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Amazon advertising - how to successfully advertise on Amazon

Everyone knows Amazon as the most popular online marketplace in the US, a global force and as a reliable dropshipping platform. Many business owners and marketers from various industries sell internationally on Amazon, optimizing their products for the platform’s requirements, and seeking for new ways to compete for a place under the eCommerce sun. 

 

At the same time, many sellers don’t know that Amazon is the third-largest digital ad platform after Google and Facebook, meaning it has numerous opportunities for promoting your business straight through the source. 

 

Today we are looking into Amazon ads and all the perks they bring along to your existing advertising strategy. 

 

What is Amazon Advertising?

 

You may not have heard about Amazon Advertising yet, but you surely are familiar with Amazon Marketing Services (AMS). Well, it’s the same thing but rebranded. 

 

Like Google Ads, Amazon Ads allows you to set up an account to place targeted PPC (pay-per-click) or PPS (pay-per-sale) advertising not only across the Amazon shopping platform, but also on Fire TV, Kindle, Standard Media, IMDb, Twitch, and more. 

 

Amazon Advertising was created to help sellers to improve brand awareness, drive purchases, and increase customer loyalty. Also, having all of your advertising efforts concentrated in one platform allows you to access measurable performance indicators through a direct channel, rather than relying on third-party solutions. 

 

Selling globally on Amazon comes with the tools you need to create a successful online marketplace.

 

Currently, Amazon Advertising has more than 300 million active customer accounts worldwide and supports all of the essential general advertising formats (more on that in a second). 

 

Benefits of Amazon Advertising

 

With all that in mind, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Amazon ads come with many benefits for sellers. In 2020, an average brand advertising on Amazon could hope for 382 clicks, more than 100k impressions and nearly a 10% conversion rate daily.  That is not to mention other perks Amazon ads bring to the table: 

 

  • safe advertising environment
  • higher reach
  • CPC model
  • optimized ad creatives
  • improved product visibility & sales rates
  • built-in DSP 
  • instant tracking-based reporting

 

… and more. A look into the different types of ads supported by the world’s largest online marketplace. Anyone selling on Amazon overseas, in the USA or in other countries can take a shortcut to a larger, more engaged audience by taking advantage of the keyword research that has already been done to make this online business kind of them all. 

 

Let’s turn to the different advertising formats that you’ll find on Amazon’s global selling platform. 

 

Types of Amazon Advertising

 

In order for sellers advertising on Amazon to gain an edge on the competition, the platform supports all of the most popular ad formats and even offers its users the chance to improve the effects of their advertising thanks to a custom DSP. But before we talk about that, let’s see exactly what kind of ads you can run through Amazon. 

 

Sponsored Products 

This is by far the most popular and, so, the most familiar type of native advertising. Amazon advertising offers Sponsored Product ads on a CPC (cost-per-click) basis. Here, the advertising engine generates ads from your product listings and provides them in shopping results for the audience matching your targeting criteria. 

 

Sponsored Brands 

These search ads work similarly to Sponsored Products, however with Sponsored Brands, instead of seeing just one listing per search query, a buyer would get a shopping result featuring a custom headline, brand logo, and multiple products to browse through. With this form of Amazon Advertising sellers can promote their entire brand at once, rather than focusing on one specific product. 

 

Amazon ads can bring up an entire brand marketplace. 

 

Product Display Ads 

Display advertising has been getting a lot of hate lately, partially due to the rising banner blindness or growing popularity of ad blockers. However, Amazon lets sellers combat these trends by providing them with an effective programmatic engine for creating visually appealing effective display ads straight from the platform. 

 

With Sponsored Display advertising you can reach shoppers searching for the products similar to the ones you offer and save time on graphics - everything will be pulled and generated automatically based on your product description. 

 

Video & Audio Ads 

 

To really take your Amazon advertising a step further and expand your advertising reach beyond a typical ad manager’s reach, Amazon offers audio and video advertising. Audio ads will appear during breaks in playback for the audience subscribed to Amazon Music and will be available for all Alexa-enabled devices. 

 

Amazon’s video ads are slightly different, though. They appear outside of video content, thus encompassing more platforms. As such, your video advertising can be available on all connected TVs, Prime Video streaming service, IMDb, Twitch, and more. 

