Love it or hate it, almost all of us use Amazon — but did you know it’s also a powerful platform for advertising?

Say what you want about Jeff Bezos, but the guy had vision. When he launched Amazon back in 1995, he wanted it to be “an everything store,” and it’s pretty safe to say he delivered. 

In 2023, Amazon averages around 2.72 billion unique monthly visitors.

More than half of all American internet users start product searches on Amazon, which outshines Google. (Can you believe anything beats Google?!)

And this was before the pandemic. 

Now that we’re all a little more reliant on online purchasing, Amazon is showing even more power: Amazon sales in North America were up 11% in Q1 of 2023.

I probably didn’t need to convince you Amazon is a powerful digital platform. Instead, we’re going to talk today about how you can capitalize on Amazon’s reach for your own dealership.

There is great opportunity to get your brand in front of the shoppers in your area by running campaigns across Amazon.

Who Can You Reach on Amazon?

With 200 million unique visitors a month, you might be thinking that targeting on Amazon marketing services is like throwing money into the wind. How can you possibly reach the right audience with your message? 

If you left the targeting wide open, you really could eat up an endless budget on unqualified shoppers.

Fortunately, there are really detailed targeting options available on Amazon advertising. The Amazon campaigns we run for our clients use a combination of the following criteria: 

• Amazon Shopper Data: Targeting based on shopping and browsing behavior of users signed in to their Amazon accounts
• Amazon Garage: Targeting based on 113 million registered users who share their vehicle’s year, make, model, and trim, as well as their auto-related shopping data
• Amazon Vehicles: Targeting based on specifications, images, videos, and customer reviews for thousands of new and used car models
• Edmunds: Targeting based on Edmunds auto shopper data through an Amazon partnership
• Auto Shopper Targeting: Targeting of local, in-market shoppers for both your brand and your competitors’
• Your Dealership’s Database: Targeting using customer email lists from your customer relationship management (CRM) tool, which can include past or existing customers as well as lookalike audiences of similar Amazon users

Using the right combination of targeting parameters, you can get your dealership’s message in front of the right audience out of those 2.72 billion visitors on Amazon. 

How Can You Advertise on Amazon?

So that’s who you can reach on Amazon, but how do you do it? 

We’re able to do a couple different types of campaigns with Amazon ads: 

1. Amazon Display: Desktop and mobile display ads that run on Amazon’s website and a few partner sites (like TBS, CBS, and IFC)
2. Amazon OTT: Video campaigns served on Amazon’s over-the-top (OTT) service (i.e. bypassing cable platforms) on the Fire homepage and on the IMDb streaming channel

Display advertising is something a lot of dealerships have been doing for years, but OTT might be a new tool you’re considering. As more and more people “cut the cord” and move to streaming services, OTT is a great opportunity to be ahead of the curve in your market. 

The types of campaigns we can run on Amazon ads are similar to the messaging we’d use on Google Ads — like model-specific offers, dealership branding, and competitor conquest campaigns.

Amazon Ads Service

Does Amazon Advertising Work?

That’s an important question to ask about any new digital marketing service, not just Amazon ads. 

We’ve been testing with some of our clients, and we’re seeing great results.

For one dealership, our top-of-funnel display campaigns have brought more than 3,500 new users to the dealership’s website in one quarter. Those users have a 55.75% goal completions rate (which, for this store, are either vehicle description page [VDP] or search results page [SRP] views or form submissions). 

Amazon advertising isn’t the only piece of this client’s digital marketing strategy, but it is a new option to add to their mix and reach a larger audience than on Google or Facebook ads alone. 

How Do You Get Started?

Our team here at 9 Clouds is always looking for new technology and new platforms to share with our clients.

If you think your dealership could be doing more to reach leads and customers online — we’d love to help you grow your business. 

Learn more about the possibilities with Amazon for your store.

get started with amazon ads