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Amazon Ads expanded its ad-tech line-up at the unBoxed 2024 conference in Austin, Texas last week with the debut of a myriad of AI tools. From AI Creative Studio and Audio Generator, which use generative AI, to others that give extra insights, the idea is to bring a treasure trove of AI tools for advertisers.
Here, we summarise the main announcements at Amazon unBoxed 2024.
AI Creative Studio uses artificial intelligence to generate advertising creative concepts. According to Amazon, Creative Studio can suggest ideas for advertisers’ campaigns, and expand them across different ad formats and marketing collateral. It can also combine the company’s own assets with the new AI-generated creatives.
Creative Studio can also be used to edit or adjust brands’ existing advertising collateral – by turning still photos into video ads, for example, or transforming an advert designed for TV into something that could be repurposed for online ads. Creative Studio currently in a closed beta.
Audio Generator automatically creates soundtracks for advertising content. Using details of a product, Audio Generator can create 30-second audio ads to promote them.
Brands can customise the ads based on preferences such as voice of the speaker, whether the ad should be more conversational or hard sell in tone, and what background music the advertiser prefers. Ad execs can also test out variations of the ad messages to see which ones land better with buyers.
Audio Generator is currently available in beta for US users, through Amazon DSP (demand side platform).
Alongside its new AI tools, Amazon used unBoxed to unveil a number of new advertising tools under the Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) umbrella: high-value audience and optimal frequency analyses, as well as a new multitouch attribution model and long-term sales insights.
High-value audience analysis allows the audience to see customers’ total spend over time, and segment out audiences for campaigns accordingly.
Optimal frequency analysis enables to compare campaigns’ performance against their KPIs, such as how much return ads deliver and what their conversation rate is, tracked against the number of times the ad is seen.
The multitouch attribution model sheds extra light on where advertising is having the most impact: it gives advertisers more data on which touchpoints are most successful in influencing consumers to make a purchase.
According to Amazon, the model employs machine learning to understand which points in the buying journey have the most sway, including conducting “hundreds of thousands of randomized control experiments – A/B tests – to establish impact”, to draw out which ad types are most influential. Multitouch attribution will enter testing this year, ahead of a full rollout next year.
Amazon is also adding conversion path reporting, which enables companies to see which paths were most popular with customers that went on to make a purchase, as a self-service report through Amazon DSP and ad console. It will be accessible in open beta later on this year.
Like conversion path reporting, long-term sales insights should be available in open beta in the coming months. The feature lets ad execs predict future revenue based on how previous purchases interacted with ads over a similar timeframe.
“For example, a customer may click on an ad and engage with a brand for the first time by visiting their product page, and go on to purchase from that brand months later,” said Amazon.
“With long-term sales insights, that campaign now receives credit for the new product page visit based on the historical outcome from customers who have also visited a product page.”
Amazon UnBoxed 2024 also saw Amazon Ads bring updates to DSP, including simplified workflows for setting up campaigns – according to the company, brands can now set up the same campaign 75% quicker. Campaign health pages will now also include new features for auditing campaigns, including audit cards which can indicate where campaigns are struggling with performance, along with recommendations on how to tackle any problems.
Automation is also the buzzword of the day for Amazon Ads’ DSP optimisation feature, Performance+. Performance+ works to create and optimise campaigns and audiences, based on the advertiser’s KPIs. New functionality launched at unBoxed sees Performance+ now able to optimise campaigns and audience relevancy around lower-funnel goals, including customer acquisition, based on advertisers’ signals and using Amazon’s AI.
