CES has become the ad industry’s first real gut check of the year. For Amazon’s ad team, that means less pitching and more listening.
That posture can read as contrarian given the concentration of big agency leadership and CMOs. Internally, however, Amazon treats the show less as a sales opportunity and more as a read on how closely agency and advertiser priorities track with its own plans for the year ahead.
If the gap is too wide, there’s still time to adjust. That was the case last year, when marketers said they wanted Amazon’s performance data and closed-loop signals but could only use them partially because upfront budgets were locked into publisher-specific deals and flexible dollars were scattered across too many systems to manage intelligently. Amazon’s response was telling. It built tools that let advertisers keep their upfront deals intact while quietly repositioning Amazon as the brains behind how those budgets are paced, optimized and measured.
Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV.
