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- [00:01]
A
Hi, I'm Jeff Cohen with Sky and you're listening to the CPG Guys Podcast.
- [00:08]
B
Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast. Set at the intersection of commerce and tech, your hosts, Sri Raja Gopeland and Peter Vs. Bond explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in a digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG Guys. Hello and welcome to a special episode of the CPT Guys podcast. We're coming to you from Nashville, Tennessee, home of the 2025Amazon Unboxed Conference. I'm PBSB, co host of this podcast. Allison moonlight is head of industry and client engagement at Flywheel, the commerce acceleration division of Omnicom. Joining me today to help break down all the great news coming out of Amazon Unboxed is my co founder of this media platform. He's the patriarch of the Raj family media empire, CRO of Think Blue Consulting, and of course he's bff. I'm speaking about Papa Raj himself, the man known as Sri Sri. How was your trip into Nashville? No, no major problems or how'd it go, Peter?
- [01:08]
C
Eventless trip in, but I really enjoyed that. We were able to do quite a few things when we were here in Nashville. First of all, you know, obviously attending Amazon Unboxed, it's a first for me, not being in the industry as a professional on the CPG side. So that was exciting. Just to get diverse opinions from the attendees, whether they were brands, service providers, agencies, and even talked to leaders like Alan Moss and Tanner Elton, which we did yesterday. Then we got invited by Dollar General. Their copper comms wanted us to cover the hall of Values, which we did with their VP of Insights and Branding. We also did a store tour with their VPDMM of Merchandising for Fresh and Food. So for our listeners, look out for two episodes. And then finally, all the discussions at Amazon Unboxed. Exciting. That's what we're doing on this episode, along with our friend Jeff Cohen over here. And lastly, it'll be Remis if I didn't mention Peter made me go to the Loveless Cafe in Nowheresville, Tennessee.
- [02:09]
D
Oh yeah.
- [02:10]
C
For Southern biscuits. And of course, he enjoyed his bacon. Southern bacon. I did get a bag of three jellies, so it was kind of fun to do that in the middle of nowhere.
- [02:21]
B
It absolutely was.
- [02:22]
C
You know, I wanted moonshine, but they only had mixers.
- [02:25]
B
Sorry, couldn't. Couldn't help you out there. No, it was exciting. When we went into the hall of Values, I was looking forward to meeting the Wonder Twins and Gleek, the. The Wonder Monkey. But unfortunately, that's the hall of justice from Super Friends. So I got my halls mixed up, but it was a good thing to our audience. Look forward to not one, but two upcoming episodes involving Dollar General.
- [02:44]
C
Wait, isn't halls like a cough drop?
- [02:46]
B
No, no. Okay.
- [02:47]
C
Just being sure.
- [02:48]
B
Okay.
- [02:49]
A
Halls like the halls of this hotel.
- [02:51]
B
There you the very long halls.
- [02:53]
A
Yes.
- [02:53]
C
Are we going to Cooperstone next year?
- [02:55]
B
Yes, we're going to Cooperstown for the hall of fame. All right, so let's let me remind everyone to follow CPT guys on LinkedIn and on your preferred podcast platform. If you listen to us, particularly on Apple or Spotify, please make sure to leave us a rating as it makes our podcast more findable by your industry contemporaries. Also, leave us a review and let us know what you like and what topics you want us to discuss so that we can make our podcast more relevant to your interests. So let's get to the heart of our episode. Sree and I traveled here to Nashville to attend the 2025Amazon Unboxed event. It's an annual conference where Amazon ads announces new solutions and innovations to help brands big and small connect with customers, grow their brand, and prepare for the future. Joining us to help recap what we heard at Unboxed is a familiar friend of the podcast. Earlier this year, he joined sky as its Chief Business Development Officer. Please welcome back the podcast our dear friend, Jeff Cohen. Jeff, how you doing, man?
- [03:49]
A
I'm doing great. Thank you for having me. And, you know, very similar to paparazzi here. This was my first unbox not being at Amazon. So it was a different take on both my. My day, my planning, as well as the conversations, the media conversations that I've had. And it's really been still a great experience from the other side. And seeing it from the other side just adds more context to the challenges and the headwinds that brands and marketers are facing.
- [04:24]
B
Jeff, before we get started, I know when last we spoke, you were at Amazon. We recorded an episode at Cannes Lions. Why don't you tell us about what you're doing now?
- [04:32]
A
Yeah, so I joined sky about two months ago, and my role is head of partnerships and business development. And in that role, I get to work with not just the likes of Amazon, but Now Walmart, Instacart, DoorDash, Reddit, Critio, I could keep going. And we work with over 250 different retail media networks, and I also get to work with all of the. We call them our commerce plus partners. So when you get into the NIQs and the incrementals and the amps of the world that are helping brands do all the stuff they need to do within their commerce operations.
- [05:15]
B
Thanks Jeff, for that great description. We're going to include in the digital show notes of this podcast episode links to your LinkedIn page and Sky's corporate site so that our audience can do a little multitasking as they listen to us recount what we liked, what we found interesting about Amazon Unboxed. So Jeff, Sri and I are going to walk our audience through what we identified as the major innovation announcements that came out of the event and why we think they are important for brand advertisers. So let's get it started. Sree, you have the first big area of announcement. What's this about?
