Amazon Buy With Prime Was Always Waiting for Sponsored Ads - Will It Work?

Buy With Prime Was Always Waiting for Sponsored Ads - Will It Work?

There are a few major events in the history of Amazon's retail business:

- Amazon's introduction of its third-party seller marketplace (2000)

- Amazon's introduction of Prime (2005)

- Amazon's introduction of Fulfillment by Amazon (2006)

Buy With Prime is another big shift. It takes the advantages of Amazon's logistics, combines it with trust of Prime and opens it up to the rest of the web. Of course, that's the theory.

Most brands are going to be in one of two buckets:

Group 1 - "Let go, let Amazon. I'm not good at fulfillment anyway."

Group 2 - "Hell, no. It's a trap."

The dilemma for most merchants? Both are somewhat true. And I predict it's going to go one way or the other.

Another major shift is Amazon's introduction of Sponsored Ads with Buy With Prime. Amazon will let you take traffic off-Amazon - on a cost per click (CPC) basis - to your own website, as long as it's a Buy With Prime item. This is a titanic shift, and usually reserved for publishers, or someone like Google who's sole job is to send the item to another website.

All of these programs are invite-only at the moment, but the program is ambitious and well-funded at Amazon.

Frankly, Google should be worried about where this is headed more than anyone. Google's next strategic moves could be the most interesting to ponder in the future - this is for another post!

Of course, all this is still invite-only. Who knows how it will turn out? Amazon, appropriately, is taking time to learn.

First, for either group, it is not ready for "prime-time" -- excuse the pun -- because there is no way to do a large-scale integration to items on your website or an advertising platform, that I have seen. The tools for developers are either non-existent or limited.

Second, Amazon's Buy With Prime "marketing toolkit" is almost like a trap within a trap. The examples I've seen on sites turn your site into a Prime ad. Which is... interesting. I understand why it's there, but the fact that it needs to be there is just a reminder that this isn't going to be ready for some time.

This is a multi-year journey for Amazon - in my opinion - before it is able to hit scale. Both sides need to line up: merchants and buyers. The merchant tools are just starting to be released and will take some time to bake and refine. And perhaps the more important side -- buyers.

Prime has been around since 2005. To a buyer, it's synonymous with Amazon. At worst, getting Prime on another website could feel like a scam and unnecessary at worst -- after all I could just buy this on Amazon.

Amazon is setting up a new two-sided marketplace here, requiring both sides to work.

For Buy With Prime, the merchants have to buy in. But for ads? The key factor will be the buyer. Will I click off Amazon and trust?