In this edition of the Glossy+ Research Briefing, we look at sponsored display ads on Amazon during its annual Prime Day sale, as well as findings from our newest installment of Glossy’s CMO Strategies series on display advertising.
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Over three-quarters of surveyed marketers currently use programmatic site display ads, up 13% compared to last year
In the news: On Tuesday night, Amazon’s marketing portal for merchants crashed during the retailer’s biggest sale of the year. When up and running, the ad portal is a self-service system that uses programmatic ad bidding through which advertisers can adjust budgets and bid on key words for effective ad placement. The portal crash was a major disruption for a few merchants that had limited access to the portal for approximately two hours during the first day of the sale, according to a Bloomberg interview with Jed Rawson of consulting firm Pirawna.
Display ads that appear on a high-traffic site, especially during a major shopping event, are extremely valuable placements for advertisers. Amazon’s ad portal is now fixed. In an email statement, an Amazon spokesperson said that only a small portion of advertisers were affected and there was “no impact to ad delivery and advertiser campaigns continue to run as they intended.”
Research highlight: Glossy’s newest installment of our CMO Strategies series takes a look at how marketers are using display ads this year and the challenges they face across different display ad types. Glossy’s 2024 survey results confirmed that programmatic ad buying remains the most popular display ad choice among marketers and that usage has risen since last year. Seventy-seven percent of marketers surveyed currently use programmatic site display ads, which is up 13% compared to last year’s reported use.
Because of its automatic nature, programmatic advertising allows advertisers to quickly respond to fast-moving trends and tailor brand messages for individual audiences in real time. “Programmatic ads are like the Spanx of display advertising — they’re not sexy, but they work,” said one media executive at a major consumer goods conglomerate who preferred to remain anonymous.
But this has been a tough year for programmatic advertising with the deprecation and eventual dissolution of the third-party cookie and inventory quality issues on made-for-advertising sites eating away at ad budgets. Could AI come more into play in the future to better serve targeted ads and monitor site placements?
