EPISODE 500 : Brand Building Through Superior Media Capabilities with Amazon's Tanner Elton

Summary

Podcast Summary: The CPG Guys – Episode 500: Brand Building Through Superior Media Capabilities with Amazon's Tanner Elton

Release Date: June 18, 2025

In the landmark 500th episode of The CPG Guys podcast, hosts Peter V.S. Bond and Sri Rajagopalan celebrate their milestone by engaging in a profound conversation with Tanner Elton, Amazon’s Vice President of US Advertising Sales. Recorded live at the 2025 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France, this episode delves deep into the intricacies of brand building through advanced media capabilities, the evolving landscape of consumer behavior, and the future of advertising in an increasingly digital world.

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1. Celebrating a Milestone

Sri Rajagopalan opens the episode with reflections on the podcast’s journey, reminiscing about its humble beginnings in Chicago in 2018 and how it has evolved into a comprehensive media platform addressing brands, retailers, and service providers. The hosts express astonishment at reaching 500 episodes, emphasizing the hard work and dedication required to maintain consistency.

[02:03] Sri Rajagopalan: "What's harder to believe is this is a full time job."

2. Introducing Tanner Elton

Peter V.S. Bond warmly welcomes Tanner Elton, highlighting his impressive 13-year tenure at Amazon and his role in advertising sales. The hosts share a light-hearted moment about awarding Tanner a varsity leather arm wool jacket for his appearance, showcasing the camaraderie and rapport among the participants.

[03:36] Peter V.S. Bond: "We are incredibly pleased to welcome... Tanner Elton."

3. Tanner’s Role and Responsibilities at Amazon

Tanner Elton provides a comprehensive overview of his responsibilities at Amazon, encompassing large customer sales, mid-market teams, account management, and agency business. He elaborates on how his team collaborates with top-tier brands and focuses on advertisers not solely selling on Amazon, highlighting Amazon's expansive role in the advertising ecosystem.

[04:48] Tanner Elton: "I oversee the advertising sales organization in the US For Amazon Ads..."

4. Leadership and Innovation at Amazon

The discussion shifts to innovation, a core aspect of Amazon’s DNA. Tanner emphasizes the importance of Amazon’s leadership principles in fostering a culture of innovation. He introduces his "Six Cs of a Successful Culture," which include Community, Collaboration, Creativity, Credibility, and Cheer. This framework underlines the significance of a supportive and collaborative environment in driving creative solutions and sustaining innovation.

[08:33] Tanner Elton: "One of my favorite things about Amazon is our leadership principles... Community, Collaboration, Creativity..."

5. Consumer Behavior Trends Impacting Advertising

Tanner identifies key consumer behavior trends influencing advertising strategies today. He underscores a persistent demand for the greatest selection, best pricing, and utmost convenience. Additionally, he highlights the shift towards simplicity, aiming to reduce friction in consumer interactions. A significant challenge mentioned is the fragmentation of consumer behaviors across platforms, necessitating strategies that simplify engagement and transaction processes.

[14:33] Tanner Elton: "Customers are going to want the greatest selection at the best price as conveniently as possible... shift to simplicity."

6. The Future of Advertising Sales: Streaming and E-commerce Integration

Envisioning the future, Tanner discusses the convergence of premium content and e-commerce, particularly through Amazon’s partnerships with streaming services like Roku and Disney. He elaborates on the integration of authenticated customer data, expanding audience reach to over 80 million households, and the seamless connection between content consumption and transactional opportunities. This integration aims to create friction-free experiences from browsing to delivery, enhancing brand-consumer interactions.

[16:29] Peter V.S. Bond: "Now that is phenomenal."

[20:31] Tanner Elton: "Shop the show where you can watch the show and see the product real time… that's going to be the future."

7. Evolving Relationships with Major Brands

Tanner explores how relationships with major brands have evolved at Amazon. Initially perceived as a straightforward retail platform, Amazon has transformed into a multifaceted media partner. Brands now seek to leverage Amazon’s capabilities to drive sales both on and off the platform, emphasizing the importance of relevancy and innovation in their collaborations.

[22:13] Tanner Elton: "The evolution of those relationships, how we think about, again, the art of the possible..."

8. Challenges in the Advertising Industry and Amazon’s Solutions

Addressing industry challenges, Tanner points out the difficulty in changing established habits and behaviors among advertisers. He advocates for simplification as the key solution, making it easier for brands to adopt Amazon’s advanced advertising tools without being overwhelmed. Tanner also touches on the potential of AI and language models to enhance advertising performance, emphasizing the importance of user-friendly interfaces.

[28:05] Tanner Elton: "The biggest challenge that we have is moving people away from what they're used to."

9. Best Practices and Advice for Advertisers

In offering advice, Tanner urges advertisers to approach partnerships with Amazon without preconceived notions, encouraging them to bring challenges and collaborate on solutions rather than imposing predetermined strategies. He emphasizes the importance of openness to innovation and fully leveraging Amazon’s diverse advertising platforms to maximize brand potential.

[31:42] Sri Rajagopalan: "Bring the challenge at hand, try to solve it and then look for the tools..."

