Since new buying habits are formed by consumers now and then, it is beneficial to understand Amazon advertising trends in 2022. This means that Amazon advertising campaigns should likewise adapt to the consumers’ new way of living to impact your overall Amazon campaign.      

Factors Affecting Consumer Buying Habits in 2022

A change in a consumer’s buying pattern indicates a lifestyle change. With the threat of COVID-19 looming in the background, more and more shoppers choose to purchase online rather than brick and mortar stores.

Health and safety have become a priority for shoppers. Hence, changing the way they interact with the consumer industry. 

Along with safety concerns, customers have changed purchasing habits because of the multiple purchase platforms made available by technology. Due to lockdowns and quarantine protocols, access to physical stores has become more limited.  

In turn, this led consumers to find alternative means to purchasing goods. Traditional shoppers turned to online shopping for convenience and accessibility. Therefore, highlighting the omnichannel aspect of the consumer and retail industry. 

Why Amazon Advertising Matters

Although Amazon ranks third to Facebook and Google Ad platforms, it is constantly growing with a reported 52.5% increase in 2020.

Apart from the growing popularity of Amazon ads among brands, the tech giant is also known to have a higher conversion rate than Google ads. In terms of analytics, Amazon advertising has a more user-friendly interface, making it an ideal platform for retailers.   

Amazon Advertising Trends in 2022

In line with the shifting customer purchasing behavior, numerous Amazon advertising trends have been observed in the past few months. Knowing some of these advertising trends and facts provides better insight and understanding of the correlation between your Amazon business and advertising. 

• Personalized Advertising

All across the globe, companies, brands, and entrepreneurs are recognizing the power of personalized advertising. Even Amazon acknowledges the influence of this advertising trend by introducing Amazon Follow as an email marketing portal.

Unlike previous years where advertisers and business owners simply relied on target keywords, the trend has now shifted to a more personalized approach to engage customers. 

Personalized advertising easily improves customer experience, increases brand loyalty, and drives revenue by identifying which medium customers engage with.

• Social Media Advertising

Another trending option for your advertising campaign in 2022 is social media advertising. The social media platform has become highly monetized and suitable for implementing conversion strategies. Thus, it is unsurprising that social media ad spending is projected to reach over $230 billion in 2022.

To give a starting point for your social media advertising campaign in 2022, you can start with Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. In particular, Facebook can help you meet specific advertising goals, including the following:

Brand Awareness: If you wish to extend the reach of your Amazon business and increase brand awareness, Facebook Ads can help you get your brand or product in front of potential customers. 

Consideration: If your advertising goal is for consumers to consider your product, Facebook ads can help drive traffic to your product detail page or Amazon store. Facebook advertising can help increase lead generation through interesting and relevant Facebook content. 

Targeting: Another feature social media advertising is known for is targetting. Your Facebook ad can be customized to target specific regions, demographics, and other data-driven audiences or targets.

• Video Advertising

Amazon is likewise cognizant of the benefits of video advertising for an online business. That is why they recently incorporated video platforms and interfaces within their platform. 

The use of video on an online selling platform tends to generate higher engagement rates as compared to static ads. This medium is considerably more versatile than traditional ads. Thus, worth considering for your Amazon ad campaign. 

Video advertising outside Amazon is also a good avenue for a product or brand advertisement. The increasing interest of consumers, social media users, and content creators with TikTok, Instagram Stories, and Facebook Reels, is expected to boost social media video ad spending up to $183 billion this year.

• Content Visualization  

Visual content in your advertising campaign can significantly improve your Amazon advertising goal. Visual content is a powerful way of catching consumers’ attention, for images or videos can best tell a story compared to written words. 

Furthermore, integrating visual content into your advertising campaign in 2022 can also result in using less ad space. Thus, potentially decreasing your advertising expenses. 

An excellent example of visual content you can utilize is infographics. The visual representation of your product or business through infographics helps you quickly and clearly communicate complex information.

• Mobile Advertising

Another trend that could help boost your Amazon advertising campaign is mobile advertising. Since smartphones are more accessible than desktop or laptop, more and more people spend time using them for their online activities.

A testament to the power of mobile advertising and marketing, it has been reported that 63% of brands’ most significant ROI is through mobile ads, while 40 percent of Amazon sales are attributed to mobile users. 

With that in mind, advertising campaigns should be optimized to fit in with the mobile platform’s interface. 

• Rewarded Video Ads (Gaming) 

Mobile video ad spending is forecasted to grow to 53.9 billion in 2025. Both small-medium businesses and giant corporations are maximizing the benefit of mobile video advertising, especially on gaming apps.

You can maximize the impact of this advertising approach, especially since almost 70% of players like this ad format. Try to focus on ad design and customization to increase your ad campaign’s conversion rate. 

• Banner Advertising   

Banner advertisements are considered one of the first types of digital marketing that started popping out on the online scene in 1994. Contrary to what others assume, banner ads are not dead. They simply evolved.

You can use banner advertising in 2022 to retarget prospective customers to entice them to purchase your Amazon products. Be sure that banner ads are location-focused and contain CTA to increase conversion rate.  

• Increased On-Platform Amazon Ad Spending

Another noticeable Amazon advertising trend is the increased spending of sellers and brands in Amazon’s advertising solutions. Amazon now seats third largest digital advertising business after Google and Facebook, with “1 in 3 sellers plan to increase ad spend in 2022.”

The majority of the ad expenditures are spent on sponsored brands and products. Therefore, suggesting that most of the sellers are allocating a budget for on-platform Amazon ads to boost their campaign. 

• Strategic Advertising

Business owners have become more strategic when it comes to Amazon advertising. Unlike the previous years, where Amazon ads are seen almost everywhere, sellers now choose platforms that give the greatest Return On Advertising Spend (RoAS).

Most of the brand owners shared that Sponsored Products generate the greatest RoAS, which is why it is worth considering optimizing Sponsored Products to reach more audiences and increase sales conversion rate. 

Do not Forget the Basics of Amazon

The purpose of engaging in Amazon advertising is to increase store engagement and sales conversion rate. However, you should not neglect other basic components of your Amazon business, including the following:

Product Details: One of the factors influencing a customer’s purchasing decision is your product detail page. In order to convince customers to buy your product, you should provide a clear, concise, and accurate description of your product.

Image Quality: Another important factor that affects a customer’s decision are the images you use in your listing. Make sure that the photos you upload are high-quality images and adhere to Amazon image guidelines. 

Keywords: In order for your Amazon listing to appear on organic search result pages, you should use appropriate keywords. Keyword research is crucial for keyword optimization. 

Reviews: Amazon shoppers normally refer to customer feedback to assess your product and customer service. It is a must to provide the best service there is to obtain favorable reviews that will also impact not just customers’ perception, but also Amazon’s algorithm. 

Price: Since price drastically affects customers’ behavior, competitive pricing is essential. In order to achieve convenient and efficient price optimization, the use of an AI repricer is highly recommended. An automatic AI Amazon repricer will help ensure that the item price is automatically adjusted based on the current market situation, competitor’s behavior, and price change notifications. 

Stay in the Loop

Maintaining your presence on Amazon is critical. Apart from the fundamental optimization guidelines mentioned above, you should also be immersed in the Amazon advertising space to create more impact for your Amazon brand or business.

The current Amazon advertising trends will continue to shape how sellers and shoppers interact. Therefore it is always important to stay updated on what is new and what should be implemented when it comes to Amazon ads. 

However, if done the wrong way, it can prove costly and reverse your marketing efforts. In this article, we’re going to discuss some of the mistakes that sellers make with Amazon advertising and what you can do to avoid committing them. 

What is ROAS?

In the world of Amazon advertising, ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is one of the key metrics used to measure the performance and efficiency of a campaign. It is the metric by which you can calculate the amount of money generated or lost from the amount of money invested into a campaign. It is the inverse of ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sales).

ROAS is calculated using this formula:

ROAS = Total revenue from ad spendTotal ad spend OR ROAS = 1/ACOS

Top PPC Mistakes to Avoid for a Good ROAS

Using the right ad types according to your objectives

Launching PPC campaigns should always align with your business goals. Sellers use various strategies to ensure the success of their campaigns. But choosing the wrong ad type can be detrimental to improving your campaign ROAS as well as your long-term profitability. 

Amazon has 3 different ad types – Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display. Each of these serves a different purpose and helps you achieve different goals. 

For example – if you’re looking to build brand awareness and visibility by achieving more impressions and are less focused on increasing sales, then Sponsored Brand ads are better than Sponsored Products. Sponsored Brands should be used to target customers at the top of the sales funnel, whereas Sponsored Products work best for improving conversions. 

Remember, it is important to have a well-planned long-term strategy. This lets you understand and analyze which customers clicked on your ads and at what point of their shopping journey, along with the right ad types. On the whole, this helps improve your ROAS overall. 

Regular bid optimization

Your bidding strategies need to be constantly checked on as it is not a set-it-and-forget-it kind of concept. How much you bid changes according to the time as well as during peak shopping season when you will have to bid more aggressively for a particular keyword because of high competition. If you bid too low or moderately, you can lose out on important sales to your competitors. At the same time, if you’re bidding too high, it means your ACoS will be very high, and your ROAS will be low. Optimizing bids need to be done frequently along with monitoring them, preferably on a weekly basis if not daily. 

Measure the right KPIs

When it comes to measuring the performance of your ads, there are several important ad metrics – impressions, clicks, conversions, CTR, CPC, etc. However, analyzing all these metrics for all campaigns will do you no good. You need to measure KPIs depending on your campaign goals. You may see high numbers, but if they’re for the wrong performance indicators, you’re not going to know if you’re on the right track in terms of your business goals or not. 

So how can you know what KPIs to focus on? 

Many sellers think that a high conversion rate and clicks are good. But if you notice that your CTR is low, it is an indication that you’re missing out on optimizing several other crucial factors. On the other hand, if you’re looking to increase your brand awareness and exposure, then a high CTR and clicks are good indicators. 

Ultimately, many advertisers want to achieve a high ROAS. While you may have achieved this, if your ad spends, on the whole, doesn’t take into account the profitability of your product, it is an indication that your overall profitability and revenue are moving on a downward trajectory. 

To ensure a good ROAS overall, you need to always ensure that you’re looking at the bigger picture and focusing on your brand/company’s long-term goals.

Targeting the right audience and relevancy 

Amazon Sponsored ads are known to be useful in reaching a wide audience. However, targeting a wide audience is not always as fruitful as targeting the right audience, however large. Your ads have to be relevant to the shoppers you’re trying to attract. Otherwise, you’re spending your precious ad dollars with the chances of a low ROAS. To remedy this, what you need to do is define your goals, as this will help you define the right kind of traffic that is guaranteed to convert better. 

Amazon Sponsored ads allow geo-targeting so that you can target your ads to specific regions where you’re most likely to get high-converting traffic instead of targeting an unnecessarily large audience. Another method to ensure a good ROAS is with dayparting so that your ads run only at times of the day when your target audience is most likely to shop. 

In terms of keywords, make sure you focus your research on forming a list of negative keywords because they help you cut down on wasted ad spending. Also, for a good RoAS, many sellers often forget the importance of long-tail keywords. These have better conversion rates as they bring in shoppers who are searching for a very specific product and hence are high-converting. 

Strategy, structure, and Sponsored Brand ads:

While optimization and automation are important, sellers need to focus on sustainable profitability and adopt ad structures and strategies that facilitate this. While running PPC campaigns, sellers need to remember that they need to drive their profitability without spending a lot of money on making a sale profitable. 

Another important thing is to focus on improving organic ranking and traffic side by side with PPC. Keeping this in mind, after a thorough analysis of different ad types and structures, Sponsored Brand ads have been noted to generate a ROAS that is higher than the other two ad types. 

Automation with SellerApp for a good ROAS

The SellerApp advertising suite comes with automation features that allow you to optimize your campaigns for a high ROAS. With the ability to create custom rules from scratch by defining the conditions for which you want to set triggers, you can optimize your bids and control ad spending. 

You can also choose dayparting for your ads or choose from pre-defined rule templates for automation. The three rule templates – Keyword Harvester, ROI Optimizer, and Money Saver help you. The Money Saver helps with negative keyword targeting by optimizing bids for keywords that bring in low conversion. 

The ROI optimizer lets you set a target ACOS and ROAS so that your bids are optimized for the most potential campaign keywords so as to help you achieve your goals easily. The Keyword Harvester allows you to optimize your bids in such a way that you reach relevant customers and increase conversions, impressions, and visibility for your products. SellerApp automation is a safe way to ensure your campaigns are on the right track to achieving a good ROAS. 

Final thoughts

As stated earlier, Amazon PPC offers a range of benefits to sellers but make sure you tread carefully, especially while structuring your campaigns and optimizing your bids. While automation software may be slightly pricey, it can help you save your money by ensuring that you don’t make costly mistakes. 

Don’t lose sight of your brand and company goals and structure, and deploy your campaigns accordingly. Regular monitoring and optimization are important. As long as you are on top of your campaigns and don’t forget to check on their performance and progress regularly, you are sure to be on the right track to PPC success. 

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About the Author:

Arishekar N, Director of Marketing & Growth at SellerApp, is a specialist in digital marketing, in addition to website keyword optimization for search engines. His areas of expertise include enhancing the organic & paid ranking of web pages on search engines with innovative SEO & SEM strategies and online promotions.

Online Advertising for Amazon Sellers: Why Advertise on Amazon?

What Is Advertising

Before we delve deeper into Amazon advertising, it is best to refresh our knowledge on advertising and how it differs from marketing. In brief, advertising pertains to the process of promoting a company, brand, product, or service through paid channels. On the other hand, marketing is the process of knowing what consumers need and identifying the best approach to suffice such needs. Simply put, advertising is a component of marketing. 

Different Methods of Advertising

Advertising has evolved over the past decades. There have been hundreds of methods through which companies, brands, and sellers have advertised their products. Here are a few examples of these advertising methods. 

Print Advertising: Print ad is one of the widely consumed types of advertising. Whether it is via periodical advertising, brochures, handouts, leaflets, or direct mail, print advertising never fails to engage the majority of consumers.                        

Guerrilla Advertising: This is an advertising strategy that is unconventional in nature. This advertising method makes use of multiple techniques and approaches to establish direct contact with consumers. Some of the examples of this type of advertising include the use of creative stickers, stencil graffiti, and reverse graffiti. The main goal of this advertising method is to elicit emotional reactions among consumers and to get them to remember the product being advertised. 

Online Advertising: Online ads or digital advertising is the most prominent advertising method in today’s day and age. With the introduction of computers, smartphones, and tablets, a lot of consumers are spending more time on digital mediums. 

Therefore, making online ads a more effective method for online sellers. That is why top Amazon sellers invest and advertise on Amazon as part of their digital marketing campaigns. 

Advertising on Amazon: Amazon Sellers FYI

For successful Amazon sellers, Amazon advertising is among one of the key methods contributing to business growth. Amazon sellers should consider advertising on Amazon this 2021, because of the advantages it offers. To help you understand more about Amazon advertising and its impact on Amazon businesses, here are some important points to remember. 

What is Amazon Advertising?

Amazon Advertising is a service provided by Amazon to help Amazon sellers grow their business through advertising plans aimed to deliver the best possible Return on Investment (ROI).    

The main advertising model it follows is that of the pay-per-click (PPC) model. Its mechanism is similar to Google’s pay-per-click ads, where sellers will only pay when an online user clicks the ads. This method is directly opposed to pay-per-sale (PPS), which is predominantly utilized by eBay. 

Advantages of Advertising on Amazon                                                                                              

Value for Money

When you advertise on Amazon, you are only competing with Amazon sellers. Unlike when you advertise with Google and/or Facebook, where you have to compete with other sellers from different platforms for limited advertising space. Because Amazon sellers do not have to compete with multi-channel sellers for advertising space, Amazon advertising is relatively cheaper.              

Amazon advertising is worth the price, especially since the majority of online shoppers use Amazon for their product searches instead of Google. 

Captured Audience

Those who use Amazon for their product searches are likely to buy as compared to those who use Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines. With the latter options, the majority of the online users are potential browsers and not potential buyers. 

Increased Visibility and Sales

Perhaps the most important benefit Amazon sellers obtain when they advertise on Amazon is increased visibility and sales. With the help of specific Amazon advertising services, your brand, product, and even Amazon store will get more attention as compared to those who do not use Amazon ads. 

With increased visibility, store engagement will also improve. Hence, influencing your Amazon Buy Box win rate, and ultimately sales conversion rate. 

What Are Advertising Options for Amazon Sellers?    

To give you a headstart when it comes to Amazon advertising, here are some of the highly suggested and easy to use Amazon advertising solutions:

Sponsored Products: If you want an individual product to appear on shopping result pages and product pages, then Sponsored Products is best for you. 

Sponsored Brands: If you wish to showcase your brand and product portfolio through brand logo and custom headlines, then Sponsored Brands is the ideal advertising solution for Amazon sellers.    

Sponsored Display: If you are interested in reaching the right audience for your Amazon business while staying in control of the advertising campaign, try self-service Sponsored Display.

The options mentioned above are not the only advertising solutions available for Amazon sellers. If you wish to advertise on Amazon, they offer an array of advertising solutions, including but not limited to, Amazon Attribution, Amazon DSP, Amazon Live, and Audio ads. 

Is Amazon Advertising a Must-Try in 2021?

If you are serious about growing your Amazon business this year, Amazon advertising is a must-try Amazon seller tool. Similar to Amazon repricers, product research tools, and keyword research softwares, Amazon’s advertising will help boost your business potential.      

Amazon advertising is highly effective due to Amazon’s access to necessary data. Unlike other online advertising tools and services, Amazon advertising has more defined access to customer behavior, demographics, and other crucial information. With over 300 million users on Amazon.com alone, Amazon sellers will never run out of ad targets for their advertising campaigns.  

As the volume of offline sales has started to drop during the pandemic, the adverse impact of COVID-19 has motivated people to incline towards digital marketing. Consumer behavior has changed the role of e-commerce and online sellers should take more responsibility to fulfill consumer demand.  

Being the largest e-commerce platform in the world, Amazon has a major part to play in managing the present crisis and creating a comfort zone for loyal customers. To tell the truth, Amazon has succeeded in creating a notable customer base in the middle of COVID-19, and more and more people are turning towards its product range for safer and secure online purchases.

Effective Amazon Sellers Advertising Tips

Following are the most appropriate Amazon Sellers Advertising Secrets that go quite well to increase the volume of potential customers during the worst possible scenario!

1. Go for the Right Product at the Right Time

It’s a reality that the sales graph has come down drastically under the influence of the coronavirus. It has led plenty of Amazon sellers to launch more product variations as consumers feel more comfortable placing orders while sitting at home. Therefore, if you happen to be a seller and prefer marketing your products and services through Amazon, you need to adopt a decent Amazon advertising strategy. You have to take a deep look at your product range and stack them in order of consumer preference.

It may surely happen that some of your products will be classified under a priority group (high in demand). It may then require an aggressive PPC campaign. If you are successful in doing so, you will definitely be the first among equals amidst fierce competition. Likewise, in the case of a low demand product category, your bid should go down a bit, and you can even defer your Amazon ads for the time being till the position improves.

2. Shifting the Ad Budget to the Right Product List

It is in human nature to stock essentials because of the crisis. Online consumers are no exception during the present pandemic. They always make sure that their ordered products are delivered on time. However, with the frequent use of Amazon FBA, the customers’ expectations have been managed remarkably, and a delay in shipment by a day or two is well accepted.

Even so, a delayed shipment on account of uncertainty always creates a bad impression and affects the ultimate product conversion rate. As per the Amazon advertising strategy, the sellers need to assess the gravity of the situation. Consequently, they must consider moving their assigned budget to those products that bear positive reviews and maintain a high inventory level.   

3. Groundwork for Inventory and Shipping

The sellers, who are affiliated with Amazon, should plan their stock in advance otherwise they will face logistic issues that will surely hamper their business in the near future. During this phenomenal pandemic scenario, one of the Amazon sellers’ advertising secrets is to ensure to check the inventory levels of brand items related to the high demand category. The Amazon sellers need to foresee the demand and maintain the stock and decide their bids accordingly.

4. Look for the Right Opportunity to Launch a Product

The present extraordinary situation has prompted some Amazon marketers to go for such brands, which are frequently preferred by online customers. This idea might encourage new sellers to make use of the current situation on the Amazon e-commerce platform with a perfect Amazon ad campaign. Therefore, it’s high time to launch a new brand with a high level of inventory and capitalize on the market situation. Amazon PPC can be of immense help for your error-free decision making.

5. Go for a Data-Driven Approach

Your Amazon advertising strategy may face a setback unless you apply proper analytics so as to utilize every penny of your investment. Proper planning and a logical approach will certainly enable you to optimize your ROI. 

It is always recommended to find answers to the following questions:

• What is the present buying trend?
• Is a specific brand item or a product tagged with an SKU high on demand? 
• Have you sufficiently refilled your inventory level to meet the contingency? 

As a seller on Amazon, you can always access Amazon ad campaign reviews to go through the customer data. It can be a useful ploy to change things at various levels to maximize the outcome.

6. Interaction with the Target Audience

Though money matters the most as you step into the world of the vast e-commerce platform of Amazon, yet that’s not all. As per Amazon sellers’ advertising secrets, creating a strong customer base cannot be overlooked while optimizing your PPC campaign. A fruitful online communication with your dedicated customers through chatbots will be an added advantage to know the current market trend. Spending a reasonable time with your valued customers will help you a lot to increase your brand positioning.

Make use of your marketing budget to connect with AI-driven social media channels to float your Amazon ads and also deliver high-quality SEO content to attract more traffic to your business website for a successful brand presence.

The Bottom Line

It’s needless to say that in the present circumstance, when COVID-19 has become a dominating force in our lives, a majority of marketers tend to slash their budget and prefer to stay inactive. However, you should never allow these ideas to enter your mind because it can be fatal to your business goals, resulting in reduced web traffic and lean product conversion.

Using the advertising resources on a limited budget is very difficult to handle during the hard times of the prevailing pandemic. Fortunately, you have an expert team from Amazon, and the team members are always available 24×7 to give a useful insight to launch your advertising campaign.

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About The Author:

Kamaljit Singh is the Founder and CEO of AMZ One Step and a former Amazon seller. Kamaljit has been featured in multiple Amazon podcasts, YouTube channels. He has been organizing meetups all around Canada and the US. Kamaljit has over 250,000+ views on his Quora answers regarding FBA. Kamaljit also founded AMZ Meetup, where he organizes conferences for Amazon sellers.

With the introduction of new advertising solutions, such as Amazon ads, online advertising has become highly relevant and more personalized to online shoppers worldwide. Online ads are utilized by online sellers to increase traffic, visibility, and sales conversion rate of their online stores and businesses. 

By advertising online, new products, or brands that lack visibility and followers can easily gain exposure. Amazon advertising solutions, for example, serve as a springboard for new Amazon products to be catapulted into the consciousness of Amazon shoppers.      

