Aaron Conant 0:18

Happy Wednesday everybody. My name is Aaron, I'm Co-founder and Managing Director here at BWG Connect. We're networking and knowledge sharing group with 1000s of brands to do exactly that we network and now it's here together to stay on top of the newest trends, strategies, pain points, whatever it might be, that's shaping the digital landscape as a whole, connect with 30 to 40 brands a week, we'd love to chat with anybody on the line today, if you want to throw some time on the calendar, you know, we can send you a follow up email, we'd love to do that. Those conversations that I'm having with brands is how we stay on top of all those newest trends and strategies and stay extremely relevant on everything that we're doing, I dropped to the chat, if you want to see upcoming events, we really don't try to post anything out there more than two to three months out, because it's the digital landscape. And it's changing all the time at a rapid pace. But still, check out some events there. Just a quick note as well, we're gonna start posting content afterwards. So if you miss something, or you want to re listen to it, you can jump out to those pages, we're trying to leave some key takeaways bullet points, a little mini synopsis of what took place, just a heads up, check out that we've just launched it this month. So not everything has content yet. But over the coming months. Hopefully, it's a great resource for everybody to use. It's in the network as a whole. A couple housekeeping items as we get started here. At any point in time, if you have questions along the way, drop them into the Questions section or into the chat. Or at any point in time, you can email me Aaron Aaron@BWGConnect.com that includes an hour after this call tomorrow next week, if you ever have any questions, the digital spread space, if you want to talk digital strategy and what's going on as a whole, I run point in the network. And so get the opportunity to share across the board a lot of those trends as a whole. So love to spend time, it's one of the favorite parts of my job with anybody, we don't sell anything here. So there won't be a sales pitch, they'll just be great conversation. So as we kick off the call today, you know, something that's come up over and over again, in brands that I'm talking to is the the rapid evolution of Amazon, Amazon paid media, there's been this huge push to DSP. Now questions pop up, will you know what about you know, I'm thinking, you know, I'm kind of old school and ATMs and then sponsor display ads come up, like, what should the mix be? Is it still important? Should I all be going all in on DSP? Should I replace my budget. And so rather than, than me tackle those, we've got some great friends, great partners, supporters of the network come highly recommended from multiple brands in network. That's how we got connected with them. team over at Perpetua and Adam is on the line today to kind of walk us through some some details, some thoughts that they have, as leaders in this space, they're dealing with tons of brands, so they see a different perspective than a single brand point of view. So they really have a great feeling what's working what's important in so that's how we got to sponsor display ads on Amazon, why they matter, as a whole on this discussion. So quick note two is the discussion, drop questions and we want to we want to have this be as engaging as possible q&a chat or email them to me, but, Adam, I'll kind of kick it over to you. You know, if you want to do a brief intro on yourself and Perpetua that awesome. And then we we can kind of jump into some of the information here