 

Other supported features of Amazon Advertising

 

As a part of its advertising engine, Amazon is now offering Stores - essentially a website builder that can help you get discovered by shoppers faster as Amazon provides you with a space to share your mission and your products. The platform basically lets you create a custom website for your products without having to rely on any third-party partners, thus significantly cutting your expenses. 

 

Thanks to Amazon Advertising learning console you can master all the diverse ad formats and techniques the platform has to offer, earn certifications, and achieve greater marketing results for your business. 

 

And then, there is Amazon DSP. As a typical demand-side platform does, Amazon DSP allows you to leverage programmatic advertising to access audiences on and off Amazon websites. DSP provides you with drill-down audience reports, valuable customer insights, and the most promising publishers - all in one place. 

 

How to get started with Amazons Ads

 

Are you sold on the unique advertising value your favorite online marketplace has to offer? Perfect! Now you’re probably wondering how to effectively run your first advertising campaign. 

 

As we already mentioned at the beginning, the platform itself is highly intuitive and easy-to-navigate, which is why you shouldn’t have any problems with launching your very first ad campaign. Instead, we’ll provide you with insightful good-to-knows before you head to the editor and start advertising. 

 

1️⃣ Organize your campaigns based on product category 

 

Don’t try to bundle-promote all of your inventory at once. Instead, take a close look at the niche categories where the products you want to advertise fall and set up several Amazon ad campaigns for each of them. 

 

2️⃣ Invest time into creating a compelling yet specific ad copy 

 

Ad creatives are important, yet Amazon can take care of them for you on its own. Copy, however, is your chance to shine as a creative genius. But be careful as one wrong word can cost you quite a high ROI.
 

3️⃣ Gain exposure by bidding on popular brands with similar products 

 

This one is particularly helpful when it comes to display advertising. Make sure to do your product research and bid not only on the keywords your competitors are using, but also try using their brand names for your ad to pop up when a user is searching for a specific type of product. 

 

4️⃣ Don’t underestimate the power of negative keywords 

 

While working on your keyword research, try to think of the search queries you don’t want your ad to appear for. Remember, on a CPC model, whenever the user clicks - you pay. So you’d want to ensure that your ad only appears to the people who will actually consider buying from you. 

 

5️⃣ Use long-tail keywords 

 

One last piece of advice on your choice of keywords. You have higher chances of winning the bids on specified long-tail keywords rather than generalized ones. Choose them wisely. 

 

6️⃣ Experiment with different bids based on performance 

 

Don’t forget to optimize your bids over time, based on how your particular ad is performing. If you own a clothing store, a bid that worked for a t-shirt may turn out to be completely useless for a blazer. 

 

7️⃣ Test different ad types 

 

This advice is true for all sellers trying to advertise on Amazon. Don’t limit yourself to native advertising just because you’ve heard display is dead. Experiment with different ad formats, see what works best for what kind of products and learn from your observations. 

 

Optimizing your Amazon Ads

 

As you probably know, optimization is everything in digital marketing and Amazon Advertising is no exception. If you want to achieve the best results from your ads you need to be ready to constantly track their effectiveness and optimize them when needed. 

 

There is no magic fix here - every seller’s situation is different, just like every business is unique. However, there are certain optimization best practices that are musts: 

 

  • analyze performance of each of your campaigns regularly
  • A/B test everything: creatives, copy, CTAs, target audiences, etc. 
  • rely on the numbers but trust your gut as well 
  • make sure your timing is right - connect your promotions to events, days of the week, etc.
  • optimize your landing page as well as your ads for maximum efficiency 

 

Summary

 

Getting started with a brand new solution for digital advertising might be stressful, but with Amazon Advertising you will soon see that it is worth the effort and easier than you think. 

 

Think about the opportunity you have with Amazon:

 

  • A listing on the world’s #1 retail website
  • A partner that takes care of payments and, if needed, fulfillment and shipping the product
  • The chance to sell internationally from a single user interface
  • The ability to be a click away from customers in all Amazon shipping countries
  • A partner that takes customers through every step, even shipping charges and rates, leaving you only with the need to provide the product

 

The platform is more intuitive than Google and more straight-to-the-point than Facebook, so don’t let this opportunity go to waste. Follow the advice from this post that you found especially useful and you’ll be able to take your campaigns to greatness in no time!

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