April 2025: It’s springtime, so Amazon’s is hard at work releasing and updating the AMS platform. Amazon ad revenue continues to grow at double digit rates and is on a $70 billion dollar run rate for 2025. There continues to be a flood of new changes to try continue their growth and capture more of brand ad revenue.
As usual, some are great for brands, some are bad, and some are downright ugly. Here’s the top 5 changes your brand needs to be aware of is Q2 starts to heat up:
Amazon Business Bid Adjustment: This feature allows sellers to increase their bids for Sponsored Products ads specifically for Amazon Business placements, allowing them to prioritize reaching business customers.
- Verdict: Good – This is perfect for anyone who sells B2B on Amazon and lets you strategically bid more for B2B (and if done correctly) less for B2C buyers who aren’t a fit.
AI Creative Studio (Beta): This newer version allows advertisers to generate and publish images and videos directly within Amazon Ads Console, streamlining the creative development process.
- Verdict: Bad. Sizing, positioning, and proper context of items is still way off. You’d be better off using third party tools to make your AI images.
Expanded Measurement Capabilities in AMC Brands: Can now query up to five years of their Amazon store purchase signals. This increase from the previous 13-month lookback window enhances the ability to assess long-term customer metrics.
- Verdict: Good, especially for more expensive items with a longer life cycle.
Event-Based Bid Rules for Sponsored Products: This feature allows advertisers to set bid increases across their campaigns during high shopper traffic events, automating adjustments that were previously manual.
- Verdict: Bad, while it’s nice that you can bump up budgets for events like Easter, it lacks the true day parting and rules-based automation that’s needed for the dynamic nature of Amazon ads. Yeoman managed accounts are continuously monitored and adjusted based upon dates, events, and time of day. If you’re not using full automation this is an ok tool.
Sponsored Products new default settings for ads served off Amazon: This ‘feature’ was released without much notice or fanfare and will impact all sponsored product ads. The option let’s specify how you want your ads served off Amazon. Maximize reach (which is the default) shifts your sponsored products off Amazon as much as possible. Minimize spending (recommended by Yeoman) keeps the focus on the Amazon platform.
- Verdict: Ugly. The fact that Amazon is setting all users sponsored products to maximize reach by default is an end run around your off-Amazon ad strategy. Make sure you’ve reviewed and reset all campaigns.
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