Beyond Sponsored Products: Exploring Amazon DSP for Advanced E-commerce Growth

For most e-commerce brands on Amazon, Sponsored Products are the bread and butter of their advertising strategy. They're excellent for driving immediate visibility and sales directly on Amazon's search results and product pages. But what if you're looking to cast a wider net, build stronger brand awareness, and influence shoppers at every stage of their buying journey – both on and off Amazon?

This is where Amazon DSP (Demand-Side Platform) enters the arena, offering a sophisticated programmatic advertising solution that goes "beyond sponsored products" to deliver advanced e-commerce growth.

What is Amazon DSP, and how is it Different?

Think of Amazon DSP as your portal to Amazon's vast advertising ecosystem, extending far beyond the Amazon marketplace itself. While Sponsored Products are focused on converting shoppers who are actively searching for products on Amazon, Amazon DSP allows you to:

• Reach audiences on and off Amazon: This includes Amazon-owned sites and apps (like IMDb, Twitch, Fire TV, Prime Video), as well as thousands of third-party websites and apps across the open web that are part of Amazon's extensive publisher network.

• Leverage Amazon's unparalleled first-party data: This is the real superpower of Amazon DSP. Amazon knows its shoppers intimately – their Browse history, purchase patterns, interests, and demographics. DSP allows you to tap into this rich data to target highly relevant audiences.

• Employ advanced targeting capabilities: Go beyond keywords to target consumers based on sophisticated behavioural, demographic, lifestyle, contextual, and even lookalike audiences. This enables incredibly precise campaign delivery.

• Utilise diverse ad formats: Run display ads, video ads, and audio ads, allowing for richer brand storytelling and engagement across various touchpoints.

• Influence the entire customer journey: From building brand awareness at the top of the funnel to retargeting high-intent shoppers for conversion, DSP supports a holistic marketing strategy.

  
  

Why Go Beyond Sponsored Products with Amazon DSP?

While Sponsored Products are crucial for immediate sales, they primarily address bottom-of-funnel conversions. Amazon DSP fills the gaps and supercharges your overall e-commerce growth by:

1. Building Brand Awareness & Consideration: Before someone even searches for your product, DSP can introduce your brand to potential customers through engaging display and video ads on relevant sites and apps, driving discovery and consideration. This is particularly valuable for new products or emerging brands.

2. Expanding Your Reach Significantly: Your potential customer base isn't limited to active Amazon shoppers. DSP allows you to reach consumers wherever they are online, pulling them into your funnel and ultimately back to your Amazon listings or even your own website.

3. Powerful Retargeting & Re-engagement: Did a shopper view your product but not purchase? Add items to their cart and abandon it? DSP allows you to re-engage these high-intent individuals with targeted ads across the web, reminding them of your products and prompting them to complete their purchase. You can even retarget customers who have previously purchased to encourage repeat buys and loyalty.

4. Strategic Competitor Conquesting: Identify audiences who are Browse competitor product pages or categories on Amazon and serve them your ads across Amazon's network, offering an alternative and capturing their attention.

5. Optimising for New-to-Brand Customers: With Amazon's robust reporting, you can track "new-to-brand" purchases, understanding which DSP campaigns are effectively acquiring new customers rather than just recapturing existing ones. This is vital for sustainable growth.

6. Full-Funnel Optimisation: Integrate DSP campaigns with your existing Sponsored Product efforts to create a seamless customer journey. Drive awareness with DSP, then capture intent with Sponsored Products when they search on Amazon.

7. Data-Driven Insights: Amazon DSP provides in-depth reporting and analytics, allowing you to understand impression viewability, reach, frequency, and conversion paths, enabling continuous optimisation and smarter budget allocation.

   
   

Advanced Strategies for E-commerce Growth with Amazon DSP:

• Audience Segmentation Mastery: Don't just broadly target. Create highly specific audience segments using Amazon's data. Examples include:

  • In-Market Audiences: Shoppers actively looking for products in your category.

  • Lifestyle Audiences: Consumers with demonstrated interests relevant to your brand (e.g., fitness enthusiasts for a sportswear brand).

  • Lookalike Audiences: Reach new users who share characteristics with your best existing customers.

  • Custom Audiences: Upload your own customer lists (e.g., email subscribers, past website visitors) to re-engage them or build lookalikes.

• Dynamic Creative Optimisation (DCO): Use DCO to automatically generate personalised ads featuring products that are most relevant to each individual shopper's Browse history or interests.

• Video & Audio Ads for Brand Storytelling: Leverage video on Prime Video and Twitch, or audio ads on Amazon Music (free tier) to build brand narratives and emotional connections that static images can't achieve.

• Strategic Bid Management & Frequency Capping: Manage your bids effectively to ensure competitive placements, and use frequency capping to avoid ad fatigue and ensure your message remains fresh.

• A/B Testing Creatives and Audiences: Continuously test different ad creatives (images, videos, headlines, calls to action) and audience segments to identify what resonates best and drives the highest ROAS.

• Measure Beyond ROAS with Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC): For larger brands, AMC allows for even deeper analysis of the entire customer journey, understanding the cumulative impact of various ad types and optimising your overall media mix.

  
  

Is Amazon DSP Right for Your Brand?

While Amazon DSP offers incredible power, it typically comes with higher minimum spends compared to basic Sponsored Product campaigns. It's often best suited for:

• E-commerce brands with established sales on Amazon.

• Brands with a healthy advertising budget ready to invest in broader brand building and advanced targeting.

• Businesses seeking to diversify their reach beyond Amazon's immediate marketplace.

• Brands looking to re-engage past customers and build long-term loyalty.

Amazon Ads and Paid Media form a dynamic ecosystem that many brands struggle to manage effectively. At Ikay Media, we’re here to ensure your Digital Ads strategy drives results for your business. We’re currently providing brands with free audits, designed to pinpoint challenges and offer actionable solutions.

If you’re keen to learn more about how Ikay Media can drive your brand forward, please DM me on LinkedIN or email on adam@ikaymedia.com