Amazon, with its already omnipresent position in our daily lives, would be wise to explore additional opportunities to promote the brand and potentially drive incremental members to the Amazon Prime membership pool, as well as push consumers to purchase Alexa.

A subtle approach to advertising would be wise, as the Amazon brand virtually sells itself these days with the seemingly daily public relations activity. A focus on social responsibility will resonate with not only the Millennial generation but with all generations.

A recent Burger King advertisement covered the controversial topic of bullying. The spot had subtle product references but focused on something more meaningful than the actual product. Amazon may be wise to implement a similar approach and take full advantage of what appears to be a void in the industrial advertising complex.

The big advantage Amazon has over competitors is the round-trip aspect of advertising and fulfillment under one roof. Everywhere else, an ad is seen and if it generates interest, the shopper is transported to another place to complete the transaction. Amazon removes some of the friction between the offer and the fulfillment saving consumers effort and time.

Effectively every headline-grabbing concept the press eats up is subterfuge while they stealthily are moving the big gun of Amazon advertising into place. Brands and retailers needn’t fear drones, Amazon Key, and the like. This is where the real future impact is going to be leveled from.

Thank you Kiri for this timely article. Through their marketing services, Amazon operates as a digital advertising platform (supply side) for merchants selling on its website and mobile app. Compared to Google and Facebook, Amazon has an absolute cost advantage as well as being more tuned to the purchasing moment for consumers; together these generate a lower keyword cost of sale for merchants. On the downside, usability issues of the Amazon marketing platform are cumbersome and manually intensive, but I expect that will change as Amazon moves further into digital advertising. For Amazon, this is a new and fast-growing revenue stream. The company collects its usual selling fee from the merchant in addition to the incremental ad revenue. While the digital advertising model has been core to Facebook’s monetization, for Amazon it’s a downstream result of the depth and breadth of its reach of Amazon Prime and the underlying data. An unintended result of Amazon’s anticipated success in this area is that Google and Facebook will likely open up their walled gardens and allow price… Read more »

I think the time frame is critical here. While Phil and Ben are right in the near term, I think we have to consider that Amazon’s game may change over time. Their pattern is to experiment first, gain a toehold, maximize opportunity and then move to what I’m sure some of their competitors see as predation, but what I’ll call hyper-competition. So today they have a clearly differentiated goal and approach. But tomorrow, who can say that they won’t try to out-Google Google? After all, if your mission is to surround a consumer and filter out competition, why stop at selling stuff? As to winners and losers, time will tell. technology has a nasty habit of evolving through disruption. As to sharing, that again depends on how you believe Amazon will define its long game. I could envision a future in which Amazon would want to block out non-Amazon advertising vehicles, so why share any more than you have to now?

Amazon has a huge lead in attracting consumers to their platform. It has been the nature of their platform and extensive investment since early in the company’s existence. Their move to a mobile platform was early and is paying off with many consumers picking Amazon as their first website to scan for any purchase. Therefore, it is natural for any brand or retailer to want to advertise on Amazon as a priority. The short-term losers of this movement to advertising on Amazon are Google and brand-specific sites. Having said that, I do not see Google sitting still while this happens. I believe Google will expand its marketplace with Walmart, Target and other retailers and brands in the future. As the Google Marketplace grows, it will provide major competition to the Amazon Marketplace and will provide a viable alternative to advertising on Amazon. Amazon will over time provide consumer data to help advertisers measure performance vs. the cost of advertising. As the competition heats up in the advertising space, the pressure to provide this data will… Read more »

Another win for Amazon beyond the advertising revenue — and a win for brands (assuming good ROI) in an increased sales rate of products. With an endless shelf, products can get lost unless there is a way to promote.