Unpacking Amazon unBoxed 2022 [Key Takeaways + Top Announcements]
[This post was authored by Emily Sullivan and Shannon Mullery, Content Specialists at Tinuiti]
Amazon recently hosted their highly anticipated flagship event in New York from October 25-27, 2022. Thousands of Amazon experts and advertisers tuned into unBoxed 2022 to hear about Amazon’s newest features and advancements. The event hosted speakers from around the world and included keynote sessions, lightning chats, and breakout workshops covering everything from driving growth during major shopping events to achieving trust, scale, and efficiency with the help of Amazon Ad Tech.
Tinuiti, an Amazon Ads Advanced Partner, was thrilled to be on the ground at the event, not only as a platinum sponsor, but also as an industry thought leader.
Pat Petriello, Director of Amazon Strategy at Tinuiti, led a lightning talk covering how brands can use Amazon Marketing Cloud to measure the impact of shopper behavior, both online and in-store, as a result of investment in Amazon digital media.
He explored a variety of applications within Amazon Ads’ Ad Tech suite, powered by Amazon Web Services and activated for advertisers through Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC). Petriello highlighted how Tinuiti client, Poppi, is using Amazon Ads digital solutions to drive impressive results both on and off Amazon.
For those who couldn’t attend his session, we asked Petriello how he would best summarize the top takeaways…
“Stop thinking about channels; it’s not your ‘Amazon customer’ or ‘Target customer’ or ‘TikTok customer’ or ‘Walmart customer’—humans are humans. Think of your own experiences in product discovery: You stumble across something on Amazon; you see something on the shelf when you’re at CVS; your friend shares something with you on TikTok; you Google search something, etc.
One of the ways we were able to use AMC was to show the positive in-store impact of digital advertising. And it’s not a singular sugar high; these are not one-time customers. With Poppi, we also saw an increase in Subscribe & Save Customers. These are folks who had never heard of the brand, became new-to-brand aware, trialed the product online or in-store, and loved the product so much they subscribed to have it delivered regularly. That is the narrative of how a brand grows—it’s all about incrementality.
In order to be successful, brands need to be able to convert today’s demand at the same time they are reaching new customers. Every brand has a current demand ceiling. The only way to raise that future brand ceiling is reaching new audiences and growing the pond. If you keep growing your pond by reaching new shoppers, you can fish in perpetuity.”
— Pat Petriello, Director of Amazon Strategy at Tinuiti
To top off an amazing event, Tinuiti’s booth activity supported our company’s philanthropic program called Thankful Giving. All proceeds from the event supported the Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida in the wake of Hurricane Ian. Through this booth activity at unBoxed, Tinuiti raised $7,505, which equated to 18,012 meals for those in need.
During the event, Amazon announced a host of exciting new features and products advertisers need to know about. Let’s dive into the top 10 announcements from unBoxed 2022.
Top 10 Announcements from Amazon unBoxed 2022
Amazon announced major updates, products, and features at this year’s unBoxed. Here are the top 10 advancements and updates you don’t want to miss. Let’s start from the top.
1. Amazon Creative Services
Amazon’s #1 announcement from unBoxed 2022 focused on all things creative. Amazon Ads revealed a new expanded public beta program for Video Builder. Video Builder provides customizable templates allowing brands to create videos for Sponsored Brands video placements at no additional cost. Users can access this tool within the Advertising Console and will have the ability to pull product images and copy from detail pages or by uploading lifestyle and other images from creative assets or desktops.
For many small to medium-sized businesses, it can be difficult to create video assets when resources are limited. With Video Builder, brands of all sizes can create (and test) engaging ad content in less than 10 minutes. This exciting announcement empowers every brand to level up their video advertising on Amazon.
“The launch of Video Builder, which enables brands and advertisers to build videos from assets that are already on Amazon, significantly lowers the barrier to entry for video. This ultimately leads to more videos, which leads to an increased video adoption rate, which leads to people understanding that video advertising, whether through Sponsored Brands or DSP, is a valuable channel worth investing more heavily in.”
— Stuart Dooley, Sr. Manager, Marketplaces at Tinuiti
“Whether your goal is to boost fast-selling products or react to seasonal selling patterns, this tool allows your team to build videos in just a few simple clicks… Our goal is to help you unleash creativity by assisting brands of all sizes in removing obstacles and bringing products to life through creative. Each brand has a story to tell and with our unique video products and services we can help you connect your story with your customers.”
