The Power of More: Harnessing First-Party Data From Amazon, Google and YouTube

It’s no secret that consumers are shopping online and searching for products and services online more than ever. Research shows that residential package delivery increased by 60 percent year-over-year after the start of the pandemic. Overall eCommerce spending rose by 44 percent in 2020, compared to the year before.

While consumers are spending more time shopping from home, they are also increasing their media consumption, with consumers drawn not only to traditional TV experiences, but also over-the-top (OTT) streaming and other digital video.

Some of that media consumption isn’t just for entertainment purposes: Destinations like YouTube become a popular source for accessing DIY videos, watching home fitness workouts, following cooking demos, and even learning how to learn new digital business solutions such as project management software, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams.

For the local business building advertising strategies, all of these trends offer the same kind of value. Through the influx of first-party data created by increased activity on Amazon, Google and YouTube, you can now reach your target audience better than ever.

Here’s a deeper look at how to advertise on Google, Amazon and YouTube to push your ad campaign performance even higher.

Access a Wealth of First-Party Data

From top-of-funnel research to making the purchase, consumers visit Google, Amazon and YouTube all throughout their customer journey. While Google is well-known as a go-to web destination to submit a search query that starts the path to purchase, Amazon and YouTube also function as popular destinations to begin this process.

Nearly 50 percent of all Internet users visit Amazon first when searching for a product online. Amazon also plays a crucial role in product research, even when consumers don’t make a purchase through the website: 36 percent of Internet users check Amazon first for online product reviews.

At the same time, YouTube attracts two billion users every month—and many of those visits play some role in the customer journey. Research shows that 68 percent of YouTube users watch YouTube at some point to aid in making a purchase decision, consulting content that may include product unboxings, reviews, instructional videos, or other relevant content.

These massive online entities are connected to a wide range of related products and services. With this enormous footprint comes irreplaceable first-party data that can help businesses target their audience and deliver advertisements that meet new and existing customers at the perfect moment.

The trick is getting access to this first-party data to shape your ad campaigns. Cox Media is able to support our advertising clients through comprehensive access to data-driven insights that you can’t find anywhere else.

Connect With Your Audience Across the Web

Through access to broad first-party data from websites and activities across the Internet, local businesses can advertise on Google, Amazon and other platforms through targeted campaigns that understand where to find your audience.

These ad campaigns can make use of many different digital channels, placing display, video, OTT ads and other ad types across properties owned and operated by Amazon and Google.

By leveraging online shopping behavior, search history, video view history and other online behaviors, your business can learn more about what your target audience is looking for, how they search for solutions to their problems, and what kinds of pain points they’re looking to address.

With these insights at your disposal, branded messaging can target segments of your audience to speak directly to these needs, meeting consumers at different points in their customer journey and driving awareness and engagement that increases your sales opportunities.

How to Advertise Your Business on Google, Amazon, and YouTube

If you’re interested in developing a Google and/or Amazon advertising strategy, and you’re eager to utilize the first-party data available to reach your target audience, the most important step is teaming up with a digital advertising partner that can help you navigate the ad opportunities available through these networks.

An advertising partner with experience on Google, Amazon, and YouTube properties can help you build more effective campaigns with ease, and launch them across ad inventories to optimize your spending and maximize your ROI. Given the size and scale of these ad platforms, a little experience can go a long way toward avoiding costly mistakes and delivering results right out of the gate.

Find out how Cox Media can grow your business through digital advertising—contact us today.