Adam Epstein 3:31

something perfect. Aaron, thank you so much for having us. It's great to be a part of the BWG Connect family. I think we're nearing on a year now for a little more than a year. And it's great to get exposure to so many brands and tell them some of the things that we're seeing in the in the eCommerce advertising landscape. So myself, I'm Adam Epstein, VP of Growth at Perpetua. I oversee all customer and revenue growth and who we are Perpetua is we build growth infrastructure for eCommerce. We're a team of roughly 80 over 80 people with offices in Toronto, San Francisco, and we recently opened up an office in London. And we make advertising products that help brands and agencies grow on marketplaces like Amazon, instacart, Walmart and Target. Prior that mean, for the past three and a half years, we've been a venture backed technology startup funded by top Silicon Valley investors with leadership at top tech companies, tier one tech companies. And a little over a month ago, we were acquired by Essential Essential is a publicly traded global company that operates a number of agencies and data and analytics products such as edge as well as flywheel digital, and we are remaining an independent brand post acquisition within the Essential family. The other thing is that within the lens of this discussion is that a little over a year ago as well. We've leaned very, very heavily into sponsor display ads with Amazon. So whenever Amazon tells us something is a high priority, we usually listen, they don't say everything is a high priority. And whenever we start to see this sales team start to be comped on a certain ads units activation. We know that that's really important for us. To ensure that we'll we're building the best possible products to support our advertisers on those ad units. And so our journey into sponsor display began I think, in December 2019. When we built out our initial sponsor display remarketing product is quickly expanded into sponsored display product targeting, we we as of today actually launched a totally revamped sponsored display product targeting product. And I'll tell you more about it later today. And we're really excited by the future possibilities to sponsor display audiences. But I think more than anything, you know, what our learnings over the past year and a half with sponsored display is that it moves a lot in true Amazon fashion, and sponsored display ads have evolved a great deal. They'll continue to evolve a great deal and our guidance on how our customers should activate sponsor display ads will continue to evolve at the speed of the ad unit itself. So I'll go into a quick statement. And I'll say, you know, almost every single advertiser on this call, should spend money on both sponsor display and DSP. We believe that display advertising is a really strong way to at the bottom of the funnel, capture purchase intent with remarketing campaigns, and at the mid funnel, find ways to conquest competitors whether that be on Amazon traffic or off Amazon traffic at the top of the funnel, both sponsor display and DSP provides some really good opportunities to reach new customers with their in market audiences. So to start, almost every single advertiser should be active on both sponsored display and DSP and for the purposes of this call, it goes far to say is every single advertiser so should so at the moment how we advise our customers and thinking about DSP and sponsor display is at the bottom of funnel we think retargeting and also known as remarketing and Amazon's language, I'm sure because go to DSP will go into it in a little bit but simply put the the levers and controls that one has with retargeting campaigns on sponsored display are not sufficient enough to provide the best possible results. However, we do recommend that every advertiser activate sponsored display product targeting so we'll go into this in a minute as well. These are above the fold above the for display inventory on product detail pages. Little known fact is that DSP, contextual targeting line items go after the same inventory. But we recommend instead of using DSP for these going after still POS will display at the top of the funnel, or a mid funnel cup or competitor conquesting campaigns and prospecting campaigns we recommend DSP these are the type of campaigns where you'll be doing competitor laps purchases competitor product page views, as well as per as well as other means of targeting your competitors. And then at the top of the funnel, this is where the DSP really shines is when you can get custom creatives specifically with video assets. And, and being able to serve the ads as online video ads on traditional programmatic display as as well as video ads on Ott and Twitch. And custom creative continues to be the means with which DSP really differentiates. And generally speaking, we advise our customers the further up the funnel you go, the more you want to invest in your brand, the more you need to tell your brand story with custom creative. So to sum it all up here, DSP often wins because advertisers simply have more control over over targeting capabilities. They have more control over inventory capabilities, and they have more control over creative. And in many instances Asides from sponsor display product targeting DSP is the chosen preference.

So why the sponsor display matter having me said all that, so sponsored display does matter. And we are really excited by sponsor display even for the largest advertisers. So just a quick definition to talk about, like what sponsored display really is so responsive display ads serve display ads both on and off Amazon and any advertiser can launch a sponsor display ad in seconds. And so if you think about that, I'm not sure how many people on this call have purchased display media in their life. But typically, the purchasing of display media is a very manual and laborious process, you typically need to plug into the DSP or a DSP. You need to know the audience capabilities, you need to create custom look, back windows, there's a lot of different variables to play with sponsored display ads gives you access to display at advertising in seconds, any advertiser access to display advertising in seconds. And I think that that's really, really impactful, you know, someone at Amazon told me he was joking and said, you know, the 200 clicks that you'll need to launch a DSP ad might not be the best strategy for every single advertiser. And we tend to agree with that. So at a high level, this democratization of display advertising is really compelling. And display ads, since they they are allow you to re engage shoppers across the funnel are really, really good way to ensure that you're capturing all of the potential purchases for your bread. So another important thing to know is sponsored display ads are efficient. So because they operate on a cost per click model, rather than a CPM model, you know that a customer that is clicking on that ad, and going to your product detail page has a relatively high degree and a high probability that they might purchase your product, you know, the conversion rates on your product detail page, if you can get a customer to come to your product, Detail page, what whether it be any ad via a very efficient pay per click, or a cost per click, then that could ostensibly be an effective ad regardless of the conversion rate. And so DSP ads which operate on CPM model, so obviously, you're paying for the ads, regardless of whether a customer clicks on them or not, just ends up being less efficient. You're, you're you're measuring eyeballs as a metric for success, not clicks. And on account of the fact that you're measuring clicks with sponsored display on your row as tends to be a lot higher, and they tend to be more efficient. A little known fact with DSP advertising is that there is a platform fee that Amazon charges for every single advertiser. And this platform fee is used to pay third party publishers for serving the ads on their inventory. But it is a rather significant fee. Most agencies or software products have a 10% platform fee, Amazon themselves if you're using Amazon Media Group for DSP advertising, Amazon charges a 10% platform fee, because of the volume that we move, we actually have a seven and a half percent platform fee. But in general, you are getting charged a platform fee that is baked into your media costs in the CPM of your DSP ads. So with sponsored display ads, there are no platform fees on account that your ads are immediately seven and a half to 10% more efficient than a DSP ad. And then finally, sponsored display ads are retail aware, so your ads will not serve if you lose the buy box, and they will not serve if you're added to inventory. So you can launch these ads. with smaller budgets. Now you can set really low bids on those cc PCs and go fishing. On account of the lack of a platform fee and the CPC model, they are very efficient, and they tend to be cheaper. So this is all good things. So this is the kind of the building blocks for understanding why sponsor display ads matter. And if you look here, they have by far the cheapest cost per click of any sponsored ad unit on Amazon and have for the almost the past year now. So the actual ability to bid and win traffic on sponsored display is pretty cheap. It's less competitive. And there's a good opportunity if you're doing it well. So again, we're very encouraged by the prospects of sponsor display advertising. So I'm going to get into targeting capabilities. But before I do so, Aaron, do we have any questions? Yeah, one comes through around,

