For years, Amazon’s advertising business has been powerful but self-contained. Brands could reach people based on what they did on Amazon, but what shoppers bought at the grocery store, the pharmacy or the beauty counter was largely invisible. A new integration changes that.
Advertisers can now target Amazon users who also shop at Walmart, Dollar General, Kroger, Walgreens, and Sephora. They can reach these shoppers through display and video ads. This capability is powered by data firm Attain. The company has connected its network to Amazon Ads DVA+, Amazon’s platform for buying display and video advertisements.
What the integration does
Attain’s network covers purchase behavior across tens of thousands of merchants and brands. Through the DVA+ integration, advertisers can build audience segments from that data and activate them across Amazon’s inventory. That includes Prime Video, as well as third-party inventory within Amazon’s network.
In practice, a brand could build a segment of shoppers who regularly buy a competing product at a big-box retailer or a local grocer, then reach those same people through Amazon’s ad placements.
Attain CEO Brian Mandelbaum explained the integration to Adweek. He said it connects shopping activity on Amazon with purchases at other retailers. These include Target, Walmart, and local grocery stores.
Why this matters for advertisers
1. It fills a measurement and targets the blind spot. Most consumer spending still happens outside any single retailer’s walls. Amazon’s first-party data is rich, but it tells only part of the story. Layering in purchase behavior from other retailers gives advertisers a fuller picture of who their customers are and where they spend.
2. It makes conquesting easier. Reaching shoppers who currently buy a rival brand, or who buy in your category at a different store, is one of the oldest goals in advertising. Purchase-based segments are generally more reliable than guesses built on demographics or browsing habits.
3. It brings offline-heavy categories closer to Amazon. Grocery, health and beauty, and dollar-store goods are categories where much of the buying happens in physical stores. Retailers such as Kroger, Walgreens, Dollar General and Sephora anchor those categories. Advertisers selling in them can now use Amazon’s reach, including premium video on Prime Video, with audience signals from where their shoppers actually spend.
A shift in how retail media works
Retail media has traditionally worked on a simple premise: the retailer owns the shopper data, so brands buy ads on that retailer’s properties. Each retail media network has been its own walled garden, and brands had to run separate campaigns, with separate reporting, on each one.
The Attain integration points toward a more open model. Amazon’s ad tools are being fed by data that originates elsewhere, which means a brand’s Amazon campaign is no longer limited to Amazon’s own view of the customer. For marketers who already juggle several retail media networks, that could simplify planning, since one buying platform can draw on signals from many retailers.
It also raises the competitive stakes. Amazon gains a stronger pitch to advertisers who might otherwise have spent on rival retail media networks, since it can now offer targeting informed by those rivals’ shoppers. How retailers like Walmart and Kroger respond, whether by tightening their own data partnerships or building similar bridges, is worth watching.
Questions advertisers should ask
Any new targeting option deserves scrutiny before budgets move. Media buyers evaluating this capability should consider:
- Match rates and scale. How many Amazon users can actually be matched to purchase behavior at other retailers, and are segments large enough to run at volume?
- Data freshness. How recently is the purchase data updated, and how quickly do segments reflect changes in behavior?
- Measurement. Can results be tied to actual sales, including purchases that happen outside Amazon?
- Privacy and consent. How is data collected, anonymized and governed, particularly as regulations evolve?
- Pricing. Does the added data come with extra fees on top of standard DVA+ costs?
The answers will determine whether this becomes a core part of campaign planning or a niche tool for specific categories.
Conclusion
Amazon has long been where shoppers go to buy. Now it is also a place where advertisers can reach people based on what they buy everywhere else. By connecting Attain’s cross-retailer purchase data to DVA+, Amazon is giving brands a way to link what happens on its platform to what happens at Walmart, Kroger, Sephora and beyond.
For advertisers, the opportunity is sharper targeting across display and video, including Prime Video. The task now is to test it carefully, measure the results and see whether cross-retailer audiences deliver the lift the pitch promises.
