unBoxed innovation: How Ad Relevance is bridging the gap between brands and consumers

People are inundated with digital ads at every turn, and too many of these miss the mark. Imagine that you’re scrolling through your favorite site and you’re shown an ad for a luxury retirement cruise—an offer that's irrelevant to your age and interests. This scenario creates frustration for consumers and wasted investment for advertisers—and it's the problem that Robert Manly, a senior manager at Amazon DSP, is solving with Amazon's Ad Relevance.

“People actually appreciate advertising when it's relevant to them,” Manly says, “but 91% of consumers see at least one irrelevant ad every day.” As the deprecation of third-party cookies continues, brands and advertisers face new challenges in delivering relevant content to their intended audiences. Manly and his team created Ad Relevance to address these challenges and improve the way advertisers connect with consumers.

Manly has more than 15 years of experience in ad tech, including nine years with Amazon Ads. His Amazon journey has included many significant milestones, from work on attribution models to machine learning optimization for budget allocation. His deep understanding of the challenges facing the digital advertising industry is a strong qualification for leading the Ad Relevance team.

"I came to Amazon to work on products at scale, and I got the opportunity to do that in Amazon Ads. I learned all of the ways our core infrastructure products, like measurement, can impact a customer."

Connecting customers and consumers

Ad Relevance represents a significant shift in how Amazon approaches digital advertising. At its core, the product leverages Amazon's trillions of unique signals and advanced AI modeling techniques to deliver more relevant ads to consumers, even in the absence of traditional identifiers like third-party cookies.

Manly explains the team’s approach: "We started by coming at it from a different angle. Amazon has a valuable set of signals, built on insights from the hundreds of millions of consumers and their interactions with us over many years. This is something that’s very powerful in the advertising industry."

These unique signals enable Amazon to create a more nuanced understanding of consumers’ behaviors and preferences, enabling advertisers to reach their audiences more effectively. The result is a win-win scenario where consumers see more relevant ads and advertisers achieve better performance and return on investment.

Manly and his team are focused on solving real-time customer challenges while also anticipating and influencing how advertising works in the future. Their goal is to create a process where advertisers can focus on what truly matters—crafting compelling messages and strategies—rather than wrestling with technical complexities.

"When we think about re-imagining advertising," Manly shares, "it’s building tools that allow advertisers to get back to being marketers."

This vision extends beyond serving relevant ads. It's about creating a more seamless, intuitive advertising experience that benefits both brands and consumers. By harnessing the power of AI and machine learning, Ad Relevance aims to make advertising more contextual, relevant, and effective than ever.

Ad Relevance is just one example of Amazon Ads’ ability to continually adapt to the evolving digital landscape. By leveraging Amazon's unique position in the market, vast resources, and powerful AI, Manly says, “Advertisers can get back to the real challenges of marketing rather than worrying about ad tech complexity."

In this re-imagined approach to advertising, brands can focus on crafting compelling stories and strategies while advanced technology ensures that these messages reach the right audiences at the right time. For consumers, it means a more relevant ad experience that reduces intrusive or impertinent content and adds value to their digital experiences. And for professionals like Manly, it's an exciting opportunity to work at the forefront of this transformation.

During his Amazon tenure, Manly has enjoyed continuous opportunities to learn and grow. He credits the unique company culture for fostering innovation and encouraging ownership.

"I think a big piece of it is end-to-end ownership, and the people who do well here really lean into it. It's not like, 'I only own this portion of the requirements' or 'I only own this portion of the experience.' I have to think about how what I do makes an impact across the customer journey and how I can make sure my work contributes to the product's success.”

This culture of ownership empowers our builders to invent and experiment in an environment where they can think big, create solutions at scale, and tackle some of the most pressing challenges in advertising. For Manly, it's this opportunity to work with outstanding talent and have a significant impact on the advertising industry that makes working at Amazon Ads so rewarding.

"Over my nine years here, I've built a huge number of relationships and a really deep network across Amazon Ads and Amazon more broadly. It's amazing how often this experience helped me and my team figure out when and where there is someone who can help us navigate roadblocks. This powerful network of experts enables us to continually improve our products and results."