Amazon Retail Ad Service is currently available for retailers based in the US, which will pay fees based on usage levels.

Amazon is capitalising on its years of ad tech expertise by launching a new ad service for retailers.

The ecommerce giant released the Amazon Retail Ad Service in beta to retailers in the US yesterday (9 January), placing it in competition with adtech companies such as Epsilon and Criteo.

The business’ cloud-based ad-tech solution enables retailers to monetise their online web and app traffic by displaying “contextually relevant sponsored products ads” in search results, product pages and other areas of their site. Prices have not been disclosed.

Amazon has previously released its services to third parties – it launched Amazon Web Service (AWS) in 2006, and in 2022, it launched its Buy With Prime feature, which brings together Amazon’s payment and fulfilment services for retailers.

And now, with the Amazon Retail Ad Service, the company claims that users will be able to customise the design, placement and number of ads shown across their sites. It also said that retailers can avail of Amazon’s ad measurement and reporting tools.

Amazon added that the new service operates on systems that are separate from its own retail business, and retailers manage their data via AWS accounts.

As noted by CNBC, Amazon is already enjoying success when it comes to advertising – in fact, its ad revenue in the latest quarter came in at $14.3bn, ranking alongside Alphabet and Meta when it came to digital advertising.

However, this profit is still less than the sales it generates from online stores and cloud computing, which came to $61.4bn and $27.4bn, respectively, in the quarter that ended in October.

Expressing optimism for the release of Amazon Retail Ad Service, Paula Despins, VP of Amazon Ads Measurement, called it a “win for retailers, advertisers and shoppers”.

“We look forward to seeing how it improves outcomes, drives sales and enhances the shopping experience,” Despins added.

In related Amazon news, the company’s AWS division made headlines last month when it announced the launch of an incident response service which uses automated features to help organisations manage security events, including data breaches and ransomware attacks.

AWS said that its Security Incident Response automates the primary assessment and investigation of security findings from Amazon GuardDuty, which is the company’s threat detection service.

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