The abbreviation AMG stands for “Amazon Media Group”, a special department within the Amazon Group that takes care of the placement and development of advertising campaigns for vendors and major brands. AMG manages all display advertising spaces on and off Amazon and plans and executes campaigns. Depending on the customer’s order, the Amazon Media Group takes over the entire management of all campaigns for a fixed advertising budget (approx. EUR 50,000.00 minimum amount per year).
Unlike the performance-driven Amazon Advertising formerly Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), AMG is not primarily concerned with ROI (return on investment), but rather with achieving a large reach on the partner side and increasing brand awareness by playing display ads on your own shopping website, among other things.
If a vendor decides to allocate the budget to AMG, it cannot expect the same KPIs and certainly not the same targets that it uses for click-based measures. While Amazon Advertising is based on directly controllable click bids and can therefore largely be played out with pinpoint accuracy and cent precision, the Amazon Media Group is only provided with an annual budget, which is then used for the Amazon Advertising platform and is difficult to measure directly.
AMG customized and relevant advertising – advantages and disadvantages
Due to the sheer volume of user data and their purchasing behavior, Amazon has more data power in its hands than almost any other company in e-commerce. The findings from the customer journey are incorporated into the management of the campaigns, which are played out programmatically and largely automatically (programmatic advertising) via AMG.
The advantage of advertising with the Amazon Media Group is clearly the variety of data that is used for the advertising campaigns.Furthermore, a vendor does not have to invest a great deal of effort (including personnel) to advertise specific products, their own brand store or external websites. All that is required here is the provision of an annual budget.
The disadvantage is also based on the advantage – little to no control over how Amazon invests the budget provided and how exactly brand awareness is increased. AMG is probably not the right choice for purely sales-driven retailers, especially since a one-time advertising budget cannot be easily changed or shifted to other advertising media (such as Amazon Advertising).In addition, the CPM (cost per million) model is almost impossible to measure and is very difficult to classify as a success or failure.
Conclusion: Amazon Media Group may or may not work
For large brands with a high budget for advertising measures, AMG may well be worth a try if you do not want or need to specifically promote the sale of certain products. With a correspondingly high budget (depending on the planned measures, the product area and the competitive situation), advertising campaigns via the Amazon Media Group can be strategically valuable in the medium to long term. However, it is advisable to precisely define the company’s goals and to weigh up (or distribute in a healthy way) the available budget in AMG and Amazon Advertising.