Amazon’s sharp ad pitch to SMBs

A short while before India’s festival shopping season began, Amazon commissioned YouGov, a survey specialist, to gauge consumer sentiment. The findings were striking: 60% of shoppers said they planned to spend more than last year, while 84% were willing to try new brands, regardless of size.

At a press briefing, Kapil Sharma, director of Amazon Ads, outlined the e-commerce firm’s full-funnel advertising tools, which aimed to help brands both build awareness and drive sales. 

The solutions included Prime Video ads and placements on Amazon’s MX Player, alongside more targeted offerings such as sponsored brands, custom landing pages, Sponsored TV and Amazon DSP. 

“What are the features that they’re offering? How does their brand stand out in a different way? What is the ethos of their brand? There are multiple nuances that brands can communicate,” Sharma explained.

Amazon pitched these tools especially to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), which operated on tighter budgets than large firms with expansive marketing war chests. Sponsored TV, for instance, was a self-service video solution on MX Player that used “trillions of shopping and streaming signals” to reach relevant audiences. 

Sharma described it as an alternative to linear television, where advertisers once had to allocate hefty sums upfront and contend with clunky production and weak measurement. 

By contrast, Sponsored TV allowed advertisers to target by content genre or persona—such as comedy, fantasy, anime or drama for awareness, or Prime Video audiences, early adopters and fashion enthusiasts for consideration.

Some brands reported strong results. “There were two major reasons why I was very excited about Sponsored TV. One was obviously the first party signals that we’ve all heard about and the second piece was the full funnel data that we get,” said Nikita Bavishi, marketing lead at Bajaj Almond Drops. The brand wanted to strengthen top-of-mind awareness. 

“We did choose our audiences very carefully through lifestyle signals and we deployed our advertisement with our brand ambassador, and we actually saw really great performance, with 45% increase in our unique visitors,” she added.

Others used Amazon’s suite to amplify campaigns beyond television. Shruti Kedia, founder of a direct-to-consumer luggage and travel accessories brand that appeared on Shark Tank season three, said: “We have used all the possible tools that Amazon offers right from DSP to Sponsored ads and retargeting across platforms. And we use a lot of insights that Amazon Ads gives to get our targeting really sharp.” 

The Shark Tank appearance, boosted with Amazon’s advertising tools, paid off handsomely. “The search volume increased over 7X. We were amongst the top search luggage brands on Amazon during that period. Back in 2017 when we started to where we are today, we’ve seen a CAG of over 60% year on year,” she noted.

Sharma also showcased Amazon’s Creative Studio, powered by generative AI. The tool, he argued, transformed how advertisers produced assets. “Advertisers can explore AI gallery, experiment with emerging AI tech and create with an AI that literally jumpstarts their entire asset creation process and reduces the effort that is being required by the advertisers.”

Creative Studio allowed brands to reformat assets into multiple aspect ratios for use across sponsored display, sponsored brand and brand store formats. It also offered AI-assisted styling—altering lighting, shadows, camera angles and tone—to streamline iteration. 

The process was simple: log in and upload the product, add a text prompt to generate and refine a creative, then save and deploy the asset directly in a campaign. 

“We’re talking about few clicks from your thought to create a highly compelling creative that can be used in your campaign effectively,” Sharma said.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash.