Advertising on Amazon - Everything You Need to Know

Amazon is a huge online marketplace for companies to sell their products. They also have a built-in advertising platform, Amazon Advertising, that allows you to boost your products and increase your ROI. These self-service advertising products use a pay-per-click model. If you’re familiar with Google Ads, then you’ll likely be comfortable utilizing Amazon’s advertising model. With pay-per-click, you only have to pay for your ads when customers are actually clicking on them.

Amazon Advertising gives you a ton of options when it comes to how you want to advertise on their platform. You can choose from advertising options like Sponsored Products, Sponsored Display, Sponsored Brands, and more. You can also run ads through the Amazon DSP, or Demand Side Platform, to run video ads, display ads, and more. In this article, we’ll explain these advertising options in further depth and tell you how you can utilize them for your benefit.

What is Amazon Advertising?

Amazon advertising is a way for Amazon sellers and vendors to showcase their products on search pages or product pages. With so many products to choose from, advertising on Amazon is a way to ensure that potential customers are able to find your products.

In order to use the platform, you need to make sure you meet their eligibility requirements. If you’re not yet registered as a seller or vendor on Amazon, that will be your first step. Once you’re fully registered, you’ll have the Amazon Advertising platform at your disposal and you can start drawing in customers and maximizing your ROI like never before.

Types of Ad Formats

The Amazon Advertising platform lets you choose from a variety of ad formats. You can utilize as many of these formats as you want, customizing your ad campaigns to perfectly fit your product. Below, we’ve outlined some of the most commonly used ad formats on the platform.

Sponsored Product Ads

Sponsored Product Ads are perhaps one of the most commonly used ad formats used in Amazon Advertising. As with most Amazon Advertising formats, Sponsored Product Ads utilize the cost-per-click model and can target specific keywords, product groups, product listings, or they can be automated to let Amazon target keywords or products using their algorithm. While auto-targeting is useful for keyword or product target discovery, we find the best results with manually-targeted sponsored product campaigns. When you use this ad format, you can either choose the keywords you want to target or you can let Amazon choose the keywords for you with their algorithm. You’ll be able to set your budget and measure performance after putting your ads in place. 

In order to use Sponsored Product Ads, your products must fit into an eligible category. You can then serve your ads on desktop and mobile, reaching as many potential customers as possible. When your ad is clicked, it takes the customer directly to the product page, getting them as close as possible to a conversion. Sponsored Product Ads can really help you highlight a product and get more people looking at a product you want to push.

Sponsored Brand Ads

Sponsored Brand Ads can utilize keyword targets or product targets. However, unlike product ads, these ads allow you to highlight multiple products, create your own headline, and feature your brand logo all within the advertisement. When clicked, your customer will be sent right to the product or your brand’s store.

Both new brands and established brands can benefit from using the Sponsored Brand Ads. For new brands, you can quickly reach new shoppers and help them discover your product. Your ad creative can highlight what’s unique about your product and show them what you have to offer. 

If your brand is already established, you can make sure your brand-loyal customers continue to think of you when searching keywords that are related to your product. Established brands want to drive repeat business, and Sponsored Brand Ads are one of the best ways to do this. Plus, driving loyal customers to your Amazon brand Store could lead them to find new products of yours that they weren’t yet aware of.

Here are some of the primary goals that Sponsored Brand Ads might help you achieve:

• Bring more brand awareness to your brand. Help customers discover your product and become loyal customers
• Build your brand with custom advertisements. Perfectly communicate your messaging and show customers how you want your brand to be portrayed
• Quickly achieve high visibility for your brand on one of the largest online marketplaces in the world
• Highlight best sellers and drive sales for particular products that you want to push
• Promote your seasonal products at the right time and drive sales for them
• Bring shoppers to your brand store to view your entire portfolio of products instead of a specific product page

Sponsored Brand Ads also come with several reporting tools that help you get a clearer picture of your brand awareness. For instance, you can look at first-time customers and first-time sales for the year. This will give you an idea of how much visibility Sponsored Brand ads are helping you get.

Video Advertising - (sub group of sponsored brands ads)

Sponsored Brand ads can be displayed in a number of ways. One of the more engaging sub-categories of Sponsored Brand ads you might consider is video advertising. With video ads, you can use visuals and audio to give customers a better idea of what your brand represents.

Video ads can be a highly engaging way to quickly appeal to customers. Videos can quickly create an emotional connection. They’re also likely to draw a customer’s eye and get them to view the ad creative. When you create high-quality video advertisements, you’re sure to see a worthwhile return on investment.

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Sponsored Display

Sponsored Display ads are another self-service ad format that runs both on and off the Amazon platform. Amazon allows you to easily create display ads that are going to be served to relevant shoppers and help you convert. These display ads are built to engage customers who are browsing similar products and categories. The way you set these ads up is simple. You can select your audience and demographic, choose your bid amount and your daily budget, and then let Amazon know what products you want to feature.

Your Sponsored Display Ads are then generated and served in a format that includes an image of your product, the product rating, and a Show Now button that will take customers right to your product page to finish their purchase. As you run these display ads on the Amazon Advertising platforms, you’ll be able to optimize your bids and the platform itself will show you which products have the best chance of converting through their machine learning and automation features.

Native Ads

Native Shopping Ads are another great way to reach your customers. These ads are meant to integrate seamlessly into a web page, creating a more organic shopping experience for the user. These ads are meant to be innovative and stylishly designed to create a compelling advertising experience that customers are more likely to engage with. These ads should enhance the user experience while also driving them to click-through to the product page. Here are a few boxes that a good native ad should tick:

• The ads should be relevant to the content of the web page
• You should be willing to experiment with ad formats and choose the best one for your product
• The ads should be highly responsive
• Your ads should be optimized for mobile
• Your ads should be easily integrated into the web page

Native Ads are a great way to stay top-of-mind for customers and reach them when they’re already engaging with relevant content.

Building Campaigns on Amazon

As you can see, when it comes to building campaigns on Amazon, there are a lot of factors to consider. It can be hard to know where to begin. When you’re first starting out, it helps to test the water with some simple ad formats, like Sponsored Product Automatic ads. You can set these ads up in a few clicks and they have very flexible budgets. But, if you really want to take your Amazon advertising campaigns to the next level, you’re going to need an edge. That’s where Mayan comes in.

Boost Your Amazon FBA Business with Mayan

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