Create a 12-month strategy to grow Advertising among deal seekers

Problem Statement Description

Product context: Amazon is a commerce, logistics, media, devices, and cloud company; its products include Marketplace, Prime, Prime Video, Alexa devices, ads, fulfillment, and AWS.

Amazon is looking to grow its Advertising business by better serving “deal seekers” — customers who actively search for discounts, promotions, coupons, limited-time offers, and event-based deals such as Prime Day, Black Friday, or seasonal sales. These customers are highly intent-driven but may also be price-sensitive, promotion-hopping, and less loyal to specific brands, creating both an opportunity and a challenge for advertisers.

In this strategy interview, you are expected to define a 12-month growth strategy for Amazon Advertising focused on this segment. Your answer should consider how Amazon can create value for shoppers, advertisers, and Amazon’s broader retail and media ecosystem without degrading customer trust or the shopping experience.

You should frame the market opportunity, evaluate strategic options, identify trade-offs, and explain how you would prioritize initiatives over a one-year horizon. Consider Amazon’s unique assets across commerce, first-party shopping signals, logistics, Prime, devices, media properties, and retail events, while also recognizing competitive pressure from retail media networks, search advertising platforms, marketplaces, and commerce-enabled media companies.

The experience should consider:

- Who “deal seekers” are, how they discover deals today, and where advertising can add value versus create friction

- Advertiser needs across brands, sellers, vendors, and agencies trying to reach promotion-sensitive shoppers

- Strategic options for growing revenue, engagement, advertiser adoption, or campaign effectiveness

- Trade-offs between monetization, customer trust, relevance, price perception, and long-term brand value

- Amazon’s right to win compared with Walmart, Shopify, Google, social platforms, and other retail media players

- Key risks, including ad overload, low-quality promotions, margin pressure, attribution complexity, and advertiser ROI concerns

- Decision gates, milestones, and success indicators across a 12-month roadmap

The goal is to present a clear, defensible strategy that shows how Amazon Advertising could grow with deal-seeking customers while strengthening the broader Amazon flywheel of selection, convenience, customer trust, and advertiser performance.