Amazon Ads Best Practices

What is Amazon Ads?

Amazon Advertising was only launched in 2018, but with its launch it brought Amazon into the world of search marketing solutions. Similarly to PPC on Google or Bing, Amazon vendors can show ads for their products on Amazon search results across relevant queries.

It works in the same pay-per-click format as Google and Bing meaning businesses only pay if their ads gets a click.

Why is it useful?

In line with the overall market share increase of Amazon and indeed of online traffic overall, Amazon Ads has seen rapid growth since launch and provides an additional revenue stream for ecommerce businesses. In 2022 it made up almost 14% of businesses digital ad revenue.

The platform also offers less competition with it being available only to Amazon sellers, of which only 75% use the advertising solution on the platform. Opening the door for the savvy businesses to get ahead of competition on one of the world’s biggest online marketplaces.

How can I make a start?

Now that the explanation of why Amazon Ads is an important solution to consider for your business, we can outline how to get started on running PPC ads within the platform by following the below best practices.

1. Ensure strong product and brand store pages

   • We advise starting with the product pages and brand store to ensure your paid traffic will be sent to high-quality pages that are likely to convert users.

   • Top tips include concise (bullet point) product information, detailed product titles, and multiple high-quality images.

   • For brand stores, ensure the brand message and offering is clear and that products are displayed with the user journey in mind (for example different pages for different product types).

2. Research the competition

   • Have a look at relevant keywords and branded searches on Amazon to see which competitors are already bidding within the space. This also helps with the next step of keyword research.

   • This should also give you an idea of how expensive the activity will be and whether or not you would want to include competitor bidding within your strategy.

3. Find relevant keywords

   • Split your campaigns by brand and generics (and competitor if appropriate) as well as by product grouping to ensure the most relevant keywords and ads for each campaign.

   • If you run PPC across other platforms you can use your keyword sets as a good starting point for Amazon. If not then build out lists based on relevant searches around your brand and your products.

   • Amazon also offers automated campaigns which are useful when starting to use as keyword mining tools. These show your ads across relevant searches based on targeting groups defined by Amazon; Close Match, Substitutes, Complements, and Loose Match. (matched using your product details).

4. Ensure campaign type coverage

   • Amazon offers different campaign formats to traditional search engines and it is advised to have coverage across these. Essentially, you want to duplicate your keyword coverage across all format types (if budget allows).

   • Sponsored Products – These appear in the search results and product listing pages (look similar to organic results) and these allow multiple ads to show at once.

   • Sponsored Brands – These appear at the top of the search results page and on product detail pages, used to drive awareness as well as sales. Unlike with Sponsored Products, there is only space for 1 ad.

   • Sponsored Brands Video – These appear in the middle of the results page and similarly to sponsored brands are used predominantly for awareness. Again only 1 ad will show in this placement at a time.

5. Apply relevant products

   • Once you have defined your campaigns and keyword sets you then need to allocate relevant product targeting to ensure you show the right product at the right time.

   • Ideally, you would have full coverage of your product set across the relevant campaigns (e.g Eyeliners would be targeted within the Eyes campaign). But to start you may want to focus on top performers and highest rated products.

   • Across Sponsored Brands campaigns you can only show creative for 3 products within the ad so ensure the top performers are prioritized here to drive CTR.

6. Apply negatives

   • Don’t forget to apply negative keywords to ensure there isn’t budget wastage. You can also regularly review the queries your ads are matching to within the search terms reports.

7. Set generous bids and budgets

   • Apply appropriate budgets and bis based on your overall available budget and regularly check how these are impacting visibility (impression share and budget capping are visible in the campaign view).

   • You may also decide to use some of the available bidding strategies and bid adjustments for placements to prioritize key products and to allow some ‘real-time’ automation of bids.

If you have any questions or are interested in getting set up running Amazon Ads then get in touch with us at hello@wrp.team