Amazon spent $29.1 million on ads on its own ad network between Jan. 1 and June 25 making it its own top buyer, according to marketing data company Pathmatics. Comcast, Progressive, Purina PetCare (Nestle), and AT&T rounded out its top five.
<i>Cheddar</i>
"We are in an era where consumers are inundated with messaging, so for a brand to break through the clutter they have to have a consistent point of connection in a meaningful way to drive business growth," said Sargi Mann, executive vice president of digital strategy and investments at Havas Media. "It's not shocking to see Amazon use its own network because they have scale, ability, and rich data sets to take advantage. [It also has] the potential and want to grow across the globe in both B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer)."
Brands will spend $11.33 billion on ads through Amazon, according to eMarketer. Its ad business is expected to increase more than 50 percent this year, making up about 8.8 percent of the U.S. market. Meanwhile, digital ad revenue leader Google is expected to decline slightly.
"Amazon has invested heavily in a variety of different businesses like content production, grocery stores, connected home devices, etc. that they are looking to stand up against major competitors, and so they have a ton of advertising they need to do," said James Donner, vice president of media strategy at Decoded Advertising. "It makes sense that they would prioritize leveraging their own platform to do so versus spending anything with Google (DV360), AT&T (Xander), or a third party platform such as The Trade Desk."
While the top 15 advertisers spent more overall year-to-date (approximately $67.8 million in 2019 versus $56.1 million in 2018), the majority of that increase came from Amazon boosting its buys on its platforms.
Last year, during the same time period, Amazon's largest client was Comcast. It spent $11.4 million dollars from Jan. 1 through June 23, 2018. The second largest client at the time was Amazon, spending about $10.7 million. The next largest ad buyers were Vi-Jon, Verizon, and Geico.
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By Amazon investing its own money into its own ad platform, it makes its marketing more efficient, effective, and optimized. It also pumps more data into the system, which can improve the offering. The ad platform is still behind many of its competitors including some programmatic or automated controls and bid factors, said Jesse Brewer, head of demand sales and operations at behavioral marketing platform BounceX.
"Amazon is known for not having anything too impressive on the attribution front," Brewer said. "A lot of advertisers have pulled their spend outside of CPG (consumer product good) companies."
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