Aaron Conant 14:42

it's going to be on the DSP side, the minimum DSP spend, if you're doing it on your own versus using, you know, an agency or an ad tech, what does that look like?

Adam Epstein 14:55

So, so most agencies charge a minimum fee. Have, we charge $10,000 and I think most agencies fall somewhere around that Amazon charges something like 25 to $35,000. I think they've lowered it recently. But if you can't, it's tough to say like what the minimum spend is for DSP if you're doing it on your own, because it's very difficult to get what's called that quote unquote, seat on the DSP. So Not everyone gets access to the DSP, you usually have to go through an agency or another tool provider like us to give you access, and on account of the manual and laborious nature of the DSP. agency agencies charge that minimum fee because there is a fairly significant manual uplift and getting these campaigns go. Awesome. Love it.

Aaron Conant 15:48

Just a quick reminder as well drop questions for those who joined us dropped questions into the q&a section or chat or email them to me Aaron Aaron@BWGConnect.com

Adam Epstein 15:59

For sure the more questions the better and happy to jump in at any time that to feel dumb. So let's let's talk about the building blocks of sponsored display advertising. And there's two primary targeting capabilities. So one is product targeting. So you can target ASINS or category of ASINS to serve ads that appear above the fold on product detail pages. So by ASINS, like very specific ASINS that whether they be yours or whether they be a competitor of yours. And then categories the same way that you target categories in sponsored product product targeting campaigns, where you can create refinements, like products like this that have X number of stars and y number of reviews at this type of price points are other ways in which you can target customers. For SSD product targeting, we typically don't recommend the categories, we recommend taking specific ASINS of yours and your competitors. It just ends up being a much more nuanced strategy where the category targeting tends to be a lot bigger of a broader brush. We recommend our advertisers do the heavy lifting to find those ASINS that the category campaigns would extensively find on their own if they want to get the best possible results. And then an audience targeting is really exciting. And so one views remarketing is also known as retargeting campaigns not so exciting. Everyone's very familiar, I'm sure with retargeting campaigns. But I think one of the most interesting things is this idea that Amazon has recently unlocked in market audiences for sponsored display advertising. So what are in market audiences? So a lot of people will will say, well, well, how is Amazon's ad business so big? Well, Amazon's ad business is so big because Amazon has this treasure treasure trove of incredible first party shopping data of how customers purchased on Amazon. And the the the manifestation of that data is this thing called in market audiences which are over 1500 audiences that Amazon has created that allow any advertiser historically only on the DSP to serve display and connected TV ads by using these as targeting capabilities. So in market audiences is quote unquote, Amazon's advertising IP, if you will, they had only been available via via the DSP. And over the past couple of months, Amazon has allowed advertisers to use in market audiences on sponsored display. And we believe that that's a very big deal. So let's talk about sponsored display product targeting. And we think it's the most strategic sponsored display ad placements that every single advertiser should be using the same way that sponsored products sponsored brand and sponsored brand video ads are building blocks for a successful Amazon sponsored ad campaign. Sponsored display product targeting is table stakes for doing the same. And so why is this important? So these ads again, they appear on product detail pages. So we like to we think the product detail page is almost the new battleground for Amazon advertising. So on. Typically, you know, everyone thought that Amazon ads are searched. But you know what, what we discovered is that for all of our sponsored product ads 42% of all clicks occur on product pages, not search and 30%. attributed sales comes from product pages and not search and where are these ads showing? Well, if you go to any amazon prime Page, it's a banner ad that appears sorry, not a banner ad, it is a carousel that appears below the fold as you scroll down on product detail pages. And so I want to highlight that distinction because you really have to go to bar to find these ads. It's not high quality inventory. And and yet still, there's a significant demand of clicks. And there's a significant amount of attributed sales coming from these ad units. So we think that this alone is sufficient enough of a data point for you to know that it's really, really important for you to have a sophisticated advertising strategy for both your and your competitors, product detail pages.

