No issue tomorrow because of American thanksgiving.
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Marketers are stuffing their media plans with Amazon's new shoppable ads this Thanksgiving—should your brand be serving the new ad format?
As the holiday weekend kicks off, five media buyers shared with Digiday that they're experimenting with Amazon’s new shoppable ad formats to gauge whether viewers will engage with these interactive ads to make purchases and how they might impact brand performance.
To keep the risk low, most are setting aside small experimental budgets, less than 10% of their monthly media spend.
What’s Cooking with Amazon’s Shoppable Ads?
Amazon introduced three “interactive” formats earlier this year:
Add-to-Cart Video Ads: Viewers can instantly add featured products to their cart with a remote click.
Interactive Pause Ads: Ads that appear when viewers pause their shows, driving brand engagement during breaks.
Shoppable Carousel Ads: These let customers browse and buy multiple products during ad breaks on Prime Video.
With 130 million subscribers to its ad-supported tier (around 80% of its total user base according to eMarketer, Amazon is sitting on a huge audience primed for testing these new formats. And consumers are gearing up for holiday deals with a massive viewership expected for Prime’s Black Friday NFL coverage of the Chiefs vs. Raiders.
Note: individuals of any age who watch video via app or website through an ad-supported subscription at least once per month. Source: EMARKETER Forecast, February 2024
Brands Testing the Waters
So far, most marketers are playing it safe.
Brett Fischer, performance media supervisor at media agency Collective Measures, shared that toy brands VTech and LeapFrog are adding Amazon's shoppable ads to their Thanksgiving campaigns. While he didn’t share details of the agreements, he said, “We don’t want to bet the house on these shoppable units. It’ll certainly be more of a testing approach at first.”
For brands like Fisher-Price, the focus is on “test-and-learn” strategies. The company’s senior vice president said the Mattel brand had already “dabbled” with the formats, acknowledging that they are still in the early stages. He added that Amazon remains “critically important” to its holiday strategy, but did not share performance results from those initial tests.
Neither of the executives said what percentage of monthly media budgets would be put aside for shoppable formats.
Some agencies, however, are betting bigger.
At Juice Media, which works with direct-to-consumer brands like Dollar Shave Club and Goldbelly, shoppable formats could account for up to 20% of their spend, though the agency declined to share specific figures or disclose which clients are participating.
Live Sports + Shoppable Ads = A Winning Combo?
Thanksgiving weekend marks Amazon’s second year of streaming NFL games on Prime, with high advertiser demand for the Black Friday matchup.
Google Pixel, Microsoft, and Uber Eats are among the brands that snagged spots in the sold-out ad inventory, while 40% of the advertisers are newcomers to Amazon’s football coverage, according to a company spokesperson.
The spokesperson declined to confirm the percentage of ads featuring shoppable formats.
🎯 What This Means for You
Thanksgiving weekend is a critical test for Amazon’s shoppable ads. While marketers are cautious with their investments, the combination of holiday shopping, live sports, and interactive formats could pave the way for a new era of advertising.
How these ads perform could determine how shoppable ads fit into your media strategies moving forward.
Today’s Other News
Advertising
Google Ads’ New Conversation-Started Metric
Google Ads has launched a new “Conversation Started” metric for message assets like WhatsApp, measuring how often users start a conversation after clicking a message-based ad. The update is now live. more
Meta Bug Disrupts Financial Services Ads
Meta appears to have fixed a nasty bug that stopped new financial services advertisers in the UK from running campaigns, disrupting campaigns for days. The bug lasted from late July to this week. While Meta confirmed the issue is resolved, some advertisers still report issues. more
🎯 It’s always a good idea to have contingency plans in place for critical campaigns to address unexpected platform issues — can you shift to another platform quickly?
X Gives Shopify Merchants Free Ads
X, in partnership with Shopify, is offering a holiday promotion, from now through December 1st, where it will match Shopify merchants' ad spend dollar-for-dollar up to $500. To qualify, merchants must commit to a minimum ad spend and link their Shopify account to X. The ad credits will then be valid for only 30 days. more
🎯 While ad credits are always welcome to expand reach, on X you’ve got to consider whether the brand safety risks on the platform are worth it.
It’s Not Too Late to Drive Black Friday Sales
Black Friday marks the most streamed period of the year on Roku, and Roku Ads Manager makes it easy to reach your audience during this all-important kickoff to the holiday season. Roku’s self-serve platform lets you set up, optimize, and measure CTV campaigns in real-time so you can focus on driving results. Plus, innovative ad formats like Action Ads let viewers instantly engage with your brand and even shop directly on-screen with a click of their remote – perfect for holiday shopping.
Social Media
TikTok Beauty Ads at Risk?
TikTok is blocking teens from using beauty filters to address mental health concerns. New changes will restrict under-18s from using certain appearance-altering effects and expand filter descriptions to clarify what they alter. Filters with effects like skin smoothing or altering facial features will require age verification. No word yet on how this will affect TikTok ads. more
Instagram’s New Collage Feature for Stories
Instagram is testing a new Collage option for Stories, which lets brands and users select multiple images from their camera roll to create a collage image to post to their Story. more
🎯 It’s almost always a good idea to jump on new creative tools, as platforms tend to give organic reach of posts that use the shiny new things a boost. This is especially the case on Meta’s platforms.
YouTube’s Tips To Boost Your CTV Ad Game
YouTube has shared some new tips to help brands align their ads with the growing connected TV (CTV) audience. Key tips include:
tracking TV viewing behaviours through YouTube Analytics
uploading in 4K for better playback quality
using high-resolution thumbnails
creating episodic content to boost return viewership
optimizing channel visuals for big-screen impact
🎯 Many CTV platforms now offer simple self-service ad managers, meaning the days of requiring a purchase order and six-figure minimum buy are leaving us.
Yes, More than Half of LinkedIn is AI Spam Now
“Over 54 percent of longer English-language posts on LinkedIn are likely AI-generated, according to a new analysis… The uptick happened when ChatGPT came out.” LinkedIn claims it has “robust defenses” to identify low-quality and duplicate content. But they don’t remove it. They just “ensure it is not broadly promoted.” more
🎯 Don’t use AI to write your brand posts on LinkedIn. Just…. don’t.
Tech and Policy
Claude AI Can Try to Get Your Brand Voice Right
Anthropic’s Claude AI now offers “custom style” presets, letting brands tailor its tone to fit their brand voice better. You’ve got to upload some samples of your brand’s copywriting first for it to train on. All the other AI platforms have this now to some extent. more
🎯 While AI copywriting tools are good for brainstorming text combinations or clever puns, most experts say the tech isn’t ready yet to completely write your next ad.
Walmart Drops DEI as Trump Re-Enters Office
An apparent reaction to the political climate in the U.S., Walmart is retreating from many of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) marketing efforts, including cutting partnerships and rebranding. The change comes as corporate values increasingly influence advertising decisions, and despite DEI ranking as a top priority for marketers. more
SEO
Video Overlays Could Curb YouTube Engagement
Google's video overlay feature in search results, which plays YouTube videos directly within the SERPs, may reduce user engagement. While views and ads are counted, features like subscribing, liking, or commenting are missing. This could lead to fewer clicks through to YouTube and reduced channel interactions. You should be able to find these numbers in the “External” traffic source in Analytics. more
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