A New Startup Could Boost Amazon’s Presence in TV Advertising

A new advertising company called Gigi aims to capitalize on Amazon’s expanding streaming services for its business growth.

Gigi is a startup focused on simplifying the process for brands to purchase and assess streaming video ads on Amazon. According to co-founder and CEO Adam Epstein, the objective is to assist brands in transitioning their television advertising budgets to Amazon’s platform, leveraging its extensive data on consumer purchasing behaviors and online interests. At first, Gigi’s efforts are concentrated on using programmatic technology to facilitate the purchase of Prime Video ads.

Amazon’s introduction of an ad-supported tier on Prime Video in January has significantly influenced the television advertising market. Analysts on Wall Street project this tier to generate $7 billion in revenue for Amazon within this fiscal year.

Epstein said, “We see an opportunity in this one narrow use case.” He added, “We think that there’s a lot of problems to solve. A lot of people are trying to formulate their Amazon streaming TV strategy.”

Gigi has engineered technology that interfaces with Amazon’s demand-side platform for programmatic ad purchases and Amazon Marketing Cloud, a secure environment for ad measurement and customer insights. Advertisers face an uphill battle with Amazon’s streaming TV ad formats as tracking sales proves more complex compared to the straightforward last-click attribution used for Amazon’s core search ads, which are typically credited with driving sales.

Epstein highlighted Gigi’s goal to help brands utilize Amazon’s DSP for tracking digital ad last-click attribution and integrate it with Amazon Marketing Cloud for measuring branding metrics, especially for TV ads. He emphasized the challenges brands face in navigating AMC’s technology for SQL queries without deep technical expertise. Gigi addresses this with an API for Amazon Marketing Cloud, enabling creation of lookalike audiences and providing detailed metrics like TV ad campaign reach.