Amazon Is Still the DSP of Choice Among Marketers While Google Loses Ground

Amazon continues to be the demand-side platform (DSP) of choice among advertisers, while the Trade Desk bumped Google to the No. 3 spot in research firm Advertiser Perceptions’ latest Programmatic Intelligence Report. Nearly half—46%—of the advertising professionals interviewed said they have used Amazon Advertising in the past 12 months. That’s down slightly from 48% in Advertising Perceptions’ last report, but still gives Amazon the lead among DSPs. The Trade Desk was the second-most popular DSP overall with 38%, followed by Google with 33%. MediaMath (31%), Adobe Advertising Cloud (25%) and AppNexus (24%) rounded out the top five. Advertiser Perceptions looked at 16 DSPs in the study, which also included AppNexus, Criteo, Dataxu, MediaMath and Quantcast. Continuing a trend Advertiser Perceptions has tracked since October 2016, more advertisers choose Amazon Advertising over any other DSP if they could only pick one. In fact, Amazon’s lead has grown to 29% of respondents, which is up from 16% three years ago. Meanwhile, Google is the DSP of choice for 17% of respondents, which gives Amazon a double-digit lead. Amazon also leads among respondents primarily using DSPs as a managed service, followed by The Trade Desk, MediaMath and Google. Meanwhile, advertisers that want a self-service DSP rank The Trade Desk No. 1, followed by Amazon Advertising, MediaMath and Google. And while Google has been competing with The Trade Desk in self-serve, Advertiser Perceptions said Amazon is now suddenly gaining ground. As of September 2019, most advertisers are using DSPs as a managed service, according to the Advertiser Perceptions survey, with 37% using them both as a managed service and in a self-serve capacity, while 18% use self-serve DSPs only. And while most marketers still work with agencies in the same way they’ve done for typical media buying, Advertiser Perceptions found the model is evolving toward more of an in-house programmatic model with 49% of respondents somewhere in the middle, a hybrid model that combines the traditional agency model with DSPs and ad-tech partners. Kevin Mannion, chief strategy officer at Advertiser Perceptions, credits Amazon with rapidly developing its capabilities in the areas that matter most: delivering the audiences advertisers want, a good user experience in setting up analytics and campaign dynamics, good post-campaign reporting and a support team waiting at the ready when things go wrong. “Amazon has always had audience scale and reach, and advertisers believe they have even improved,” he added. “Is the user interface easy? The answer is suddenly yes. Do they have the ability in post-campaign reporting to show what worked, what didn’t work and make recommendations? They’ve turned on that capability. Where they’ve always been good but not for self-serve is availability for support. Now they have very good FAQs, and their reps are available to advertisers.”