by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, June 27, 2017

In a bid to create a scaled and integrated marketing and commerce approach to online shopping giant Amazon, WPP agencies POSSIBLE and Mindshare are joining forces. They are launching a new international offering to help brands leverage investments across the entire Amazon ecosystem, the companies confirmed Tuesday.

The offering will be available through POSSIBLE and Mindshare in Seattle, New York, Cincinnati, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, London and Singapore. It combines media planning and buying, data analysis and strategy expertise of Mindshare with the ecommerce, data analysis and creative expertise of POSSIBLE.

The partners position the offering as one that will optimize clients’ marketing investments across all Amazon platforms. The venture is timely, the firms add. Amazon has become central to the lives of consumers and brands, and there is a need for an integrated solution across media and ecommerce.

Pointing to how far Amazon has come and how dominant it is within the consumer-buying culture, the agencies note that 55% of U.S. consumers now begin an online product search on Amazon, compared to 28% who use a search engine and only 16% who use a retailer’s website.

Also, the firms note, spending via Amazon – including sales from first- and third-party sales, Amazon.com and Prime Now – accounted for 43% of all the revenue generated in the U.S. online market in 2016 and 53% of all online sales growth in the U.S.

In addition, 64% of U.S. households are now Amazon Prime members, making Amazon not just a retail giant, but also one of the world’s largest media owners. eMarketer predicts Amazon will generate $1 billion in advertising this year.

That number will grow to over $20 billion by 2020, making Amazon the third-biggest digital-advertising player behind Google and Facebook.

“If brands aren’t thinking about Amazon as a media platform, they run the risk of becoming obsolete,” stated Joe Migliozzi, Shop+ Lead at Mindshare. “Understanding where and how to spend media dollars on Amazon is important, and integrating that spend into the rest of your media strategy is where brand loyalty and greater demand are achieved. But in the end, if brands aren’t optimized on the platform, it doesn’t matter how much money you spend.”

“The potential for brands and retailers on Amazon is enormous,” added Frank Kochenash, Global SVP of Commerce at POSSIBLE. “But they need a holistic strategy to succeed. That strategy needs to cover everything from retail fundamentals to media buying and planning.”

POSSIBLE brings several formal partnerships with Amazon, proprietary tools for shelf and AMS campaign management and dedicated employees providing expertise in strategy, content, AMS/Amazon Ad Platform (AAP) and analytics to the new service. I

Mindshare will bring its Shop+ media and commerce capability, which is already an established Amazon Media Group (AMG) partner and includes SEO/SEM, content development, analytics and reporting. It also has status as one of a handful of approved Amazon Alexa developers — allowing Mindshare to create Skills for Amazon’s voice-activated AI assistant.

Mindshare will also leverage GroupM’s mPlatform capability for programmatic services and will incubate this first-to-market, full-service solution for GroupM clients globally.

MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily

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