- [05:50]
C
Even before I start I want to kick it off, Peter, by talking about the big announcement that came from Paul Kotis, which is on reach 90% of households in America through the various Amazon properties on site, off site. That does make them and put them in a league of their own.
- [06:07]
A
Yes.
- [06:08]
C
In terms of reaches number one.
- [06:09]
B
They've had a lot of big announcements of late. Netflix and other platforms that are building into. Into the overall ecosystem makes them a. A force of scale.
- [06:21]
A
Yeah, I don't think. I don't think there's any streaming TV now that you can't get through them. Right.
- [06:26]
C
Which is a big deal.
- [06:28]
B
We're going to Brit box. The Brit. The Brits. Those who love. There's always one those who love like, you know, call the housewife and whatever they want. They.
- [06:36]
C
How do you watch curling in Canada?
- [06:38]
B
We get that.
- [06:38]
C
He said 90%. He didn't say 100.
- [06:40]
B
Exactly.
- [06:41]
C
Thought about curling.
- [06:42]
B
Good point.
- [06:42]
C
But anyway, so obviously Peter, that results in the first very thing if you touch that many properties on site and offside. There was an ask in the industry from CPGs and agencies over time that sponsored ads and DSP be within a single interface and a single platform. Aha. First unlock right there. Amazon ads. New Command Hub will unify sponsored ads.
- [07:07]
B
And so you don't have to log out of one and log into the other to run a full funnel campaign.
- [07:11]
C
By the way, was super annoying when I was very annoying earlier in my career and my Jeff, you could say that too.
- [07:18]
B
Now that you're no longer at Amazon.
- [07:19]
A
Well, I think I was trying to think. I was trying to look back at my notes. I think that's the one that got like the round of applause I got.
- [07:27]
B
In a pause that was reminiscent of going to accelerate.
- [07:30]
A
Right.
- [07:30]
B
Where the sellers get they get really excited. Most of the applause at Unboxed are the plate golf clubs.
- [07:36]
A
Why?
- [07:37]
B
Because it's the people that are six or seven levels removed from hands on keyboard. So it's. Oh, that's nice. Whereas the sellers, they're the ones actually doing the grunt work. They love announcements.
- [07:47]
A
Yes. Yeah, yeah. I can't think of that many rousing replaws. I mean you get it at like upfronts where you bring out big stars or stuff like that. But that one did get a big excitement or a gasp of, you know, relief when they, when, when that was announced.
- [08:06]
C
Let's get into some of the details. Right.
- [08:08]
B
Almost as much of a gasp as when they announced that they were subbing in Luke Bryan for Jelly Roll at last night's big concert.
- [08:14]
C
Yes, I didn't go to that one. But you know, the. Some important things there is obviously embedded with AI. It lets advertisers plan, activate and measure campaigns seamlessly in one interface. The silos go away between formats, no login logouts. And if I'm a CPG brand and an agency, here are some things I'm thinking about. Number one is full funnel. Full funnel advertising makes the whole capability whole lot easier to come in and just do full funnel planning. Right. It simplifies multi channel operations, eliminates fragmentation between upper and lower funnel. As I mentioned, real time insights for global scalability, which of course given today's volume challenges in the CPG industry and that a lot of promotional activity is simply not working. It's crucial for CPGs managing multiple markets, product lines, things of that nature. And then I think of from an agency perspective, the operational efficiency, one set of permissions, one group of people handling all types of ads, upper funnel, middle funnel, lower funnel. Think of all the billing and the efficiency that's going to be created there. That's a big one that silently passed by, wasn't acknowledged. And then I think about optimization. You can now optimize up and down the funnel as opposed to upper funnel separately and lower funnel separately.
- [09:32]
B
I think Jeff knows this both from his time at Amazon. Now on the agency side, I know it from my time, is that having separate platforms created specialties within agencies. So very oftentimes you had one person that worked on DSP and one person that worked on owned and operated lower funnel, you know, product search ads. Now it's creating a situation where it's encouraging everybody to be fully fluent in everything. It's not separate environments. Yeah.
- [10:01]
A
And then they're adding the AI on top of it to kind of help Assist and guide you.
- [10:07]
B
Yep. All right, so let me, let me follow up. Next area of announcement was around the creative agent. It's an AI powered creative production at scale solution. So it's an agentic AI solution that automates creative development. It merges Amazon's audience and retail signals. So very data driven. Right. Creating audiences based upon signals or purchasing behavior. Right. With conversational guidance to produce multiple variations of display and video creatives instantly and cost free. So let's talk about this, right? You don't have to know how to do SQL code, you can basically do conversational to talk about what's the creative you want and what type of audiences do you want that creative to resonate with. Yeah.
- [10:54]
A
What I thought was interesting about it was that this isn't just about going and generating the creative, it's actually generating the creative brief that you're then using to go generate the creative. And so it's, it's kind of adding an extra step from what we maybe saw last year. And then in the creative keynote, which was on day two, they went deeper into the creative agent to kind of demonstrate how it's actually impacting the workflows within the, the creative teams.
