Shifts in technology have the habit of temporarily causing chaos as they upend the status quo. The problem is, regardless of what’s happening on the technology front, brands always need to find ways to reach relevant audiences during moments that matter. 

The challenge for many is that current go-to-market strategies are still overly reliant on at-risk third-party identifiers, specifically cookies. In order to continue reaching current and prospective customers with the right messaging, advertisers need to make sure their audience-building strategies prioritize agility and customer trust – and that those solutions are durable.

Durability means standing the test of time – finding ways to connect with the right customers, regardless of what happens to third-party cookies or other identifiers, now or in the future. But it also describes an audience strategy that can endure the ebbs and flows of larger shifts, such as developments in the macroeconomic climate, evolving privacy regulations, new advertising channels or evolutions in shopping behaviours.

For Amazon, that means turning to the power of first-party signals. As IAB notes, 41% of North American advertisers are expected to increase their spend in relation to using their own first-party signals – and it only makes sense. Unlike cookies, the insights based on a brand’s first-party signals don’t degrade with any changes made by web browsers or device manufacturers. 

Amazon, for example, makes meaningful connections with customers across a wide variety of touchpoints. Consider the insights available via Amazon’s shopping, browsing, streaming and contextual signals. Or advertiser first-party signals such as website engagement. Then layer on signals from Amazon Publisher Direct. Or real-time bidding signals, which include device type, time of day, software version and page URL, all of which help the aggregate model understand ad opportunities with more granularity. 

Together, all these signals represent a treasure trove of shopping, browsing and streaming insights that enable advertisers to understand more about their customers and their interests. But they’re just the start. Machine learning capabilities can help extend reach further in ways that go beyond traditional lookalikes.

With the right tech provider, first-party signals can do even more. Data clean rooms have become a necessary part of a brand’s tech stack for many, largely for measurement purposes. Today, however, it’s possible to leverage the power of data clean rooms to create fully custom-built or customized audience building efforts and activations.

First-party signals are incredibly valuable but they’re also limited in scale, and a brand’s audience is going to show up in places that those signals may never indicate. It’s for this reason (and others) that tactics like modelling and contextual advertising are becoming more popular. That these approaches also prioritize customer trust just makes them that much more durable.

With regenerative machine learning, which is the approach Amazon Ads employs, audience-building models are continuously learning and improving, taking into account changes like new streaming channels, new devices, changes to shopping patterns and more. 

And these strategies seem to be paying off. In recent tests Amazon conducted with advertisers across verticals, it says it has observed that contextual targeting drives better consideration rates and return on ad spend compared to traditional cookie-based strategies. And Amazon goes further to say that advertisers that model audience strategies have seen benefits as high as a 25% increase in impression delivery and 12% decrease in CPMs.

No matter the approach advertisers take to future-proof their audience strategy, it’s important to ensure they’re closing the loop on reporting and measurement. After all, the more they are able to input into a model, the more they’re going to get out of it.

Change in this industry isn’t slowing down anytime soon. But with the right audience-building strategies, based on the best signals and modelling, it’s possible to be in a position to weather whatever changes do come.

 Interested in finding out more about measuring impact with Amazon Ads? Read on here.