The 2023

Amazon
Guide LEVEL UP YOUR AMAZON STRATEGY WITH INSIGHTS
INTO AMC, STREAMING, OPERATIONS, AND MORE
Table of Contents
03 Introduction

04 Amazon Trends and Tactics Brands Should be

Harnessing in 2023

04 Core Advertising

06 Amazon Marketing Cloud

08 Streaming TV

09 New Savings Events

1 0 Posts and Stores

1 2 Amazon Fulfillment and Operations

13 Navigating the Next Stage of Amazon with

14 2023 Amazon Predictions from the Experts

 Introduction
We’ll take a 2022 brought on economic headwinds and uncertainty of consumer demand, but
it also gave brands the opportunity to hone in on their strategies, take a deeper

deeper look into look into budgets, and encourage creativity and innovation in the advertising
space. Brands advertising on Amazon are currently in a balancing act of having

the current trends foundational elements in place as well as testing out new opportunities without
unlimited resources. Strategic thinking has never been more important as we

we’re seeing in head into 2023.

2023 is both the year of response and creativity. In the past, advertisers focused
the Amazon on methods to reach people on Amazon, but now, brands are asking themselves,
“how do we get in front of these consumers anywhere?”

ecosystem,
“We’re in the new era of Amazon Ads—this new era of being able to

explore new measure, reach customers on-and-off Amazon, reach customers through
video, and more. Today, the prize is bigger, and the ecosystem is more

innovations, and complex. Because it’s more complex, you need a more sophisticated
approach. If you keep using a simplified legacy approach, it’s no longer

offer tips for

going to work the way it once did.”

staying ahead of Pat Petriello

Director of Amazon Strategy at Tinuiti

the competition on
the world’s largest In this year’s Amazon Guide, we’ll take a deeper look into the current trends we’re
seeing in the Amazon ecosystem. We’ll also explore new innovations as well as

marketplace. tips for staying ahead of the competition on the world’s largest marketplace.

We’re entering a new era of Amazon ads… is your brand ready?

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Amazon Trends and Tactics Brands
Should be Harnessing in 2023

Core Advertising Will Remain Critical

While you should be testing new features, products, and ad types it’s more important than
ever to have your foundational Amazon advertising strategy in place in the coming year. With
budgets top-of-mind for many advertisers, it’s crucial to have your core elements in place to
determine what’s working, what’s not, and new opportunities for testing. Sponsored Products,
Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and Amazon DSP are highly recommended solutions
for any brand’s Amazon marketing strategy. If they aren’t already in your toolkit, let’s take a
quick look at what they are and their newest test-worthy features for 2023.

SPONSORED PRODUCTS

Amazon Sponsored Products are pay-per-click ads based on keywords (and product targeting)
that drive traffic to a desired product detail page within the Amazon platform.

New Features

• Expanded Product Targeting: Now, advertisers can access expanded product targeting
for Sponsored Products via the advertising console and Amazon Ads API. According to
Amazon, this enables advertisers to target their preferred products and to reach related
products at the same time with one click.

SPONSORED BRANDS

Amazon Sponsored Brands Ads are one of Amazon’s flagship ad types that can feature brand
imagery, messaging, and a product showcase to engage people at the beginning of their
shopping journey.

New Features

• Video Builder: Video Builder provides customizable templates allowing brands to create
videos for Sponsored Brands video placements at no additional cost.

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 SPONSORED DISPLAY

Amazon Sponsored Display ads allow brands to reach customers via auto-generated placements on
both detail and other pages across Amazon in addition to placements across Amazon’s third-party
display network with targeting on desktop and mobile devices, similar to DSP.

Sponsored Display “The nature of Amazon Ad Types are constantly shifting due to the rollout of new betas
and targeting opportunities. Currently, I’ve been seeing increases of budget support in the

has become Sponsored Display campaign type. Sponsored Display has become increasingly popular
among Amazon Advertisers due to the dynamic targeting opportunities it offers, such

increasingly as categorical, audience, and re-targeting capabilities. Another benefit to this targeting
type is the capability to target both on and off of Amazon, making it a great option for

popular among advertisers who are not utilizing DSP and want to expand off of the platform. Sponsored
Display has continued to roll out new targeting betas throughout 2022, with Sponsored

