Amazon Advertising is a fast-growing advertising network that is attracting more and more advertisers every day.
Did you know, for example, that about half of all online purchases in the United States are ordered on Amazon?
In France, the world’s leading e-commerce site is still the 6th most visited, and it is growing every year.
And today, we observe that more and more consumers are starting their product search directly on the American platform, actually since Amazon dropped Google as a search engine in 2018.
Amazon offers the best prices in the market, the best product selections and the fastest delivery.
So advertising on Amazon is an opportunity that cannot be overlooked by e-tailers and brands around the world.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll show you how Amazon Ads works and everything you need to know about it.
Why advertise on Amazon?
Amazon Advertising is a must for brands that want to sell well on the platform.
That’s because for the past 20 years, Amazon has been quietly building the most impressive database of consumer buying behavior ever created.
When it comes to buying behavior, Amazon has become a master at knowing who wants what, at what price, when, how, and even why.
Amazon uses a collaborative filtering engine to group consumers into detailed profiles, giving the platform the power to predict and then influence buying behavior.
Amazon attributes 35% of its sales to this carefully crafted, strategic suggestion power. The aggregation of consumer data is not new in itself, but the efficiency with which Amazon uses it is formidable.
Amazon Advertising is leveraging this resource to expand its offering to ads outside the platform. Not surprisingly, it is already the third largest advertising company in the world behind Facebook and Google.
And while the tech giants currently enjoy a comfortable lead, we have every reason to believe that this is unlikely to last long given the rapid growth of Amazon Advertising.
Amazon Advertising: an overview
Amazon Advertising’s many formats offer you advertising solutions for every point in your marketing funnel, which can be broken down into 2 main categories:
Amazon Advertising on Amazon, also known as “Amazon PPC
Amazon Advertising on and off Amazon, called “Amazon Advertising Network
In each of these categories, there are several types of ads, as we will see in the rest of this article.
Amazon Advertising/Amazon PPC
Amazon PPC is about products and brands on Amazon and offers three types of ads:
Sponsored Products
Sponsored Brands
Sponsored Display Ads
Who can buy Amazon PPC ads?
Amazon “Vendors” and “Sellers” who trade on the platform in eligible categories (excluding adult and used products) and whose products are eligible for the “Buy Box.
These ads are what Amazon calls “self-service solutions” that can be managed through Seller Central (for Sellers) or on the Amazon Advertising Console tool (for Vendors).
How much does it cost?
These ads are sold on a per-click basis, which is why they are called Amazon PPC (Pay-Per-Click ads). This is the Google Ads version of Amazon.
Let’s now take a closer look at each of these advertising solutions.
1- Sponsored Products Ads
It is impossible to talk about Amazon PPC without having a basic understanding of Amazon SEO. So, to fully understand what follows, you need to know that the likelihood of a brand selling on the Amazon platform depends on its ability to rank on the first page, and ideally as close as possible to the search results at the very top of the page.
What are the specific benefits of Sponsored Products ads?
Amazon describes them as a “visibility boost” and that’s exactly what they are.
Sponsored Products ads give brand owners the opportunity to avoid queues and compete with the top ranked products.
Sponsored products are “native” in appearance. Thus, for most consumers, they are indistinguishable from organic search results and have the advantage of targeting consumers who are ready to convert.
These Amazon ads have high conversion rates. Since they also appear on product detail pages, it’s hard to miss.
In addition to generating sales, Sponsored Products ads can help you find the most profitable keywords and sales strategies for all your advertising campaigns.
2- Sponsored Brands Ads
Sponsored Brand Ads are more traditional ads, in that they appear separately from the search results. But unlike traditional banner ads, they have dynamic elements.
Clicking on the brand logo takes you to the Brand Store, and clicking on a particular product takes you to the respective product detail pages.
What are the particular advantages of Sponsored Brands Ads?
Sponsored Brands Ads promote exposure on the Amazon platform and provide greater control in terms of appearance and ad text.
Since the brand logo is prominent in the ad, this type of ad is perfect for generating brand awareness.
Just as with Sponsored Products – because the bidding is based on keywords – Sponsored Brand ads offer the possibility to appear in a desired context.
Sponsored Brands offer the ability to direct consumers to your Brand Store for an enhanced shopping experience.
3- Sponsored Display Ads
Amazon Sponsored Display Ads combine elements of Sponsored Products and Display Ads.
These Amazon ads are generated based on your product listing and link directly to a product detail page.
This means that these ads are only available to brands selling on Amazon.
Unlike traditional “sponsored products” that appear on the Amazon platform in search results and product pages, Sponsored Display Ads appear outside of Amazon, on third-party websites and applications.
These ads appear only when they are relevant to consumers, such as when they search for keywords relevant to your products, or to customers who have already purchased your products.
With this type of advertising, you can pay on a Cost Per Impression basis rather than a CPC basis, if you wish.
What are the unique benefits of Sponsored Display Ads?
This Amazon ad format offers the broad reach and advanced targeting style of a website display ad, but without having to do the creative part of your ads. In other words, there is no artwork or copywriting required.
Amazon Advertising on and off the Amazon Advertising Network
This second major advertising category on Amazon Advertising is for products and brands on and off Amazon.
Like Facebook and Google, the Amazon platform uses pixel-based targeting so that users’ online behavior can be tracked and their data can be captured when they visit a given website, specific pages, or by performing certain actions.
The data capture is used in combination with a collaborative filtering engine that interprets the huge amount of individual data points associated with a single user to create a user profile.
Amazon is then able to compare this data and the behaviors of users who appear similar.
These guesses can actually predict purchase behavior with impressive accuracy.
The more patterns and data points Amazon collects, the more refined and effective its recommendations and predictions become.
Basically, all users have to do is demonstrate behavior that suggests they might want your product, and it’s done.
In short, the main appeal of this ad category is the data and insights Amazon obtains from its huge pool of customers, combined with access to Amazon’s ad network, which includes Alexa and AWS Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Music, Amazon Publishing, and Amazon Studios.
There are 2 main formats: Video and Display Ads, managed under the umbrella of Amazon DSP (Demand Side Platform), and Custom Ads, which encompass all of the previous formats.
All brand owners, whether or not they sell products on the Amazon platform, are able to purchase Amazon DSP ads.
This type of ad is charged on a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) basis and requires a minimum spend of $35,000.
1- Amazon DSP Display Ads
Amazon’s display ads look like the ads you see on most websites: they can be desktop and mobile display ads, banner ads, mobile interstitial ads, and of course they can include a link that redirects visitors to your website or a landing page.
These Display Ads can be displayed on Amazon, Amazon devices, Amazon owned and operated sites and other websites that offer display ads.
2- Customs Ads
Amazon also offers Custom Ads, which is actually a global service offered by Amazon Advertising, because instead of opting for a particular type of ad, Custom Ads allow you to include all the ad formats we have already mentioned.