10. Concluding Remarks and Announcements

As the episode wraps up, Tanner shares exciting announcements about Amazon’s partnerships with Roku and Disney, enhancing addressability and integration with premium content. The hosts congratulate Tanner and reflect on the seamless integration of Amazon’s services into everyday life, humorously sharing personal anecdotes about package deliveries.

[34:05] Tanner Elton: "We also made an announcement in a partnership that we have with Disney..."

Final Thoughts:

The CPG Guys 500th episode serves as a comprehensive exploration of brand building within the digital advertising landscape, enriched by Tanner Elton’s insights from one of the most influential companies in the space. From fostering a culture of innovation to navigating consumer behavior trends and evolving advertiser relationships, the conversation provides valuable takeaways for brands aiming to thrive in an omni-channel environment.

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Notable Quotes:

• [08:33] Tanner Elton: "One of my favorite things about Amazon is our leadership principles... Community, Collaboration, Creativity..."

• [14:33] Tanner Elton: "Customers are going to want the greatest selection at the best price as conveniently as possible... shift to simplicity."

• [28:05] Tanner Elton: "The biggest challenge that we have is moving people away from what they're used to."

• [31:42] Sri Rajagopalan: "Bring the challenge at hand, try to solve it and then look for the tools..."

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This episode not only marks a significant milestone for The CPG Guys but also offers an in-depth look into the dynamic world of CPG and FMCG eCommerce, making it an invaluable resource for brands and retailers seeking to navigate and excel in today’s digital-driven marketplace.

Transcript

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Chain Drug Review's focus is on reaching the key decision makers across all retail channels, delivering comprehensive coverage of the latest shopping trends and in depth category analysis on health, beauty, over the counter products and wellness. Whether it's the latest trends, emerging technologies, or strategies for adapting to new consumer behaviors, Mass Market retailers deliver the critical information retailers need to navigate this dynamic environment. To subscribe to the newsletters of CDR and mmr, simply follow the hyperlinks in the digital liner notes of this episode. Chain Drug Review and Mass Market Retailers are published by Retail Media iq.

[Tanner Elton]

My name is Tanner Elton. I'm the US Vice President of Advertising Sales at Amazon and this is the 500th episode of the CPG Guys.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Welcome to the CPG Guys podcast. Your host, Shree Rajagopalan and Peter V.

[Peter V.]

S Bond explore how brands and retailers.

[Tanner Elton]

Engage consumers in an increasingly digitally driven world.

[Peter V.]

And now, here are the CPG Guys. Hello and welcome to a very special episode of the CPG Guys Podcast. We're recording this episode in France at the 2025 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. I'm your co host pbsb. When I'm not podcasting, I serve as head of industry and client engagement at Flywheel, the E Commerce accelerator division of Omnicom. I am appropriately joined today by my co founder of the CPG Guys media platform. He's the Chief Revenue Officer at Think Blue Consulting. Papa Raj to the Raj family media empire. He is also the former chief customer officer at General Mills. Of course I am talking about the man known as Sri Sri. Here we are. Can you believe it? Five years later, 500 episodes.

[Sri Raj]

What's harder to believe is this is a full time job. I still remember back in Chicago, it was 2018.

[Peter V.]

2018.

[Sri Raj]

Made a call over to you said I'm staying at the Marriott on jw.

[Peter V.]

Yeah.

[Sri Raj]

And like hey head over, let's have a chat about doing some content. Came over. We had grandiose plans that got nixed because of a respective jobs that we had. And then when I got to General Mills we had already started this podcast in early Covid to kind of kill time the fact that it's actually a media platform now where we have brands, retailers and all kinds of service providers and we are actually at episode 500. It's a big moment.

[Peter V.]

It is. I think in the postlude to today's episode we'll talk a little bit more about that, the journey we've been on. But right now let's get to our very special guest for this monumental episode. We've been looking forward for quite some time to get him on the podcast. He's not someone you see very often other than an Amazon's upfront event, typically riding a bicycle. We actually brought a bicycle. We have it in the back room here. And we're going to ask you to do a little circuit around. Around the apartment, but I thought that would be pretty good. His tenure at Amazon has exceeded 13 years, holding numerous roles in advertising sales. Sri and I are incredibly pleased to welcome, for his first, and hopefully not last appearance on the CPG guys, the vice president of US Advertising sales at Amazon, Tanner. Elton. Tanner, welcome.

[Sri Raj]

Does he know about the Letterman jacket thing?

[Peter V.]

Oh, you know, if you come on five times, you get a varsity jacket.

[Sri Raj]

300.

[Peter V.]

It's like the smoking jacket.

[Tanner Elton]

I love it.

[Peter V.]

But we upgraded. We're like none of that cheap smoking jacket. It's like a legitimate varsity leather arm wool jacket.

[Tanner Elton]

Love it. It's amazing that this is the first time we've been on because I think Sri, you started talking to me about coming on @ episode what, 300?

[Peter V.]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Tanner Elton]

But 300 wasn't good enough. 400. That's milestone.

[Sri Raj]

Worker baby.