— Heather Kehrberg | Director, Global Creative Success, Amazon Ads
Check out an example of the customizable templates within Video Builder below:
2. Digital Signage Ads in Amazon DSP
Amazon DSP can now help bring campaigns to life in-store. Amazon DSP already gives advertisers the opportunity to reach consumers via Amazon’s website, mobile, Fire TV, third-party publishers, etc., and now Amazon is giving brands the opportunity to meet their goals with new, in-store signage ads. According to Amazon…
“Digital Signage Ads in Amazon DSP, which will be available in November to eligible U.S. advertisers via managed service, make it easier for brands to advertise within Amazon Fresh stores. With Digital Signage Ads in Amazon DSP, brands can now purchase ads programmatically, giving them more flexibility and control over where their ads are featured. Campaigns can be scheduled based on store location, by daypart, or by location of the digital signage within the store. This creates more opportunities for brand discovery and will enhance the customer shopping experience by creating a wider variety of in-store ads.”
3. Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) Partner Program
Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) hosts a suite of tools for advertisers to help better plan, measure, and optimize campaigns. Amazon Ads announced that they will further invest in AMC by incorporating additional signals for ease of use, adding new ways to act on those insights, and providing more support to partners. Let’s break each of these down a bit further…
Signal coverage: Amazon announced that advertisers will now have a deeper understanding of the customer journey as well as attribution with the addition of Sponsored Display and digital subscription events. Within that same vein, advertisers will be able to build queries to analyze reach, attribution, and more through the integration with Sizmek Ad Suite (beta).
Ease of use: Amazon has improved their Instructional Queries library, which serves as a guide for advertisers to get started with AMC. The Instructional Queries library has grown from 10 pre-built queries to 50+.
Actionable insights: Amazon Ads announced the ability for brands to manage their Amazon DSP audiences within AMC coming later this year and according to Amazon, “This will enable audience creation via a SQL statement, allowing for increased customization based on campaign goals and the ease of pushing these audiences directly into Amazon DSP for campaign activation.”
Partner programs: Amazon has been rolling out certifications across agencies, tool providers, systems integrators, and software vendors. When a partner is certified, they will be recognized in Amazon’s partner directory, directly connecting partners, like Tinuiti, with advertising customers.
4. Amazon Brand Lift U.K. Expansion
While this isn’t so much a new feature, Amazon announced that they will be expanding their Amazon Brand Lift Surveys to now include the United Kingdom. With Amazon Brand Lift, advertisers can quantify how campaigns are driving marketing objectives like awareness, preference, or purchase intent. Brand lift surveys were announced at last year’s unBoxed and now those in the U.K. will have the opportunity to survey customers directly through Amazon DSP for easy execution. These surveys are powered by Amazon Shopper Panel, an invitation-only, opt-in program where participants can earn rewards by choosing to share receipts or complete a survey via an app. There are currently more than 300,000 active participants across the U.S. and U.K.
5. Quick Draw Sponsorship
The Quick Draw Sponsorship is a new product from Amazon that’s available within the What to Watch App. This app is designed to help users figure out what they want to watch, which is often easier said than done. The app gamifies the experience by offering Fire TV customers in the U.S. a series of interactive mini-games and quizzes to help users decide what to stream. Advertisers can be in on the fun with in-app sponsorships like the Quick Draw game sponsorship (beta) as viewers discover great content.
6. Sponsored Display for brands that don’t sell directly on Amazon (currently in closed beta on Twitch)
Advertisers who don’t sell on Amazon will now be given the opportunity to reach new audiences through Sponsored Display advertising, including on Twitch. There is currently no minimum spend required, with the move designed to benefit advertisers, shoppers, and streamers alike, with a richer mix of the brands they’ll see ads from. The ads served will be from brands and businesses offering relevant products or services beyond what you’d find for sale on Amazon, with verticals including hospitality, education, automotive, and travel brands.
7. Performance Recommendations
Performance Recommendations are designed to cut down on the troubleshooting and guesswork of campaign optimization, particularly for new advertisers. These Amazon recommendations aim to help advertisers efficiently, effectively, and optimally create and refine their Sponsored Products campaigns.
Recommendations will not only be helpful in quickly identifying underperforming campaigns, but will also provide advertisers with insights on why those campaigns weren’t achieving their desired goals or benchmarks.
Amy Mbagwu, Sr. Manager, Agency, Ads, at Amazon, explained:
“Performance Recommendations help pinpoint opportunities for advertisers to increase the performance of their Sponsored Products campaigns, and it’s consistently running in the background. Advertisers can get real-time feedback through proactive and comprehensive diagnostics, with ways to course-correct built right into the Amazon Ads console.”
