2020 Advertising best practices en_GB
Advertising on Amazon can help you increase your reach, boost sales, and grow your audience. You can access our advertising products by logging in to...
2020 Advertising *best practices*
A guide for Amazon sellers and vendors
Getting started with *advertising*
Getting started with advertising
Advertising on Amazon can help you increase your reach, boost sales, and grow your audience. You can access our advertising products by logging in to Seller Central or the advertising console. But first, we recommend preparing yourself for success by making sure your business is ready, learning about eligibility requirements, and being informed about your advertising options.
Note: Products and features may not be available in all marketplaces.
Sponsored Products
Sponsored Products let you promote individual product listings to shoppers as they’re browsing and looking for items to buy.
Sponsored Products ads are targeted to keywords or products and appear in shopping results and on product detail pages, across desktop and mobile. You pay only when your ad is clicked, and you choose how much you’re willing to bid for a click. You also set a daily budget to control your campaign spend.
To advertise with Sponsored Products, you must:
- Have an active professional seller account or vendor account.
- Be able to ship to all addresses in the country where you wish to advertise.
- Have products in one or more of the eligible categories.
With a simple campaign creation process and the ability to go live in minutes, Sponsored Products is the recommended way to get started advertising with Amazon Ads.
Sponsored Brands
If you meet the seller requirements for Sponsored Products and are also enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry, or if you are a vendor, you are eligible to use Sponsored Brands. These customisable, prominent ads help shoppers discover and engage with your brand and products as they browse on Amazon. Sponsored Brands ads may appear in shopping results and on product detail pages and direct shoppers either to a landing page that features a selection of your products, a Store (see below), or to an individual product’s detail page.
Just like Sponsored Products, these ads target keywords or products, and you’re charged when your ad is clicked. In addition to a daily budget, you have the option of setting a lifetime campaign budget.
Stores
Sellers enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry and vendors can also create a Store, a customised multipage experience that showcases your brand and product catalogue, at no additional cost¹.
The simple, self-service Store builder allows you to create a Store even if you don’t have any coding or web experience. Pre-built design templates and widgets with drag and drop functionality let you customise your page layout, add multimedia content, and feature a curated selection of products.
You can drive shoppers to your Store with Sponsored Brands or promote it through marketing activities off Amazon.
1 Vendors and sellers already selling on Amazon in the country where they wish to advertise can create a Store at no additional cost. Otherwise, selling fees apply.
Sponsored Display
Sponsored Display helps you reach relevant audiences for your business, both on and off Amazon, with display campaigns that are ready to launch in minutes and inspire shoppers throughout their purchase journey.
With Sponsored Display, you can promote discovery and consideration among audiences who have shown an interest in related categories or shoppers who are actively browsing specific products or categories. You can also remarket to audiences who have viewed your products’ detail pages or similar products’ pages to help stay top of mind.
Sponsored Display is available for sellers enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry and vendors².
2 Targeting options and features mentioned in this section may not be available for all selling partners in all marketplaces.
Before you begin *advertising*
Before you begin advertising
Ask these questions first to check that your business is ready to get the most out of advertising.
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What are my goals?
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Which products should I advertise?
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Are my product detail pages ready?
What are my goals?
Your advertising goals will shape your strategy.
If driving sales is your priority, you’ll focus on converting ad clicks into orders. Monitor your advertising cost of sale (ACOS), which is calculated by dividing your total ad spend by total sales from advertising.
If creating brand awareness is your priority, you’ll focus on impressions, or the number of times your ad is shown. Set strong cost-per-click bids to help you win more keywords.
Which products should I advertise?
Choosing the right products will help you accomplish your advertising goals. Select products that are in stock, priced competitively, presenting the featured offer and receiving a high number of visits. Pricing competitively helps increase your chances of presenting the featured offer on the product detail page.