Amazon Advertisers
Display Video being the newest addition. With this in mind, I would predict continued
increases in ad placements for this campaign type, along with categorical targeting
being included for SDV.”
due to the
dynamic targeting Arianna Silvestri
Specialist at Tinuiti

opportunities
it offers, such New Features

as categorical, • Rewarded Sponsored Display: Advertisers using Amazon DSP are currently able to add rewards
to campaigns across Display, Twitch, and FireTV, including shopping credits and Prime Video

audience, and credits. In 2023, Amazon will extend rewarded ads to Display, enabling retail brands of all sizes
to create direct-to-customer interaction.

re-targeting • Sponsored Display for Those That Don’t Sell on Amazon: Advertisers who don’t sell on
Amazon will now be given the opportunity to reach new audiences through Sponsored Display
capabilities. advertising, including on Twitch.

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AMAZON DSP

Also known as Amazon’s Demand-Side Platform — enables advertisers to programmatically buy display, video, audio, and STV ad placements.

New Features

• Digital Signage Ads: 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.

• 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.

Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) Will Change the Game

If you’re not taking advantage of all that Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) can offer your brand, it’s time to get started in 2023. AMC is a secure, privacy-friendly,
dedicated cloud-based measurement and analytics solution. It gives advertisers the transparent, cross-channel data they need to make more informed
decisions about their marketing. And today’s marketers need that transparent, actionable data more than ever before.

Amazon
AWS DSP
Data storage, Programmatic
computing, data AMC media buying,
lake, and advanced audience planning,
data analytics Data clean room enabling and performance
pseudonymized signals connection reporting
and advertising-focused analytics

Sizmek
Ad Suite Sponsored
Ad server managing Ads
and distrubuting Retail focused
campaigns across Amazon Ads
channels and solutions
screens
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But as browsers begin blocking third-party cookies, advertisers are struggling to
measure conversions and access the information needed for in-depth reporting.
And as the industry continues to change, it’s getting more complex and challenging
to measure attribution and campaign performance across channels. AMC helps
advertisers overcome that challenge by offering analytics beyond what traditional
reports can provide. Advertisers can generate aggregated reports based on both
their own data sets and their Amazon Advertising campaign events.

Amazon Marketing Cloud offers reporting and analytics unique to each advertiser’s
goals, channels, audience, and messaging. With AMC, advertisers can measure
advertising performance impact across channels both on and off Amazon, creating
a truly holistic reporting environment.

“If you find yourself looking at reports trying to string together various
metrics—especially if it’s across search and display—and really trying to
make a story out of it when it’s not clear, this could be a great indicator
that you simply need more than what’s available to you. This is where AMC
can come in and provide a huge variety of reporting and metrics that just
aren’t available in the standardized reporting we have today.”

Jen Acosta
Sr. Strategist, Marketplaces at Tinuiti

Recently, Tinuiti partnered with Poppi, a Sparkling Prebiotic Soda brand, to

understand the effect of Amazon media across the omnichannel landscape, with
in-store impact at Whole Foods being a top priority. By leveraging AMC (Amazon’s
Marketing Cloud), Tinuiti was able to track metrics that included in-store sales for
the first time.

Learn more about how Tinuiti partnered with Poppi

in our recent case study.

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 Streaming TV (STV) Will Continue to Climb

83% of consumers in the U.S. used a subscription video-on-demand service in 2022, an

increase of nearly 20% in five years. To top it off, there are more than 50 million monthly active
users on Fire TV alone. There’s simply no denying the growth of streaming services and the
impact streaming advertising has on consumers and this trend will undoubtedly carry into
2023. If you’re not in the streaming game, there’s no better time to get started to ensure you
have a full-funnel approach.

“Video is the future– Amazon will look to increase video placement opportunities with premium

Amazon Ads
STV deals and placing video ads mid-roll with Amazon Live. Also, Amazon will look to break out
into podcasting with live video capabilities allowing for additional video ad placements.”

has seen a
Karen Hopkins

+90% increase Strategist at Tinuiti

in purchase rate
when integrating “Amazon will be looking to acquire more sports rights and add to the NFL games they
currently stream to provide advertisers with a better cost of entry for streaming ads where
Streaming TV they bucket the games in a package.”

ads into media Christian Lopez

Team Strategist at Tinuiti
strategy.

Amazon STV has continued to garner notice and gain momentum throughout 2022, and as we move
into 2023, streaming TV opportunities will only expand further.