8. Amazon Audiences
Amazon Audiences, a standard catalog of audiences that is prebuilt in DSP campaigns, have been enhanced with machine learning to serve targetable and measurable ads on both addressable and non-addressable media without the need for an ad identifier. This will help advertisers increase campaign reach, while maintaining relevance and performance.
Sam Cox, Director of Amazon DSP at Amazon Ads, explained:
“Many of our customers will already be familiar with the interface and the capabilities, but now the capabilities are expanding, as it’s taking into account a variety of additional signals to help brands reach larger groups of customers based on the likelihood of relevance for your brand and business goals. Because these expanded audiences are predictive, and do not leverage any ad identifiers, they can scale across a much broader range of inventory that was not previously addressable. All of these updates happen automatically within Amazon DSP, and without any changes to the interface, or the ways in which brands activate their campaigns.”
9. Sponsored Products campaigns with presets
Currently only available for new products, this feature allows Amazon Ads to recommend preset Sponsored Product campaign settings for advertisers. These recommendations consider daily budgets, bidding strategies, and associated bids, with estimated performance metrics, including impressions, clicks, and conversions.
The new feature is especially helpful for new advertisers in the space who may be easily overwhelmed by the sheer volume of Amazon Advertising options. By kicking things off with Amazon’s recommendations, these advertisers can save time while driving real results from the beginning, cutting down significantly on the learning curve.
Amy Mbagwu, Sr. Manager, Agency, Ads, at Amazon, shared:
“Amazon Ads has tested the efficacy of this experience and they found that campaigns launched with presets actually resulted in a 77% increase in clicks, and a 29% increase in conversions, all compared to campaigns that did not utilize presets.”
10. Rewarded Sponsored Display (beta)
Advertisers using Amazon DSP are currently able to add rewards to campaigns across Display, Twitch, and FireTV, including shopping credits and Prime Video credits. In 2023, Amazon will extend rewarded ads to Display, enabling retail brands of all sizes to create direct-to-customer interaction.
Colleen Aubrey, SVP of Ad Products and Tech and Amazon Ads, shared that a study Amazon commissioned with Omnicom Media Group found:
“73% of customers appreciate when brands help them discover new products, and more than half of respondents said they prefer ads they can interact with. Adding a reward to your creative is one way to build that interaction. Whether your objective is engagement or purchase intent, rewards can be used to encourage customers to take an action.”
A similar feature is also now in beta for Twitch advertising. Sarah Iooss, VP of US Sales at Twitch, offered some insights on how the feature has been working on the Twitch side:
“We’re currently in beta testing two display offerings: Rewarded Sponsored Display, which is Sponsored Display that is sold through the Ad Console; and Rewarded Purchases, which are integrated into the stream display ads that are sold through Twitch Direct. Both of these features reward viewers for making purchases from display ads. Rewarded Sponsored Display gives viewers valuable Amazon shopping credits, while Rewarded Purchases on the Twitch side provides viewers with codes to redeem monthly channel subscriptions—or subs, as we lovingly call them—for their favorite Twitch streamers’ channels…It’s really all about encouraging interactivity, and incentivizing purchases, with rewards we know our community will love. So whether it’s Amazon credits, or Twitch subscription codes, the rewards have significance to our users. And they also help improve ad performance.”
Day 2 Keynote: Representation in Advertising
The final keynote of unBoxed 2022 shifted away from Amazon announcements, unpacking the importance of diverse, inclusive, and equitable representation in media and advertising—both on camera, and in key decision-making and direction-driving positions behind the scenes.
Amazon’s Latasha Gillespie led the keynote, and was joined on-stage for conversations with a stellar lineup of speakers who brought thought-provoking considerations, recommendations, insights, and examples that are a must-watch for every brand and marketing professional.
Some of our top takeaways from the keynote include…
“I’m deeply proud of the work that we have done at Amazon Studios to launch the industry’s first Inclusion Policy and Playbook, which extends our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility across all of our content, and our production sets. It provides aspirational goals and guidelines for collaborators in the creative community. It is my hope that when you, our customers, see our content, you see yourself. And by engaging and connecting based on shared values, brands can earn the trust and loyalty that drives long-term relationships.“
— Latasha Gillespie | Global Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Amazon Studios and Prime Video
“We really need to tackle representation equity, and how we define it is by basically providing fair opportunities for people of underrepresented backgrounds to tell their own stories. It’s about who is present at the table; it is about who can determine the creative strategy, the execution—and for those voices not only to be heard, but also respected…If we tackle equity, we can guarantee that the representation will be authentic.”