Online Advertising in Numbers 

Similar to eCommerce, online advertising is yet to reach its peak. In fact, it is expected that this year, global digital spending will grow up to 2.4%, according to emarketer. Hence, making it ideal for sellers to delve deeper into Amazon advertising solutions as early as today. 

It is also projected that in 2021, spending for online or digital advertising as a whole will increase up to $389.29 billion. And such spending equates to 17% growth in digital ad spending worldwide. 

With the projected increase of online ad expenditure in the coming years, it only shows how critical online advertising is in today’s landscape. In relation to consumer response, it is estimated that almost 50% of consumers are influenced by online advertisements and are likely to make purchases after seeing online ads. 

Amazon Is More Than Just A Store

Online sellers should recognize that Amazon is not just your ordinary eCommerce platform that offers products to consumers. People tend to forget that Amazon, with its advanced A9 algorithm, has become a search engine. 

In its own right and capacity, Amazon is now the largest search engine for eCommerce. With 54% of product searching taking place on its platform from 2015 to 2018, Amazon can be considered as the second largest search engine next to Google.    

With that in mind, online sellers should understand and adopt the new dynamics of Amazon. Online sellers should see the value of Amazon as a holistic channel for marketing and advertising. Importance should also be given to its advertising solutions that are triggered by queries on Amazon’s search engine. 

Getting to Know The Amazon Ads Solution

If you wish to improve the visibility of your Amazon products, drive sales, and increase the revenue stream, product advertising is immensely important. Whether you are a newbie seller or not, you should consider Amazon’s own advertising solution before exploiting other external advertising campaign tools.          

Amazon encourages Amazon sellers to launch new products with Amazon Sponsored Ads. Since shoppers go to Amazon to browse and discover new products, advertising with Sponsored Ads will provide a seamless introduction of products to new audiences. 

With 75% of shoppers using Amazon to discover new products or brands, it is crucial for sellers to take advantage of it, especially when introducing new products. That is why the Seattle-based company suggests two of its popular Amazon ad formats, namely the Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products.

Amazon Ads: Sponsored Products Overview

Sponsored Products campaign is one of the Amazon store ads that sellers should use when introducing new inventory items in the Amazon marketplace. As an Amazon advertising tool, Sponsored Products is a form of cost-per-click (CPC) ad that promotes individual product listings on Amazon.                                                                           

As an Amazon advertising solution, the tech-giant guarantees that using Sponsored Products will require no previous advertising experience. Thus, suggesting the ease of use when it comes to this kind of Amazon ad solution.

How Does Sponsored Products Work? 

When using Sponsored Products, the product ads will appear in shopping results and on specific product pages. Through this method, shoppers can easily take notice of your new products. 

Amazon US: A screenshot(cropped) Amazon store search result; Retrieved: Sept. 16, 2020, From https://amzn.to/2H37JMV

As a direct consequence of improved product visibility, Sponsored Products help increase sales of your Amazon store. This happens because Amazon buyers who are looking for items using Amazon as a search engine will be notified of your new item through ads, directing them to your product page. 

What makes Sponsored Products efficient and effective is its automatic targeting feature that allows Amazon to match your ads to specific shopping queries and product searches. In terms of monetary cost, since it is a CPC campaign, you will only pay when customers click your Amazon ads. 

If you wish to get started with this type of Amazon advertising solution, you may CLICK HERE. 

Amazon Advertising solutions: Sponsored Brands Overview

Amazon takes into consideration Amazon sellers who are trying to build their brand and not simply sell products on the platform. For that matter Sponsored Brands is suggested to professional sellers enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry.

As an Amazon advertising solution, the Sponsored Brands are also cost-per-click (CPC) ads, similar to the Sponsored Products Amazon ad. What differentiates this Amazon advertising solution from its counterpart is that it appears on relevant shopping results in the form of a custom headline showcasing brand logo and multiple products. 

How Does Sponsored Brands Work? 

The goal of Amazon sellers who utilize this type of Amazon ad campaign is to drive awareness and discovery of their brand and product portfolio. Through customizable ads appearing on relevant shopping results, Sponsored Brands help improve brand visibility.              

Sponsored Brands do not only help in brand awareness, for they also promote product awareness. When an Amazon buyer searches for what to buy on the Amazon marketplace, your custom headline appears on the search result showcasing both the brand and product. See image below –

Amazon Advertising: A screenshot(cropped) of an Amazon search video; Retrieved: Sept. 16, 2020, From https://amzn.to/3c7n9LM

If a shopper decides to click on the product advertised in the custom headline, the Amazon shopper would then be led to the Amazon product page. Such a process makes it ideal for introducing shoppers to new products from Amazon sellers. 

Just like the Sponsored Products ad, sellers also have control over the cost of such an Amazon advertising campaign. You only pay when an Amazon shopper clicks your Amazon ad.

