In September, Amazon notified applicants that they were recipients of the Summer 2021 Amazon Research Awards, a program that provides unrestricted funds and AWS Promotional Credits to academic researchers investigating research topics across a number of disciplines.
Today, we’re publicly announcing those five recipients — the first recipients of the Amazon Advertising Call for Proposal. Each award is intended to support the work of one to two graduate students or postdoctoral students for one year, under the supervision of a faculty member.
Proposals submitted to the Amazon Advertising call for proposals were reviewed based on the potential impact to the research community, quality of the scientific content, and relevance for Amazon Advertising customers.
Recipients have access to more than 300 Amazon public datasets, and can utilize AWS AI/ML services and tools through their AWS Promotional Credits. Recipients also are assigned an Amazon research contact who offers consultation and advice along with opportunities to participate in Amazon events and training sessions.
Additionally, Amazon encourages the publication of research results, presentations of research at Amazon offices worldwide, and the release of related code under open-source licenses.
“The world of advertising has radically transformed in the past few years, and is expected to further change tremendously in the coming years," said Oded Netzer, Amazon Scholar and Arthur J. Samberg Professor of Business at Columbia University. "We are very happy to collaborate with our grant recipients, using state-of-the-art research to better address our customers’ needs in this dynamic environment.”
ARA funds proposals up to four times a year in a variety of research areas. Applicants are encouraged to visit the ARA call for proposals page for more information or send an email to be notified of future open calls.
Below is the list of summer 2021 award recipients, presented in alphabetical order.
| Recipient | University | Research title |
| Maarten Gijsenberg | University of Groningen | When, Where, What Amount. How Smarter Decisions on the WWW of Advertising Budget Allocation Grow Consumer Mindset Metrics and Brand Sales |
| Zhu Han | University of Houston | Understanding Consumers’ Attention on Online Advertisements: An Ambulatory Eye-Tracking Study with Machine Learning Techniques |
| Ilya Morozov | Northwestern University | Display Advertising and Consumer Search |
| Koushyar Rajavi | Georgia Institute of Technology | Advertising Diversification |
| Yingfei Wang | University of Washington - Seattle | Understanding Video Advertising Effectiveness |