[Tanner Elton]

I love it. Made.

[Peter V.]

And I'll tell you, there were a lot of inquiries from other people like, can we be 500? Can we be. They were, they were throwing stuff at us. I'm like, no, we want Tanner. We want Amazon. We're holding that spot.

[Tanner Elton]

So we're so grateful for that.

[Peter V.]

And we had to rough up your PR person, Eric, a little bit just till he finally said okay, okay.

[Tanner Elton]

He's a little bit of a loose cannon, so I gotta be. There we go.

[Sri Raj]

Not today though. Not to worry.

[Tanner Elton]

Yeah.

[Peter V.]

Listen, Tanner, before we get to the question Shree and I have prepared for our conversation, you want to share with our audience a brief overview of your responsibilities in Amazon?

[Tanner Elton]

Yeah, absolutely. So I oversee the advertising sales organization in the US For Amazon Ads that encompasses what we call large customer sales. All of our selling teams that work with the top largest brands in the country, as well as a mid market team, primarily focused on those advertisers who do not sell product on Amazon. Additionally, I oversee the account management organization and our agency business, which has been a lot of fun. That's great.

[Peter V.]

All right, to our audience. In the digital liner notes of this episode, you will find links to Tanner's LinkedIn profile, the Amazon ad partners LinkedIn page and the website as well so that you can multitask as you all want to do while you listen to the melodious tones of our conversation. So let's get to the questions we've prepared. I'll open it up and SRI and I will interchange. But reflecting on your career journey over the last 13 plus years at Amazon, would love to understand the experiences you think have been most pivotal in changing how you lead the organization. In US advertising sales, what have been some pivotal components of your experience?

[Tanner Elton]

I started in entertainment within Amazon, which is very unconventional because when people think about Amazon, you think about the stuff you buy.

[Peter V.]

Right.

[Tanner Elton]

And at the time that I started, it wasn't obvious that Amazon could be a great partner for the entertainment industry, period. So what was really interesting during that time was trying to figure out why Amazon mattered to big major movie studios, how we could help. And so going through the process of looking at all the different components that Amazon had, the customer journeys that were happening, and then building out strategy that tied into that was kind of transformative because there was something that was intuitively not obvious in terms of how we could be working with brands. And then you start to say, oh, wait a Second, Amazon has. IMDb was actually one of our first acquisitions.

[Peter V.]

Of course, I use that almost daily, strangely.

[Tanner Elton]

Yeah. Shout out to Col Needham, our CEO and founder. Actually former CEO and founder, but he's still at the company, which is amazing.

[Sri Raj]

Yeah.

[Tanner Elton]

And we say the first time a movie, television series even gets mentioned, where does it go?

[Peter V.]

Because you go right time tv if you want to. You see something like, I want to know who that actor is. And I'm like, I've.

[Tanner Elton]

Yeah. And then throughout that entire journey, when, when a film goes into theaters and then it's out and you want to buy at the time, the dvd. Where could you find a DVD without the limitations of shelf space?

[Peter V.]

Yes.

[Tanner Elton]

So on Amazon. So you start connecting all of those dots and figuring out how we could build out programs and strategy studios. That was a transformative moment for. Because it really helped us realize the art of possible, even when something isn't obvious. So that was kind of one of the first journeys. And then outside of that, I'd say just every step along the way, the innovations, the creative thinking, never believing that we were limited at Amazon has been a huge boost for how we've been able to show up and deliver for brands.

[Peter V.]

Okay.

[Sri Raj]

You know, one of the first things that comes to our mind when we think about Amazon is innovation. That it's in your lifeblood at this point. It's part of Amazon's DNA. We see it every day, if not every week, routinely through the course of the year. So what role does innovation play in your leadership? And how do you, as a leader of the organization, foster a culture that encourages innovative thinking within your teams?

[Tanner Elton]

Yeah, this is something we think about constantly. One of my favorite things about Amazon is our leadership principles. And the reason I love our leadership principles is because it becomes a kind of system of governance. It's how we think about challenges and possible solutions, and it keeps us very focused on solving challenges for our customers. So for me, as a leader, one of the things that I focus on, other than instilling and teaching and referencing our leadership principles daily, it's how are we building a culture where all of those talents of our individuals that can drive innovation are amplified? So I'll give you a few key things that mean for standout. First of all is I actually did this whole thing for my team a while ago, which I call the six Cs of a successful culture. First one would be community. What are we doing every single day? So when people walk in the door of our offices, when they get on our chime calls, they feel like they are part of that community. Because when you do that, you're more open to collaborate.

[Sri Raj]

You want to participate.

[Tanner Elton]

You want to participate, Right? It's like you guys remember the cheers back in the day. You want to go sometimes you want to go wherever you are. So that whole attitude of we're in the door, we're part of this team, it leads to greater collaboration and we collaborate together. That's when creativity innovation really starts to come out. I love. So if you guys had to think really quick because you guys have been seasoned. We just talked about imovie great movies about community. What kind of comes to mind?

[Peter V.]

Oh, my God.

[Sri Raj]

First time the CPG guys have been flummoxed by somebody.