Aaron Conant 20:49

I mean, that gets into a little bit on the conquesting side as well, right? Because that's one of the big things that they call out for DSP. Right is hey, you know, DSP, you want to get off from the, you know, massive collection of ads that's thrown, you want to separate yourself off off Amazon, you know, maybe it's owned and operated around the comScore, you know, top 300, whatever it is. But this is a key part then of of conquesting as well.

Adam Epstein 21:21

Yeah, sure. So we think of competitor conquesting. And like three big buckets. So one would be on search. So bid on your competitors terms. Two would be product detail pages. So bid on your competitors ASINS. And then the third, I think the thing that you alluded to Aaron there is competitor conquest and for audiences. So how can you serve ads off Amazon with the DSP for people that have purchased your competitors products, so you can capture that audience, people that may have viewed your competitors product pages, but not purchased, and one that we really like is this idea of competitor conquesting lapse purchases. So if you're in that consumable category as an example, creating an audience and the targeting capability of people that have purchased your if you're in the mustard category, and I'm using mustard once every two months. People that have purchased your competitors mustard but have not repurchased in two months, you can start serving them ads with a DSP. So those are the three big buckets. Search, everyone knows about conquesting via search, bidding on competitors product pages is very expensive. It's you're gonna have a super high eight guys, if you're conquesting on search, the product detail pages because this is a relatively new ad unit, specifically sponsored display product targeting. It's a, it's a really, really good strategy to employ that can lead to hopefully a lot of new to brand customers.

Aaron Conant 23:00

Awesome. Another question comes in and maybe we're gonna get to this is questions around the paid media split. So I'll kind of hoggy chop up the budget on Amazon.

Adam Epstein 23:14

Yeah, that's that's a really good question. The good news responsive display ads is that it's, it's usually a very small budget, it's tough to spend a lot. Typically we see our advertisers spending anywhere between five to 10% of all of their Amazon spend on sponsored ads, I would probably put that on the low end at the moment, though, about mid single digits. Awesome. Cool. So let's let's move along to the importance of this. So we have this lovely graphic that shows the three placements where these sponsor display product targeting ads show, so they show right below the buy box, they show right below the bullet points. And then there's what's called a stripe at the top of the product detail page. That also shows a sponsored display product targeting placement. a fun thing to note is that unless you add copy and creative by creative adding your brand image and a little bit of copy you you will not be able your ads will not show on the stripe at the top. But the important thing here is that there's three types of ads that go after the same inventory. So sponsored ads like product targeting ads, there's DSP contextual line item, and some instances they're sponsored display sponsored product product targeting ads. But But all of the data that we've seen is that this is the most assured way to win the above the fold placements on product detail pages and for that reason alone because these ads are so Such in such premium real estate, and they're so important for you to win. We strongly once again recommend that every advertiser use a sponsor, despite product targeting. And so, if we see an example here at our friend Mike's hot honey, every single advertiser should treat sponsor display products or in the same way they treat top of search. So the same way that you bid on your branded search terms, you got to bid on your branded ASINS and defend your product detail pages. The other thing is that there's a unique opportunity to conquest competitors, as we've mentioned, by bidding on your competitors ASINS. And I think, you know, one thing that I like talking about this, this, this ad unit with is it's kind of like the like, the WTF ad units, I like to say. So if you're added eCommerce, which I'm sure a lot of folks are on the call, or if you're a media manager at an agency, and your CEO, or your client goes to your hero image, and there's three competitor all three ad units above the fold our competitor asons, and not your own branded essence, you're going to get that WTF email, or WTF message from that CEO or that client. So sponsor display, product targeting is a really great way to cover your ass and make sure that you only your brand is on your hero image. And then at the same time, not only on hero images, but it's a really good way to introduce customers to complementary products within your portfolio. And similarly, it's a really, really good great way to make your competitor upset, you know, it is a high degree of visibility when your products are showing on your competitors product pages. And, and I think they've been given the cost per click, it represents a really effective strategy. And, you know, those impressions aren't really calculated that well at the moment, but I think those impressions are really, really valuable. And in the very near future, a bit later this summer, where I think we're going to be the first software tool that a lot opens up share a voice metrics on above the fold inventory on product detail pages. So I'll give you the opportunity to truly measure the effectiveness of apps from your sponsor, it's like product targeting campaigns for both yourself and your competitors.