If you are a seller, you can find your current featured offer win rate in your reports. Go to the ‘Reports’ tab in Seller Central, click on ‘Business reports’, and under the section labelled ‘By ASIN’, click on ‘Detail page sales and traffic by child item’. Here, you can sort by ‘Percentage’ to find your best-performing ASINs. Choose the ones that are presenting the featured offer at the highest rate – ideally 90% or higher.
It’s best to look for a high featured-offer percentage paired with a high number of sessions or visits to the product detail page. These are your most frequently viewed ASINs.
To learn more about the featured offer as a vendor, contact your Amazon account executive or visit advertising.amazon.com.
Are my product detail pages ready?
Review your product detail pages. Check for these criteria to make sure they're ready:
- Accurate, descriptive titles
- High-quality images
- Relevant and useful product information
- At least 5 bullet points
- Contain shopper keywords
Advertising can help shoppers discover your products, but you'll need a strong product detail page in order to help them make an informed buying decision.
Your advertising *timeline*:
The first 60 days
Your advertising timeline:
The first 60 days
You don’t have to build your advertising strategy all at once. To stay organised, break up the work and check off a few items each week, depending on what works best with your time and resources.
Your first couple of weeks are especially valuable as a test-and-learn period. By investing time in these steps now, you can deepen your knowledge of advertising and position yourself for long-term success.
We recommend starting with Sponsored Products—it’s fast, easy, and helps you learn how customers are finding your products.
To create your first campaign, go to the Advertising tab in Seller Central or in the advertising console. Also check out the New Advertiser Success Guide for step-by-step guidance.
Set a daily budget that’s high enough to keep your ads showing. If your budget runs out in the middle of the day, shoppers won’t see your ad until your budget resets at midnight. We recommend a minimum daily budget of:
How does my daily budget work?
A daily budget is the amount you’re willing to spend per day over a calendar month. Ad spend on any given day may exceed your daily budget but, at the end of the month, the average daily spend will not exceed your daily budget.For example, if you set your daily budget to USD 100, you may receive up to USD 3,100 worth of clicks in that calendar month (assuming a full 31-day month).
Steps for success with Sponsored Products
Take an always-on approach with your campaigns by setting no end date. This will help shoppers discover your products any time they browse on Amazon, helping you drive demand for your items year-round. Amazon will automatically update the search terms used for your automatic targeting campaigns, so you’ll be able to track changes throughout the year.
Choose automatic targeting to let Amazon do the work of matching your ads to shopping queries and products. These matches are based on your product information and regularly update with changing trends.
We suggest being prepared to bid competitively. We recommend setting the maximum bid that you’re willing to pay. You can also refer to suggested bids for help.
After two weeks, check your search term report in Advertising Reports (Seller Central | Advertising console) to see which search terms are resulting in ad clicks and sales. Use this information to create a Sponsored Products campaign with manual targeting, where you choose your own keywords or products and set individual bids for them. For a keyword-targeted manual campaign, use the top-performing keywords from your automatic campaign. For a product-targeted manual campaign, target products that are relevant to your advertised product.
Continue to run your automatic campaign to stay on top of shopping trends and understand how shoppers are finding and buying your products.
Make your manual targeting campaign evergreen, just like your automatic targeting campaign, to ensure you don’t miss any advertising opportunities. Remember that you’ll never spend more on a campaign than its daily budget, so it’s easy to account for spend.
Continue to monitor your search term report to generate more keywords for your manual targeting campaign. Aim to reach at least 30 keywords within your first few months. If you need more help finding potential ones to try, refer to our suggested keywords.
This is also a good time to familiarize yourself with keyword match types: broad, phrase, exact, and negative. Together, they’ll help you reach relevant customers and drive more sales.
- Broad match: This offers the widest traffic exposure. Your ad may appear when a shopper uses your keyword in any order, including close variations.
- Phrase match: Your ad may appear when a shopping query is either your exact phrase or sequence of words in your keyword. While this is more restrictive than broad match, it can drive more relevant traffic to your ads.
