B2C Marketers’ Interest in Amazon Advertising Grows

October 16, 2017

Amazon’s US advertising revenue is expected to reach $1.65 billion this year, according to recent eMarketer estimates, before almost doubling to $3.2 billion in 2019, at which point its ad revenues are expected to be as large as Snapchat and Twitter, combined. New survey results [download page] from Catalyst and ClickZ Intelligence demonstrate that B2C marketers are taking note of Amazon’s potential in the advertising business, and that a sizable share are already advertising with the e-commerce giant.

In fact, almost one-third (31%) of the B2C marketers surveyed report spending advertising budgets on Amazon. That suggests that Amazon is a more popular advertising vehicle than Pinterest (22%), Twitter (21%) and Snapchat (9%).

What’s clear is that Amazon advertising revenues are ripe for growth: 63% of the respondents said they’re planning to increase their ad budgets for Amazon over the next 12 months. That put Amazon at the forefront of growth plans, ahead of Google (54% increasing), Facebook (53%) and Instagram (47%).

Another potential harbinger of growth? Awareness. Among those not spending advertising budget on Amazon, fully one-third said it was because they’re not aware of the opportunity. That’s likely to change quickly…

A Challenge to the Duopoly?

While Amazon’s ascent could potentially pose a challenge to Google and Facebook, which together vacuum up one-fifth of global ad spend – that may not be the case if the survey’s results are to be trusted.

In fact, 42% of respondents said that their Amazon search marketing budget has been created specifically for the platform, rather than being reallocated from other channels. Just 16% said they’ve shifted budgets to Amazon from other digital channels, including Google, though 15% have shifted budgets from a mix of digital and traditional channels.

As such, Amazon doesn’t look poised to threaten the duopoly’s supremacy as of yet.

Other Findings

Separate highlights from the survey follow.

  • 71% of marketers are optimizing their product listing pages for organic search on Amazon.
  • Digital marketing and ad buying teams are more likely to be in charge of paid advertising and product listings on Amazon than e-commerce teams.
  • Sponsored Products are the most popular Amazon Marketing Services solution, while respondents are equally as likely to use Headline Search Ads and Product Display Ads.

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About the Data: The results are based on a survey of more than 250 North America-based B2C marketers across all sectors.

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