- [11:27]
C
The one thing I want to add, as a lifetime CPG brand veteran, one of the hardest things to do in creative is actually generating a creative brief and getting people to agree because there are 4000 opinions now when an LLM informs the actual creative brief, you're going to get tighter, cleaner, significantly faster creative briefs, which is a big freaking deal and I hope the industry recognizes that.
- [11:53]
B
Yeah. Because it's tailored to shopper intent. It should, it's using those signals to say it's not just, oh, I, I've got this creative brief and I, this is my, you know, my whimsical idea of what it should be about. It's like, no, no, it's actually based upon the data signals that, that Amazon is feeding them. So I think it's a big deal.
- [12:11]
A
It's also, I think important to note that this is an extension of the creative studio that was announced last year. And this is really becoming a new, we'll call it a home page. Right, that, that you need to be familiar with because this is clearly where they're investing. This is clearly what they see as one of their core AI agents across the board. And any, whether it's updates around video or audio or photos, this is the center where it's going. This is, this is the room that it's going to happen in. Right.
- [12:50]
B
And I think that's Hamilton.
- [12:51]
A
That's right.
- [12:52]
B
Is that streaming on prime now? Hamilton, is that where. No. Ok, that's good. Jeff, over to you. What's your big announcement?
- [12:58]
A
Yeah, so the one that kind of caught me was the Project Complete TV which is optimizing the streaming TV investments. This is a unified, again, AI driven platform that's helping brands and marketers manage and optimize their streaming TV by across multiple publishers.
- [13:20]
B
And this is why it's so important that so many of the publishers have now plugged into Amazon.
- [13:25]
A
Yeah, well it's, it's balancing the upfront commitments that you as a brand are making with the real time optimization and then the cross publisher insights. And so one of the things that was really interesting about it is the ability for you to add kind of your own deals into this. So it knows what deals you've made with the different publishers and it doesn't.
- [13:48]
B
Reveal that information, doesn't retain it or.
- [13:51]
A
Yes, they were very specific to, to, to, to mention that, that you're not sharing that across.
- [13:56]
C
Yeah, and it's, it's for our audience. Guys, explain a little bit more about what that means, not sharing across.
- [14:02]
B
Well, because it means that the knowledge of the deal you negotiated with a particular platform isn't going to be accessible or understandable by frankly, Amazon or any of the other, any of the other advertisers on Amazon. Does that sound right, Jeff?
- [14:16]
A
Yeah, yeah. And then you know, the tool is allowing you to integrate both linear and streaming strategies. So that's allowing you to, you know, get that incremental reach. It's optimizing your performance with the AI recommendations, whether that's delivery reach or efficiency or combination thereof. And you know, this is really a product that's maybe more ideal for larger advertisers because it is based around the idea of having the deals and it's allowing you to unify the video storytelling across the different retail and streaming, you know, content and context that you're trying to do across these publishers.
- [15:02]
C
Well, one thing, the one thing I'd love for us to chat about is again coming from a large CPG brand background, three words come to mind. To me, right when I think about AI and the three words that I'd love for us to discuss is delivery, audience reach and efficiency. What you just mentioned in CPG land, we believe for the longest time, whether it's our agency or whether it's the brand managers, that there's always a gut intuition required and we know our brands the best and that's why agency replacements don't happen often. You rarely change your agency. They stick around with you for 15 years. How do you guys feel about robotic AI taking that over and making the recommendations now? I personally believe it's long overdue and you're going to get the best campaigns optimized. When a machine fed with LLM is able to advise you on delivery, audience reach and efficiency because it's going to remove bias and it's always going to shoot for the best thing, given the constraints. But the human element people have always believed brings emotion to advertising. Thoughts, guys?
- [16:09]
B
I think it's about the input, obviously. It lets the humans behind the scenes create the big concepts and then using the data signals, it's allowing you to actually create most of the campaign activation stuff. So I think from a perspective of, here's what I like the most. What's one of the biggest beefs that brand advertisers have? It's duplicative audiences. Right now that they've got all of the different streaming services plugged in. Right. And it's behind your firewall and you know, your connectivity, it's going to greatly reduce, to your point, the efficiency. It's going to make it much more efficient, this thing. And you're going to your measurement of multi touch attribution. I know last year Paula Desmond spoke at length that Amazon unboxed about multi touch attribution as a mechanism. This is really going to help in that area, isn't it?
- [17:01]
A
Yeah, I think that when it comes down to it, I know we're going to cover this from themes, perspective in here, but there's, there's a hesitation with how much should AI be doing? And so I think like when we look into the future, you know, we'll call it AI Years. It could be three months or six months into the. Into the future. Right. I think it can solve for the things that you're looking for. But right now it requires the human in the loop to review the recommendations. Because the biggest thing that Amazon doesn't have is they don't have the context of your brand and they don't have the context of what you're trying to drive. So if you can prompt engineer it to provide that context, it can make a better decision. But I do think it can make you aware of things you maybe weren't aware of before. And one of the best ways to use AI is to have it actually debate itself. Right. And so I don't know if Amazon that I love can do that. But like that's what you want to.
- [18:05]
B
Build in do you open up like Gemini and then chatgpt and you ask them to connect and debate each other over topic? How does that work?
