Spotlight on YouTube & Amazon Advertising: Opportunities for Local Businesses

Compared to larger corporations with a national footprint and familiar brand name, local businesses are left to work with smaller advertising budgets—and smaller target audiences.

Despite smaller-scale advertising strategies, though, local businesses still have access to the same powerful tools and digital inventories that bigger businesses use to achieve their own advertising goals. The expansion of digital advertising inventories, along with powerful first-party data, has made it easier than ever for local businesses to drive ROI through targeted ad campaigns on some of the world’s largest advertising platforms.

Amazon and YouTube may not be the first ad platform your local business turns to when building an advertising strategy, but these platforms offer incredible data-driven tools and insights to power targeted ad delivery that supports revenue generation and other business goals. If you haven’t used these platforms in the past, it’s time to consider how Amazon and YouTube can help you develop the best marketing plan for your business.

The Business Benefits of Advertising on Amazon

Amazon’s sprawling ad platform offers a wide range of channels, including display, video and over-the-top (OTT) streaming ads. Along with this inventory, Amazon supports its advertising clients through rich first-party data gathered through its online retail shopping data, consumer purchasing habits, Amazon prime streaming activity, and other relevant consumer information.

With more than 62 percent of households expected to use Amazon Prime by the year 2025, the company’s proprietary consumer data can be a great investment for local businesses targeting a specific audience. In addition, Amazon’s “walled garden” of digital properties and robust first-party data means its advertising solution is largely unaffected by privacy updates affecting third-party cookie usage, iOS updates, and similar events.

And while the heart of Amazon’s business is its online retail operations, its ad inventories don’t need to be focused around product promotion. Ads only need to be relevant to consumers when those ads are delivered, which means your local gym can advertise a membership promotion alongside Amazon product listings for free weights, fitness supplements and other fitness-related products.

How to Avoid Amazon Ad Spending Minimums

If you’ve tried to set up an ad campaign on Amazon in the past, you might have been turned away due to the hefty minimums the platform charges for direct sales to businesses. These minimums typically start at $50,000 per month, which is far beyond the means of most local businesses—and even many businesses with a large regional footprint.

Digital advertising partners like Cox Media have direct access to the platform, though, and can create campaigns for clients well below this minimum threshold. While you likely can’t afford to create an Amazon account directly, a trusted digital advertising partner can offer back-door access that lets you leverage Amazon’s platform and first-party data at whatever scale suits your company.

The Business Benefits of Advertising on YouTube

As the world’s largest video platform, it’s easy to forget that YouTube is also one of the largest search platforms in the world. Yet that’s how many consumers choose to use this Google-owned property: while it logs more than two billion active users every month, research shows that 57 percent of consumers use either Google or YouTube when starting the research process for a new product or other purchase.

As either a complement or alternative to TV advertising, YouTube offers a scalable digital video option within the suite of Google advertising products. Its popularity is also consistently high across multiple generations of consumers, from Gen X to Gen Z, making it broadly effective for a wide range of local businesses.

Integrating YouTube Into Your DV360 Strategy

Google’s vast ad network offers incredible options for targeting an audience and building cost-effective campaigns on YouTube and other Google ad products. But Google’s Display & Video 360 solution offers an integrated tool that extends the reach of the Google ad network even further, while also providing tools to improve ad bids and cost optimization—improving ROI for businesses of any size.

When YouTube campaigns are built, launched and managed through DV360, these campaigns inevitably generate better performance results and ROI thanks to the improved tools and first-party data available through the platform. Google reports a 1.9x lift in ad recall among consumers—as well as a 1.5x lift in purchase intent—when YouTube campaigns are built and managed through DV360, rather than through Google Ads.

Since access to DV360 is restricted to certified sales partners, your business needs to work with a partner authorized to access and create video ads through this platform. Cox Media has the access needed to help you leverage Google’s powerful first-party data to run more effective YouTube campaigns.

To leverage the full value of advertising on Amazon and YouTube, your business needs an advertising partner that can help you access their most powerful data and platform tools to optimize your campaigns and lift your business to new heights. Cox Media can provide your business with access to these platforms, along with our in-house expertise to build ad campaigns that meet and exceed your expectations.

Ready to get started? Contact us today.