Ultimate Guide To Amazon Advertising in 2022

Amazon has become one of the key channels for retailers to drive sales as the users on Amazon are actively looking for products to buy, so the buying intent is very high on Amazon.

Below chart explains how Amazon is moving above Google as the first touch point for product discovery. 

Amazon Search Landscape

Understanding this demand, Amazon created an advertising platform called as Amazon Marketing Services commonly known as AMS, so that sellers/retailers can start advertising on Amazon to increase visibility and drive sales.

This article will guide you on Amazon advertising fundamentals and how to create Amazon sponsored product ads.

So let’s get started!

So What is Amazon Advertising?

Amazon advertising is a method to advertise on Amazon store through Amazon’s platform called as Amazon marketing services, with different type of ad formats, including sponsored product ads, product display ads and sponsored brand ads to drive product sales on Amazon.

So how to start with Amazon Advertising?

In order to start with Amazon advertising, you need to have either of the below Amazon accounts 

Seller Central Account – This is an account if you are a retailer and selling multiple products of different brand 

If you don’t have a seller central account, you can create it from here – Amazon Seller Central Account 

Brand Account – This is a brand account which a brand would create

If you don’t have a brand account, you can create it from here – Amazon Brand Account 

Once you have either of the above accounts, you can register for Amazon advertising from here – Amazon Advertising

What are the different types of ads on Amazon?

There are 3 types of ads on Amazon:

  • Sponsored Product Ads
  • Sponsored Brand Ads
  • Product Display Ads

Sponsored Product Ads

Sponsored product ads are ads which trigger on Amazon search when users search for a particular product/keyword. These ads are viewed on Amazon in a form of listing.

Sponsored product ads are very effective as they trigger on targeted searches related to your products. They also have higher conversion rates compared to other types of Amazon ads.

Here is an example of a sponsored product ad

Amazon Sponsored Product Ads

Sponsored Brand Ads

Sponsored Brand Ads trigger with a collection of products to users searching on Amazon for a specific keyword. 

Sponsored brand ads usually appear above all the search results on Amazon. They are very useful, if you are looking to showcase multiple products within a product category. 

Below is an example of sponsored brand ads

Amazon Sponsored Brand Ads

Product Display Ads

Product display ads are display ads which trigger on product pages by targeting users interests or related product and categories.

Product display ads are usually to target competitor product pages. 

Here is an example of product display ad.

Amazon Sponsored Display Ad

In this article we are going to understand how to create Sponsored Product Ads, so before we start, let’s understand few requirements to fullifull, in order to start with sponsored product ads on Amazon.

Account Requirements:

  • The account has an active payment method
  • You are a professional seller of a vendor on Amazon
  • You are eligible to ship in the country you are advertising in 

Product Requirements:

  • Products which do not comply with Amazon policies are not eligible to advertise 
  • Incorrect information on the product listing page is not allowed 
  • Adult products, used products or refurbished products are not allowed 
  • Sponsored products are available for the following search categories on Amazon only

Amazon Sponsored Product Ads Requirement

What are the Sponsored Product Ad Campaigns Limits in Amazon?

Amazon Sponsored Product Ads Limit

So how to create Amazon Sponsored Product Ads campaign?

Let’s understand the campaign creation for sponsored product ads step by step 

Step 1

Login to your account – Amazon Advertising

Step 2

Now say create campaign by clicking on the orange button. Once you click, you will see the below screen 

Types of Amazon Campaigns

Now select sponsored products option.

To know more about sponsored brands ads, refer article – Guide to Amazon Sponsored Brands Ads

To know more about product display ads, refer article – Guide to Amazon Product Display Ads

Step 3

Once you select sponsored products option, you will see the below screen.

How To Create Sponsored Product Ads

Let’s understand each one of them.

Campaign Name – Campaign name is the name of the campaign which you would use to identify the product which you are marketing through Amazon Ads. 

This is similar to the campaign name which we use in Google Ads

Portfolio – If you have multiple Amazon accounts, then you can select the account type for which you want to run ads.

Start & End Date – Start & end date are the dates for your campaign. You can define these days as per your requirement. 

Daily Budget – Daily budget is the budget which you would like to spend daily for this campaign.

Targeting 

There are two types of targeting:

  • Automatic Targeting 
  • Manual Targeting 

Automatic Targeting – With the help of automatic targeting, Amazon will match your ad with keywords and products which are similar to the product in your ad copy. 

For Eg: If your ad has a weight loss supplement product, Amazon will match relevant searches happening on Amazon similar to weight loss supplements, and then trigger your ad in the search results. 

Automatic targeting helps you to target multiple searches within a click, the visibility of your ad increases with automatic targeting. I would recommend if you have limited budget don’t go with Automatic targeting, as your ad will participate in multiple searches which sometimes might not be directly relevant to your product. 

Manual Targeting – With the help of manual targeting, you can choose specific keywords which are related to your product and target them. You can also use different keyword match types including exact, phrase and broad to define your keyword strategy.

I would recommend, always go with manual targeting, because you know which keywords are going to show your ads, so there is less wastage of budget, and highly focused targeting to drive sales. 

Step 4

The next step is to define the products. Products nothing but the products which you want to promote for this campaign.

You can search products are directly searching with a product name or ASIN

In the below screenshot, you can see I have selected one products which is related to weight loss supplement. Similarly you can select multiple products in a single campaign.

