Amazon Briefing: What Google’s cookie reversal means for Amazon’s ad pitch 

In a blog post, Anthony Chavez, Google’s vp of Privacy Sandbox, wrote that the company “would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time.”

Despite the sudden announcement, Amazon still stands to grab a bigger slice of Google’s digital advertising pie, according to industry analysts and agencies. That’s due to a few things. For one, Amazon’s value proposition to marketers — more precise and targeted advertisements — is tough to ignore, even if cookies are here to stay. 

Plus, brands have been scrambling to test out cookieless targeting alternatives, something they say they will continue to focus on even though cookies aren’t going away. That’s compounded by the fact that Google’s new plan lets users choose whether or not third-party cookies are used across their internet browsing, a shift that may lead to an effectively cookieless future. 

“Amazon stands to pick up the pieces from all this very successfully,” said Mo Allibhai, senior ad tech analyst at Forrester. “Marketers who considered Google to be the default because they were the standard bearer for advertising, that thinking is shifting right now where Amazon is going to be that coming into 2025.”

Indeed, Amazon Ads introduced a new product called Ad Relevance during the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity last month. In short, the offering relies on machine learning to help advertisers target online audiences without the need for third-party cookies or other alternative ID solutions that have entered the market in recent years to replace cookies. 

Certainly, Amazon’s ads business, which launched in 2012, eight years before Google ever mentioned deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome, is not dependent on cookieless advertising. Amazon raked in nearly $12 billion in ad revenue alone during the first quarter, a 24% jump year over year. Amazon has recently added commercials to Prime Video, which the company expects will drive further growth. The company has also been making a concerted effort to bolster its demand-side platform, which lets advertisers send targeted ads to people on Amazon’s owned properties and other publishers’ websites.

While eMarketer predicts that Amazon’s ad revenue will surpass more than $58 billion this year, behind only Meta and Google, the company’s ad business still has plenty of room to grow. By comparison, Meta is poised to make $98 billion and Google about $189 billion. But eMarketer forecast data also shows that Amazon is on track to receive more incremental dollars in advertising spend between 2024 and 2026 than Meta and Alphabet combined. 

“Given Amazon’s established track record among advertisers and continued innovation in arenas like CTV and shoppable video, I expect that trajectory to hold steady even in light of Google’s announcement,” said eMarketer analyst Sarah Marzano. Amazon also commands more than three quarters of retail media ad spend, she added. 

To Andrew Lipsman, independent media analyst at Media, Ads + Commerce, Amazon’s advertising dominance boils down to one crucial fact: better data. 

“Cookie deprecation has often been overstated as a driver of the growth of retail media, but, at best, I see it as a mild accelerant,” said Lipsman. “Amazon is winning in this space because they have very valuable audience segments based on actual intent-driven searches on Amazon.”

Despite Google’s about-face, advertisers see no reason to change course. For Robert Avellino, Tinuiti’s senior innovation and growth director, it’s business as usual. “We are still actively working with Amazon on identity resolution options and not taking this announcement by Google as anything that allows us to take our foot off the gas of identity resolution best practices with Amazon,” Avellino said in an email to Modern Retail.

The online shopping company has ramped up efforts to beef up its DSP and make it more competitive against the likes of Google and The Trade Desk. That includes letting companies advertise on its marketplace even if they aren’t sellers on Amazon. But it’s quite expensive for such advertisers to buy in. The minimum spend is typically around $50,000, Amazon previously told Modern Retail.

Katya Constantine, founder of agency Digishopgirl Media, said that while most of her company’s clients have adopted cookieless targeting alternatives, they generally have not meaningfully looked to Amazon as such an option, in part because it’s too expensive.

While it remains to be seen how exactly Google’s plan will be implemented, the perseverance of third-party cookies is more likely to harm smaller, more emerging players that relied on the deprecation of cookies as part of their value proposition to advertisers, according to Marketer’s Marzano. She said she’ll be keeping an eye on the recent wave of companies, such as financial services and travel companies, that have launched retail media networks in recent months. 

If Google lets users opt out of cookie tracking, the end result may just be a slow decline for third-party cookies rather than an abrupt end. Ultimately, Amazon stands to win out either way, said Marzano. For brands, this means “there is still a need to plan advertising strategies that don’t rely on third-party cookies for success.”

Constantine said brands are “very happy about the change.” Even though most clients in the agency’s portfolio have adopted cookieless targeting alternatives, she said, “I don’t think the system was ready to be in a cookieless environment.” 

Amazon news to know

• Amazon will be getting the rights to NBA and WNBA games alongside Disney and Comcast for the 2025-26 season.
• Alexa has become a ubiquitous product in millions of people’s homes, but the Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon’s devices are losing the company billions of dollars.
• Physical stores that accept Amazon returns are drowning in packages and not seeing much of an upside.

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