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New Savings Events Ramp Up
Prime Early Access Sale
Amazon is king of creating buzz around their staple Prime Day event, but this year, the
world’s largest marketplace kicked things up a notch by adding yet another savings event vs. Prime Day 2022
to their roster. For decades, most Americans considered Black Friday the official start of
the holiday shopping season. But for today’s online retailers, every minute of every day is a
sales opportunity.  AD SPEND

While many shoppers referred to Amazon’s newest savings event as Prime Day 2 or Fall Prime
Day, its official name being the Prime Early Access Sale indicated that unlike July’s Prime Day,
this fall event was intentionally designed with the holiday shopping season in mind.
-24%
vs. Prime Day 2022
“Customers will be less willing to spend on high AOV items given the instability of
the economy. If customers do decide to buy a higher priced item, they will likely  AVERAGE ORDER VALUE

-22%
be willing to wait until a tentpole event so that they can purchase the product on
deal. This will make promotional strategies during tentpole events all the more
important in 2023.”

Prime Early Access: $47

Courtney Macfarlane
Sr. Strategist at Tinuiti
Prime Day: $60
 AWARENESS

How did the new Prime Early Access Deal stack up to Amazon’s tried and true Prime Day?
Let’s take a look…

• The event failed to live up to Prime Day 2022, with ad spend down 24% compared to
9%
the July event, but Sponsored Products investment topped the last October Prime
of shoppers said they
member event, a pandemic-delayed Prime Day 2020, by 23% (source) weren’t aware of the
• The average order size during the Prime Early Access sale was $47, down from $60 Prime Early Access
on Prime Day 2022 (source)
Sale before visiting
• 9% of shoppers said they weren’t aware of the sale before visiting the site (source)
Amazon.com
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 Although initial numbers were down when compared to Prime Day, Tinuiti’s own Karie Casper shared
how these stats might not be considering the full picture…

“Comparing Prime Early Access to Prime Day is an unfair comparison given the awareness and
overall uncertainty of the event. For example, one brand saw 22% less units sold during Prime
Early Access Sale than during Prime Day yet saw a 6,378% increase in units sold over last year.

Comparing The real question is if the sales lift will be incremental to Q4 sales or if we’re only pulling forward
the holiday shopping period.”

Prime Early Karie Casper

Strategist, Marketplace Search at Tinuiti

Access to Prime
Day is an unfair So, will we see even more Amazon savings events happening in 2023? Only time will tell but it’s becoming
increasingly important that brands are ready for these high-volume events at a moment’s notice. Take a
comparison. look at a few of our quick tips so your brand can be ready for the next big Amazon savings event.

The real question Posts and Stores Will Gain Momentum

is if the sales lift will Brand building on Amazon can be a challenge for many sellers, but with Amazon Posts and Stores you
have the ability to stay top-of-mind for shoppers in creative ways. With Amazon Posts specifically, you

be incremental can mimic your efforts on social media channels like Instagram within the Amazon Marketplace. Posts
can help your brand stand out from competitors and draw the attention of shoppers for free. How will
Amazon Posts innovate in 2023? Let’s hear predictions from our experts…
to Q4 sales or if
“Underutilized content opportunities will continue to present themselves in 2023. Brand follow will
we’re only pulling become more powerful with the ability to communicate directly with highly engaged customers,
Posts will have increased placements and become more dynamic in nature, MYCE (Manage Your
forward the Customer Engagement) will continue to get enhanced functionality. Advertising on Amazon will not
be going away, but brands will find a new arena for differentiation via leveraging

holiday shopping branded content opportunities.”

period. Pat Petriello

Director of Amazon Strategy at Tinuiti

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 “Amazon will begin to incorporate short-form video
content into its Amazon Posts in order to begin
the TikTokification of its current Beta. The hashtag
#TikTokMadeMeBuyIt has over 26 Billion views and has
been a great driver of off-site purchases for various
products. Imagine if you could add the item to your
Amazon cart right from the video instead of having to
track it down by exiting TikTok and searching on Amazon.”

Christian Lopez
Team Strategist at Tinuiti

As competition on Amazon increases in 2023, it has never been

more important to build your brand through awareness and
immersive experiences. Luckily, Amazon Stores allows you to
do both by utilizing branded images and videos to tell your story
and to increase customer education. Amazon A+ Content and
Enhanced Brand Content are the norm (and you should really
already have those implemented). As we enter the new year, it’s
time to take your branding to the next level with Amazon Stores.

