• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 24, 2023

In what they claim to be a first-of-its-kind collaboration between a major agency holding company and commerce media giant Amazon, a team of engineers and commerce experts from both organizations came together to build an "excellence monitor" tracking and managing the performance of Amazon Ads over time.

"The question we still get from our clients is, 'What does great really look like,'" Samantha Bukowski, global head of commerce at GroupM Nexus, tells MediaPost, adding, "We thought the missing piece was, ‘What happens when Amazon and GroupM come together and look at our collective data set.’"

That data set began with hundreds of variables identified by both teams, which were ultimately culled to the 20 bespoke factors organized into four primary buckets: creative, targeting, campaign management and advertising readiness.

"In each of those categories, we broke down what does best-in-class look like and then we were able to assign quality scores against each of those things," Bukowski explains. "We're looking down to ‘are the products that are receiving the advertising support, actually the ones that deserve advertising support? Are they operationally healthy in terms of inventory support? Is the content right on those product pages? Are we sending people to the right places?"

Bukowski describes the new commerce media excellence monitor as a blueprint for GroupM to build on.

Initially, she said it is being "pressure tested" across Amazon Ads "on-platform" inventory, but the goal ultimately is to take the methodology off Amazon to other media partners, including other big retail media and commerce companies.