Amazon selling its ad tools to other retailers
Amazon is looking to expand its lucrative ad business by selling the technology that powers it to other retailers.
In an email to Chain Store Age, the online giant announced a new program called Amazon Ad Retail Service that lets other retailers use its own tools to showcase ads on their own websites. Built on the hosted Amazon Web Services platform, it enables retailers to show product ads on their search, browse, and product pages to help customers with product discovery and purchase decisions. The ads can incorporate availability and price, in addition to contextual information such as shopper search query, category or product being viewed to help ensure customers see ads for desired and available products.
Participating retailers determine ad creative formats, where ads appear across their apps and websites, and how many ads are shown. They can also determine what customers see after clicking on an ad, such as directing traffic to the product page, providing a ‘view of the product, or enabling the customer to add the product directly to their cart.
Retailers using the service can also choose to make their advertising offerings available via the Amazon Ads console and APIs. Amazon Ad Retail Service is currently in beta with multiple retailers including Oriental Trading Company, and launching with Tilly's and other retailers soon.
The service operates on dedicated systems with access controls designed to ensure that retailer information is separate from Amazon Ads and other Amazon businesses. It uses machine learning models that process contextual information like search queries and product attributes to help serve relevant ads.
Ad measurement takes place within AWS clean rooms (secure data-sharing environments) to generate aggregated, anonymized reports for the retailer and its advertisers.
The release of this new solution follows Amazon’s October 2024 rollout of a range of new AI-equipped solutions for advertisers and insight-based features for advertisers on Amazon Ads and the January 2025 introduction of new Amazon Ads generative AI tools.
[READ MORE: Amazon expands generative AI capabilities for advertisers]
"Amazon Retail Ad Service helps retailers enhance their shopping experience with highly relevant advertising that guides customers through the shopping journey, helping their shoppers with product discovery and making informed purchase decisions," said Paula Despins, VP of ads measurement. "We’ve designed this to be a win for retailers, advertisers, and shoppers, and we look forward to seeing how it improves outcomes, drives sales, and enhances the shopping experience."
