Advertising your products on Amazon can help shoppers find your items more easily. But what options are available within the platform, and how do each of them work?
All of your advertising options are going to be available to you within Seller Central. The way you get to them is by going to Seller Central and clicking on advertising. Once there, you’ll see the following screen:
Within Seller Central, there are three different types of campaigns.
- Sponsored Products
- Sponsored Brands
- Sponsored Display
Sponsored Products appear in Amazon searches. Within that platform, you’re competing against other products that are trying to rank for those keywords and display near similar products.
Sponsored Brands feature your logo and tagline, as well as a couple of chosen products. This shows up at the top of an Amazon search page, before the product listings start. If someone’s searching for your brand or a more generic phrase for some of your products, this is where you would show up.
Sponsored Display is a relatively new method of advertising and it isn’t available to all sellers yet. Sponsored Display is a type of advertising that is available both on and off Amazon. It allows you to retarget potential customers back to your listings when they go to a different website. When someone visits your page on Amazon, and then goes elsewhere, they’ll get ads on those pages to remind them to come back to your products.
How Amazon Advertising Works
Amazon uses a cost per click (CPC) advertising model. CPC advertising works in the following way.
CPC only charges you every time someone clicks on your link. If someone simply sees it and doesn’t act on it, you won’t be charged for it. CPC campaigns often help your ads show up more prominently and increase traffic, which in turn increases sales.
CPC bidding requires you to pay for every click you get through advertising. In your CPC campaigns, you’ll set a maximum bid that signifies how much you’re willing to pay for clicks. Most of the time, you’ll get the click for much less than your max bid. However, you’ll never pay more than the maximum amount you put in your campaigns.
The system is basically an option based system that allows you to bid on keywords or groups. You set a maximum bid for keyword terms. Depending on how much competition you have, you may get it for less.
Let’s say you bid on the term “natural baby wipes” for $1 per click. But then someone else bids on the term for $2 per click. They’re going to get priority and show up higher in results than you because they outbid you. However, if someone else bid on it for 50 cents per click, you’ll not only get higher priority, but you may only have to pay 60 cents per click. It depends on several factors.
Amazon’s model is similar to how Google’s bidding on advertising works in the CPC world. In both cases, you set a max bid and pay up to that amount for each click you receive.
Sponsored Products
Sponsored products are listings that show up at the top of Amazon search pages. Most of the time, the top three search results will have a sponsored banner under the image to indicate that it’s sponsored.
When you search for dog gravy, you’ll see that the first three products have a sponsored banner above each title. This indicates that brands are paying to be in the top spots for your specific search.
The first organic listing is also the second paid listing in this example.
Another place you’ll see them is in the middle of a page on the product page. You’re going to see a couple different sections called Sponsored Products related to this item, these are also sponsored product listings. These can show up in the middle of the page, as well as at the bottom. Mobile users will see the same thing.
You can also do product targeting ads and they’ll show up right below the product listing.
Sponsored Products are available to the following types of sellers:
- Book Vendors
- Kindle Direct Publishing Authors
- Professional Sellers
Items in adult, refurbished, or used categories are not eligible for sponsored products.
Sponsored Brands
Sponsored brands appear at the top of search results to help improve shoppers’ discovery of your brand. These banners allow you to create custom messaging that connects with your target audience and gets their attention.
When shoppers click on your logo, Amazon takes them to your store or a custom page. When they click on the products in the banner, they are sent to that product’s page.
This whole banner here at the top is a sponsored brand. You can put a logo and a short sentence of copy and advertise up to three products. These can jump to a page or you can jump to a store front, it just depends on what option you have for your ad. These show up in some other places as well, but this is probably the most common placement.
Sponsored Brands can also show at the bottom of search pages. The brands that show up here didn’t get the top bid, so they’re down here at the bottom.
Sponsored Brands are only available for sellers enrolled in Brand Registry. However, agencies, book vendors, and vendors can also be eligible.
Sponsored Display
Sponsored Display is a new type of advertising campaign that is only available to select brands. It should become available to all sellers within a few months.
In the example above from the New York Times, a sponsored advertisement appears in the middle of the page. This model retargets you using your cookies to get you back on Amazon’s platform.
Campaigns are a cost per click model that operate on daily budgets. Once you set a budget, Amazon will display your ads until it hits the limit you’ve set and then stop.
Sponsored Display helps you grow your Amazon business by helping you create relevant campaigns that reach shoppers across the web. The program increases product awareness and shopper conversion by showing your ads on and off Amazon.
Your ads can have a “shop now” button that brings the reader back to your store page.
The program is available for Amazon Brand Registry sellers that are in eligible categories. The seller also has to be able to ship anywhere in the US.
There are several different targeting strategies.
Targeting views places ads on third-party websites and engages people who’ve looked at your products within the last month. This is the only strategy that places ads on other websites. The rest are on product-related pages.
Targeting interests places ads in front of people who the algorithm has tagged as being interested in your product category.
Targeting products simply targets items that are similar to what you’re promoting.
Targeting product categories targets categories that are similar to the ones you are promoting.
There are several prohibited products, including:
- adult products
- alcohol
- contests
- digital hacking services and items
- drug testing kits
- health diagnostic kits
- permanent beauty care products
- tobacco
- weapons
Sponsored Display campaigns are helpful because you can bring interest to your items without a huge amount of extra advertising resources.
Knowing what your options are when it comes to Amazon Advertising can help you plan out your campaigns. In turn, you’ll have a better idea of the best ways to position your product and use your advertising budget.