[Peter V.]

Yeah, I mean, I always go to. I like. Okay, yeah, I always go to my favorite movies, but they tend to not be about community. Okay, but. Oh, I am completely. I am flummoxed. I don't.

[Sri Raj]

Tell us.

[Tanner Elton]

I'll tell you what I love. It's the Goonies.

[Sri Raj]

There you go.

[Peter V.]

Oh, there you go.

[Tanner Elton]

A bunch of kids coming together to save their community. Right?

[Peter V.]

I would say stand by me.

[Tanner Elton]

Stand by me. Another great one. Right?

[Peter V.]

One. Yeah.

[Tanner Elton]

But there's something that we can all relate to about, like, how do we become part of those communities? And then again, when we're collaborating, we're sharing great ideas. It leads to greater creativity, which is important. I'll say one of my favorite quotes. I'm going to paraphrase it a little bit. This is from Steve Jobs back in the day where he said, it's really hard to design products by focus groups.

[Peter V.]

Very true.

[Tanner Elton]

People don't know what they want until you show it to them.

[Peter V.]

Yeah.

[Tanner Elton]

And so when we talk about innovation, it's what are we going to show people? So having that environment is really what's going to help drive.

[Sri Raj]

It's interesting you say that, Tanner, because that's the culture you guys have excelled at. But, you know, in my other hat that I wear, I advise a lot of startups, they really want to do focus groups. And I'm like, no, no, no. But it's good you're saying that. So now we can get the message out.

[Peter V.]

It's funny, I read, I read a 2018. A couple of professors, one at MIT, one at Northwestern, had a hypothesis. They said almost everything you can get out of focus groups, you can probably get by just reading reviews on Amazon.com and they went about testing this on six categories. And they said that 97% of the themes you could get from a focus group you could get by just enlarged language models now allow you to. To get that. It's like you do it instantaneously is how long and how expensive are focus groups? It's all right there.

[Tanner Elton]

Yeah. You have the information.

[Peter V.]

Amazing.

[Tanner Elton]

But it, you know, sri to what you were just talking about, that whole idea of this focus group is going to help us innovate. And I was like, no, you need the team that's going to help you innovate. And then the. The reviews and the response for kind of really validates those efforts.

[Sri Raj]

You gave us one C. You said you had six.

[Tanner Elton]

So the first one is community. Community, which leads to collaboration.

[Peter V.]

Yes.

[Tanner Elton]

Right?

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Tanner Elton]

Great collaboration movie for me. Ocean's Eleven.

[Peter V.]

Yep.

[Sri Raj]

Perfect.

[Tanner Elton]

I mean, who doesn't want to be part of heist, Right? Come in. All those, like, every moving part coming in seamlessly. Then it's creativity. Right after creativity, we think about, why are we creative? And this is one of my favorite leadership principles. Amy says, for the customer. So when you stay focused on why are you doing the things that you do? It's like, because we're doing them to solve challenges for our customers. And if we do that and we stay rooted firmly on that, we're gonna get to a good endpoint. Now, when we do that, here's the other part that comes up a lot. Whenever you try to do something big, it's always going to take multiple teams, probably outside of your sphere to be able to get that stuff done. And aside from the collaboration working Together it's credibility, which is one of the next Cs, right?

[Peter V.]

Yeah.

[Tanner Elton]

So you need to be able to show up, do what you say you're going to do, have the trust of the teams that you work with. Like this, how we're going to deliver. And then the last C, this is the sixth C on this. At first I'll tell you was celebrate. Right. We want to celebrate the wins. But then I thought, well, celebration is a. A reaction. You've done something well. So now I'm going to celebrate it. And we wanted it to be more of a behavior. So it became cheer. Want to cheer for each other.

[Sri Raj]

Okay, so do the CPG guys deserve.

[Peter V.]

A cheer for We're a seat. We're right, by the way.

[Tanner Elton]

500 episodes. I absolutely get a cheer man. How about a little golf clap cheering for you guys? It's pretty phenomenal at this point.

[Sri Raj]

Celebrating cheer. I'll remember that one.

[Peter V.]

And the CPG guy starts with C. So we could be the seventh.

[Tanner Elton]

The seventh.

[Peter V.]

All right. Little known fact, Shree actually thinks the hero of Ocean eleven is the Andy Garcia character.

[Tanner Elton]

Very interesting.

[Peter V.]

I don't know what that says.

[Sri Raj]

Well, I thought we multiplied this five oceans to seven.

[Peter V.]

Five, 11, 11.

[Sri Raj]

We added six.

[Peter V.]

Oh, sorry. Yeah, that's right.

[Tanner Elton]

There we go.

[Peter V.]

Anyhow, so I'd love to hear from you about the consumer behavior trends that you think are most influencing advertising strategies in today's industry.