- Exact match: In order for your ad to show, a shopper’s search term must match your keyword exactly. This is the most restrictive match type, but can help generate the most relevant traffic.
- Negative phrase and exact match: Applying a negative match type to keywords in your campaigns prevents your ads from showing when customers browse with those terms. This helps you maximise relevant clicks and minimise those that aren’t.
We recommend starting with broad match and then reviewing your campaign performance reports to see which specific terms are performing best. Add phrase match or exact match to target those terms more precisely, helping to reach highly relevant shoppers as they look for products.
The more campaigns you run, the more opportunity you have to learn what helps you drive the most sales. We recommend launching at least five Sponsored Products campaigns within your first few weeks of advertising. From these campaigns, you can identify top-performing products and keywords so you know where to focus your resources.
More about reports:
Your advertising reports provide a great way for you to understand your performance. Here’s a look at the reports available for Sponsored Products:
Search term report: This provides visibility into the actual search terms entered by customers shopping on Amazon that resulted in at least one click on your ad. As mentioned, you can use this report to identify top-converting search terms.
Targeting report: This report offers insight into sales metrics for keywords and products in all campaigns that have received at least one impression. You can use this report to see how well your targeting is performing, so you’ll have a sense of when to adjust your bids and whether to expand your keyword or product targets.
Advertised product report: This gives you information on sales and performance metrics for advertised ASINs in all campaigns. You can use this report to see how your advertised products are performing over time, which will help you determine strategy changes for future campaigns. For example, if you find that an advertised ASIN receives a high number of clicks but not sales, this might prompt you to take a close look at that ASIN’s product detail page to make sure it’s accurate and engaging for customers.
Placement report: This report provides insight into the performance of your campaigns on top-of-shopping placements compared to other placements.
Performance over time report: This summarizes clicks and spend over a specific period. You can use this report to see average cost-per-click, plus your total spend change over time.
Campaign report: Use the campaign report to get better insights into the overall performance of your campaign.
Optimise your campaigns regularly. Here are some recommendations:
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Add negative keywords to your campaigns to help prevent your ad from being displayed when shoppers browse with those terms. This helps minimise irrelevant clicks.
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Increase your bids on shopping terms that perform well for you and help you meet business goals.
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Take advantage of our dynamic bidding feature. With this, Amazon will adjust your bid in real time (by a maximum of 100%) when it’s more or less likely to lead to a sale.
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Create a campaign with product targeting to target specific products, categories, brands or other product features that are similar to the product in your ad. This can help shoppers discover your product when browsing detail pages and categories or shopping for products on Amazon.
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Consider raising your bids and budgets in the weeks leading up to and during major shopping periods. This action can help you reach new customers and engage more shoppers who are interested in buying your products during the busiest shopping seasons on Amazon.
We recommend that new advertisers start with Sponsored Products, but the strongest advertising strategy includes a mix of ad types. Our advertising solutions help you reach and engage shoppers at every stage of their journey—from awareness to purchase and beyond. Take advantage of them all to help maximise your performance.
Sponsored Products
Help drive sales by promoting your product to shoppers looking for products like yours.
Sponsored Brands
Help increase discovery, and engagement with your brand and products
Stores
Create a unique, immersive shopping experience, inspiring customer loyalty.
Sponsored Display
Reach the most relevant shoppers for your business, both on and off Amazon, and help increase awareness, consideration, and sales.
7 key *strategies* to remember
7 key strategies to remember
Build your advertising success on Amazon by using a combination of strategies. Learn our top 7 recommendations below.
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Launch your first Sponsored Products campaign with automatic targeting. Then use the results to build a campaign with manual targeting.
2
Run your ad campaigns without an end date to keep your products top of mind and keep up with shopping trends.
3
Target at least 30 keywords. Use your search term report to discover the keywords shoppers are using to find your products.
4
Start with broad match for your keywords in manual campaigns. Focus on the top performers from the search term report with phrase match or exact match.