- [18:12]
A
Well, I mean, we've seen it. We've seen it at sky where you're able to, you know, ask for a scenario and then ask, okay, well, is this the best way to do this? And you can. You can ask it like debating questions, but it requires it to have context to be able to debate. And yes, you can do that in chat gbt. You can even ask it about, you know, never believes it's absolute. So it will always say, well, that's a really good point. Let me see.
- [18:39]
B
Let me think about that.
- [18:40]
A
Right. But, like, you know, you can't move Veterans Day from Veterans Day. So, like, could you get it to debate that Veterans Day really wasn't yesterday? I don't know.
- [18:49]
C
But you know what? We should try that for fun.
- [18:51]
B
Yeah, just don't move. Thanksgiving. I like that. Thursday, Friday weekend.
- [18:55]
A
Right.
- [18:56]
C
So, by the way, guys, I'm not done on this topic yet.
- [18:59]
B
By all means.
- [18:59]
C
And Jeff, I want your. Actually, I'll take both of your opinions not having come from CPG brands. There's this element of I know my brand the best from brands and agencies. AI will diminish. I know my brand the best because it'll take 30 years of history that even a brand manager doesn't have and use that to inform decision making. So we're going outside the scope of just this capability now. But what do you guys think is so external?
- [19:27]
B
Throw that in. I think that what the brand manager really should be saying is, I know how I want to message my brand the best. And if there's nothing we've learned more in the age of influencers is that influencers tell us what they really think of our brand. And if a brand manager continues to try to play whack a molecule in the. In the age of influencers to try and control the brand message, it's a losing battle. They should spend their time listening to their customers through that, through their behaviors and their signals, so that they can understand how their brand is currently positioned and how consumers are thinking about it.
- [20:05]
A
You have to take the emotion out of it. I met with a large brand for breakfast this morning, and we were having this conversation of how they've restructured their brand catalog. And I said, what's the biggest difference? He said, we took all the emotion out of it, and we took it down to mathematics. And when you take the mathematics into it and you understand what you're trying to do the business you're trying to grow, the customer you're trying to serve. You can make business decisions. Now listen, we all have to agree that these business decisions have real human consequences. And I think that's the challenge of AI today is that there's a, well, I don't want it to replace this person's job or I don't want to replace my job. And that's where I see the value of AI is not necessarily a job replacement as much as it is a job enhancement. It's that ability to really think more critically. Again, debate with yourself theories and, and ideas that you've had and get to a propensity model that tells you the likelihood of success of something happening. Debating. I'm just for the record, I'm debating Gemini right now and it will not give. Veterans Day was November 11th.
- [21:19]
C
It is sticking to it.
- [21:20]
A
It's sticking to it. No matter. It's telling me like, well, I could be confused with Armed Forces Day or Memorial Day, but Veterans Day was yesterday.
- [21:28]
B
That's true in other countries.
- [21:31]
C
Well done, Gemini. But what if you went to Scorpio 80s, right?
- [21:35]
A
Right.
- [21:35]
C
So.
- [21:35]
A
All right, Jeff, I do have a.
- [21:37]
C
Follow up question on that. I mean, for breakfast, did you get a California avocado toast or did you get country Southern biscuits like the CPG guys did?
- [21:45]
A
Maybe a mix. It was a buffet. Eggs, bacon took the hideout.
- [21:49]
C
All right, so let's continue with the theme of AI and the next big announcements, which is Ads Agent. Right. So ad agents combines now AI audience targeting and the Amazon Media Cloud insights. It's a big deal. So what is it? In the first place, the announcement centered around the generative AI tool that simplifies both targeting and measurement. Guys, I'm saying it again. AI agencies, brands are going to have a thousand opinions. This is wrong. This is not okay. I know. I'm sure. I don't believe but tree, don't I? Hold on, hold on. Peter.
- [22:22]
B
Don't I have to use SQL queries to build audiences?
- [22:25]
C
Yes. Yes.
- [22:26]
B
Is this changing that?
- [22:28]
C
No, it's not. So. But it's still recommended by AI. It actually recommends optimal audiences. I know my brand the best. And keywords. I know my keywords because I grew up in the band history. Sorry for the annoying voice. And for Amazon Media cloud users using SQL queries like you said and insights. But here's the punchline word automatically. What do you think, guys?
- [22:57]
B
I think it's game changing. It makes SQL query development of audiences accessible to anyone who can speak English.
- [23:04]
A
Yeah, this is about democratization.
- [23:05]
B
Right.
- [23:06]
A
This is not a tool, this is not a tool in an announcement that was really for the larger brands in the audience. They've had access to this. There's been third party tools that have had a lot of this feature and functionality for a long time. But this is creating, you know, if you, if you marry this to the announcement from Accelerate where they made AMC available in Council and available for everybody, you're now putting some intelligence on top of that announcement that's making it more usable. Listen, there's value to the audiences even if you're doing sponsored products alone. And Amazon wants to unlock that for advertisers to be able to use those insights.
- [23:52]
B
Right before the keynote started, SRI and I were talking to someone sit right behind us. She was responsible for Amazon advertising for her cpg and she said, I've just, I, I know that I'm just so far behind the game in Amazon marketing cloud and I just, I don't know how, how to pick that up and I don't have the SQL experience and I don't have people on my team are doing like, what am I going to do? And I, I could hear her when they announced this, just almost screaming out loud.
