A cosmetics brand sold on Amazon can now target Sephora shoppers there. A restaurant chain such as Chipotle can reach customers of rival chains. A consumer packaged goods company can go after people who shop at Target, Dollar General or Kroger.
The targeting runs through Attain's integration with Amazon Ads DVA+, Adweek reported. Attain builds the segments from purchase behavior it sees across its network. Brands can then run display and video against them on Amazon's inventory, including Prime Video, and on third-party inventory available through its platform.
The shoppers opted in, not the retailers
Walmart and Sephora aren't handing their customer files to Amazon. Attain builds its audiences from 15 million consumers who agreed to share their purchase data, including through its Frisbee and Merryfield rewards programs and its Klover budgeting platform.
That distinction matters. Attain, not the retailer, holds the relationship with the consumer. So it sees purchases across several retailers, while each retailer sees its own customers in depth but only part of their path to purchase.
The reach has limits. Visibility into many merchants isn't the same as knowing all of their shoppers, or seeing every purchase in the same detail.
What's new is the pipeline
Amazon already works with third-party audience signals, including through partnerships with Roku and LiveRamp. Outside data on the platform isn't new.
The difference is that Attain plugs straight into Amazon Ads' APIs instead of going through an integration partner such as LiveRamp, an Amazon spokesperson told Adweek. Attain is still a third-party data provider. It just no longer needs a middleman to get its data activated.
The partnership also moves upstream. Attain already worked with Amazon to measure in-store sales tied to campaigns. Its data can now help decide which consumers see the ads in the first place.
No retailer has an exclusive on its shoppers
The announcement exposes a weak spot in retailers' data-exclusivity pitch. A retailer controls its loyalty data and the terms under which brands can activate it. It doesn't control every source that can identify purchases made in its stores.
Brands that want to reach Sephora customers now have another way in besides Sephora's own ad offering. The two aren't equivalent: data granularity, coverage, measurement options and proximity to the purchase can differ. But they now compete for access to the same audiences.
Amazon stands to gain on two fronts. It gets a fuller picture of what its own users buy elsewhere. And its ad platform becomes more useful to advertisers who sell well beyond its marketplace, or not on it at all.
Media buyers will need to check what these segments actually add to their existing targeting: new consumers, better conquesting or just another way to reach customers they can already target. Past purchases don't guarantee future ones.