[Tanner Elton]

I think I'd start by saying this is something that really instilled in the DNA of Amazon as a company where Jeff Bezos, from the beginning, I remember, I can't remember what interview it was, but he was asked, predict the future. What's the future going to bring? It's really hard to predict the future. So what I try to do is say what's going to be true? That's true today. In the future, customers are going to want the greatest selection at the best price as conveniently as possible. That really hasn't changed. What we are seeing though, is this shift to simplicity. How can you make it easier? How can you make all these friction free? Absolutely. And I would say one of the biggest challenges facing our industry, especially from an advertising marketing standpoint, is fragmentation. Right. Everyone has all these different behaviors. They're all over the place. There's common threads throughout all of them. But how do we make it simple to engage, to provide that selection, to make it easy to transact and easy to understand? So when we talk about those consumer behaviors, if you're providing exceptional customer service, if you're providing all of those things, then the question becomes for brands and marketers, how do we make it easy? So a huge focus Amazon really since I started, but we're seeing great strides right now is on that simplification. How do we make it easier to engage, easier to interact, easier to inform and then ultimately easier to transact.

[Peter V.]

And then I have to imagine that by making available to your vendors access to Amazon marketing cloud and the incredible behavioral signals to create audiences and do exactly that is something that you help them really understand who their shoppers are and make it simple for them to figure out how they want to talk to them.

[Tanner Elton]

Yeah. And you know, going even a step further and saying it's like who they are and why it's important. And in fact part of that effort, this is something that we announced this week at Kitten, which we're really excited about is our partnership with Roku.

[Peter V.]

Yeah, big one, Very big.

[Tanner Elton]

Right. We talk about understanding who our customers are. This is when you think about how important the CTB universes. You've got Roku os, you have fire tv. Well now for the first time in our partnership with Roku, we're doing authenticated logged in customer data match where we're going to be able to come in and say we know who these customers are everywhere. And our ability to provide exceptional insights, exceptional Relevancy because of that is going to be a game changer.

[Peter V.]

I have to imagine that is greatly expanded the combined audience reach of these two entities like significantly.

[Tanner Elton]

I'll give you the actual. Andrew should give you the actual stats. So that's over 80 million households now that we have a lot.

[Sri Raj]

Congratulations.

[Tanner Elton]

And that represents roughly about over 80 million. Yeah, 80 million. And that's over 80% of the CTV universe.

[Peter V.]

Now that is phenomenal.

[Tanner Elton]

So for brands and advertisers that we want precision, we want relevancy, we can give that to them at a scale that's never been had before.

[Sri Raj]

That is a big deal. So the future came up. So I have to ask you a future question.

[Tanner Elton]

Yeah, I love it.

[Sri Raj]

But I'm not going to ask you to predict, I'm going to ask you to envision.

[Tanner Elton]

Okay.

[Sri Raj]

So how do you envision the future of advertising sales evolving over the next few years, particularly the rise of streaming services and E commerce integration? You know, with my naive mind having come from a brand brand background in cpg, Amazon is one of the only successful publishers who, who operates retail, who has become national media at this point.

[Tanner Elton]

Yeah.

[Sri Raj]

So I gotta imagine the Roku one is a massive, massive Massive adrenaline boost in that national media endeavor. But more importantly, tell us what's going on next few years. What does this mean for you, for Amazon, with the rise of streaming services and as well as the fact that the consumer is nearly 100% digital at this point? E Commerce.

[Tanner Elton]

Yeah. Well, I'll start by saying, having worked closely with you during your time, that you are an innovator and you have been looking at the future.

[Sri Raj]

Hallelujah.

[Tanner Elton]

You were ahead of the curve for a long time.

[Peter V.]

Please don't feed his ego. I have enough of a problem with it. I will take credit.

[Tanner Elton]

Oh, great. Now I'm gonna have to edit that out.

[Sri Raj]

Now I will take credit. First one to invest sports with Amazon. From a CPG standpoint.

[Tanner Elton]

You saw the vision and now what.

[Sri Raj]

A phenomenon that's become.

[Tanner Elton]

I remember sri. You and I were sitting at the Eagles game.

[Sri Raj]

Yes.

[Tanner Elton]

Against Minnesota. And the first. The first commercial break came in and we were watching.

[Sri Raj]

We were watching it live on the phone.

[Tanner Elton]

On the phone, on the sport. Yeah, yeah. And that was adapted by. We were both buying some cinnamon toast crust. Yep.

[Sri Raj]

The actual ad, I mean, that's like in real life, right? Like, it's so awesome. But tell us, man, how do you envision this going? There can't be bigger move.

[Tanner Elton]

So now when you. When you combine the most premium content out there, and I'd say what we're doing with Thursday Night Football, what we're doing, Prime Video now with those incredible shows and all of the different touch points where consumers want to go deeper into, whether that's podcasting, whether that's the books that they're reading, whether that's communities where they want to talk about it in places like Twitch, being able to seamlessly connect all those consumer behaviors and bring it back into the transactions, now we're making it easier for you to discover, easier for you to learn more, and now easier to transact. That is the future of that consumer behavior and how we are enabling brands to really take advantage of having more meaningful conversations with those consumers as well.

[Sri Raj]

So I'm envisioning friction free, browsing, hunting, experiencing, and then check out all the way to delivery.

