Home The Big Story The Big Story: The A To Z On Amazon

The Big Story: The A To Z On Amazon

SHARE:
The Big Story podcast

The Big Story is a breezy new podcast featuring a roundtable of AdExchanger editors talking about the biggest stories from the past week. It is available wherever you subscribe to podcasts.

As Google and Facebook built their castles and moats, Amazon lurked beneath surface. But in recent years, it’s breached. Its walled garden is still significantly smaller than Google’s and Facebook’s – around $2 billion, as of its recent Q2 – but maybe that doesn’t matter.

First, as Amazon continues to mature as an ad buyer’s destination, more dollars will inevitably pour in. Second, Amazon – unlike Facebook and Google – isn’t an ad-supported business. For the longest time, ad revenue was simply a nice-to-have.

In this week’s “The Big Story,” the AdExchanger team scrutinizes the history and future of Amazon as an ad platform – from one decade ago, when it struggled to convince media planners to buy a banner ad, to today, as the owner of some of the most coveted and exclusive data sets.

How does Amazon work with ad buyers today? Where does its platform most need to be improved, and how do advertisers work around its current limitations? And what products will Amazon develop as its ads move beyond performance into areas such as branding and awareness?

Finally, what does the future hold as Amazon penetrates consumer households more deeply with popular automated home assistants like Alexa?

Listen in as AdExchanger editors unpack Amazon’s ad stack like a Prime Day package.

Must Read

Omnicom Investors Cheer IPG Sell-Off, Despite Weak Ad Spend In Q2

Omnicom is halfway through a major sell-off of IPG agencies. Its future looks healthier as it prunes lower-growth firms, including eliminating certain specialist firms and overlapping agencies in certain countries.

Hundreds of emails, depositions and other documents have been unsealed in the lead-up to the Google antitrust trial, providing a fascinating look at how Google talked about its own products when no one else was watching – especially tools to counteract the rise of header bidding.

Why PubMatic Ditched Its Prebid Web Wrapper, But Never Its SDK

Earlier this month, PubMatic shelved its Prebid integration wrapper, known as OpenWrap Web, and announced it would begin recommending Playwire as an offloading-onboarding partner for the 250-odd publishers that use its wrapper.

Gareth Glaser, Co-Founder & CEO, Gamera

Google’s Buyer Direct Could Beat Agentic Ad Tech At Its Own Game

Agentic AI shows promise for direct deals. But if Google has its way, Buyer Direct could put an end to all sorts of agentic direct sales opportunities while they’re still in the cradle.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters

How Warner Bros. Discovery Is Creating Value Out Of Dead Air With Pause Ads

Streaming publishers are banking on pause ads to bolster revenue with a more user-friendly ad experience. With programmatic standardization still pending, Warner Bros. Discovery is taking a stab at advancing the capabilities behind its own pause ad formats.

Peacock Hits Profitability As Comcast Prepares To Spin Off NBCU

Peacock hit what Comcast Co-CEO Mike Cavanagh called “meaningful profitability” for the first time in Q2, just as Comcast decided to let it leave the nest. 

Comic: It's Coming For You

Programmatic Platforms Champion Transparency, But Not If It Means Giving Activists Access

A DSP refused to give ad industry watchdog Check My Ads a seat on its platform, even after both parties cosigned a master service agreement, citing concerns about “protections” for “vendor and supply partners.”