• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, 4 hours ago

Hyundai Motor America is the first auto manufacturer to build a closed-loop measurement system powered by Amazon that links privacy-compliant digital shopping to verified dealership sales.

The automaker plans to release results publicly this week from its project with multiple Amazon companies and services that began in 2024, and continues to expand through artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology.

Matching Amazon Autos data signals with Hyundai’s sales data, using pseudonymized identifiers and never raw customer data, the strategy closed the loop between what customers do online and what they buy at the dealership.

It delivered closed-loop measurement capabilities that the companies said is not currently available through other automotive measurement providers.

Hyundai and Amazon did this by building a data-tracking loop that connects online car shopping on Amazon to physical car sales at dealerships.

Through this tracking, they proved that for every one person who buys a Hyundai directly on Amazon, more than 10 other people used Amazon to shop but completed their purchase in a physical showroom.

Notably, 79% of customers who shopped on Amazon Autos and later purchased offline were new to Hyundai, showing that the platform helped the automaker reach new buyers.

The strategy also achieved a more than 90% customer match rate, which is nearly 2x the prior third-party benchmark -- showing that Amazon Autos helped grow Hyundai’s brand by connecting it with new customers where they wanted to shop.

It also reduced duplicate ad targeting by 22%, meaning customers no longer saw redundant ads for vehicles they had already bought or were not interested in, which reallocates budget to other sources.

And, by suppressing existing owners and improving audience targeting with real purchase data, Hyundai delivered more relevant ads to in-market shoppers, so every ad dollar worked smarter, improving the campaign efficiency by 2.2-times.

Based on the past year’s success, Hyundai and AWS are evaluating an AI layer that would let marketing teams ask measurement questions in plain language and receive privacy-safe answers on demand.

An Amazon spokesperson told MediaPost the goal is to shorten the time required to generate insights. Longer term, the companies envision one complete view in Hyundai's AWS environment to track customer lifecycles from the first ad impression through purchase, service and consideration of the next vehicle.

Through the ongoing partnership, Sean Gilpin, CMO at Hyundai Motor America, believes numbers now can "prove” every dollar that brought in a sale.

Amazon Autos launched in December 2024 with Hyundai as the exclusive automotive partner. 

AMC combines the datasets at the time of the query using privacy-safe matching and returns only the approved, aggregated results. The framework is designed so raw data is not copied, moved, or shared between parties at any stage and remains in Hyundai’s private framework without rebuilding the underlying infrastructure, according to an Amazon spokesperson. This means Hyundai can bring more of its media investment into one measurement framework over time.