Aaron Conant 27:33

When you say like, then share a voice is that how often you're actually showing up because I know this, there's a thought, you know, sometimes, oh, I'm just gonna set my bid at $100. It'll make sure I win. But that's not how Amazon is even there's an algorithm for serving the ads. Right? if nobody's ever buying to purchasing your ad or your product, then it's harder to even get shown at all in an ad doesn't matter how high you bid?

Adam Epstein 27:57

Yeah, no, that's, that's definitely, generally speaking, you're not, you're not going to have to bet $100 on your sponsor display product targeting ads, you can be very, very efficient with your bids. But I think it's really important for you to know, you know, on your hero image, if you're, if you're, every single time someone lands on that product page, that it's only your products that are showing up. So on these three ad units that I show you here, are you covering 100% of those with other products within your brand? Or are your competitors covering it, and it's a really, really good way for you to report on the effectiveness of it. So, you know, one way to report on the effectiveness of these campaigns is obviously sales, which would then be row ads. But you know, because of the high visibility inventory of these ads, I think share voice is a really, really important metric that really everyone should be tracking. And no one is right now because the not so dirty secret about share voice metrics is that they're not sanctioned by Amazon, you have to use browser automation. And I think every tool provider, including our own are playing a little catch up in determining the the way to properly report on Share of Voice on these placements. But we'll have that in our product really soon.

Aaron Conant 29:23

So next question that comes in is do you have KPIs around performance, whether it's a cost or Caicos?

Adam Epstein 29:31

Yeah, for sure. You know, the main metric that is will ultimately come from sponsor display product targeting is absolutely going to be a cos. Typically, we've seen these be fairly efficient ads. At a certain point, the impressions on these ads matter a great deal and again, I'd get back to I get back to share a voice being really important. But in general with sponsored display advertising, not necessarily with As a product targeting, but in general, new to brand is a really important metric. So specifically when we talk about audiences in a minute, and we talked about moving up the funnel with sponsored display advertising, ensuring that you're bringing new to brand customers in a very efficient way is a really important metric for you to focus on.

Aaron Conant 30:24

Awesome what they do and everybody keep probing questions in the question section the chat or emailing them to me, Aaron Aaron@BWGConnect.com.

Adam Epstein 30:35

Cool, so we'll move along to sponsor display audiences. So my my analysis here is that it's definitely worth experimenting, and it could get relatively exciting pretty quickly. So we spoke about views remarketing. And so this is also retargeting campaigns. So how do these work? So similarly to all sponsored display ads, these are cost per click ads, in which an advertiser creates audiences of customers who have viewed a product page but not purchase. So very similar to any retargeting campaign. But whereas a traditional retargeting campaign on the DSP, you can select specific ASINS so serve ads a customer if they've landed on this asen and create rules around how you serve the ads. The biggest limitation that you'll find with sponsor display views remarketing is that you can't actually choose specific ASINS so that presents problems. So like choosing advertise products, or products that are similar to these advertise products cast a much wider net. And so while retargeting campaigns are effective, do not get me wrong, I believe that almost every advertiser should be using retargeting campaigns for Amazon. If you're using DSP, you should be using the DSP for retargeting, and the main reason being, you can target specific ASINS or you can leverage custom creative and you can create rules around when to serve the ad. So that last point is really is really valuable and that many advertisers will use. retargeting campaigns is almost a gateway drug and a crutch for for display advertising. And that anytime that you do a retargeting campaign your retargeting segment is always going to have a better row as than any other segment that you have. And there's a simple reason for it. If someone lands on your product page, there's a high degree of likelihood that they're eventually going to purchase your product. But there's also a high degree of likelihood that they're going to purchase your product if you serve them that ad or not. And so the last thing that you want to be doing is cannibalizing your organic sales with too aggressive of a retargeting strategy. So one of the fun things that we do with the DSP that you can't do on sponsored display is that you can, you can watch a you can determine that you want to serve the ad after a finite number of days from the customer or the shopper going to your product detail page and not purchasing. So for example, we never create retargeting pools based on customers that purchase that viewed the product page same day or the next day. We always wait for a few days when we view that that customer is extensively quote unquote, lapsed. So we determined that that customer might not consider purchasing the product again and we serve the ad for that customer A few days later, to bring them back to that product and this is obviously very effective. For more expensive higher order value products. A customer of your spec selling a $200 product is not going to purchase it that very first time that they see it. The customer is going to need the opportunity to to be captured with retargeting campaigns. And typically and we still very much recommend that these targeting campaigns retargeting campaigns appear on our use via the DSP so so that's abuse retargeting responsive display audiences. So our guidance here is continuing to leverage the DSP. But if you're not leveraging the DSP, you should absolutely be leveraging a sponsored display of use remarketing because retargeting ads remarketing ads however you want to call it these work, they are effective, you just a might be casting too wide of a net and be cat cannibalizing organic sales to a certain degree. But if you set low bids and set a low target A cos your ads are going to be efficient on the lesson. I don't think that that's something that you really need to be too concerned about as provided you're not spending a ton on them.

