Dive Brief:
- Macy’s Media Network will launch a pilot with Amazon Retail Ads Service, enabling partners to purchase ads on its website through the Amazon Ads console and other APIs, according to a company announcement.
- Through the program, advertisers will be able to manage Macy’s sponsored products campaigns alongside other retail media investments using familiar workflows and reporting and measurement tools.
- The pilot, which will launch in early Q4 in time for the holiday season, will not affect self-serve or managed campaigns already being run through Macy’s Media Network.
Dive Insight:
The collaboration leverages features Amazon introduced in January, enabling it to serve as a third-party provider of ad-serving and reporting capabilities for retailers. Through the offering, named Amazon Retail Ad Service, outside partners can use Amazon’s ad-targeting and measurement tools on their own websites and in their apps, thus providing advertisers better data regarding real-time availability, pricing and contextual information such as search queries and browsing behavior.
Amazon’s Retail Ad Service product was met with some skepticism due to concerns from many retailers about data privacy and control. Macy’s service will operate on dedicated systems with access controls, and the company would maintain full control over its ad experience, per the release.
In addition to enabling campaign management through the Amazon Ads console, the partnership also opens up placements on Macy’s Media Network on retail media platforms like Pacvue. Pacvue President Melissa Burdick called the deal “a pivotal shift in retail media” that will “drive immediate scale, performance and efficiency,” in a statement issued by Macy’s in support of the deal.
Macy’s also said the collaborative partnership was a way for the company to help advertisers seamlessly scale their reach to the retailer’s engaged audience and form more meaningful connections with online shoppers.
Retail media networks play a major role in companies’ holiday marketing strategies. While the market has been cooling, eMarketer predicted U.S. retail media ad spending will hit $62 billion this year. Last year, the channel recorded 75 billion total impressions in Q4, up 4% over the previous year, according to Sensor Tower. However, because Amazon is so large as a media player that it effectively stands in its own category, it was not included in Sensor Tower's data.