- [24:21]
A
Yeah.
- [24:22]
B
With excitement. It was a big deal.
- [24:23]
A
Yeah. I mean, Russ from Stratability had a data that he released over the summer that was like the increase of advanced uses of AMC only increased from 9 to 10% in the last year. Right. So there's still a big knowledge gap of how to use AMC in a more advanced way.
- [24:41]
C
No debate here. So let's cover some of the capability outcomes that this will create. Number one, I think about CPG brands and advertisers as well as agencies, reduces time to insight by actually synthesizing and automating complex audience discovery, which is great. Which is awesome. I would love that. Especially, you know, the first announcement that we talked about was one platform. So this is going to sit on top of that and be very helpful. The second is again, I'm telling you guys, as a former brand leader, improving targeting precision using Amazon's proprietary intent signals. Aha. Is it game changing? In my opinion, yes. We should take advice from LLMs. We're going to have annoying brand people here say I know my brand the best, I know my targeting. I love that.
- [25:38]
B
I don't like brand people. I don't know.
- [25:41]
C
The voice has to come out. I'm sorry. Because it needs to sound annoying. And the third one is the ability for the analysts, which Jeff referred to, to scale the Amazon media cloud Insights without that deep SQL query expertise that only very few in the industry have. Now I want to ask you all a question on that third one. Right. Talent hasn't really changed much in the agency world, which supports brand. The fact that you can actually scale the Amazon media cloud insights without those deep SQL queries is a blessing for agencies.
- [26:15]
B
This technique is snatching classic agency people from the jaws of obsolescence and actually making them value because they can use the English language to describe what they want.
- [26:30]
A
Yeah, listen, that's the beauty of what AI has really given us. If we look at it over the last, you know, two years, if we really boil it down beyond some of the hype, that's what it's doing is it's allowing people that understand contextually how to do things to do some skills they didn't have before.
- [26:46]
B
Yep. All right, so I'm going to, I'm in the next section. I'm going to cover. It's, it's, it's a conglomeration of four things that they kind of all fall into. The sponsored ad evolution is about taking those classic sponsors ads that we are all accustomed to, you know, the mid lower funnel and it's, it covers everything from video to conversational prompts. So let me go through these four and then I'll ask you for your thoughts on this. First one is round sponsored products video. This really falls into trees. It's about frickin time.
- [27:18]
A
Yeah, but it got a big clap.
- [27:19]
B
That got a big clap too.
- [27:20]
A
Yeah.
- [27:21]
B
So we're talking long form video ads now integrated directly into sponsored Products. No brainer. Next one is Sponsored Brands collection. So a manual curation, up to 10 related products into one AD unit. Again you can sit there and find products that are related by color, by by size, by a number of different things and put them all into a single ad.
- [27:44]
C
General Mills World I'll come back to in a minute.
- [27:46]
B
Yeah, we'll go back to that. But prompts so conversational AI powered extensions that deliver real time product information within the ad experience. And then the last one is a really interesting one. Reserve share of voice. So it's a fixed price guaranteed placement for brand keywords. So Jeff, thoughts on any or all of these?
- [28:08]
A
These got a lot of really good excitement from the audience. I, I would agree with paparazz here that some of these are kind of long overdue. Just to give you a little bit more context around like the sponsored product videos. These are like almost like deep dive feature based videos versus what you're used to within brand Videos so that if somebody's in your product or in a search looking for specific features, you've got videos that are kind of speaking to what they're specifically looking for. I think this was also the area where, correct me if I'm wrong, where they started to demonstrate how Rufus is integrating these types of video ads. And we've been kind of waiting to understand how ads are going to roll into Rufus. And so if you want to start kind of testing Rufus and advertising, this is another area that, that should be on your test list.
- [29:06]
B
I think for a brand advertiser, what this colle really allows them to do is take more creative control over product storytelling and portfolio presence.
- [29:16]
C
So let's let me jump into that a little bit and I want to go over each one. Sponsored products video, long form video ads as part of sponsored products. Now think of some categories like skin.
- [29:27]
B
Care, beauty regimen, makeup, skin care. Right.
- [29:31]
C
Anything regimented images weren't enough. If you want to get the aha moment. As Jeff points out, the creative narrative is important that comes from the video. So it's a game changing moment and I'm not going to limit it just to those I would say even in pet food it's important. Anything that requires unboxing consumption, demo videos, etc. This would be very helpful. Toys, baby care, things of that nature. Then I take a sponsored brand collection. You the curation up to 10 related products in one AD unit. I thought of General Mills and bars. So you have treat bars, cereal bars, you have nutrition bars, you have snack bars, salty. So you have four different types of bars. So think about, you could now combine those under the bars category in the airport bar, right?
- [30:16]
A
Then it's using the AI the way I kind of understood.
- [30:19]
C
He's a natural, he wants moonshine.
- [30:20]
A
Pretty fair. But if I was understanding the collections correctly, it's. You're not showing 10 images, you're giving it 10 images. And then it's using the context of.
- [30:30]
B
It is deciding what's right for you.
- [30:32]
A
To put the right. That's what I'm saying. That's powerful because you can create that collection that has the salty, the non salty, the high protein.