So in market audiences are where things start to get excited. So again, I spoke about it earlier on in our chat, and that in market audiences are leveraging Amazon's treasure trove of data. It's Amazon's IP for display advertising. And they're opening up in market lifestyle, which is quite similar, and also twitch audiences so that you they allow advertisers to target customers based on their twitch viewing and engagement behavior. So similar to all sponsored display ads, these work on a CPC model. And they leverage these unique audiences that have normally only been available via the DSP. Similar, again, to all sponsored display ads. The us out of the box da creative, so you're not able to leverage custom creative. And then the other thing is that assuming you set a very low bid, and this can be very, very efficient. So I'll get into that in a minute. And so it these sponsor display audience advertising is an exciting proposition and that it provides access to all of these audiences that were never available before. If you're using the DSP continue to use the DSP. Continue to use custom created and video on the DSP. With the sponsor to which sponsored display ads, we recommend advertisers for these, they almost go fishing set a really low bid, if you get someone you don't need to pay for the views, you only pay for the clicks. So if you're setting someone if you're setting low bids, and someone comes in at a really low a cost, it's well worth it. And this ad can be very effective for driving new to brand customers. It's tough to spend a lot on those though because you're you are essentially go like going fishing and hoping for the best. Whereas with DSP advertising, you're going for reach, you're going for impressions, you're building a brand, you're introducing customers to your brand. And in that that I think is a really key differentiator is that CPM model impressions and brand awareness are the priority which for some advertisers it is, it's going to be really challenging to get that reach and to get that spend on sponsored display audiences. The other thing is it and this really gets back to the the nuances of the targeting capabilities of the DSP, you're unable to layer audiences together. So demographic audiences, it's nice to layer them together to create a more refined pool. As well, you we have the ability to negate people that have purchased your product. So really focus on your your brand customer. So if you're casting that wider net with sponsored display ads, you're not able to negate people that have purchased your products you're going after anyone that falls in that type of audience. There might be new your brand, there might be people that are similar to your brand, or purchase your brand in the past little bit. Whereas with us, anytime we run DSP ads, we always negate past purchasers within the past 365 days to ensure that we're focusing entirely on new to brand. And then the other impactful thing is that we can create a customer journey with DSP. So you can see the the top of funnel in market audience ad, and then we can serve a customer a retargeting ad as well, even if they haven't landed on the product page. But just from a retargeting ad by way of the fact that they've seen the the in market ad with a DSP. So those are some specifics about why the DSP is really impactful and executing this strategy. And I don't mean to trash on sponsored display, but it is still really early days. And if you set really low bids on your sponsor display ads, they can be incredibly effective. And they're really easy to launch. So there's almost no harm in giving it a shot. Because there's that there's almost nothing to lose, you set a really low bid, you're not having to have any minimums. And generally speaking, these audiences are going to lead to do to brand customers, where things get really exciting with sponsored display. And I'll get into this in a moment is how it evolves. So one sponsored display might allow customers to create custom creative, that can be really compelling. Maybe once you can negate past purchasers that might be really compelling as well. So we're really excited to see the evolution of this because ultimately, the more and more sponsor display ads gets feature parity with the DSP and this is a trend that we're seeing and we'll get into that in a minute. The more our guidance begins to shift and that you should use sponsored display more and more. I'll pause there for a second.