[Tanner Elton]

Yeah. All 100%. And from a content standpoint, when we're talking about IMDb, like, we go there and we say, well, who was this and what. Well, now from. From that standpoint, I'll use the Summer I Turn Pretty, which has been a phenomenal show for us. Right. Love it.

[Peter V.]

Got hooked on it immediately. Binge watched the whole thing in one day.

[Tanner Elton]

Yeah, that's Impressive.

[Sri Raj]

One day.

[Tanner Elton]

Who's it gonna be, Pete?

[Peter V.]

I totally watched. I just watched the first episode.

[Sri Raj]

You deserve a chairman.

[Peter V.]

And I looked it like I'm just gonna binge it.

[Tanner Elton]

I mean, we can all relate, right?

[Peter V.]

There you go. I remember you remember the summer you turned pretty sree.

[Sri Raj]

There we go.

[Tanner Elton]

What year was that?

[Sri Raj]

I'm still pretty. I'm still pretty dark age. Maybe not you guys, but me.

[Peter V.]

Yes, yes. Last millennium.

[Tanner Elton]

Yeah, that's right. What's, what's amazing about that though is it's a best selling book.

[Peter V.]

Yeah.

[Tanner Elton]

And then it becomes this incredible show and people are talking about it on Pocket and then the merchandising around the show, it's there. So now we have it. So on Amazon it's shop the show where you can watch the show and see the product real time. You see the IMDb, who's what and where and what else have they done. So that experience becomes all encompassing. So the content you're watching, the way that you can consume, the brands associated with it, really, to me, that's going to be the future of how we engage with content and how brands can really take advantage of it as well.

[Peter V.]

Yep. Let me remind our audience that today we're speaking with Tanner Elton. He is the vice president of US Advertising sales at a little niche retailer called Amazon. All right. In your role in advertising, you obviously deal with quite a number of vendors and sellers that are, that are looking to leverage the marketplace you've created to sell their products. How has your relationships with the big major brands, the enterprise brands, evolved during your time at Amazon? Where have you gotten to in terms of your relationships with them and how.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Did you get there?

[Tanner Elton]

Depending on the brand and the industry, it can vary. So we're talking to CPG companies. That's very specific in terms of the challenges, the opportunities, the needs that they have. Talking to entertainment companies, a little bit different, travel companies, et cetera. What I will say is those would.

[Peter V.]

Be typically like not. There'd be some non endemic.

[Tanner Elton]

Yeah, not sold on Amazon.

[Peter V.]

Right, Exactly.

[Tanner Elton]

And even I can talk a little bit about, about that, how that's evolved where it's very easy for, no pun intended, for brands to think about Amazon and put us in a box.

[Peter V.]

Sure.

[Tanner Elton]

We know who you are.

[Peter V.]

Brown box with the blue tape on it. Yeah. The beautiful smile.

[Tanner Elton]

Everyone gets excited when it shows up on your doorstep.

[Peter V.]

Who doesn't?

[Tanner Elton]

Right. And it's. And I totally get that. But the, the reality is we're not in a box. Or if we are, it's a Very, very large box, very big box. And so the, the evolution of how brands have been engaging with us and working with us has gone to, well, I sell my product, can you help me sell more of it to, well, how do I engage with these customers to drive action activity off of Amazon? How do I engage to make my brand more relevant everywhere? How can I do this and think about all the sales that my, that are meaningful, not just what's happening on Amazon? And that's where the conversations have really changed. The other thing I would say is part of that we talked a little bit earlier about that spirit of innovation and how we evolve the amount of conversations that we're now having with major brands, major partners on innovation, how do we build together, what's next? Like that, those are conversations this week at Cannes. Every meeting we're talking about that. So the evolution of those relationships, how we think about, again, the art of the possible, that's where the focus has really turned to, which has been super exciting.

[Peter V.]

And you're offering them through your mechanism, some really powerful performance marketing measurement. That's why it's great for big brands and small brands to come to Amazon to innovate because you give them the performance measurement that they crave to understand. Is this actually working?

[Tanner Elton]

Yeah. And I would say what they're building with us is leading to more innovation and more understanding, you know, for us. When you think about all that incredible content, the underpinning technology that's being built to service that, to simplify it, Amazon, dsp, etcetera, that's really where we're seeing a lot of like leaps and bounds and huge strides forward that we're just thrilled about.

[Peter V.]

By the way, I should make mention of the fact at my house, when my Echo device sends the ping, my daughter runs over and asks Alexa to play the notification. When she hears that it's a box, she starts screaming, daddy, yeah, there's a new package. We have to go outside right now.

[Tanner Elton]

I love that.

[Peter V.]

And see, we don't know where it's gonna be, the side door, front door, whatever. But it's a big adventure for us. So we love the big boxes arriving.

[Tanner Elton]

Isn't that amazing?

[Sri Raj]

I missed this with my 25 year old and 20 year old, they're like, dad, they don't, dad, go get the.

[Peter V.]

Dad, just go get my package.

