Home Content Studio How Amazon Ads Is Reshaping Contextual Advertising

How Amazon Ads Is Reshaping Contextual Advertising

SHARE:

The media landscape is changing thanks to the looming phaseout of third-party cookies and changes being made by smartphone manufacturers. The largest demand-side platforms, meanwhile, are each tackling addressability differently. This makes it more difficult for decision-makers to plan their road maps, which they are working on as we speak.

Here at Amazon Ads, we are focused on solving for the future of addressability without sacrificing relevancy while continuing to meet the needs of consumers. This means we’re building products that are already familiar to advertisers. One of our key differentiators, however, is that we’re combining those products with all the unique capabilities that Amazon Ads can offer.

Take contextual advertising, which is experiencing a reemergence.

Context strengthens reach

Results from our new Contextual Targeting product, which is currently in beta, underscore that brands don’t need mobile ad IDs or cookies to drive performance. In early tests, one CPG company saw a more than a 65% increase in reaching previously nonaddressable audiences, or those that did not have mobile ad IDs or third-party cookies, according to a case study Amazon Ads released at the CES conference earlier this month.

The CPG company added that reaching these incremental audiences translated into a 20x return on ad spend, or ROAS, for the company – from $.59 to $12. It also saw a 45% uptick in reaching audiences running Firefox, Safari or iOS.

And because our content exists all over the world, we’ve made Contextual Targeting effective not just on the Amazon storefront but also on third-party websites through our relationships with publishers and leading ad exchanges. That’s a first.

Contextual Targeting is now also paired with our signal-based marketing. This means that, when running ad campaigns, advertisers can use Amazon signals rooted in our first-party retail, entertainment and digital experiences, without cookies or mobile ad IDs, at scale.

A brand selling digital watches, for example, may see more conversions advertising on car review websites – and not apparel websites – with Contextual Targeting. While it’s early days, our take on contextual advertising is showing promise in building the future of addressability.

For more articles featuring Sam Cox, click here.

Must Read

AdExchanger Senior Editors Anthony Vargas and Alyssa Boyle.

POSSIBLE 2026: AdExchanger's Hot Takes

AdExchanger Senior Editors Alyssa Boyle and Anthony Vargas share their takeaways from three days chatting about agentic AI at POSSIBLE.

Reddit Reports A 75% Boost In Q1 Ad Revenue As It Reaches For 100 Million Daily US Users

Generative AI search has pushed traffic off a cliff across most of the internet, but not on social platforms. Reddit included.

POSSIBLE 2026: Can AI Help Agencies Finally Break Down Those Silos?

Domenic Venuto, indie agency Horizon Media’s chief product and data officer, sat down with AdExchanger during POSSIBLE at the Fontainebleau in Miami to unpack the role of AI in today’s media and advertising landscape.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters

Google Touts Its AI Ad Tech Adoption And New AI Max Features

Google announced new features and ad types for AI Max, its AI-based bidding product for search and shopping or sponsored product ads. The company also touted “hundreds of thousands” of advertisers using AI Max.

Hand pressing blue AI button on keyboard. Digital collage of artificial intelligence interface.

Meta’s Ad Machine Is Purring, So Why Did Its Stock Drop?

Meta’s Q1 call sounded like an AI and hardware pitch, but under the hood it was still about one thing: investing in AI to squeeze more money out of its ads business.

Alphabet Exceeds $100 Billion In Q1 And Its Profits Almost Doubled

Alphabet earned $109.9 billion in Q1 this year, up from $90.2 billion a year ago. And that’s not even the truly gobsmacking number.