Amazon Ads launches Amazon Retail Ad Service at CES

January 9, 2025

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Retailers are continuously exploring ways to help customers easily find products they want and need. To help retailers do this more effectively, Amazon Ads is introducing Amazon Retail Ad Service, a new service built on AWS that enables retailers to enhance their shopping experiences and scale advertising using Amazon Ads' two decades of ad tech expertise. Retailers use the service to quickly, easily, and cost-effectively deliver contextually relevant ads in the right place and at the right time in their online stores. Their customers can click on an ad and complete their purchase in the retailer’s online store. The service is currently in beta with multiple retailers, including iHerb, Oriental Trading Company, and Weee!, and launching with Tilly's with more retailers soon.

Participating retailers can also choose to make their advertising offerings available via the Amazon Ads console and APIs. This makes it easy for Amazon advertisers to discover additional opportunities to scale their reach. It also simplifies managing ad campaigns across multiple retailers with consistent reporting, enabling faster understanding of campaign performance and easier campaign optimization.

"Amazon Retail Ad Service helps retailers enhance their shopping experience with highly relevant advertising that guides customers through the shopping journey, helping their shoppers with product discovery and making informed purchase decisions," said Paula Despins, Vice President of Ads Measurement. "We’ve designed this to be a win for retailers, advertisers, and shoppers, and we look forward to seeing how it improves outcomes, drives sales, and enhances the shopping experience.”

Amazon Retail Ad Service enables online retailers to show product ads on their search, browse, and product pages to help their customers discover new selection and make informed purchase decisions. Ads incorporate availability and price, in addition to contextual information such as shopper search query, category or product being viewed to ensure customers see ads for desired and available products. Retailers will determine ad creative formats, where ads appear across their apps and websites, and how many ads are shown. They’ll also be able to determine what customers see after clicking on an ad, such as directing traffic to the product page, providing a ‘quick view’ of the product, or enabling the customer to add the product directly to their cart.

“We are excited to work with Amazon on the launch of its new Retail Ad Service. This innovative solution and proven technology allow us to deliver more relevant and personalized ads to our shoppers, enhancing their experience while driving stronger engagement and conversions," said Neil Folgate, SVP of Global Marketing at iHerb. "With over 1,200 shared brands already active on Amazon Ads, this creates a frictionless opportunity for advertisers to connect with iHerb's highly motivated audience and drive measurable results."

The service makes it easy for retailers to offer their advertising to brands already using Amazon Ads, providing retailers a streamlined connection to advertisers. Advertisers will see available retailers in their Amazon Ads console or API integrations. They will then be able to create and manage their campaigns for each retailer and access reporting seamlessly through existing workflows that are familiar to them. This centralized approach saves time and resources while expanding reach. Advertisers also benefit from the reassurance that comes with using the same ad technology and machine learning models that drives their performance in Amazon’s store.

“Amazon's Retail Ad Service has the potential to be transformative for advertisers. It leverages high-performance advertising technology to simplify campaign management with access through a single service provider: Amazon Ads. This streamlined approach allows us to efficiently manage our advertising efforts across multiple retailers, maximizing our reach” said Drew Habeck, SVP of Media, at Flywheel. “Tapping into Amazon's expertise in delivering relevant, contextual advertising at all points of the consumer path to purchase is invaluable. The consistent measurement, reporting, and purchase data across different retail platforms is incredibly insightful for campaign performance and optimization. We're thrilled about the potential this service has to enhance our advertising strategies and drive better results for our clients.”

Amazon Retail Ad Service operates on dedicated systems with stringent access controls, ensuring retailer information is separate from Amazon Ads and other Amazon businesses. It’s built on Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is architected to be the most secure cloud environment, and retailers manage their data in their AWS account. This means they will have the same level of access and security benefits that all AWS customers are provided. The service uses machine learning models that process contextual information like search queries and product attributes to serve relevant ads. Ad measurement takes place within AWS Clean Rooms, enabling privacy-enhancing collaboration to generate aggregated, anonymized reports for the retailer and its advertisers.