• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, June 15, 2017

Amazon this week introduced Advertiser Audiences, a self-service capability that allows advertisers to securely engage customers and extend campaign reach on and off the Amazon site.

The new feature, which Amazon introduced in a blog post, enables advertisers to anonymously match a list of their customers with Amazon shoppers and create new targeting segments for use in their Amazon advertising campaigns.

An Amazon spokeswoman confirmed that audience segments can’t be activated outside of Amazon’s advertising systems. Advertiser Audiences is only available for Amazon advertisers (advertisers placing buys directly with/through it), for use specifically in their Amazon campaigns.

Amazon said that early studies of advertisers using the tool showed an increased return on ad spend between 2x and 8x campaign averages.

To protect consumer privacy, Amazon said advertisers can either upload pre-hashed lists or have their lists hashed in their browser. “Through this upload process, Amazon can never accept nor access any un-hashed data,” the blog post stated.

Amazon said Advertiser Audiences aims to help advertisers do three things: Reach existing customers, reach those who exhibit similar behaviors by building a new segment to extend campaign reach, and reach entirely new customers. It said that in some cases, it found lookalike segments enjoyed a 200% lift in traffic to Amazon.com product detail pages, where those customers are 4x more likely to purchase.