Amazon launches retail ad service, bringing its ad tech to third-party retailers

New Delhi: Amazon has introduced the Amazon Retail Ad Service, a new platform that enables retailers to leverage Amazon's advertising technology for their own digital spaces. 

This service allows brands and retailers to deploy advertising solutions on their websites similar to those used on Amazon.com.

The Amazon Retail Ad Service is built on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and offers retailers the opportunity to monetise their digital platforms by providing a seamless ad experience to their customers. This includes the ability for ads to appear in search results, browsing pages, and product listings, all enhanced by Amazon's machine-learning models, which have proven effective on its own platform. Retailers can control which aspects of their ad businesses use Amazon's technology, offering flexibility and control over their data and operations.

For advertisers, this means a more unified approach to managing campaigns across different retail environments, potentially reducing the complexity of working with multiple retail media networks. Brands can now leverage Amazon's advertising tools to target customers on other retailers' sites, potentially increasing their reach and effectiveness in the retail media market.

The introduction of Amazon Retail Ad Service directly challenges companies like Criteo, which has built its business model around providing similar services to retailers. Criteo and other ad tech players like Publicis Groupe's Epsilon and startups like Koddi primarily help retailers set up and manage their ad platforms. Amazon's entry into this space could shift market dynamics significantly:

With Amazon potentially offering these services at competitive rates or even bundled with other AWS services, smaller ad tech firms might find competing on price or service breadth challenging.