Amazon's Kelly MacLean on How the eCommerce Giant Built a Killer DSP

Sep 9, 2025

Kelly MacLean, Vice President at Amazon and a former professional soccer player, shares her journey from sports to ad tech. She discusses the transformation of Amazon's Demand-Side Platform from a single-use tool to a multi-functional powerhouse, enhancing performance by over 40%. Kelly highlights the innovative 'crystal box' AI approach, ensuring transparency in automated advertising. With Amazon's unique reach to over 80 million CTV households and industry-low fees, she reveals what's next in the ever-evolving landscape of digital advertising.

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ANECDOTE

From Soccer Pitch To Ad Tech Leader

Kelly MacLean moved from pro soccer to ad tech, teaching herself to code and leading engineering teams.
She helped scale Facebook’s ads business from about $4B to $100B before joining Amazon to tackle a new challenge.

INSIGHT

DSP Evolved From Single To Multi-Purpose

Amazon DSP began as a single-purpose tool for stores and sellers and needed re-architecting to serve all advertisers.
Kelly repositioned the DSP to be multi-purpose for full-funnel, cross-channel advertising.

INSIGHT

Rebuild Boosted Performance 40%

Amazon rebuilt both backend and frontend, re-architecting ad sourcing and models and embedding AI across the stack.
Those investments improved overall DSP performance by over 40%.

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🔖Chapters:

[00:01:12] - Kelly's Background: From Soccer to Ad Tech

[00:03:22] - Making the Move from Meta to Amazon

[00:04:44] - Amazon DSP's Evolution from Single to Multi-Purpose

[00:06:10] - Adapting to the Streaming TV Revolution

[00:07:31] - Technical Differentiators and Competitive Positioning

[00:13:30] - AI Integration and the "Crystal Box" Approach

[00:16:54] - The Future of Automated Advertising Agents

[00:18:03] - Impact of Changing Consumer Search Behavior

[00:19:56] - What's Next and Amazon Unboxed Preview

💡Takeaways:

🏆 Kelly MacLean's competitive background as a professional soccer player shaped her approach to building fast-moving, high-performing ad tech teams.

🔧 Amazon completely re-architected their DSP backend and frontend, moving from single-purpose to fully functioning multi-purpose platform, improving overall performance by over 40%.

📺 Amazon DSP is now the only platform offering authenticated reach to over 80 million CTV households in the US through partnerships with Roku and other premium publishers.

🤖 Amazon's "crystal box" approach to AI provides transparency and control while leveraging automation, contrasting with traditional "black box" systems.

💰 Amazon offers industry-leading low fees: 0% for programmatic guaranteed deals on Amazon properties and 1% across premium streaming publishers.

🎯 Performance Plus campaigns have driven over 51% improvement in customer acquisition costs through AI-powered optimization.

📱 Amazon launched Complete TV ahead of upfronts, using AI to help marketers plan, manage, and measure holistic streaming TV buys across platforms.

🔮 The future will likely combine simplified AI-driven products with complex expert features, as different campaigns and brands will require varying degrees of automation.

🏈 Live sports remains one of the "last best places" where consumers are truly engaged for long durations, making it increasingly valuable for advertisers.

📊 Amazon's approach focuses on deterministic identity and frequency capping to provide more efficient spend and clearer impact measurement.

Amazon DSP: https://advertising.amazon.com/solutions/products/amazon-dsp