- [30:40]
C
So let's debate another one. Think of, think of Frito Lay and PepsiCo, right? Yeah, Lays, Cheetos, Doritos. Think of them for a second. Now they all deliver against a salty snack consumption window that different brands I would argue not delivering against a different need state. They're all salty snacks. Now you could actually market them as salty snacks based on what you Just said yeah. In one portfolio. So someone doesn't get the search outcome which they'd want, which Frito may want as Doritos. It may show them lays and still get a conversion going towards Frito lay. The third one, the prompt which is conversational AI powered extensions. You've already talked about the combination with Rufus. I think that's huge. That to me is one of the biggest standouts that I took away from the announcements yesterday that AI will now help through the search journey. Narrowing the search window of products and making it much more hyper targeted for. It's not only good for advertisers, it's great for customers.
- [31:42]
A
Yeah. And they're in there, they're shifting the shopping experience. Right. So you used to have to activate Rufus, they're now inserting Rufus into it.
- [31:52]
B
They're forcing it on us.
- [31:53]
C
But the last one, probably another big one here which is the reserve share of voice for branded keywords. The most important word that Muthu said yesterday was fixed price.
- [32:05]
B
Fixed.
- [32:06]
C
Yeah. But we'll see how fixed price works. You know all of a sudden every three months you could take up the fixed price. Second price auction has worked great in the industry for a reason. But we'll see how fixed price goes. It's a great way to kick it off. I also love the guaranteed placement word that he used for branded keywords. But Peter, talk about the value to CPG brands. What does this mean?
- [32:28]
B
Three things I think are value to CPG brands. It drives deeper engagement through rich video first and conversational experiences. There's no question. We talked it, we talked at length about that. As I mentioned, it expands creative control over product storytelling for brand advertisers. And lastly it improves the visibility and predictability with reserved top of search placements that are ideal for big brands moments or seasonal campaigns.
- [32:52]
A
So yeah, I think that the share of voice, the reserve share voice, I think big brands that are, that are spending brand dollars and want that type of search brand placement are going to really enjoy that and build that into their product mix.
- [33:06]
B
So Jeff, you've got something around deal building.
- [33:08]
A
Yeah. So they talked about a new project called Project Deal Builder which is a self service premium for streaming deals. This is a new workflow for negotiating private marketplace and programmatic guaranteed streaming TV deals directly with publishers via the Amazon publisher cloud. Kind of a, kind of an early. It seemed like this was an announcement. It's out there. It's something that we're going to learn more about over time. But giving the promise of accelerated deal activation unlocking exclusive, you know, enhanced supply.
- [33:50]
B
And really that's driven by signals.
- [33:52]
A
Right, right. Everything driven by signals. Yeah. The signals and AI were the buzzwords.
- [33:58]
B
They were.
- [33:58]
A
And ultimately what happened to Metaverse?
- [34:01]
B
Where did that go? Do you remember those good old days?
- [34:03]
A
I think they still believe in it.
- [34:04]
B
I'll let them keep dreaming.
- [34:06]
A
Yeah. At the end of the day, this deal builder, along with a few of these other announcements are all around media efficiency, scaling the premium inventory that, that Amazon now has across both their network and the open web.
- [34:23]
B
Yeah, I think these are, these are big deals. You know, I love the self service aspect. I think Amazon is through, whether it's through the intuitiveness of creating audiences through descriptive language to making these self serve tools, it's just, it's making, it's to your point, it's democratizing, it's making it so much more accessible to brands big and small. You don't have to have an armada of analysts that are coded in SQL. These are, these are all things that.
- [34:54]
A
Make it easier to get, make it simpler to use, make it transparent of what you're doing and how it's working. It's a good, it's a good model.
- [35:01]
B
But, but it's smart for Amazon. And why? It's because, you know, we've talked about this on the podcast a lot. You know, auction density is very important. It's very important for Amazon to generate the kind of revenue off the platform that it's created. The more brands they can bring on and access these kinds of capabilities, the more auction density they're going to create. It's going to be better prices for the, for the advertisers, but it's also going to be more revenue for them.
- [35:29]
C
You know, my only comment on this one, anything that removes friction from negotiating process.
- [35:35]
B
Yeah.
- [35:35]
C
For advertising is a beautiful thing. Yes. But I want to see it in action, deliver outcomes before I judge good or bad.
- [35:42]
A
Yeah, it's, it's too early to call. Listen, I think that's part of all of this, right? It's a big, this is about test and learn. These are all new tools. They were also very clear to say that many of these tools are kind of rolling out throughout next year. So some of these are in, still in closed beta. Some of these are, you know, not fully available to everybody. So there may not be more information for people today, but it's something you want to put on your radar.
- [36:09]
B
Sri, you have the last group of announcements we're going to cover today.
- [36:13]
C
Yeah, you know, kind of, I won't say a Somebody but nothing is more important than reporting. So because you got to report against these campaigns and you got to be.
- [36:22]
B
Able to how brand marketers are going to justify moving their budget from traditional allocations into this. Particularly when when you're talking about not just people who are responsible for selling on advertising. This is bigger than that. This is about total advertising.
