Simplicity and scale—how the HAQM DSP is redefining advertiser value and success

Over the last three decades, HAQM has relentlessly focused on trying to make life easier for its customers. Hundreds of millions of shoppers regularly visit HAQM’s stores to benefit from low prices on a vast selection of products with fast delivery in just a few clicks. We work hard every day to make that experience even better.

That same simplicity mindset exists across HAQM and none more so than in HAQM Ads. Our goal is to offer advertisers the easiest-to-use and most effective products and tools to achieve their business goals in the most efficient manner possible.

Over the past few years, we have invested heavily to overhaul the HAQM DSP, driven by feedback and insights from advertiser customers on how we could deliver the best demand-side platform for them. At HAQM, we always work back from the customer. The key challenge we found ourselves trying to answer was: In today’s fragmented digital advertising landscape, how can we make it easy for brands to connect the right product or service with the right audience at the right time through highly relevant advertising across a multitude of devices, channels, and media types?

To achieve our vision of being the most performant AI-driven buying system for digital marketers, we have addressed this challenge by investing and innovating across our ad tech to provide ever more precise reach, deeper insights, and world-class measurement capabilities whilst also removing complexity and increasing transparency. The HAQM DSP’s complete re-architecture ensures that we not only provide the most comprehensive, yet easy-to-use media planning, buying, and measurement tools, but that we are also laser-focused on optimizing for the specific outcomes that any advertiser is looking to achieve. This overhaul was built upon what advertisers tell us are the key reasons for HAQM DSP being their DSP of choice, including:

• Our ability to take trillions of browsing, streaming, and purchasing signals from across HAQM properties and employ advanced AI and ad tech to deliver high performance campaigns.
• The array of premium inventory available through not only HAQM properties but tens of thousands of premium streaming TV, web, mobile, and audio publishers. When you add all this together, HAQM Ads helps advertisers reach an average monthly ad-supported audience of more than 300M in the U.S. alone.
• Our ad tech and interoperability—making sure that advertisers can use not only HAQM Ads products, but also services from other providers that they are already using. By operating in a service agnostic manner, we are able to fully deliver against advertisers’ goals.

At HAQM Ads, we believe that advertising effectiveness comes from seamless interoperability. Our philosophy centers on creating integrated ad tech where measurement solutions communicate securely, and where consolidated insights and reporting drives smarter decision-making. By breaking down silos between advertising tools, services, and vendors, we help advertisers build a connected experience that follows the natural customer journey—turning fragmented touchpoints into a cohesive strategy that delivers measurable results while upholding the highest privacy standards.

Putting this interoperable philosophy into practice, we've simplified the process for advertisers to directly integrate common industry services like VideoAmp, Canva, and many more, along with developing solutions that make it easier to connect independent data sources. We recently launched Ads Data Manager to make it easy for advertisers to connect business data from a variety of third-party sources within a matter of clicks. This connected data then informs campaign performance, measurement, and optimization, and creates the end-to-end value for advertisers. Similarly, in 2024 we launched HAQM Marketing Cloud (AMC) on AWS Clean Rooms, so advertisers can connect the data and integrations in their AWS account to AMC in very few clicks. Both of these give brands that don’t sell their products on HAQM—travel companies, financial services, and others—the same value and accuracy as we deliver for brands that do sell in our store.

HAQM Publisher Direct (APD) is built on more than a decade of HAQM Publisher Services innovation, connecting advertisers directly with thousands of premium publishers across streaming TV, display, audio, and mobile apps. By removing ourselves from the process and allowing direct interactions, advertisers and publishers can work together through proprietary technology like HAQM Publisher Cloud (APC) to create custom deals. On many occasions, using insights from HAQM Ads further enhances these deals but it doesn’t need to be the case. We’ve found that enabling these direct relationships between advertiser and publisher greatly enhances campaign relevancy and performance.

While APD provides direct publisher access, that is only part of the picture. Our recently launched Certified Supply Exchange (CSE) program deepens HAQM Ads relationships with leading third-party sell-side platforms (SSPs) and exchanges, providing better insight into open real-time bidding supply. In 2024, this commitment to quality supply was recognized when HAQM Ads was named a leader in sell-side platforms by independent research firm Forrester. Additionally, HAQM DSP gives advertisers the control to choose where ads are delivered whether that be APD, third-party exchanges or any combination in between. Advertisers can even exclude HAQM properties if desired.

Our interoperable approach is powered by advanced AI technology that strikes an important balance—automated measurement with transparent reporting and campaign controls. This balance ensures that our technology enhances human decision-making rather than replacing it. By providing objective insights and optimization capabilities, we empower advertisers and publishers to make more informed decisions that drive business outcomes. Across our AI-powered capabilities, we intentionally build in traditional controls, so that advertisers have the campaign flexibility that they expect and need.

Through tools like Performance+ and Brand+, we combine the power of automation with strategic oversight, enabling advertisers to launch automatically optimizing campaigns in as little as four clicks. Ad Relevance drives performance for both of these by leveraging our unparalleled reach and trillions of accurate signals. Its advanced AI optimizes campaign performance across the entire funnel, while providing full transparency and control over ad placements. Advertisers are seeing significant results: Performance+ has shown a 51% improvement in customer acquisition costs on average, whilst Brand+ has delivered some advertisers more than a 10% increase in sales and over 70% increase in website traffic.¹

This commitment to advertiser success extends to our pricing model. We charge 0% for programmatic guaranteed deals on HAQM properties and just 1% for publishers across the open internet—directing more of your budget toward more performant media and simultaneously ensuring publishers capture greater value from each impression.

Through all our investments and innovations, we're creating measurable advantages for advertisers that will continue to evolve and improve. Our vision for HAQM DSP extends beyond traditional boundaries toward an integrated approach to media planning and buying—one that continues to objectively serve the needs of advertisers and publishers, while creating even more relevant experiences for consumers.