Tiger Pistol has beefed up its platform. The company recently told Localogy that it’s among a few select partners to take part in the Amazon Sponsored Display product, currently in beta. The program contains a few diverse partners including platforms like Tiger Pistol, and SMB sales channels like Hibu.
Backing up, what is Amazon’s Sponsored Display? Broadly sitting in the retail media bucket, these are ads seen on Amazon, Twitch, IMDb, and thousands of other websites and apps that help advertisers reach customers in relevant contexts across their shopping and entertainment journeys. This makes them a particularly opportune and emerging ad format for several reasons we’ll get into in a bit.
The timing is also opportune because, as we examined recently, Amazon recently unlocked Sponsored Display for businesses that do not sell in the Amazon store. This is notable because it opens the floodgates to service-based businesses.
Back to Tiger Pistol, its platform is used by multi-location brands (or agencies who work with those brands) to help them optimize presence and promotion across channels, especially social. The addition of Amazon’s Sponsored Display in Tiger Pistol’s platform now arms those agencies with more robust capability.
“Participating in Amazon’s Sponsored Display program allows us to provide our clients with a powerful new tool to help reach their audience,” Tiger Pistol VP of Business Development, Sarah Cucchiara told Localogy Insider. “This integration ensures that our clients can tap into high-intent shoppers with locally and contextually relevant ads.”
Context, Intent & Scale
So why is Amazon’s Sponsored Display so effective and opportune? As noted, they hold strong contextual ad opportunities, placed in a high-intent environment. Shoppers who navigate to Amazon to find things (and conduct explicit searches to do so) are in shopping mode, which naturally boosts ad performance.
As for the contextually-relevant part, that gets us back to service-based businesses. Opening Amazon’s Sponsored Display up to businesses that do not sell in the Amazon store essentially means that local businesses are invited to the party for the first time. And there are several fitting places for them to live on Amazon.
For example, consider home services businesses like electricians and pool cleaners. They’re complimentary to several product categories – and thus product searches – happening at scale on Amazon (think: pool supplies or home repair tools). Again it’s about the fusion of context and intent.
Another key variable, noted above, is scale. Amazon offers something very rare in the sheer volume of high-intent shopping happening throughout its pages. And it’s all first-party data – making it privacy compliant – given that it’s all self-contained within the trusted confines of Amazon’s domain.
“We’re excited to participate in the development of this program and help influence its future,” said Cucchiara. “Our insights into local business needs and multi-location brand dynamics position us well to contribute meaningfully to Amazon’s growth in the local brick-and-mortar advertising space.”
Demand & Dynamics
For all of the above reasons, Amazon knows the advantages and headwinds it has as an advertising player. This is one reason that Localogy continues to see it as a sleeping giant in the advertising world. Perhaps ‘sleeping’ is an unfair descriptor, as it’s actively making big moves. So we’ll stick with giant.
This has been playing out for several years as Amazon’s ad revenue – and market share – continue to ratchet up and challenge incumbents like Google and Meta. This is a familiar story in terms of Amazon’s conquest of the ‘duopoly’s’ dominant position… but it continues to show fresh evidence.
This is all to say that Amazon is invested in all the above efforts and therefore gives us confidence that it means business. Companies in its early reseller program for Sponsored Display – back to Tiger Pistol – likewise feel confident that they’re in good hands and that Amazon is all-in on the effort.
In fact, Cucchiara tells Localogy Insider that Amazon is eager to learn from program partners – one reason it selected a cross-disciplinary mix. Tiger Pistol has in turn influenced key components, given its perspective on local business demand signals and dynamics – especially that of multi-location brands.
With all of these pieces in place, we can expect Amazon’s Sponsored Display – just like Amazon’s broader growth in digital advertising – to be a meaningful force. The possibilities are also amplified by the variety of ad formats under Amazon’s umbrella – everything from Prime Video to Twitch. We’ll be watching it closely.
