Amazon REV2018 workshop: Road to Seattle

Over the years, Amazon has been quietly holding yearly, invite-only, conferences and workshops to provide select agencies with insights, advanced product information and to bring together some of the best agencies to discuss the future of Amazon’s advertising business. These events have been pivotal game-changers to the adoption and showcasing of new tech, as well as for addressing important issues marketers currently face today. We are looking forward to this year’s event because compared to last year’s event, this year appears to be bigger and better! How do we know? Well, we have already begun to differentiate how Amazon’s 2018 event will differ than the 2017 event.

Amazon Marketing Services Agency Workshop – 2017

Last year in early August 2017, Pragmatic attended Amazon’s one day, workshop centered around Amazon Marketing Services.

Select agencies from around the world attended this workshop. Leaders within the industry, such as Content26’s  David Zimmerman, gave presentations and shared their successful strategies on AMS. The Head of Global Partner Marketing of Amazon was the moderator of the workshop.

The day was jam-packed with working sessions on reporting, optimization, and holiday preparation strategies, with a live product panel Q&A session with Amazon and assistance from their team.

Amongst last year’s hot topics there was voice search, as Amazon was promoting Alexa, and also Amazon Fresh, in the wake of the recent acquisition of Whole Foods.

What did we learn last year? How to better grow businesses with Amazon PPC to help them reach new shoppers and drive sales upwards.

All in all, we learned a great deal more on AMS and essential strategies for clients to increase their ROAS and sales.

Amazon Advertising Event – REV2018

Yet again, we have been invited to attend this year’s Amazon event, Rev2018 on September 6th. This time, there’s a different focus than last year’s event, Amazon Advertising. Amazon will dedicate this day to provide industry insight, advanced education, business development and product knowledge.

What’s on the agenda for Amazon’s Rev2018?

Amazon’s invite-only attendees of the event will gain advanced insights into the e-commerce industry, strategies on how to stay agile in the ever-changing Amazon ecosystem and how to help clients position themselves better on Amazon. Q4 strategies and tools will additionally be a hot topic for debate as the season is upon us, especially strategies to keep the momentum up after the holidays are over. Furthermore, there will be opportunities for networking with additional Amazon teams.

What Information Can We Gather Already?

Amazon’s advertising operations are expanding.

The venue for Rev2018 has let the cat out of the bag. Last year the AMS Workshop was held at the Amazon Meeting Center and Campus in Seattle and this year the event takes place inside a more spacious event hall in Seattle outside of Amazon’s Headquarters.

Not only is the venue of the event a telltale sign that the Amazon Advertising business is expanding, there are numbers and a slew of new ad features being rolled out that back that up.

A Q2 Benchmark Report that compared differences for 2017 vs 2018 for 1P and 3P sellers from CPC Strategy showed no let up in the use of Sponsored Product Ads. As a matter of fact, they reported that for both 1P and 3P sellers experienced an increase in spend, revenue, clicks and average CPC. Their benchmark report yielded a strong correlation between the increase in spend for Sponsored Products that lead to an increase in revenue.

Data from intelligence company, Standard Media Agency showed an increase of 36% year-over-year increase in agency spending growth on Amazon Ads.

Merkle recorded a YoY increase 165% in marketers spend on Amazon Sponsored Product Ads and a YoY increase for Amazon Headline Search Ads of 162%, from their “Merkle Digital Marketing Report Q2 2018.”
From a recent study by MediaRadar, Amazon is the leader in programmatic ad buys and accounts for more than 10% of out of the top 50 programmatic advertisers in Q1 of 2018.

Amazon has rolled out “Video in Search Ads” which is currently in beta and a new measurement solution that provides Amazon sellers with actionable insights called, “Amazon Attribution.”

Our speculation is that this year will be (more than likely) Amazon’s biggest agency event yet. Can’t make it to Rev2018 but want to know the latest happenings inside the advertising world of Amazon? Be sure to follow us on Twitter @weare_pragmatic for live updates and keep an eye out for our recap of the event!