[Sri Raj]

I celebrate boxes they outsource to you. My wife and I still do. So talking about, we've talked quite a bit about innovation, evolution, being there for the customer, putting the customer right at the center of all actions. And one of those is the ad platform itself. I'm sure you'll get a lot of feedback from your advertisers, irrespective of whether they're large or small, those that advertise in the marketplace as well as Those that are true 1P partners of yours. What mechanism exists to get that feedback in from the advertisers? And then how do you all actually take that to heart and how does it reflect back in the product evolution itself?

[Tanner Elton]

There's actually a lot of mechanisms that we have in place to be able to stay in touch with our advertising customers at scale. Whenever we give feedback, we give opportunities for all the brands we work with to provide it directly to us so they can actually submit feedback. And we review that weekly. We also through our sales channels we have voice of the customer, voice of sales. They come in and say these are the things that the pain points, these are the evolutions that we need to solve for. And again, that's a weekly behavior to me, taking those insights and then saying, great, now we need to move that to one on one personal conversations where we can get in and say here's the challenge. We agreed with this, this is what we're trying to solve for. Understanding the multiple levels of why this is critical and then building paths forward so we can streamline and hold ourselves accountable to. Here are the milestones that we need to hit an example of that. Yesterday we were in a meeting with a shop and we were talking about some of the challenges that they've been having working through some of our tech, right? And we're really excited about the capabilities, but there's some integration points that they need. So they're like, okay, great, let's make a plan, let's build out a timeline. This is what we're going to get here, this is why we're doing it. And let's set a date for August 1st to have this completed so that real time, constant feedback. It matters. But what that really leads to is the sit downs, the meaningful conversations to say now here's how we're going to tackle it and solve for it.

[Peter V.]

When SRI and I have the opportunity to talk to industry thought leaders and ask them what are some of the challenges that are faced in the advertising industry? They often bring up things like multi touch attribution or customer long term value or other things. I want to hear from you. What do you think are some of the biggest challenges facing the advertising industry today and how do you think Amazon Ads is positioned to address those?

[Tanner Elton]

If I Had to distill down. This is just my own personal opinion. The biggest challenge that we have is moving people away from what they're used to.

[Peter V.]

That is a big, big. Yeah. Get changing habits changes really hard.

[Tanner Elton]

I come in and I do that and this is the tool that I use and I understand and I'll give you an example. For me, a little unrelated. I have an iPhone.

[Peter V.]

Yep.

[Tanner Elton]

Love my iPhone. I decided five years ago to try a different phone after three days. I know of not knowing where all the buttons were and all the.

[Peter V.]

You won't get the blue bubble. You understand the.

[Tanner Elton]

Yeah, but it's a better camera. And it's green.

[Peter V.]

But it's green.

[Tanner Elton]

But I just know how to use this.

[Sri Raj]

Peter's got a Mac. I've got a PC. He's been trying to convince me don't do it.

[Tanner Elton]

Sree.

[Sri Raj]

It hasn't worked out.

[Tanner Elton]

Don't stick with the PC.

[Sri Raj]

It hasn't worked out.

[Tanner Elton]

But it is. So it's that changing humor behavior. So we'll come in and we'll say we've proven better performance, we've proven better results. But when somebody your hands on keywords is like, but I'm just used to doing it this way. That change. It's a lot of inertia that you need to say like let's keep it focused. So yeah, the solution to that is simplification.

[Peter V.]

Okay.

[Tanner Elton]

We talked about AI a little bit earlier and the language models we've been developing a lot of those changes that you could get better results if you know how to code. If you can do this well now if you have a voice and you have an idea and get the outcome.

[Sri Raj]

You need, if can be real, real.

[Tanner Elton]

Life, if can be real. Right. And that, and that's that to me is, well, how do you get people there? It's that simplification process. I know the results are going to be stronger. I know the data is second to none. But now you need to make it easy for me.

[Sri Raj]

How awesome. We wouldn't have expected anything less from Amazon though. I got. I'm going to wrap it up with this question and it's a two part question from your perspective, Tanner. Why should advertisers believe that Amazon is the best place for them to build their brands? Now I'm going to caveat at this and say SRI is already there and you know, she's already been there. But we want our audience to hear straight from you. And the second part, which, which I'm going to ask you this again after you answer this first part is, what advice would you give to brands listening to this show on what is the best in class partnership? So let's do it in two parts. First one, what's the reason for them to believe that Amazon is the best place for them to build their brands?

[Tanner Elton]

Well, the good news is we're not asking you to have blind belief. The reason is because we can show you. Right. You can actually see the results, the performance. That's why you should believe. Right. This is one of those few instances we talked about belief. We say seeing is believing.

[Peter V.]

Yeah.

[Tanner Elton]

And that's where we have a lot of confidence and conviction on what we're doing is I don't need you to just take my word for it. I can show you the superior performance better.

[Peter V.]

They're from Missouri, the show me state.

[Sri Raj]

He's making me think about the Imagine Dragons. So, so show me is. Show me is one of the best ways because then the brand gets to experience it and the brand gets to knows. But then what is your advice to those same brands on what is the best in class partnership? So they can indeed build their brand. Because if you come in halfway in and you don't go all the way or you barely experience it, you're not going to be the most satisfied person and then you're going to complain.

