In April, Amazon rolled out its new Buy with Prime program, an expansion of its Prime membership service to third-party retailers. While the program is still in its initial rollout phase, many experts believe it has the potential to shake up the online shopping and advertising landscape.
What is Buy with Prime?
Buy with Prime will allow retailers to add a “Buy with Prime” button on their own online shopping sites to offer Amazon Prime delivery service to customers who have an existing Prime subscription. That means customers will be able to experience Amazon’s seamless checkout, quick and free Prime delivery, and free returns when shopping from DTC retailers.
“This is another opportunity for Amazon to stick its Prime platform in front of consumers: brands get to take advantage of Amazon's robust fulfillment network, while Amazon gets access to additional customer data and increases their "stickiness" of Prime membership benefits,” says Zach Richiutti, Associate Vice President of Client Delivery at Kepler.
What Buy with Prime means for retailers
This new offering has the potential to bring the ease of the Amazon buying experience to any DTC online store without those retailers taking on the cost or logistics of offering a delivery service of that convenience or scale on their own.
Customers who already subscribe to Prime will likely appreciate this offering, which could make for a friction-less purchase process across the web, and direct to consumer retailers could see a boost in conversions and a decrease in abandoned shopping carts as a result, but the ease could come at a cost.
The biggest benefit Amazon could see from this offering is data. Using Buy with Prime checkout will allow Amazon to capture the first-party customer data retailers are seeking now that cookies are on their way out. While smaller retailers may feel that the benefits outweigh the costs, large retailers may see more value in owning their own first-party data in the long term.
What Buy with Prime means for advertisers
The data Amazon stands to gain from this offering has the potential to make its advertising solutions even more powerful for brands, making Amazon a must-have partner as its scale, reach, ad formats and inventory, and audience data mature.
“Assuming high adoption rates, Amazon continues to grow its treasure trove of consumer data, likely leading to even stronger audience signals for their ad platforms,” Andrew Fitzpatrick, Manager, Optimization and Innovation at Kepler.
While the immediate impact will be minimal, the long term growth and future-proofing of Amazon’s audience data is key to the program’s success.
“As Amazon expands their sphere of consumer touchpoints spanning shopping, viewing, checkout and distribution they become a more central and more future-proofed advertising partner for retailers and non-retailers alike,” says Hannah Grobmyer, Associate Vice President of Client Delivery and global Amazon lead at Kepler.
Buy with Prime is currently available by invitation, with no current date for a wider rollout. If you’re interested in how your brand can use Buy with Prime, sign up for Amazon’s interest list or contact us for help.
Kepler is an Advanced Amazon Sales Partner and a certified Amazon Marketing Cloud partner servicing retail and non-retail clients and agencies globally. Learn more about how we help brands succeed on Amazon.
