (46.7%) of US internet users started product searches on Amazon.”
The Amazon Advertising impact across other retail channels
Now, a report from Analytic Partners shows that advertising on Amazon drives significant sales outside of Amazon.com to other retail channels. ROI Genome Marketing Intelligence Report – The New Omnichannel: Clicks, Bricks And Everything In Between finally puts some quantification behind what many marketers already knew to be true about the Amazon Advertising impact.
“On average, we see that more than half of the impact of Amazon advertising is actually onto non-Amazon sales channels—in other words, advertising on Amazon helps drive Amazon and Brick & mortar sales. In fact, up to 70-90% of the impact of AMG (Amazon Display Ads) is onto non-Amazon sales channels. Even AMS (Amazon Paid Search) drives offline sales – up to half of the impact of Amazon Paid Search is onto non-Amazon sales channels.”
Amazon Search (AMS) was the former name for the two very popular Amazon ad formats, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products, which are triggered by queries on Amazon’s search engine.
Marketers must harness the Amazon Advertising impact correctly
The notion that the power of Amazon and Amazon Advertising extends beyond 
the walls of Amazon.com is a known best practice for marketers who have been working for a while in this channel. In fact, in Skai’s recent white paper, Get Primed for Prime Day, we urge brands to understand and leverage the impact of Amazon’s role in the customer journey:
To maximize the impact of Amazon for your business, the right way to position it within your organization is to think of it as a marketplace and not just an online store. After all, it plays a key role in product research with reviews, questions/answers, and high-quality images & videos. A number of consumer surveys have shown that many U.S. digital shoppers now start their product searches on Amazon.
It’s not a stretch to think that your product’s Amazon profile page could be the most important page online for that item because of its ability to reach shoppers at scale. When you begin to understand the influential role that Amazon plays in today’s customer journey, your strategy will become more holistic and you can truly maximize the full power that this marketplace can have on your business—for Prime Day and beyond.
Key takeaway: Marketers must think beyond channels to succeed
The core message of the free report is that marketing organizations who continue to plan in channel silos may be limited in their ability to drive business value. Understanding market dynamics and how consumers engage with brand messaging is the right path forward to truly unlock the full power of what advertising can accomplish.
As stated eloquently in the report’s final pages:
From a consumer perspective, today’s world is omnichannel. A buyer may be exposed to a product through a display banner, check out the product in a store and ultimately decide to buy it online. Marketers need to keep up with this behavior by seeing their marketing tactics as not focused on online or offline, but for their holistic impact.
Buying ecommerce search? Make sure you capture its impact on “bricks.” The same goes for television: it may be most efficient at driving foot traffic, but it will also increase “clicks.” The most successful marketing programs are those that make sense for the dynamics of the business, rather than the channel.
Are you making the most of the Amazon Advertising impact?
Skai Ecommerce is the leading solution for brands and agencies to maximize their marketplace advertising including Amazon. Reach out today with any questions you may have or to schedule a quick and easy demo to see the platform in action.
