According to Kantar Research, Amazon audio ads that include an Alexa CTA were 1.5 times more likely to generate a statistically significant lift in at least one brand metric such as awareness, consideration or purchase intent compared to Amazon standard audio ad creatives.
One test campaign, produced with health care giant Bayer in 2021, ran for four weeks across Amazon Echo devices in conjunction with British audio network Global.
Created by British tech company Say It Now, the audio ad would promote energy vitamin Berocca Boost through an ad developed by Bayer’s agency teams alongside A Million Ads and Mediacom. It made the product available for purchase to the listener using a simple voice command—“Open Berocca Boost.”
The personal and connected nature of smart speakers enabled the ads to be carefully targeted, while contextual data such as time of day, day of the week and weather further honed relevance and accuracy.
The activity, which was seen as both an advertising tool and a sales channel, reached 1.6 million customers, Bayer revealed, delivering a brand lift of 13.6%. Nearly half of those who engaged requested more information.
Walgreens’ Boots pharmacy chain also tested the technology for a campaign this summer. And while it has yet to receive the results, chief marketing officer Pete Markey said he’ll use the tech again.
It’s annoying that you can be at the forefront of the technology and the market just isn’t there yet.
Simon Dunlop, co-founder, Instreamatic
“Given the additional speech-enabled tech available on a smart speaker, we are keen to test the options to close the gap from ad to purchase with interactive ads,” Markey explained. “It is another example of our focus on commerce-based media—similar to our approach with QR codes, VOD and TikTok commerce ads, all aiming to connect consumers from ad to .com.”
The campaign married a standard radio ad from the brand playing on an Alexa smart speaker with the chance to find out more about its relevant summer products.
“Fifty-three percent of smart-speaker users listen to radio on them weekly, so it is a scaled medium for consuming audio and radio [that] has a strong ROI for us,” Markey said.
Last year, the Ad Council worked with Amazon Ads’ tech on its “What Is Love” campaign, where users would ask that question to Alexa, only to hear a response from community organizer Dianne Hodges, who fronted the campaign to highlight local safe spaces in American cities. This partnership allowed Amazon to showcase the potential of interactive voice ads to the advertising community.
