Amazon Ads VP Kelly MacLean on how AI helps marketers connect the dots across the customer journey, with lower costs and better delivery in early tests.
Programmatic was supposed to make buying ads easier. For plenty of marketers, though, it made things more complicated. Amazon Ads thinks AI can finally close that gap.
On this episode of “Inside the Stack,” AdExchanger Editor-in-Chief Allison Schiff speaks with Kelly MacLean, VP of science, engineering and product at Amazon Ads, about the announcements that came out of Amazon unBoxed in September.
MacLean unpacks Amazon’s new AI-powered ad platform, which combines its ad console and DSP so advertisers can launch a programmatic campaign in as few as four clicks. She also explains what the marketer’s job looks like when AI handles the mechanics.
“The advertiser is owning the why and the what,” she says, “and then AI can help drive the how.”
Amazon Ads wants advertisers of every size to be able to use its DSP, not just those who already know programmatic. MacLean calls it “programmatic for everyone.”
That is a nice sentiment, but the proof is in the performance.
In beta tests, advertisers using Amazon Ads Agent to scale AI-driven campaigns saw 18% lower CPMs, 16% lower CPAs and a 65% improvement in delivery. “Those aren’t theoretical projections,” MacLean says. “Those are real live campaigns, budgets and measurable outcomes.”
MacLean gives credit to Amazon’s authenticated graph, which connects 90% of US households and allows AI to optimize against real purchase signals instead of proxies.
Access to real purchase data matters, MacLean says, because the consumer journey is never linear. A streaming TV impression might spark consideration, a display ad might reinforce it and an audio spot might close the sale. But a human managing four or five separate campaigns can’t necessarily make those connections.
Amazon’s edge comes from being able to see the whole journey, she says. “We want to make it easier for marketers to connect the dots wherever that’s happening,” MacLean says.
Also in this episode: How advertisers can move from simple campaigns to advanced settings as their trust in AI grows, why creative becomes a differentiator when execution is automated and why measurement is what MacLean calls the “validation layer” for AI-driven advertising.
