We were invited to ‘The New Advertising Era’ Amazon conference yesterday held for advanced partner agencies. The event ran between 9am and 1pm with a packed agenda, focusing on various topics including innovation, audience tools, insights to impact and Gen AI.
If you didn’t attend or you’re interested to hear more, we’ve taken notes on the key highlights of 2 fireside chats including:
The Starting Blocks: Audience, tools and the importance of a good foundation
The Path Ahead: How GenAI is shaping Ad Tech
A big thanks to all the speakers and Amazon Ad Tech team for organising! We left feeling inspired for the future of ad tech and Amazon’s openness to innovate in the space. If you’re interested to hear more about any of these topics, please reach out.
The Starting Blocks: Audience, tools and the importance of a good foundation
Katie Field – Head of Ad Tech, UK Amazon Ads (host)
Lauren Raymond – Managing Partner, Strategy & Audiences, UM
Prateek Gupta – Managing Director, OMG Transact
JP James – Sr. GTM Lead, Prime Video, EU Amazon Ads

How does the customer journey inform your marketing strategy?
Why are some people saying that TV is dead?! The panel raise some key moments on how the nation were brought together in recent years by big moments. This includes the Prime Minister’s updates during Covid and recently the Post Office Scandal.
Apparently humans evolved by staring into fire together? I suppose the point is that it’s ingrained in us as humans to watch something together, socially. People are not changing the way they watch TV, they’re just changing the way it’s being bought. It’s improved drastically over the last 20 years. However, we do need to come together as industry to ensure we get the most out of it. When buying linear TV you need to commit budget 2 months ahead, whereas with Prime Video you can run it instantly.
The shopper of today of today gets influenced by TikTok, goes to Amazon to search for reviews but will then decide to purchase on John Lewis (because that’s what they prefer). It’s therefore important that we understand how we bring all the signals/touch points into cross device and category environments. It’s complicated.
How has the increase in STV (Streaming TV) supply influenced your marketing mix?
The key message is that on STV you don’t have to be spending millions. Actionable insights are invaluable. When running DSP you’re able to get signals for brands in every possible way.
STV is growing. What has changed is the quality of time spent in each environment. VOD or STV demoted to small screen? This isn’t true and it’s important we educate brands on this insight.
How does the launch of Prime Video elevate a brands tool kit?
The earlier products such as Twitch and Freevee are very different to Prime Video, which needs to be looked at as another supply source. Amazon are focused around ‘Big TV’ moments but can also be measured with Amazon Marketing Cloud.
How are new areas of supply exciting for agencies?
AMC is the anchor to Prime Video Ads reporting, however Amazon are launching 1st and 3rd party measurement. The ‘Voice of customer’ is something they’ll be keeping close toward and how each country/market differs.
More supply can make it more difficult to know which to use? More inventory means more use cases with different sized brands, and maybe brands which don’t even have an agency. It also means we can do more AB testing with AMC and learn what really works.
Historically we’d be using econometrics to measure over longer periods with TV. However, now we have instant data at our fingertips and should utilise that.
Although it’s a new supply source, it also isn’t! TV has been around for decades. However, any brand getting involved with Prime Video now is a first mover in this product. Yes it’s new, but it’s special. People are now talking about Amazon in a different way.
The Path Ahead: How GenAI is shaping Ad Tech
Laura Swire – Sr Manager, Ad Tech, Amazon Ads (host)
Matt Carter – Head of Industry Strategy, Advertising AWS
Tom Flayre – Principal Tech BD, Amazon Creative X
Ahmed Nuaman – Managing Director, Firemind

How is GenAI changing the future?
We hear a mention of NVIDIA’s “most powerful chip” called ‘GB200 Grace Blackwell Superchip’. Amazon are one of the partners set to use the Blackwell system. What does this mean? Essentially “a new era of computing” is upon us when it comes to Gen AI advancements and accessibility. Read more in this article.
Amazon have always been at the front of Machine Learning. For example, ‘pick and pack’ technology, Prime Air, Drones and then of course Alexa. The point is that although Machine Learning is becoming a hot topic for companies, this has always been as the forefront for Amazon.
Creative is often 3 things: expensive, takes a lot of time, and is difficult. Whether you need to build something from scratch through a detail page, or use text prompts, it seems the opportunities ‘will’ be endless. The 2 ad products supporting this currently are Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display.
Amazon needs to be more ‘sexy’ and allow AI to manage the ‘boring stuff’. AI allows customers to move faster with all the data at hand. Humans, we will always measure a correlation to causation in planning MMM’s (Marketing Mix Modelling), but sometimes this just isn’t the case and AI can help us get to the answers quicker.
3 core areas that brands can benefit from now with Gen AI: Asset generation, audience generation and campaign optimization.
How can we be more productive?
Reducing time using excel as a starter. People don’t go around carrying an A-Z book when commuting but instead they’re using apps like ‘citymapper’ or ‘google maps’. It’s important people are reminded on how valuable AI can be to our day to day lives, giving us more time to be creative and free-thinking.
What are the safeguards and ethics of AI?
‘Transparency’ is the most important factor. Companies should be making it public how they’re using the data at all times.
AI bills that have recently been passed in the Senate and the EU, making it now illegal for businesses to use AI maliciously with fines ranging from 35m EUR or 7% of global turnover. More details here.
How can we avoid hallucinations? The term ‘deepfakes’ was briefly discussed as a common concern for misuse of GenAI, but potential new regulations in terms of watermarking of AI content (and new systems to detect AI content) will likely address this.
How much recall are we willing to accept?
GenAI answers are always based on probability and are not always accurate straight away e.g. 5+5 may equal 9 or 10, it just depends on which one has the highest probability. In some cases, such as medical diagnostics or security screening, high recall is critical because missing relevant instances (e.g., signs of disease or security threats) could have serious consequences. In other cases, such as recommendation systems or search engines, missing some relevant instances may be less critical as long as the overall user experience remains satisfactory.
How can advertisers start planning an AI strategy for the future?
Brands or agencies should start with the obstacles first. In a very Amazonian fashion, we should work backwards from here because you’ll be surprised of the opportunity.
Start now instead of the future, and always think big!
What is the most concerning thing for AI advancements 50 years from now?
Education will be the one to watch.
Although in 50 years time, clients and agencies will still be asking the question “I don’t understand my data” because it’ll only get more vast.
Written by @Will Fisher, Amerge CCO & Co-Founder.