What is the Amazon Media Group
The abbreviation AMG stands for “Amazon Media Group“, a special department within the Amazon Group that is responsible for the placement and development of advertising campaigns for vendors and major brands. In the AMG, all display advertising spaces on and outside Amazon are controlled, campaigns are planned and executed. Depending on the assignment of the customers, the Amazon Media Group takes over the entire outsourcing of all campaigns for a fixed advertising budget (approx. 50,000.00 EUR minimum amount per year).
Unlike the performance-driven Amazon Marketing Services, AMG is not primarily concerned with ROI (Return of Invest), but rather with a large reach on the partner side and increasing brand awareness, e.g. by playing display ads on its own shopping website.
If a vendor decides to distribute the budget in the direction of the AMG, he must not expect the same KPIs and certainly not the same goals that he sets for click-based measures. While the AMS are based on directly controllable click bids and can therefore be played out with great precision and cent-exactness, the Amazon Media Group is only provided with an annual budget, which is then used for the Amazon Advertising Platform and is difficult to measure directly.
AMG customer-specific and relevant advertising – advantages and disadvantages
Due to the sheer amount of user data and their purchasing behavior, Amazon has a data power in its hands like hardly any other company in e-commerce. The findings from the Customer Journey flow into the outsourcing of the campaigns, which are played out programmatically and for the most part automatically (programmatic advertising) via the AMG.
The advantage of advertising with Amazon Media Group is clearly the variety of data used for the advertising campaigns. Furthermore, a vendor does not have to invest much of his own resources (including personnel) to promote specific products, his own brand shop or external websites. Only the provision of an annual budget is required here.
The disadvantage is also due to the advantage that there is little or no control over how Amazon invests the budget provided and how brand awareness is increased as a result. The AMG is probably not the right choice for purely revenue-driven retailers, especially as a one-off advertising budget can no longer be easily changed or shifted to other advertising media (e.g. AMS). In addition, the type of playout according to the CPM model (cost per million) is hardly measurable and can hardly be divided into success or failure.
Conclusion: Amazon Media Group may or may not work
For large brands with a high advertising budget, AMG can be worth a try if you do not want or need to specifically promote the sale of certain products. With a correspondingly high budget (depending on the planned measures, the product area and the competitive situation), advertising campaigns via the Amazon Media Group can be strategically valuable in the medium to long term. However, it is advisable here to precisely define the corporate objectives and to weigh (or healthy distribution) the available budget in AMG and AMS.