Sponsored Brands is ideal for Amazon sellers who want to provide shoppers an immersive environment that is all about their brand. If you wish to get started with this type of Amazon advertising solution, you may CLICK HERE.  

For a better understanding of ad format and functionality, you can check Amazon’s sponsored ads creative acceptance policies. 

Exploring Other Amazon Seller Tools For Maximum Efficiency

What makes Amazon a convenient platform for online selling is the array of Amazon seller tools available online. Apart from the advertising tools and solutions mentioned above, you may also utilize other Amazon seller tools to boost your Amazon ads campaign. 

To give your product or brand advertising more impact, make use of Amazon repricers to automate product pricing. With the help of a repricer, you can achieve a dynamic repricing strategy that will aid in enticing shoppers to click on your Amazon store ads.    

Through Amazon PPC, sellers can create advertisements for their products. These ads will show up for specific keywords in Amazon’s search results and other related product listings, or even on platforms outside Amazon. They are one of the most effective ways to increase conversion rates and discoverability for your products on Amazon.

1. What is Amazon PPC?
2. Types of Amazon PPC advertisements
3. Amazon PPC Tips &  Hacks
   1. Use Automatic Campaigns
   2. Structure your campaigns
   3. Keep similar products in your ad groups
   4. Use negative keywords
   5. Leverage the power of data
   6. Bid on your own brand
   7. Cut out the non-performers
   8. Optimize your campaigns regularly
4. Make the most out of your PPC campaigns

What is Amazon PPC?

Before we dive into the deep-end of Amazon advertising, let’s start with the basics. When you set up an Amazon PPC campaign, you’re bidding on keywords. When a customer searches for a product, the sellers with the highest bids on the relevant keywords win the auction. Based on the bid and the competition, Sponsored Products are listed in the search results.  

Don’t forget, this is an auction. This means you only have to pay a single cent more than your competitor’s bid to have your product show up in Amazon’s search results. The best part? You only have to pay the bid price if consumers click on your sponsored product’s listing!

With over 12 million products on Amazon, new sellers face the risk of getting lost in all the noise. A well-managed PPC campaign can help new sellers turn the tide, and gain more visibility. Hence, better Amazon pay per click management and Amazon PPC optimization is crucial. For expert sellers who are already at the top, a well-managed PPC campaign is key to holding on to that top spot in Amazon’s search results. 

The ideal Amazon pay per click management strategy varies from seller to seller. The most important thing you need to do is to identify the main goal of your PPC campaign and practice proper Amazon PPC optimization. If you’re looking to kick-off a brand new private label and create brand awareness, a higher ACoS might be a reasonable target. If you’re looking to drive sales and increase your profit margin, it is important to keep your ACoS below 30%.

Whether you are a novice or an expert seller, these advertising campaigns are key to improving visibility and conversions! Let’s look at how you can make the most out of your Amazon PPC campaigns through tested and proven Amazon PPC tips.

Types of Amazon PPC advertisements

There are three types of PPC ad campaigns that you can start on Amazon. Here’s a brief overview:

1. Sponsored Product ads 

These are the advertisements on Amazon that appear within the search results and product listing pages. All third-party sellers can create a sponsored product ad. This makes it the most common type of PPC advertisement on Amazon. 

Sponsored product ads can be further divided into two types:

• Automatic-targeting: Automatic-targeting allows you to take your hands off the wheel. Amazon’s algorithm finds relevant keywords from your product listing. Over time, Amazon uses the data it collects from clicks and purchases to adjust the ads to increase your conversions. Automatic-targeting ads cannot be manually optimized. 
• Manual-targeting: In a manually-targeted campaign, the seller inputs the relevant keywords and bids. The entire process is manual, so you’ll need to constantly monitor the keywords and bids, and make adjustments where applicable. Manual optimization usually leads to more effective ads in the long-run. 

2. Sponsored Brand ads

These ads are only available for brand-registered products on Amazon. They are banner ads that include a brand’s logo, message, and products in Amazon’s search results. They are displayed on the top of search results on Amazon, on the left-hand rail, or at the bottom of the page in search results.

Sponsored brand ads are great to target top-of-the-funnel customers. 

3. Sponsored Display ads 

When compared to the other two types of PPC ads, Sponsored Display ads are an outlier. These ads are not targeted using keywords. Sponsored Display ads show up depending on customer behavior. If you need a detailed breakdown of the differences between Sponsored Display ads and Product ads, you can check out this great article. 

Thanks to its targeting algorithm, Sponsored Display ads are a great way to poach bottom-of-the-funnel customers from your competitors. Sponsored Display ads are available to professional sellers enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry, vendors, and agencies with clients who sell products on Amazon.