Aaron Conant 39:55

Yeah, yeah, cuz you got a question that jumps in if you're doing extremely well with asin on Amazon, where you're dominating search with numerous page one rankings, would you recommend doubling down and doing DSP on these types of products? Are you better off running DSP on items that aren't doing as well but are still very viable items?

Adam Epstein 40:15

I wouldn't think of DSP being a individualize strategy on on, like specific items. I really think the DSP is a commitment to build your brand on advertise on Amazon, via display advertising across all of your products. Obviously, some products are going to perform better than others. That's the case with any ad units. But with a DSP, I think there needs to be a just an overall commitment that I want to increase impressions, I want to reach audiences. And I am I am using all of the tactics available to me in the DSP, because it is a fairly heavy lift to get going on it. So so that that would be my recommendation there.

Okay, cool. So our guidance and what we think might happen. So we saw that, that that funnel chart at the beginning, but but one of the things that we're realizing really, really quickly, is that sponsored display is gaining feature parity with the DSP. So if I get back to why sponsored display ads are impactful, it's Jeff primarily speaking CPC, there's no platform fee, it's, it's a retail aware, those are all really strong benefits for why you should use sponsored display ads. And the generally speaking, the reason why you shouldn't is Oh, it doesn't have this, it doesn't have this capability, DSP I can do so much more. And that's starting to change and it's starting to change fast and given this is Amazon's top priority. Sponsor display advertising might slowly become the preferred method for specific tactics. So if you like if you look at metrics and report and new to brand purchases, were never shown on sponsor display. Now they're available. Cost Per Detail page in detail page view rate of sponsor display ads not available at the moment, from what we understand it's coming soon. retargeting controls single Ace retargeting, I'm sorry, that's, that's, that's actually not available at the moment. And but and product view restrictions are starting to come soon as well. So retargeting controls are going to start to evolve placements in inventory. So before sponsored display ads, were only on Amazon so that limited the reach with which you could get those advertisers. Now it's off Amazon and sponsored display inventory is starting to appear soon on Twitch, as well as fire TV. And then competitor conquesting strategies like lapse purchases and people that have viewed your competitors product detail page as well as not purchase. We think that's coming soon to sponsor display as well. So all of this is coming soon. And if that begins to happen, if that begins to materialize, our guidance will actually fundamentally change in which almost everything will be preferred for sponsored display. So we'd say preferred for retargeting remarketing, preferred for sure for St. Pat, and preferred PR for competitive conquesting campaigns and still experiment for top of funnel campaigns with SD audiences. So while this all doesn't exist today, there is a possibility that it will exist in the near future. We're making simultaneous bets on both the sponsor display and DSP. DSP, we think will ultimately be an incredible place for advertisers to leverage custom, creative and specifically video to serve ads on Amazon's top of funnel placements like Ott and Twitch and prime and IMDb TV. And the DSP is a really great way to leverage Amazon's full ad suite like seismic and AMC. But for many advertisers, you know, that might be a little too much for them. And for many advertisers, you know, a 10 to $20,000 budget on display advertising with a specific role as focus might be their biggest priority. And if that is the case, then we do record we do believe that sponsor display will have this evolution in the next year or so, where it will quickly become the preferred means of running display ads on Amazon for bottom and mid funnel placements. So we think that's a very big deal. We think we're in probably ending to the sponsor display journey. We know that it's a massive, massive bet for Amazon. And we're really excited to continue to support our customers. And that's. So come say, Hi, we're Perpetua. We have a goal based sponsor display product where you can set your target a cost and target daily budget, we have a white glove DSP managed service, that's a preferred Amazon selling partner. It provides you with detailed asen level reporting that you can get in our app all the time, you don't need to wait on any of your agencies to provide weekly or bi weekly reports, you see it in the app at all times. And then one of our key things is we provide unified reporting, cross sponsored ads DSP, as well as organic and retail sales, to get the holistic view of the impacts of advertising on your business. So that's us. Thank you very much for your time. And if there are any more questions, Aaron, I'd love to take them.

Aaron Conant 45:57

Yeah, I mean, just a couple that come Top of Mind and just others you can drop it in. And then we probably got about five minutes here before we wrap it up and let everybody go on with their day. You know, what's, you know, in your mind, what's next? Right? Are there other things coming down the pipe? I mean, you were talking, you know, you highlight a couple things over the course of the past see, like 15 minutes or so are there any things that are like, Hey, everybody, like this is what we're super, super excited about.