Learn more about the benefits of

Amazon Stores.

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Amazon Fulfillment and Operations Will Stay
Top-of-Mind
Over the past few years, many brands have experienced everything from
supply chain issues to inventory shortages to production delays. Inventory
management can make or break sellers so the importance of being strategic
in 2023 cannot be overstated.
This is especially important when Amazon restricts inventory storage limits…
“Amazon’s notorious inventory limits are back in full force,
challenging brands to do more with less here in Q4 and into
2023. It is critical that brands are able to (1) be more agile in their
fulfillment strategy by restocking more frequently, and (2) pivot their
advertising and promotion strategies to their priority ASINs with more
flexible inventory limits. All brands have been and will continue to be
severely affected by these constraints, but those that are able to be
most nimble in response will stand out from the competition.”
Mark Russo
 Sr. Specialist at Tinuiti
Amazon’s notorious inventory limits are back in full force,
challenging brands to do more with less here in Q4 and into 2023.
LT Apparel Group, Tinuiti’s Full-service and Operations client for 6+ years
has thrived during times of uncertainty. The brand saw an average of 63%
growth on a large eight-figure annual Amazon business during the COVID
period. With the help of Tinuiti, they executed an Amazon strategy that
covered price increases, product, inventory planning, and negotiations with
Amazon to achieve this impressive success.
“LT Apparel was one of the few apparel clients that actually had a
successful outcome on Amazon during the last 2.5 years during COVID,
and it’s because of the operational background that they built over
the last 6 years. Since then, they have become a top 3 brand inside of
Amazon in kids and baby apparel.”
Phil Stolt
SVP of Retail Operations at Tinuiti
This goes to show that with proper planning and a dedicated partner, your
business can thrive on Amazon. Read on to learn about navigating the next
stage of Amazon, including additional insight into Amazon fulfillment and
operations.
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Navigating the Next Stage
of Amazon with
Over the past several years, Amazon has proven itself to be one of the most
valuable tools and channels for brands at large. With global reach via the
Amazon marketplace and the legendary Prime delivery guarantee, Amazon
stands (and will continue to stand) as one of the foremost revenue streams
for brands in the modern era. All that glitters is not always gold, however.
CAPACITY CONUNDRUM
Amazon, like many of its colleagues and competitors on the warehousing
side, is experiencing a historically fluid capacity situation that has led to
some significant changes for sellers. With the onset of the COVID pandemic,
ecommerce sales saw historic, exponential growth of which Amazon played
a huge part. Brands and retailers sought to adapt by increasing PO volumes
in an effort to maintain higher inventory levels and avoid stockouts. As
monetary policy balanced, the economy cooled, and inflation has given way
to lower spending across the board. So, in the course of two years, capacity
planning has become something of a guessing game for Amazon as they
attempt to keep in line with real time updates.
That all sounds great, but how does that affect sellers? For the prudent
Amazon sellers reading this, this isn’t any news: Amazon has been steadily
decreasing inventory caps for FBA clients to near dangerously low levels.
What’s worse, the costs and lead times to have inventory checked into
Amazon facilities has only increased over the past few years. Pair that with
Amazon’s self-replenishment model, and operators/sellers are forced to a
logistical Rubik’s cube just to get their items into Amazon facilities!
While it will continue to be a fluid situation over the next 12-18 months, one
thing remains certain and it’s that Amazon sellers will need to continue to
stay creative with managing their inventory, especially sellable inventory, in
Amazon warehouses. Having a concrete understanding of your cost to serve
specific channels and SKUs is the first step to creating a plan of action. From
there, understanding inventory caps and what that actually means for your
throughput and aligning it with your current replenishment model is key. Pairing
these datasets together with projected throughput increases/decreases and
transportation strategy will ensure that you are replenishing your inventory with
the right volume of goods, with the right transportation type, at the right price,
and in the timeliest manner. Will it prevent stockouts and make your inventory
cap disappear? Certainly not, but it will allow you to tack and jibe away from
some of the constraints that Amazon has put on sellers.