Amazon PPC Hacks

This is a difficult question to answer. Depending on your goals, the definition of a ‘good’ strategy varies. However, there are a few proven strategies that every PPC campaign should follow to be successful. 

1. Use Automatic Campaigns

While manual-targeted campaigns give you the chance to optimize your ads, automatic campaigns have their benefits. They are a great source to discover new high-converting long-tail keywords that lead to conversions.

Keyword research is a key part of optimizing your PPC listings. You should run a manual campaign and an automatic campaign simultaneously for an ad group. Let the campaigns run for a couple of weeks. The automatic campaign is bound to bring up relevant keywords that lead to conversions. 

All you have to do now is move the high-converting keywords to your manual campaign for further optimization. Manual campaigns give you more control over your ad spend and will help you achieve your target ACoS (advertising cost of sale.) 

2. Structure your campaigns

Always make sure you organize your campaigns. The worst thing you can do is spend money bidding against yourself. You can group your products when creating ad groups under the following categories:

• By product category 
• By brand 
• By top sellers/your top competitors

Make sure you are consistent with your categorization to avoid potential overlap. 

3. Keep similar products in your ad groups

Do men’s sneakers and women’s running shoes belong in the same ad group? While there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, most of the time they do not belong together. When you are creating your ad groups, ensure that all the products in an ad group share similar target keywords. 

This is all the more important if you have a large portfolio. 

4. Use negative keywords

If you discover that there are keywords that have a large volume of clicks, but no conversions, it is probably because the keyword is not relevant to your product. In such cases, you need to ensure that your product is not advertised for these search terms. 

The best way to do it is to mark irrelevant keywords as ‘negative’ keywords. Your products will not be advertised for those keywords afterward. Be careful not to mark too many keywords as ‘negative’ keywords, especially if they are relevant to your product. If low conversions are the issue, it might be better to lower your bid on the keywords in question. 

There are two ways you can fine-tune your campaign using negative keywords: 

• Negative Phrase: Your ads will not show for the search term or close variations of them.
• Negative Exact: Your ads will not show for the exact search term.

Identifying negative keywords is key to reducing your ad spend and improving your ACoS. 

5. Make data-informed choices

Data is the new oil. Optimizing your PPC campaigns on Amazon is impossible without coherent and actionable data. While Amazon provides all the relevant information about your campaigns, it is often difficult to extract useful information from the clutter. Campaign reports are key to growing your Amazon business, so how do you make sense of them?

Many tools like SellerApp offer data analytics solutions to help clear the clutter and stay competitive in the e-commerce marketplace. 

6. Bid on your own brand

You’re probably wondering why you would want to launch PPC campaigns targeting your own brand name. It’s because your competitors are doing it too. If you have an established brand, it is important that you protect your customer-base and prevent your competitors from stealing your market share. 

On the flip side, if you’re looking to expand your brand name and customer base, bid on your competitors’ brand names. This will ensure that your products turn up when consumers look for your competitors’ products. 

7. Cut out the non-performers

When you’re advertising on Amazon, you’re either looking to boost sales or improve brand recognition. Either way, selling on Amazon is about finding the right product. If your product isn’t flying off the shelves even after a dedicated PPC campaign, it’s recommended that you stop advertising it. In some cases, you may even need to remove the listing to save your hard-earned cash.

Your money is valuable, so only spend it on products that offer high returns!

8. Optimize your campaigns regularly

Make sure you check on your campaigns on a regular basis. This holds true for your manual and automatic campaigns. At the end of every week, check which keywords brought the most traffic and resulted in the highest conversions. Adjust your bids to reflect keyword performance. Your decisions should be driven only by data. You can find the ACoS for each of your keywords with SellerApp’s PPC dashboard.

• If a keyword’s ACoS surpasses your target, decrease the bid.  
• If a keyword is performing well and the ACoS is lower than the target value, you should bid higher. 
• If there are keywords that do not drive any traffic at all, you can try increasing the bid for a week.
• If you notice keywords that are not relevant to your listing, mark them as negative keywords. 

Optimizing your PPC campaigns is a full-time job. Services such as SellerApp can automate your campaign management process. All you need to do is set your target ACoS. The SellerApp algorithm will take care of the rest. It will optimize your ad campaigns based on high performing and low-performing keywords. 

Make the most out of your PPC campaigns

As I mentioned earlier, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy. However, these tips will help you throughout your campaigns – no matter what the goal. With rising competition in the e-commerce marketplace, a well-managed advertising strategy is non-negotiable for long-term success. Amazon’s PPC campaigns are tailored to help you reach consumers at all points of the sales funnel. 

Whether you’re looking to drive sales or lower your ACoS, you can fine-tune your campaigns with SellerApp’s data-driven algorithm.