Amazon experiments with ad opportunities on Kindle
Amazon is experimenting with how brands can advertise on its Kindle platform, revealing it recently partnered with Land Rover on a branded e-book.
Speaking at the Financial Time’s Digital Media event, vice president of global advertising sales Seth Dallaire explained that the deal saw British author William Boyd pen an adventure story – The Vanishing Game - that was commissioned by the auto brand. Amazon then distributed the free e-book on Kindle.
“We saw very high engagement,” Dallaire said.
It comes as Amazon explores alternative opportunities to work with advertisers whose products it doesn’t necessarily sell on the platform. In Japan, for example, the e-commerce giant worked with Nissan to create digital brochures for new vehicles.
“Customers trust us to provide an objective opinion and brands will seek that out. We can extend that to products that we don’t sell,” he said.
Amazon is now investing heavily into how is can demonstrate the efficacy of a brand’s media investment.
“We will work hard to show that there is some attribution to an investment, even if the end result [the purchase] doesn’t take place on our platform.”
On other Amazon-owned properties new ad formats have been introduced to better target consumers in the e-commerce environment.
The retaier has been testing three different formats; ads that allow for coupons to be digitally clipped and added to your shopping cart, promotions that serve real-time pricing information and those that include customer reviews. All three have improved engagement by as much as 20 to 30 per cent more than standard formats, according to Dallaire.
“This requires a different type of creative so we’ve made a point of educating the creative agencies on how to use the platform and incorporate those capabilities as they often think about ad creative in a different and far broader way than we would,” he said.
The approach lead to the launch of the Trusted Creative Partner last year in partnership with agencies such as Leo Burnett's Arc Worldwide, DDB California, Possible and Rockfish.