Amazon Advertising Basics Part One

Amazon Advertising has became exponentially more complex. With Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, Video Ads, and re-marketing….it seems like there's never a shortage of placements to learn about! We want to help you understand the increasingly complexity, so we put together a high-level guide to help get acquained with the foundations.

To understand how to get the most form Sponsored ads, let's look at where they show up. So, where do you see Amazon Sponsored Ads?

Sponsored Ads

1. Sponsored Ads in Search

These ads show up as product cards when shoppers search for relevant search terms.

2. Sponsored Ads on the Product Detail Page

These show up on competitor product pages when shoppers are browsing productdetail pages.

The majority of these ad types are on a PPC model, which means you only pay when someone clicks on them! That why keyword optimization and targeting is really important to optimize budgets. It's worth noting that some of the more advance ad types are on a CPM model, which means you pay per thousand views.

What are some of the benefits of running Amazon Sponsored Ads for your brand?

• There is no minimum spend! Which means you can take a few dollars and run a campaign! This makes testing and scaling much easier.

• Amazon Sponsored ads allow you to place an ad directly where your customers are shopping!

• Running Amazon Sponsored Ads is a great way to improve your organic rank.

Now, let’s get more familiar with the ad types.

Sponsored Products

• The ad type most resembles an organic listing and typically shows up throughout the search results and on the product detail page in the “sponsored products related to” section.

• This ad type has the most available ad inventory (for now) and will typically make up around 70% of your total ad sales.

• This ad type has the ability to be ran in an auto campaign or a manual campaign.

• You can target both keywords and categories / products with this ad type.

Sponsored Brands — Requires Brand Registry

• The ad type typically shows up at the very top of search, or at the very bottom of the search results. This ad type can also show up on the product detail page in the “Brands related to” section.

• This Sponsored Ad type typically has copy, and is driving to a landing page with multiple ASINs or a store page. (Typically need a minimum of 3 ASINs or a store page).

• This ad type that tends to make up around 20% of total ad sales due to limited inventory.

• This ad type that puts more reliance on creative, and branded exposure.

• **You can run self serve video ads to a single ASIN landing page here!!!

• This ad type can run keyword or category / product targeting, but does NOT have auto targeting.

• This ad type also has more creative control with Custom Image Beta, which allows you to add a lifestyle image to your ad (see example below)

Sponsored Display — Requires Brand Registry

• The ad type typically shows up within the product detail page directly under the buy box, or as an off-platform ad.

• This ad type has some of the most complex targeting options of all of the campaign types.

• You have the ability to target by Individual Products, Categories, Searches, Views, and Purchases.

• This ad type typically makes up around 10% of total advertising sales.

That's the basics of Amazon Sponsored Ads. It get more complex so we recommend reading part two.

Amazon Advertising Basics – Part Two

Part two covers auto campaigns vs manual campaigns, keyword targeting vs product targeting, match type differences AND quick tips for starting your first campaigns!