With the CES 2025 taking place at The Sphere in Las Vegas, Amazon Ads has unveiled two of its latest updates for advertisers. These include the launch of its new GenAI capability- an SQL generator for Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) that helps advertisers to develop insights from their AMC signals more quickly and easily as well as Amazon Retail Ad Service which enables retailers to help their customers find the products they want in an easy and effective manner.
According to the company blogpost, the first upgrade, i.e.- Amazon Ads’ new AMC capability provides a natural language interface through which advertisers can generate SQL queries for their desired audience use case– eliminating the need to create the code manually and reducing query development time from hours to minutes in many cases. Post that, advertisers can run the queries in AMC to create their new audience and activate the audience in Amazon DSP and ads console.
“To use the SQL generator, advertisers simply describe the audience output they want from AMC in their own words. The generator will return the relevant query, as well as the steps it used to create it. These queries can then be used to build custom audiences that can be activated for Amazon Ads campaigns across the entire marketing funnel, reaching customers through streaming TV, audio, and digital channels. For example, an advertiser can say, ‘Create an audience of customers who have viewed our product pages and seen my STV ads but haven’t purchased in the last 30 days.’ Using advanced algorithms, this generative AI capability creates the SQL query to build the audience, which could be used for retargeting campaigns across various channels, from upper-funnel awareness on streaming TV to lower-funnel conversion tactics on sponsored product ads,” the company added.
That said, the new SQL generator is the latest example of how Amazon Ads is investing in AI across all of its services – including simple, free to use creative generators for images, video and audio, along with AI-driven campaign optimization capability and relevancy models in the Amazon DSP. The same will be available for all AMC customers in the early part of 2025.
The other development announced by Amazon Ads is the launch of Amazon Retail Ad Service, the company’s attempt to help retailers explore more effective ways to help customers easily find products they want and need. Built on AWS that enables retailers to enhance their shopping experiences and scale advertising using Amazon Ads’ two decades of ad tech expertise, retailers can use Amazon Retail Ad Service 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. Via this, their customers can also 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. That said, participating retailers can also choose to make their advertising offerings available via the Amazon Ads console and APIs, making it easy for Amazon advertisers to discover additional opportunities to scale their reach and simplifies managing ad campaigns across multiple retailers with consistent reporting, enabling faster understanding of campaign performance and easier campaign optimization.
“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,” the company stated in its blogpost.
Commenting on the new retail ad service rollout, Paula Despins, Vice President of Ads Measurement, Amazon Ads, stated, “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. 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.”
Adding to this and sharing her views on the new GenAI-led SQL Generator, she mentioned, “With the SQL generator, we’re bringing the power of generative AI to help advertisers more quickly unlock value from their data and our shopping and streaming signals to execute truly full-funnel advertising strategies. Not only has this capability boosted productivity, but it has helped advertisers explore novel use cases and audience segments, helping them grow their brand and optimize their media spend across streaming TV, audio, and digital channels.”