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Focus on browsing trends by using product targeting simultaneously.
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Use separate campaigns for product groups to focus your advertising strategy and organise your keywords and budgets. Give each group a pair of automatic targeting and manual targeting campaigns.
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Partner your Sponsored Products ad campaigns with Sponsored Brands or Stores to grow your brand audience.
Need more help? Register for one of our webinars to learn from Sponsored Products specialists.
If you’re a seller enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry or are a vendor, use up to three of your top-performing products to create a Sponsored Brands campaign ( Seller Central | Advertising console).
If you’re not sure which keywords to target, start by using Amazon’s suggested keywords, available during the campaign creation process. We recommend starting out with a mix of exact, phrase, and broad match.
Make your ad headline engaging and action-oriented. Call out whether your products are new or exclusive, and be sure to express what makes them unique.
Upload your brand logo as the main image in the ad. Also make sure to include different images for the three ASINs in the ad.
Steps for success with Sponsored Brands
All Sponsored Brands campaigns undergo moderation. Once you’ve finished creating your campaign, it will undergo review and you’ll be notified within three working days if it’s approved. If your ad has been rejected, we’ll notify you via email to explain why it wasn’t approved. Common moderation issues to avoid:
- Headline mismatch with products in the ad or keywords being targeted.
- Unsupported claims such as “best” or “top-selling.”
- Incorrect punctuation, spelling, or capitalisation.
Use the suggested bids and bid range to set competitive keyword bids. Suggested bids and bid range provide insights into the auction landscape based on historical winning bids, helping you to understand bids for similar ads.
See how you’re engaging new customers with your brand. Refer to your ‘new-to-brand’ metrics to measure attributed orders and sales of your products from first-time customers of your brand on Amazon over the past 12 months. You can also identify keywords that have the highest percentage of new-to-brand orders.
Clicking the brand logo, headline, and call to action drives shoppers to a Store or page featuring a collection of products.
Clicking one of the featured products drives shoppers to the product detail page.
Stores
If you’re a seller enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry or a vendor, take the time to create a Store for your brand to start building shopper awareness. Stores offer an immersive experience where shoppers connect with your brand and explore your offerings in a dedicated setting. Use your Store’s unique brand URL in a Sponsored Brands campaign or any off-Amazon marketing channels you use.
Use one of the three design templates:
Product grid: A simple, organised way to display your selection.
Marquee: Curated product selection with additional space for select imagery and copy, such as product descriptions and customer quotes.
Highlight: A content-rich layout that features a broad selection of products and provides plenty of space for product information and images.
Steps for success with Stores
Add multimedia content that helps bring your brand to life. Images can illustrate your brand story, and videos can show your products in action.
You can handpick product listings for your Store or use dynamic widgets to auto-populate different product displays. These widgets use shopping insights such as keyword search, best-selling products, and/or recommendation history, and automatically update your Store pages when you add new listings.
Check your Stores Insights (Seller Central | Advertising console) regularly for insights on sales, page views, and traffic sources from both on and off Amazon.
Here are our top optimisation tips to get the most out of your Sponsored Display campaigns:
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Initially promote your entire product catalogue and refine your campaign structure over time. After you gather insights, segment your items into separate campaigns depending on performance for more streamlined campaign management.
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When using the views targeting tactic, prioritise ASINs with the most page views when creating new campaigns.
3
Test your ad creative when using the product targeting tactic or interests audience targeting tactic.
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Ensure your campaign has enough budget to stay live throughout the day. Consider increasing budgets that frequently run out to help continuously drive traffic to your ads.
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Monitor campaign performance regularly. Sponsored Display enables you to access similar campaign metrics to those available for other sponsored ads products.
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Measure performance against your campaign goals. For example, if you’re using Sponsored Display to help drive incremental sales, you can measure how many ad clicks convert into orders. If creating additional product awareness is your priority, you can monitor impressions and detail page views.
For more information on creating Sponsored Display campaigns, visit the help page.