Amazon Ads Product Targeting

A recommended practice is to select similar products in a particular campaign. For Eg: if I am looking to create sponsored products ad campaign for weight loss, I would add all weight loss related products only in this campaign. 

Step 5

The next step is bidding strategy 

So what is a bidding strategy in Amazon Ads?

Bidding strategy is a method through which you participate in an auction for a particular click.

Amazon Bidding Strategies

Different types of bidding strategies on Amazon?

There are three types of bidding strategies on Amazon

  • Dynamic Bids – Down Only
  • Dynamic Bids – Up & Down 
  • Fixed Bids 

Dynamic Bids – Down Only 

If you go with Dynamic bids – down only strategy, Amazon will automatically reduce your cpc bids in real time, if they are less likely to convert to a sale. 

If you have limited budget, then you can go with this strategy.

Dynamic Bids – Up & Down 

If you go with dynamic bids – up & down, Amazon will automatically increase your bids for clicks which are likely to convert to a sale during the auction.

In this bidding strategy, Amazon will not increase your bid by more than 100% for placements at the top of the first page of Amazon search results, and for other placements, Amazon will not increase the bid by more than 50% 

If you have decent budgets and want to drive more sales, you can consider this bidding strategy. 

Fixed Bids

If you go with fix bid strategy, Amazon will use exactly the same bid for auction, which you have used and will not up & down your bids, based on the likelihood of a conversion. 

Not a recommended strategy, as the bidding keep changes in real time.

Step 6

Once you have defined the bidding strategy, the next thing is to define the default bid.

Default bid is the bid at which you want to bid in the auction, for this product/campaign.

Amazon Bid Adjustments

The next thing is to adjust bids by placement. With the help of adjust bids by placement you can further increase your bids upto 900% to your existing bidding strategy. There are two types of bid adjustments by placement as below:

Top of search (first page)

 Top of the search (first page) bid allows you to bid at the top row on the first page of Amazon search results. 

For Eg: if your default bid is Rs. 35 and you set your top of search (first page) bid as another 50%, then your bid to participate in the auction for the top row on the first page, will be Rs. 52.50 

You can take a call by what percent you want to increase your bid by. This strategy is largely applicable for sponsored product ads

Product Pages

Product pages bid adjustment refers to sponsored products placements on the product page and also includes all the non search results placements like add to cart page. 

Product pages bid adjustments are very effective, if you are looking to increase your visibility on competition pages.

You can also select both the bid adjustments at a time and bids will be increased wherever applicable. You can view the reports by placement group in the placement tab!

Step 7

The next step is targeting. There are two types of targeting in sponsored product ads:

  • Keyword Targeting 
  • Product Targeting 

Amazon Ads Keyword Targeting

Keyword Targeting 

With the help of keyword targeting, you can select specific keywords which are relevant to your product and target them, so that your ads appear on those searches only. 

Once you select keyword targeting, you will see the below screen, which has three options to choose from including suggested, enter keywords and upload file.

Amazon Suggested Keywords

Suggested Keywords

Once you select suggested keywords, you will see keywords suggested by amazon, you can select the relevant keywords to your products directly from here. One thing you will observe is that all the keywords under suggested keywords are in broad match type. 

Amazon also has different match types in keywords which includes broad match, phrase, exact match and negative match. They work the same way they work in Google ads. 

(To know more about keyword match types, refer article – Keyword Match Types) 

Enter Keywords

This option allows you to add keywords manually in the campaign by selecting different match types including broad, phrase & exact. 

Amazon Keyword Targeting

You should select intent based keywords and then add to your campaign. 

Upload File

With this option you can directly upload a keywords file in a csv, tsv or xlsx file, if you already have a set of keywords to target for your campaign.

Amazon Keywords Upload File

Product Targeting

Amazon Ads Product Targeting

Product targeting is another way through which you can define your targeting of your campaign. 

With the help of product targeting you can choose specific products, categories, specific brands or any other product features that are similar to the product in your Amazon ad. 

This strategy can be used to help customers find your product while browsing product detail pages & categories, or while they are searching for products on Amazon. In this targeting you can target products and categories independently or target a combination.

Once you select product targeting option on the dashboard, you will see the below screen, wherein Amazon will suggest you a category to select basis the product which you have selected (refer step 4 above)

Amazon Ads Product Targeting
If you want to target any other product category, you can select search on the right hand side of suggested and you will be able to see the below screen. From here you can search for a specific product category and target for your campaign.

Amazon Sponsored Product Ads Targeting

You can also choose specific products for targeting by clicking on the right option called as individual products. Once you click on individual products, you will see the below screen. 

The first option on the screen is suggested, here Amazon suggests you different products which are similar to your product, you can then target the product for your campaign.

Amazon Ads Individual Product Targeting

You can also search for a particular product for targeting by selecting the search option on the right hand side of suggested.

Individual Product Targeting on Amazon

If you know the ASIN’s of the product, you can also add them directly by selecting the option enter list on the right hand side of search. 

Amazon Ads Individual Product Lists

Step 8

The final step is to add negative keywords. Add negative keywords so that you can exclude showing your ads on irrelevant searches.

Negative Keywords Match Type in Amazon

Once you have added negative keywords, say launch campaign on the top right hand side of the screen. Your campaign is ready to go live!

Conclusion

Amazon shopping ads are a great way to increase sales for your products on Amazon. The success of the campaign will depend on the bidding strategy and the keywords used in the campaign. You should keep monitoring the performance and optimize your campaigns regularly to drive maximum sales from your Amazon sponsored product ads campaigns!