- [36:38]
C
Total advertising. So Amazon called it Unified Reporting and Performance plus which reveals transparency and optimization in one view. So let's get into some of these details here. So Unified Reporting will merge DSP and sponsored ads performances. This is the first thing we talked about earlier on this episode. It'll actually merge both of those performance metrics accessible via console API or the Amazon marketing stream so you can pull it into your own reporting platform stools however you choose to do it into your MMM in the future which long overdue. And then Performance plus introduced customizable AI optimized campaign goals. You Insights cards for transparency. I want to come back to and ask you guys about those insights cards. But the value at the highest level here for brands and advertisers and agencies is number one, the simplification of cross channel analysis across different media types, audiences, geographies. Big aha. Deeper historical data.
- [37:43]
B
The look back window. The look back when you look back.
- [37:45]
C
Why is this important? Because we've gone. Can you guys believe we are almost six years from COVID Were two, five months, four months away to say we are six years of from the beginning of COVID Now habits and behaviors of consumers completely changed over Covid and then changed again post Covid and now in the economic window have changed again. Rather than run your models on historical past only the last year, you can now take six years of history build modeling. That's far more accurate. And for that I think a six year look back window first in the industry to be able to provide it.
- [38:21]
B
And here's, here's why that's important. Sree is a year ago we were talking about the standard look back window. For years have been 12 and a half months, right?
- [38:28]
A
Yep.
- [38:29]
B
How often do you buy a new HDTV? Do you buy it every year?
- [38:34]
C
Five years, seven years.
- [38:35]
B
Exactly.
- [38:35]
C
Perfect.
- [38:36]
B
So using a 12 and a half month window, you could not accurately calculate new to brand new for a whole lot of categories beyond fast moving consumer goods. Right now you have a better chance of actually understanding whether this consumer is actually new to the category, new to the brand.
- [38:55]
C
Could not agree more.
- [38:56]
A
Well, what's interesting, you know, as my role has shifted from Amazon to being in the larger retail media network Is now how many other retail media networks are scrambling create a new to brand metric. Yeah, right. And so I think one of the challenges I think for marketers will be is everybody measuring new to brand in the same way.
- [39:17]
B
Right. It's the same as IRO as like first they want to have a measurement, then they're going to have to align around how it's. And the problem is, is new to brands going to be one that's going to have to be not. Not just retailer specific, it has to be category specific. Right. Because that window is going to be relevant to the purchase cycle of that category.
- [39:34]
A
Right. And Amazon has kind of done this. I mean, the heck, they done this with tacos and ACOs, even though we as an industry created those terms. Right.
- [39:42]
B
But.
- [39:43]
A
And then, and then the rest of the industry has to. To follow. One of the things that I'd say is comical as I've learned more and more. It's like everybody calls it sponsored products, right? Amazon and I love the story Colleen Aubrey told about how they came up with the name sponsored products. You know, with all the sponsoring its products.
- [40:02]
B
It's sponsored, Right.
- [40:03]
A
It was like, it was brilliant.
- [40:04]
C
Well said, gentlemen.
- [40:05]
B
Yeah, yeah, listen. All right, this is good. So I'm going to do a little summary and I'm going to ask Sree and Jeff for their big takeaways, but I think we'll call this summary. The year that Amazon ads got agentic at its core unboxed 2025 showcased Amazon ads full transition to an AI first agentic advertising ecosystem. It's merging planning, creative targeting, activation and measurement into one interconnected environment. So what does that mean for CBG advertisers? From my perspective, we've talked about this. Reduced operational complexity through unified tools, accelerated creative and media workflows that are powered by AI, greater control and transparency across full funnel campaigns, and ultimately enhanced ROI through smarter optimization and insights. Amazon Ads has essentially created a commerce media operating system, one that enables CPG brands to connect every part of their advertising journey from awareness to purchase in a single measurable ecosystem. Jeff, what are your thoughts?
- [41:09]
A
Big takeaways 1. I want to close the loop because we talked about that Jelly Roll changed to Luke Bryant.
- [41:14]
B
That was a big deal, but it.
- [41:16]
A
Actually changed from Luke Bryant to Dirk Bentley before the concert happened because Luke Bryant got sick. And only in Nashville, kid, you have.
- [41:25]
B
A backup big ticket country singer, right?
- [41:29]
A
That goes back and that. My, my daughter was blown away. She's like, so this is who you ended up with who's just as big as the other two names you were supposed to have.
- [41:37]
B
You know, I'll tell you guys, if I had found out that it was a switch, but it had gone to like Shania Twain.
- [41:43]
A
Yeah.
- [41:43]
B
And I had a chance to, to hear whose bed of your boots been under. I would have, I would have been on that bus going to the concert.
- [41:50]
C
Damn.
- [41:50]
B
Who's better?
- [41:51]
C
Your boots been under.
- [41:52]
B
I have one of the most classic.
- [41:53]
C
I have no idea who any of these are. You know, I've heard of a Jason Aldean because I saw him at the super bowl two years ago.
- [41:59]
B
Well, you know what the problem is? I, I, I was talking to Alan Moss before the, before the, the, the keynote and he said, we did try to get Cat's eye, but she just didn't come through for us.
- [42:09]
C
Why couldn't they get Cotton Joe? That's what I wanted.
