Source: Amazon
According to CNBC, Amazon is in discussions with some major CPG vendors about presenting ads via Echo devices. The ads promise to work similar to Google search with brands paying to be mentioned higher than other suggestions.
The ads may be offered as suggestions when users ask for information from Alexa. CNBC wrote, “Someone asking the Echo for help cleaning up a spill might be nudged to use a specific brand.” An ad may also be presented as the first suggestion for a brand when shopping for a certain item. Complementary add-on suggestions could also be sponsored. Currently, Alexa’s suggestions are algorithmic and not paid.
“If sponsored brands become the first names that Alexa lists on a long list of results, it’s likely more people will just accept the top result, even if it’s an ad, because that’s preferable to listening to the voice assistant drone on,” wrote Shannon Liao for The Verge.
Some brands might be able to tie advertising to Alexa's functions — or "skills — although the options are limited. According to Amazon’s developer guidelines, “streaming music, streaming radio, podcast, and flash briefing skills” may include audio advertisements as long as they don’t use Alexa's voice or a similar voice, refer to Alexa, or imitate Alexa interactions. Any skill-linked ads also must by similar to ad content available outside of Alexa.
Amazon also issued a statement indicating there are “no plans to add advertising to Alexa,” indicating the company is early in the exploratory process.
But many believe brands should already be working on ways to reach consumers via voice assistants and the artificial intelligence underlying the devices as voice shopping expands. And yet sounding like a radio ad isn’t expected to work on smart speakers.
“If an assistant is going to be the delivery mechanism, then it is going to be in that vein that the advertising is developed,” Greg Hedges, vice president of emerging experiences at Rain, a digital consultancy that created an Alexa skill for Campbell's, among others, told Adweek. “It will be honed as a way of helping the consumer based on their shopping history, their skill/action/app use, their info.”