With an eye toward accelerating its ad revenue growth, Amazon is making strategic moves to establish a dedicated ad product team geared towards publishers. As Insider reported, this endeavor is part of Amazon’s broader effort to bolster its advertising endeavors. The retail behemoth is actively recruiting for its newly formed “PubTech” team, a division within Amazon Ads, as evidenced by the 11 job listings currently open.
The primary focus of this team is to construct a cutting-edge supply-side platform (SSP), as indicated by information on Amazon’s official job portal. A supply-side platform functions as software that empowers publishers to execute programmatic ad sales.
One of the listings, targeting a principal product manager position at Twitch, emphasizes the pivotal role this individual will play in crafting a vision and strategy for the rollout of Twitch ad products utilizing PubTech. This envisions “the new Amazon Ads Supply Side Platform.” The desired candidate should possess experience in navigating both demand-side and supply-side platforms.
In another job posting for a software engineer, Amazon highlights the pioneering nature of the PubTech initiative. This program is dedicated to innovating supply-side technology, paving the way for novel experiences for publishers in marketing video, audio, and display ads. Furthermore, Amazon is actively recruiting for a role responsible for overseeing deals within the PubTech framework, facilitating marketplace collaborations between advertisers and publishers.
The Amazon Ads team’s product development efforts are squarely aimed at enhancing Amazon-owned properties such as Twitch, FireTV, and Freevee, according to the job listings. While Amazon Publisher Services does aid publishers in ad sales, its primary focus remains on third-party publishers and those working with third-party SSPs.
Ameet Shah, Partner and Global VP of Publisher Operations at Prohaska Consulting lauds these offerings, underscoring their success among publishers. He views Amazon’s current strides as an opportunity to fortify and expand upon the foundation that has already been laid.
In the realm of SSPs, Amazon’s entry could amplify competition against the likes of Google, as well as third-party SSP heavyweights including Magnite, Pubmatic, OpenX, Index Exchange, and Microsoft’s Xandr. Notably, Amazon has clarified that its SSP is designed for in-house properties rather than third-party publishers, retracting an earlier statement made in its job listings. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed that the job postings will be revised accordingly.
While Amazon’s $37 billion ad business is anchored by search ads, this initiative exemplifies the company’s aspiration to cater more comprehensively to publishers. With a demand-side platform already in place, Amazon is actively diversifying its ad tech portfolio and positioning itself as a strong contender in the advertising landscape.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.