Adam Epstein 46:26

For sure, more controls on views, remarketing will be will will really changed the game. You know, I think all of all of our DSP spend roughly 30% of our DSP spend is on retargeting campaigns. And if more controls open up for, for views remarketing with sponsored display, such that there's feature parity with DSP, that will be a tidal wave of a shift from DSP to sponsor display. The other big one that we're really, really excited by is custom creative. So generally speaking, whenever we do a top of funnel campaign on PSP, we recommend using custom creative and not leveraging Amazon's out of the box dynamic, eCommerce creative, because you really want to make that investment in telling your brand story. So sponsored display ads are great, and that you can launch them really quickly. But you use dynamic eCommerce creative. And generally speaking, we've found worse performance, the further up the funnel, you go with dynamic eCommerce creative. So the ability to have custom creative response or display would be really, really compelling. Oh, yeah,

Aaron Conant 47:41

no, I agree. I mean, the customer? Yeah. I think everybody's waiting for that. The only issue with that would be, you know, pressures on content that I'm already hearing about right now. Right, is there's this huge demand for it. Do you see any another question that comes in? Do you see any shift away from Amazon advertising to the other ad tech platforms? You know, instacart, Walmart, you know, target? Have you seen any shift of budgets that way? I think people are trying to budget, they're trying to budget their dollars, and we'd love to hear what you're seeing.

Adam Epstein 48:13

Yeah, I totally get it. Definitely not a shift away from Amazon ads. You know, if the past year is any indication, there's just so many sales and so many customers coming to Amazon, that even despite the proliferation of new retail media platforms, across Walmart, Target and instacart, you know, what we see is that those budgets are coming from shopper marketing budgets, and are typically not touching your Amazon budget. Amazon is just such a unique beast, with with with so many ways to advertise. And there's very much a FOMO effect with Amazon. And that, you know, if you're not doing it, your competitors are and they're going to win. And Amazon is is very much a Darwinian place in which the strongest survive every single week. And if you're not pushing the needle on what's possible with Amazon advertising, then there's a, there's a big missed opportunity there.

Aaron Conant 49:15

Awesome. So, you know, we kind of wrap up here in the next minute and a half or so you know, if anybody has any more questions, drop them into the q&a there or email them to me, and we have just a few minutes left to get here. I do want to say a quick thank you to everybody who dialed in today, everybody who's sending questions, you know, once again, we'd love to have a follow up conversation with you, if you're if you're up for it. We don't sell anything here at BWG Connect. But we do get the topics or calls to those one on one conversations that we're having. Also, we'd love to you know, if you're living in tier one city, we're going to kick off some in person events coming up and love to get you on the list for that as well. So, if anybody's open for conversation, that'd be great. I mean, obviously, more than happy to connect you with Adam and the team over Perpetua other great friends partners. Support for the network across the board. But you know, Adam, like key takeaways for people today things they should be thinking about or, you know, we'd love to hear, you know, some

Adam Epstein 50:09

some key thoughts there. If I have to key take three t, I'll do three key takeaways there. One, if you're not advertising responses, play product targeting do so immediately. It is very, is a very important ad unit. And you should, and you should be very thoughtful and how you spend there to experiment with sponsored display audiences. Create a couple, even if you're running DSP, just create a couple campaigns at really low bid prices really low target A cos if you're using our product, just see what happens. Generally speaking, we've seen good results for people that use that as a prospecting and experimentation tool. doesn't need to be big budgets. But but they can be effective. And then And then the third is just watch out for updates. Sponsor display is probably the ad unit where Amazon is investing the most right now. And it will it will show the largest amount of evolution in the next year. And whenever there's something new on Amazon. Rest assured the moment that you jump on it. There are unfair advantages for early Movers. So you want to seize those moments if you have the opportunity to do so.

Aaron Conant 51:32

Awesome. Love it. Well, thanks again, Adam, for your time today. Thanks for being you know, friends, partners support for the network as a whole. Once again, encourage anybody. You want to learn more you want to have more in depth talk more than having connected with Adam and the team over at Perpetua with that, I think we're going to wrap up here, right on time, give everybody a chance to get on to the next meeting without being late. With that. We're going to wrap up look for a follow up email from us. We'll be in touch. We're going to try and post a recap of this on the events page as a whole. So check that out. And again, Adam, thanks for your time. Let us put you on the hot seat nation. And Hey, everybody, have a great Wednesday. I look forward to having you on a future call. Thanks again, everybody. Already we'll be in touch.