— Valeria Piaggio | Global Head, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Kantar
“There’s this growing desire for authentic content, for cultural relevancy, for untold stories that are not cliches…In many instances, people who are not exposed to diversity in their own lives—and that might be because of where they live, when they were born, older generations—they are learning and making associations and assumptions about these groups based on what they see on-screen. Representation contributes to that understanding, and it gives people of underrepresented backgrounds an opportunity to be seen, to be heard, and hopefully, to be better understood.”
— Valeria Piaggio | Global Head, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Kantar
“We know that customers want to see themselves represented in the content that brands share with them. In fact, 72% of US consumers want to see more diversity and representation in advertising.”
— Claire Paull | Director, Global Marketing, Amazon Ads
“Last year, we launched our Once & For All Coalition. We now have 60 brands, media partners, measurement companies [and] industry orgs that are all coming together on research pilots to properly assess how diverse audiences, suppliers, and creators impact business outcomes.”
— Helen Lin | Chief Digital Officer, Publicis Media
“Diverse and inclusive organizations outperform their competitors…70% of brands that are thoughtful about inclusion tend to capture new and different markets every day. 35% tend to see greater profitability, particularly when their executive leadership teams are diverse. And 83% tend to see more innovation driven by employees. So as we think about what it means to tell an authentic brand story—and be authentic and purpose-driven—it’s really important that we’re thoughtful about who is in our organizations, and more importantly, how we activate them—for the organization, for the brand, for the products we put in the marketplace.”
— JT Saunders | Chief Diversity Officer, Korn Ferry
“Brands and companies of all sizes can have a big influence on not only their own actions, but on what is perceived as important—and really fair—in the industry.”
— Allyson Felix | Most Decorated U.S. Track and Field Athlete and Co-Founder of Saysh
Amazon unBoxed 2022 Sessions
In addition to information-packed Keynotes on October 26 and October 27, unBoxed 2022 included 50+ sessions designed for new and experienced advertisers, ranging in duration from 15 minutes to an hour.
Some of our favorite sessions included:
- Deliver meaningful brand presence with Amazon Marketing Cloud and Streaming TV ads (Led by Tinuiti’s Director of Amazon Strategy, Pat Petriello)
- Expand your reach and explore innovation with Streaming TV ads
- Advanced strategies that can help maximize brand performance with Amazon Marketing Stream
- Advanced techniques for Sponsored Products
- Advertising that advances: Creating content that moves culture forward
- Drive marketing outcomes across the customer journey with Sponsored Display
- Grow your brand globally
- How brands can drive growth during high-traffic shopping events in 2023
- How CPG brands can build customer trust today
- Video creative and interactivity best practices to drive customer engagement
Trends & Expert Takeaways from Attendees
“Historically, Amazon’s API pull offered advertisers a next-day overview of the prior day’s performance. With the move to Amazon Marketing Stream, instead of having to wait until the next day to see how the previous day performed, advertisers can now access fresh data every hour. Prior to the unBoxed conference, these more recent insights were only available in North America; at unBoxed, Amazon announced these insights would now be available worldwide, with the exception of India.”
— Stuart Dooley, Sr. Manager, Marketplaces at Tinuiti
“Non-endemic Sponsored Display in AMC with user data is going to be interesting; this is advertisers who aren’t on Amazon selling Amazon products, but who are now going to use Amazon’s audiences to deliver custom messaging to a custom audience.”
— Stuart Dooley, Sr. Manager, Marketplaces at Tinuiti
“Amazon continues to grow the Twitch audience—and the reach that Twitch has—making it an important avenue to consider adding to your marketing mix, helping ensure the right advertisers are being served to the right audience at the right time and location.”
— Stuart Dooley, Sr. Manager, Marketplaces at Tinuiti
“We’re in the new era of Amazon Ads—this new era of being able to measure, reach customers on-and-off Amazon, reach customers through video, and more. Today, the prize is bigger, and the ecosystem is more complex. Because it’s more complex, you need a more sophisticated approach. If you keep using a simplified legacy approach, it’s no longer going to work the way it once did.”
— Pat Petriello, Director of Amazon Strategy at Tinuiti
Ready to Start 2023 Strong With Amazon Ads?
Tinuiti can help your brand drive growth on Amazon in 2023. If you’re interested in learning more about our Amazon services or have questions about the recent announcements from this year’s unBoxed, contact us today for more information.
You Might Be Interested In