[Tanner Elton]

So what is your advice specifically with working with Amazon ads? It's remove any constructs that you have of what's possible and be open to the fact that we're now in a different, playing a different game.

[Sri Raj]

So bring the challenge at hand, try to solve it and then look for the tools and the various capabilities within the ads platform. Whereas walking in with a preconstrued notion that here's the way and that's the way we're going to do it.

[Tanner Elton]

Don't come in with the solution before you understand the challenges and the opportunities to solve them. Because again, right, there's a, there's there's this whole universe of ways through the Amazon canvas where we can engage with customers, right. Whether it's podcasting, whether it's Twitter, IMDb, through the Amazon DSP, Fire TV, the shows that we have, the live sports. If you come in and you say, well, I know what I exactly what I need to do, you're going to be missing a bigger opportunity and there's other times where we can over engineer things and I'll give you an example of that. Marketers forever say I've got the perfect targeting stream, exactly who I need to engage with because it's going to drive the most sales that I have. Back in the day when we were selling DVDs, a lot of DVDs. You know, the most important insight was this person buys DVDs.

[Peter V.]

That is pretty big, right?

[Tanner Elton]

And it's. And that would outperform all the best intentions is like, okay, so. No, because, you know, it's. People say, well, this is the. The demo I'm going after. This is the. The individuals. Like, you know what you're going after. People that want to buy DVDs can.

[Sri Raj]

Get easier than that.

[Tanner Elton]

And you'd see that the. There was. There was very little consistency on, like, the. The demo splits for that type of data. And that's the case with a lot of things. So when you have. When you've made up your mind before you've gone into it, that's when you limit yourself.

[Sri Raj]

Gotcha.

[Peter V.]

Now, Tanner, I'm tempted to ask you, how long before IMDb starts to include podcasts in their.

[Sri Raj]

Oh, wait. And then I want to.

[Tanner Elton]

I want to give you guys some credits.

[Sri Raj]

You said podcasting is one of those universes now where brands can build themselves. Do you know of any podcasters that might be helping build economic brands who.

[Tanner Elton]

Are doing it right now?

[Sri Raj]

Yeah, you might know.

[Peter V.]

Okay. Okay.

[Sri Raj]

Is it the CPG guys?

[Tanner Elton]

You know, as long as we'll take an intro now that you've hit 500 episodes.

[Sri Raj]

There we go.

[Tanner Elton]

Who can ignore this?

[Sri Raj]

There we go.

[Peter V.]

Should we start referring to ourselves in the third person? The CPG guys? Yeah, I think that kind of evokes you.

[Sri Raj]

Those three. The Peter.

[Tanner Elton]

The Peter.

[Sri Raj]

Yeah, the Peter.

[Tanner Elton]

The Peter, and the Sri. The Papashary.

[Sri Raj]

There we go.

[Peter V.]

Before we go, I'd be remiss. You mentioned at the beginning you've had a couple of big announcements. You talked about the one at Roku, I think we saw as we woke up this morning, another one that you'd maybe make mention of continuing on the.

[Tanner Elton]

Path of significant addressability, making things easier against the best content in the world. We also made an announcement in a partnership that we have with Disney, where we now direct integration with Drax versus their service into all of their premium content, utilizing the signals that we have, which, again, we could not be more excited about what this means for brands.

[Peter V.]

Yeah, I think this is huge in terms of the. Now again, the reach that Amazon can measure against.

[Sri Raj]

Well, congratulations on both the announcements. Congratulations on being you as well as being Amazon. Making it easy.

[Tanner Elton]

Yeah.

[Peter V.]

There you go, Tanner. Thanks for taking time out of Cannes to spend time with our humble little podcast.

[Tanner Elton]

Not so little anymore.

[Peter V.]

Not so little.

[Sri Raj]

The Peter.

[Peter V.]

The Peter.

[Sri Raj]

The Peter.

[Peter V.]

Okay. But thank you for joining us today.

[Tanner Elton]

We really appreciate it. And to be on the 500th episode. What a privilege and an honor for me to be here. So thank you guys, both. This was fantastic.

[Peter V.]

All right.

[F]

Sri and I were incredibly honored to have Tanner join us for the monumental 500th episode. But more importantly, we want to thank you, our followers who provide us feedback, who encourage us, who want to meet us when we're out in the wild at a trade conference or walking along a street. We always love people coming up and giving us the incredible gratitude that we've received for the work we do and our mission to help educate and entertain this industry about what's transpiring the world of Omni Channel Digital. We are incredibly appreciative of the over 37,000 followers on LinkedIn who look to us for education and entertainment, and we look forward to the next 500 episodes here on the CPT Guys Podcast. Goodbye.

[Unknown]

The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPG Guys, LLC or the individual author, hosts, or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any subject matter. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPG Guys, llc. The views expressed by guests are their own, and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. The views expressed by CPT Guys, LLC do not represent the views of their.

[Peter V.]

Employers or the entity they represent.

[Unknown]

CPT Guys, LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or other damages arising out of any individual's use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we present in this podcast.