- [42:11]
A
I mean, not all Joe, not all of us have Grammy award winning children that can just come, they haven't won a Grammy yet. I knew there was an award in there. I big takeaways from the actual event. I think that my big takeaway is that this is the year of.
- [42:34]
D
Of.
- [42:34]
A
Understanding fragmentation in the marketplace and understanding how we as a business need to go through transformation. And I'm going to break the transformation down into a digital transformation as well as an operational transformation. And this is through side conversation. So not coming from the keynote address, but brands are really starting to understand that they need to blend upper funnel and lower funnel, but they have operational efficiencies that are blocking their ability to do that. We've talked about that on this podcast before, but it's becoming more and more part of the conversation. They're understanding that they need to integrate AI into their operations. They want AI to be an assistant to what they're doing, not a replacement placement for what they're doing. And so we're starting to see kind of all these momentum that we've had now start to build and shape what the future of an agency and a brand is going to look like. And I think as more and more brands are starting to do internal operational reorganizations around these concepts because their competitors or the best practices are demonstrating that when you do it, you're getting the success that you want. And so I would challenge the listeners of this podcast to not fight this concept, but to embrace this concept as a learning challenge. Right? So don't just be quick to take an action, but be quick to learn and be quick to understand what types of tweaks can, can happen in your organization. To be able to take better advantage of both the AI agentic tools as well as the continued shift of the impact of upper funnel advertising on the performance marketing.
- [44:32]
C
Yeah. So I'm going to close it up with you guys have already talked about capabilities. We have examined pretty much all the six announcements that were made. I want to bring it back to the sentiment of those attending the event this year. You know, as a CPG guys, we had a chance to talk to brands, service providers to this industry as well as agencies about, you know, we thought the three of us have just spoken to all these capabilities here, but here's what we got back from the industry. The industry said the capabilities are great. We love all the stuff going on with AI, the advancements. The merging into one platform is a big deal. All the stuff coming out from the Amazon media cloud is a big deal. But the industry generally geared in the direction of saying this is all long overdue. Have been long expecting. While they love the announcements individually, they said it's long. They didn't say it's ho hum. They said we love it, but they said it's long overdue. Now we're happy that we have it. It'll help us justify budgets in a better way. But to me, the single biggest takeaway for me is how Paul Codis opened the event. That's what CMOs need to start thinking about, which is 90% household reach. Full funnel advertising platform. Guys, how many full funnel advertising platforms exist in America? Walmart needs to find a way to get there.
- [45:55]
B
Yeah, I agree. I agree. Jeff, thank you for taking time out of our last day here at Unbox to share your thoughts and help us do this. Great recap.
- [46:05]
A
Thank you. I appreciate you guys having me on. It's always fun to share with your audience and look forward to doing it at the next event.
- [46:12]
B
Jeff, you join us in San Francisco September next year.
- [46:15]
A
For September next year.
- [46:17]
B
Yeah.
- [46:17]
C
So now you have to unravel the mystery and answer the question, Peter. But how many more does you have to do for the job?
- [46:24]
B
One more.
- [46:24]
C
One more to go.
- [46:25]
B
One more. So now like everyone else who's gotten four, we put him in like a three year holding pattern.
- [46:31]
C
He's like you.
- [46:32]
B
Oh wait, he's already said he's going to do next year's episode. So the latest you're going to get it is if we haven't had you on again before. Next Unboxed recap. We're going to present the jacket to you at Unbox. Okay.
- [46:43]
A
Even if we do the event at Cannes, let's just save the jacket.
- [46:46]
B
Okay.
- [46:46]
A
We don't need that.
- [46:47]
C
We don't.
- [46:47]
A
You don't need a jacket.
- [46:50]
B
Fair enough. No. All right. I think it's been a terrific event and brand advertisers should honestly be pleased with all the platform announcements that came out of unbox 2025. In short order, Sri and I are going to be releasing our interview with Wayne Purboo, who's the VP of Shopping Video and Amazon Advertising.
- [47:07]
A
I love way he was one of my favorite. He is one of my favorites.
- [47:10]
B
Such a kind, nice person. Sh and I have been talking to him over the last year or two. We can't. You know, we're just so excited about the interview with him. We'd be remiss if we didn't thank the team at Flywheel for inviting us to their Western soiree kickoff party. You know, my colleagues, Katie Brown, her team did a terrific job getting us started on arrival day and it was great connecting with all of our, my colleagues. We saw a lot of our friends there. We saw four time guest and friend of the pod, Imtiaz Ahmed, host of the Applied Intelligence podcast, Michelle Nielsen from Bosch and Lom Jeff Helens from 3M. There are a whole bunch of others. If you go onto Instagram, you'll see a lot of the pictures we took to our audience. Make sure you're following the CPG guys across all social media platforms, of course, LinkedIn, but also Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. We may have to dust off our MySpace account so that we're a little bit more inclusive, but I think we can live without that for a little time on any of those platforms. Just search CPG Guys. You'll find us. That's. That's the easiest way to find us. And again, thanks for joining us. We look forward to speaking with you on the next episode of the CBG Guys Podcast. Goodbye.
- [48:29]
D
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- [48:59]
B
Own, and their appearance on the program.
- [49:00]
D
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