While it will continue to be a fluid situation over the next 12-18 months, one thing
remains certain– Amazon sellers will need to continue to stay creative with
managing their inventory, especially sellable inventory, in Amazon warehouses.
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 2023 Amazon Predictions from the Experts
The Amazon landscape is ever evolving and while we can’t be exactly sure what to expect in the new year, we asked our leading industry
experts what trends they predict will shape Amazon Ads (and beyond) in the near future. Take a look at their predictions for 2023 to see
if they can help you prepare your future marketing strategies.

“Brands will have to redefine what it means to be successful on

“Omni-Channel Metrics (OCM) is just the start of Amazon’s
Amazon. Increased ad budgets no longer guarantee incremental
journey to connect their media with offline impact. Amazon
sales. Rising CPCs, heightened competition, and a heavier push
wants to be able to tap into ad dollars outside of retail media
towards upper-funnel tactics have lowered the return for many
and will work to provide the measurement to prove
sellers. As these trends likely continue, non-sales
advertisers should spend their dollars within
metrics such as impressions and share of voice
Amazon platforms.”
may become the new north star for advertising.”

–Joseph Elmquist Strategist at Tinuiti

–Brandon Jaksim Specialist at Tinuiti

“This new year may bring drastic changes to the advertising
environment that will increase its standing against some of the
other major ad platforms, some of which may be propelled by video
streaming, additional on-platform advertising capabilities, ability
to reach new audiences with additional ad inventory
and deliverability, and a huge component would be
measurability and attribution.”
“With the highly anticipated demise of the third-party cookie,
we are going to see a significant push for new innovations
that combat the difficulties of a post-cookie era. I think
Amazon will be leveraging first-party data to build out even
more robust contextual targeting capabilities
as well as improve upon their lookalike model
methodology.”

–David Yu Team Strategist at Tinuiti –Natalie Samson Sr. Manager at Tinuiti

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“Continued innovation for Sponsored Brand placement. Sponsored
Brand Video (SBV) ads are now eligible to show on the top of
search pages, but still in a limited fashion. Video is becoming more
prominent in the Amazon ecosystem, with the introduction of video
Sponsored Display, so look for those SBVs to be much more common
on the top of search as the year goes on. The evolution of normal SBs
as well, with a shift to brand “following” is something I anticipate by
the end of 2023, as Amazon looks to make the shopper
experience easier for their own personal top brands.”
–Ken Magner Sr. Specialist at Tinuiti
“Amazon Ads will have its most competitive year to date for sellers
and vendors. Recession and inflation looming over consumers will
lead to less sporadic purchases and more product research before
a final purchase. Brands will need to shift focus from increasing
efficiency and growing sales to maintaining category share for
organic and paid placements. Defending your branded placements
will become increasingly important as smaller brands
attempt to steal market share from the top sellers in
each category.”
–Wyatt Burley Specialist at Tinuiti
“Strong social media presence, engagement, and followings will
continue to be crucial for driving sales as product offerings increase
online, particularly on Amazon. With so many products to choose
from and people being more cautious on where to spend their
money as talks of a recession circulate, they will look to others for
recommendations on what to purchase. TikTok, Facebook, YouTube,
and Instagram reels showing content like “top 5 things worth your
money on Amazon” will strongly influence consumer interest.
Winning top of search placement on Amazon search
results will no longer be as strong of an influence as
it once was to convince a shopper to buy.”
–Meethila Rahman Sr. Specialist at Tinuiti
“Amazon will continue to dominate the digital retail marketplace
as Walmart, Kroger, and Instacart attempt to break through more
than 10% total market share respectively. These retailers are set to
compete with Amazon through increased advertising placements,
programmatic capabilities, and strategic partnerships. Amazon views
their competitive landscape in a different light, as they
are poised to compete for digital ad dollars not with
other retailers, but with Google and Facebook.”
–Mark Gray Specialist at Tinuiti
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 SCHEDULE YOUR
We are Brand Performance AMAZON STRATEGY
Accelerators.
EVALUATION
Tinuiti is the largest independent
performance marketing firm across
Tinuiti accelerates business growth
Streaming TV and the Triopoly of Google,
Facebook, Amazon, with nearly $3 billion on Amazon with a tech-enabled data
in digital media under management and
strategy and total channel management.
over 1000 employees. With industry-leading
expertise in search, social, Amazon and
marketplaces, addressable TV and mobile
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Tinuiti understands that success requires both
strategy and channel expertise.

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