Non-endemic brands, like insurance companies or car dealers, are finally starting to experiment with Amazon advertising.
That is largely because Amazon is expanding its ad inventory, most recently by integrating ads into Prime Video and Thursday Night Football. These are valuable, large-exposure platforms that non-endemic brands love.
Amazon also has multiple ad formats made just for non-endemics. Sponsored Display ads allow them to advertise on Amazon even if their product isn’t on the site, and DSP ads let them harness Amazon’s shopper data in order to reach people around the web.
The logic for a non-endemic brand using Amazon is simple. Amazon knows a lot about what its shoppers might be up to, based on their purchase habits.
Let’s say someone buys a bunch of storage boxes on Amazon. They might be about to switch homes, and so it’s a good time for a moving company to show an ad to them.
Or if they buy a bunch of baby products on Amazon, an insurance company might decide it’s a good moment to pitch them on life insurance.
Amazon’s data offers a lot of potential for non-endemic advertisers. The problem for non-endemic brands has always been about reach and measurement on Amazon.
Wait, what is a non-endemic brand?
“Non-endemic” basically refers to companies that don’t have products on Amazon—or that don’t sell typical physical products at all.
A non-endemic brand might sell insurance or vehicles, or it might operate a physical store, like a local pharmacy or restaurant.
Non-endemic brands still account for a small share of the overall ad spend on Amazon.
But as Amazon’s reach grows and its measurement capabilities become more sophisticated, there are more features than ever for your typical non-endemic brand to grab onto.
How Amazon is leveling up measurement for non-endemics
Let’s say you’re spending a lot on Amazon DSP ads. Amazon can not only put your brand in front of far larger audiences than before—it can also slice and dice those audiences with more granularity.
First-party data uploads. Non-endemic brands that are considering investing on Amazon will probably wonder: How many of my customers are also Amazon’s customers?
There’s one way to answer that question: Upload your first-party data—customer lists, newsletter subscriber lists, etc—into Amazon Marketing Cloud, and let Amazon match your shoppers to its shoppers.
For the record, this is all done in a privacy-safe way, and Intentwise can now do it for you.
You can refine your audiences as you like, such as segmenting your first-party audiences by high- or low-value customers. You can use these connections for your own analysis—how much overlap do you have with Amazon?—as well as for audience targeting or exclusion.
Maybe you want to exclude your first-party shoppers from your Amazon DSP campaigns, for instance, or you want to upsell or cross-sell to shoppers who took specific actions on both your website and on Amazon.
(We talk about the 1P upload process and how to evaluate match rates here.)
In-store data. Amazon’s new NCS CPG Paid Insights Stream feature remains one of the least explored avenues for non-endemic brands. But it also might be among the most promising.
Through this subscription, which we discussed in more depth here, Amazon can match shopper groups to in-store purchasers. So you can see how your Amazon ads impacted purchases across several major retailers.
Of course, if you have first-party data on your in-store customers, uploading that to AMC is still probably the best course of action.
But if your visibility into who buys from you in a physical store is limited, this subscription will probably go a long way in measuring the full impact of your Amazon ads.
Lead-gen ads. One of the newest features from Amazon is the ability to add lead-gen forms to your Sponsored Display ads.
Instead of referring shoppers back to your website, which used to be the only CTA available to non-endemic brands, now you can encourage them to fill out a signup form with their name and email address.
You keep that name and email data.
The benefit here is you can not only re-market directly to these interested customers—you can also more directly see who is actually taking action based on your DSP ads. It improves measurement for non-endemic brands.
Granular audiences for non-endemic brands
Amazon’s audience creation capabilities are becoming more sophisticated by the day, and a lot of it is highly relevant to non-endemic brands. We’ll talk more about these audiences in the future.
But for now, we’re going to highlight one type of audience filter in particular for a moment—geographic exclusions.
It’s a simple capability that is also very powerful. A lot of non-endemic brands don’t operate everywhere. Even within the U.S., an insurance company or a bank might be in some states, but not others. Same for a restaurant or grocery chain.
The more local you get, like to a local doctor’s office, the more true this becomes.
Luckily, Amazon now makes it easy to segment your audiences geographically. You can immediately exclude shoppers who live in zip codes where your stores or your products don’t exist, for instance.
Or you can go after only shoppers who live in a specific state or zip code of interest. Let’s say you opened a new location in one town, and you want to tell local residents there.
Amazon’s robust geographic filters can go a long way in helping refine your audience.
