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Beginners Guide: Amazon Advertising
Advertising is now an integral part for most brands that decide to list their products on Amazon and having a good understanding of the various types of advertising products could be the difference between success and failure on the platform. The advertising solutions offered within Amazon are designed to be used by all brands - regardless of the size of your product range or budget. Below we will give you a brief overview of the following:
The different types of advertising formats available
How these formats appear on site
The targeting method of each advert
Pt. 1 - Sponsored Product Campaigns
This is the most common ad type and usually where sellers start their Amazon advertising journey. It’s the most straightforward form of PPC to set up and usually delivers to best ROI due to its relative simplicity.
Sponsored Product ads appear both at the top of the Amazon search result page and throughout the organic results, as well as on different areas of competing product listing pages.
Types of Targeting
Auto: With this type of targeting, Amazon will decide which keywords to target based on the type of product you’re selling. It’s a great way to start running ads if you’re unsure of your keywords or your running short on time. You simply need to set a daily ad budget and a default bid for your advert and your ready to go! You can continually review your results and the keywords that are converting for your campaigns in the reports section, however you are unable to edit your auto campaigns at a keyword level.
Manual: These campaigns rely completely on the seller to provide a list of keyword targets for the ads to run. Once you have your list of relevant keywords, there are 3 types of targeting that you can use:
Broad Match - Targeted keywords can appear in any order in a search query, and additional words may be included (Example, if your target keyword is “Dog food,” your ad will also appear for “Fresh dog and puppy food” and “dog food for sensitive stomachs”)
Phrase - Contains the exact phrase or sequence of keywords. Example Dog food for puppies and raw meat dog food would appear for this type of Ad.
Exact Match – Only the terms specified in the exact format you write them will be targeted, in this case only “Dog Food” searches will be targeted.
These types of ads are targeting keywords that have been pre-defined by you and are relevant to the products you are selling. You can also target other products which can be used to target your competitors’ listings instead of keywords. You can target your competitors’ ASINs, so your ads appear on their listing under the “Products related to this item” section, as shown above.
In order to run these types of ads, you must have the buy box on your product, if another seller is controlling the buy box your advert will not be served.
Pt. 2 - Sponsored Brand Campaigns
Previously known as Amazon Headline Search Ads, Sponsored Brands campaigns help customers discover and engage with your brand in prominent search placements and generate awareness and consideration with customisable ads that link directly to a landing page or a Store. The biggest advantage here is that there are no competitor listings in sight - just your products.
Sponsored Brand Ad Types
With Sponsored Brand Ads, you can choose from three formats: Product collection, Store spotlight, or Video.
Product Collection
The Product Collection ad type allows you to advertise up to three products at once, with the option to send traffic to your Amazon Store or a dedicated landing page. This appears at the top of search as a banner before any products come into view, this type of advert, therefore, gets a lot more impressions compared to other ad types.
Store Spotlight
This option is only open to brands that have an active brand store on Amazon and products that they are looking to advertise must be present within the brand store. This is a perfect type of ad to help cross-promote your products if you sell a range of products across multiple categories. It also allows you to show a range of products if you sell multiple complementary products within one category. There is also the option to link directly to store sub-pages to give customers more insights into your brand and USP’s.
Video
The video advert type is only open to brands with an active brand registry, it allows brands to target relevant keywords and serve customers a video advert in among search results. All video adverts automatically play meaning they are a good tactic for stopping customers scrolling. They are typically a very efficient advert as you are only charged once someone clicks on your video, if a customer has watched your ad and decided to click there is a much higher chance of conversion especially if your video is informative and explains the product well.
Before spending time creating your video advert, it’s a good idea to review Amazon’s video guidelines and also view competitor videos. Amazon recommends that your videos be short and informative—between 15–30 seconds. A good video will explain the products USP’s and show it solving a problem early within the video, if there is a voice-over on the advert also make sure there are subtitles on the screen. Our recommendations are as follows:
Best Practices for Product Video Ads
- Show the product in use
- Highlight the product USP’s/main uses early in the video
- Keep your video short and to the point, 15-30 seconds should be the target
- Add informative captions as by default videos play without sound
- Seamless video as it will continually loop
- Bright and bold colours help to stand out within a sea of white within search results
- No intro or fades, straight to the productSponsored Brand Ad Targeting
Similar to Sponsored Products, you can choose from two targeting options for your Sponsored Brand ads:
Keyword targeting - As the name suggests, you target the keywords relevant to your product
Product targeting - Select specific products, categories, brands, or other product features to target with your ads.
Pt. 3 - Sponsored Display Campaigns
Sponsored Display gives you the ability to reach relevant audiences on and off Amazon. That’s right: you can now advertise to—and retarget—customers on third-party websites and apps. To gain access to sponsored display you need to be brand registered or an Amazon vendor.
The biggest difference between Sponsored Display, Sponsored Products, and Sponsored Brands is how you target customers. Instead of targeting keywords or competitors’ products, you’ll target potential customers based on interests, shopping behaviours, and whether they’ve viewed your product’s detail page in the past.
Amazon defines Sponsored Display as “a self-service display advertising solution that helps you grow your business and brand on Amazon by engaging shoppers across the purchase journey, on and off Amazon.”
Essentially, this means Amazon keeps track of the products a given customer views on their site, and displays them again across Amazon search results, competitor listings, and the third-party websites or apps that customer uses.
Product Targeting Ads
Product targeting allows you to target customers who are browsing your products, your competitors’ products, or categories of interest. You also have the option to directly target competitor products and have your advert appear on their product page.
Audiences: Views re-marketing
With this targeting option, you can re-target customers who have previously viewed your listings. This allows you to target previous shoppers who have checked out your listing and serves as a reminder to check out your product again, as they have previously viewed your product there is a good chance they could convert the second time around. Your Display Ads will be shown both on and off Amazon to people who have viewed your product but not purchased it in the last 30 days.
Amazon Audiences
This allows you to target customers at the top of the marketing funnel. You have the option to target people based on their lifestyle, interests, life events and their recent in-market behaviour. This allows you to get a lot of eyes on your product and allows you to target people who might not know your product existed. Amazon is continually adding new audiences to target to allow you the opportunity to target niche audiences and also a much wider group based on a whole host of different identifiers.