The big promise of programmatic is expanded reach. But we all know the reality is a lot more complicated. With increasing fragmentation across the digital media landscape, marketers end up chasing audiences with campaigns running across multiple DSPs and supply sources. This approach adds logistical burdens while making it difficult to quantify incremental reach, measure performance across the customer journey and effectively connect ad spend to outcomes.
These pain points are driving supply-path optimization efforts, including an evaluation of tech providers, particularly for advertisers looking for measurable results. Marketers are recognizing that accessing walled-garden inventory should be in symphony with buying premium inventory across the open internet, helping them better achieve desired outcomes.
However, to realize this maximum effect, marketers need to focus on three things:
1) Access to exclusive and complementary ad supply to unlock transparent reach
A comprehensive provider of ad supply should deliver exclusive, high-quality inventory that you cannot get elsewhere, plus a broad range of complementary third-party supply to extend your reach. With broad supply access, it can be difficult to determine the combination of supply sources and transaction types that will most efficiently meet your campaign objectives. This is why DSPs, including Amazon DSP, are now investing in supply curation solutions that help marketers engage the most relevant audiences across premium publishers.
For example, we recently launched Amazon Ads supply desk – a tailored service that helps buyers streamline and scale programmatic campaign activations across holistic supply available on Amazon DSP. Our supply desk offers pre-curated inventory packages, bespoke supply strategy consultation and troubleshooting support to ensure buyers are reaching their desired audiences while achieving their campaign objectives.
2) Unique behavioral insights tied to contextual signals for enhanced relevancy
Broader supply should come with rich signal decoration, helping ensure your campaign is engaging the right audiences in the right context. A comprehensive DSP should be able to provide unique first-party signals that add value and enhance the relevancy of your advertising. Beyond demographic data, buyers can evaluate signals of true buying intent based on real-world behaviors: what consumers are actually browsing for, shopping for and buying. Some of the biggest value can be realized when a DSP ties those behavioral signals to contextual signals across holistic supply at scale.
Case in point: We are helping some of the biggest agencies and holding companies accelerate their desired outcomes across retail media without having to build out (or acquire) their own internal infrastructure. Agency customers can activate on inventory that indexes highly against Amazon first-party shopping signals. These packages are curated to include sites and apps with the strongest affinity for the advertiser’s specified audience.
Through this approach, advertisers can activate across the booming retail media landscape – which now accounts for nearly a quarter of all digital ad spend in the US – without major investment or M&A. Larger agencies can go back to their brands with real-world results that show how they’re using durable, retail media insights to reach audiences more effectively.
3) Full-funnel measurement solutions across supply and audience destinations
Measurement is key for any customer action you are trying to drive. With traditional ad identifiers disappearing, an increasing number of consumer touch points to keep track of and economic pressures impacting budgets, marketers are looking for help measuring their campaign impact across the funnel. In fact, measuring long-term and full-funnel ROI continue to be marketers’ top priorities for 2024, according to Nielsen’s latest Annual Marketing Report. Notably, Nielsen previously reported that barely half of marketers say they’re confident in their full-funnel measurement capabilities.
A DSP with holistic access to supply and cross-channel measurement capabilities goes a long way to mitigate fragmentation. This provides marketers a 360-view of their campaigns – instead of leaving them to stitch together insights from multiple DSPs – and allows them to measure and engage audiences effectively across the entire customer shopping journey.
Amazon Marketing Cloud, our clean room solution, brings together event-level signals – such as impressions, clicks and purchases from across Amazon properties – and empowers advertisers to further enrich signals with their own insights. For example, advertisers can use these joined signals to analyze which supply combinations best extend reach and which best drive conversion, helping them optimize supply choices for future campaigns.
Realizing the full value of programmatic reach
Too many marketers today are struggling to improve their programmatic performance. The fragmentation of the buying journey makes it difficult to easily and effectively understand their campaign reach. For agencies big and small, trying to stitch together dozens, hundreds (or even thousands) of publishers is eating up time and eating into budgets.
Advertisers need to move toward DSPs that can both deliver holistic, premium supply under one umbrella and leverage that central point of control to bring better measurability and audience insights across the customer journey. This streamlined approach will allow marketers to know they’re reaching the right audiences across high-value supply – and connect ad spend with consumer actions to measure and optimize ROI with confidence.
