Reaching small business owners isn’t easy. They cut across industries, regions and revenue brackets, which means they rarely fit into neat demographic definitions. And in a media landscape that fragments more each year, reaching them efficiently demands more than scale alone.
At the same time, the pressures they face are intensifying. According to a recent TD Insurance survey, one in three small business owners say increasing operating expenses are the biggest challenge they face today. And when margins tighten, decision-making becomes more deliberate. Business owners scrutinize value, weigh risk and expect solutions that reflect their reality.
For TD Insurance, that insight shaped its recent campaign with Amazon Ads. The goal was not simply to generate impressions, but to build a full-funnel strategy rooted in audience behavior. TD Insurance wanted to connect with small business owners at moments when flexibility, value and protection mattered most.
“Small business owners really do form a community in and of themselves,” says Samantha Monteiro, account director at Starcom leading the insurance portfolio. “They’re united by common values and challenges. They’re really looking to grow and sustain their businesses, and often they do this while wearing multiple hats.”
What unites small business owners isn’t easy-to-chart information like age or income level. It’s how they operate. Recent Amazon Ads research shows consumers are 2.1 times more unified by shared behaviors than by generation. So, in a fragmented landscape, behavioral signals offer a better path to relevance than age-based targeting ever could.
For TD Insurance, that meant prioritizing verified business activity over broad demographic assumptions.
The campaign activated across Prime Video, Amazon Business and Performance+, allowing TD Insurance to engage small business audiences across multiple moments in their journey, while keeping the message grounded in real business needs.
“We know that small business owners commonly use Amazon for their day-to-day operations,” says Alan Wen, vice president of marketing at TD Insurance. “So, we saw an opportunity to connect directly with business owners in a place where they’re already doing business.”
Upper-funnel awareness was built through Streaming TV ads within Prime Video. Amazon Business ensured relevance among buyers already operating within Amazon. Performance+ and Amazon DSP powered the performance layer, using behavioral signals and BIN targeting to ground the campaign in verified behavior rather than modeled assumptions.
Amazon Marketing Cloud then played a critical role in measurement. It allowed the team to analyze cross-channel reach, monitor duplication and refine delivery in near real time. That visibility ensured each solution worked in sync rather than competing for the same audience.
The results underscore the viability of the approach. Across Streaming TV ads and Amazon DSP, the TD Insurance campaign reached 7.6 million Canadian small business owners. Just as importantly, there was less than 3% audience overlap across solutions, meaning each tactic delivered meaningful incremental reach rather than repeated impressions.
“By making more meaningful connections with small business owners, we believe we can drive better business results,” says Wen of the approach.
By focusing on confirmed business behaviors and using BIN targeting to identify real small business owners, TD Insurance enhanced targeting accuracy and gained insights into consumer behaviours – and Amazon Marketing Cloud provided the transparency needed to validate performance and optimize the full-funnel mix.
In a fragmented media environment where small business owners defy demographic shortcuts, the campaign proved that precision, not just reach, drives effective scale. Streaming TV ads, Amazon DSP and Amazon Marketing Cloud made that balance possible.
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