It’s no secret that advertisements enjoy a high status in Amazon’s ecosystem. They can be found at every major touch point of the marketplace and continue to proliferate as more sellers realize how crucial advertising is to support a strong Amazon listing.

Amazon sits on a trove of consumer data, earning them the title of third-largest ad publisher in the U.S., behind Google and Facebook. But to leverage Amazon ads effectively and responsibly for your storefront requires careful consideration on your part, and this article will explain the best Amazon advertising tips.

Amazon advertising tips: When to invest?

Various circumstances benefit from Amazon ads, including:

• New products: You need to earn your first sales and collect product reviews to increase your rankings, as well as expand brand awareness.
• Slow-moving stock: You need to increase visibility on your ASINs and liquidate your inventory to make room for newer items with higher demand.
• Seasonal products: It’s important to make the most of holidays and seasons like Christmas, which generates a large portion of sales in Q4.
• Competitive category: Use ads to leapfrog competition on search results pages and increase your odds of scoring the Amazon Best Seller Badge.
• FBA restock limits: To increase restock limits for FBA, you’ll have to move more inventory.

Amazon ads are an excellent avenue to accomplish these goals and boost your products’ popularity.

Amazon advertising tips: How does Amazon PPC work?

Amazon’s pay-per-click (PPC) ads are available to both vendors and marketplace sellers who are enrolled in Amazon’s Brand Registry. They currently offer three types:

Sponsored Products

The most popular type, Sponsored Products let you promote individual ASINs throughout Amazon category pages and product detail pages.

These ads increase weekly views by 54% and weekly sales by 40% on average.

The premise is simple: You pay per click and promote where your product shows up in the search results for a chosen keyword.

Sponsored Brands (a.k.a. headline ads)

This type of ad appears at the top of search result pages, as well as to the left, within, and at the bottom. They feature your logo, possibly a graphic such as a banner or video, and multiple products from your catalog.

The showcasing is meant to appeal to customers who may not know exactly what they want to buy but are open to exploring brands like yours.

As of 2023, you can also highlight posts, brand follows, and store buttons, making it easier to build a fan base through Sponsored Brands.

This makes them a good option for target keyword search, storytelling, and engaging and promoting products to an audience.

Sponsored Display

This is the newest ad type, launched in 2019. It works very differently from the other two; notably, Sponsored Display ads can be found both on and off Amazon.

Their primary purpose is to drive shoppers back to the products they were previously considering (or to similar ones).

Additionally, Sponsored Display ads can’t be targeted via keywords like the other two — they employ products or audiences for targeting.

This type also doesn’t have to link to an Amazon product or store and can instead link to your own private website.

What are the Amazon ad formats?

Amazon’s ads can take multiple formats, depending on the type:

• Sponsored Products:
  Individual product listings are highlighted as an ad. You don’t need custom content or imagery; you simply promote the product and pay for a placement in the search results.
• Display:
  A banner or image ad appears at the top, bottom, left, or in between search results. These are typically static images but increasingly include video. The marketplace allows for in-network ads on Amazon sites as well as third-party websites and networks.
• Video:
  Amazon’s streaming service enables you to push video ads directly to shoppers. You can even create them on websites outside of Amazon’s network. For in-network items, video ads can include direct links to products.
• Audio:
  With Amazon’s audio ad formats, you pay for (non-PPC) ads across Amazon’s audio streaming channels.
• Device:
  Push video or display ads to specific Amazon devices, like the Fire tablet or Fire TV, to expand your targeting.
• Amazon Live:
  Amazon Live allows brands to create tailored video live streams and webinars with highlighted products for enticing live shopping experiences.

As mentioned above, Amazon offers various targeting methods depending on the ad type. These include keywords, categories, individual ASINs, and others, which you can manage manually or automate.

The cost per click (CPC) of all ads is determined in a second-price auction, where you submit a bid and only pay $0.01 above the second-highest bidder.

4 Amazon advertising tips for running a successful ad campaign

1) Structure your campaigns strategically

Poorly organized campaigns are costly and inefficient. To save yourself the headache and loss of resources, develop a logical system for structuring your campaigns. For example, you could base them on a specific brand or product line.

The goal is to group similar items together and align keywords (or other targeting methods) with your product. For instance, “memory foam pillow” and the names of popular brands might feature in the same campaign.

This prevents you from overspending or wasting your ad budget. With well-organized campaigns, you can create clear keyword groups, such as segmenting by competitive terms versus branded terms versus generic terms.

2) Choose highly relevant keywords

Just like Google ads, you may inadvertently target keywords that are too broad or competitive to generate meaningful traffic. However, unlike Google ads, you have the advantage of knowing that anyone who clicks on your Amazon ad already has the intent to buy, so your keywords need to be on point.

Verify that your keywords are accurate and descriptive enough to attract the right shoppers. You can leverage various keyword match types (e.g., broad, phrase, and exact), as well as negative targeting to block low-converting traffic. Consider adopting tools like Semrush or Jungle Scout as well to discover the competitiveness, popularity, and relevance of different search terms and phrases.

3) Craft comprehensive listings

Your ads carry shoppers halfway along their purchasing journey, but it’s your product listings that push them over the finish line, so they should receive the same attention as your promotional efforts (listings are, in a sense, a form of advertising).

Prior to investing in ads, check that your listings have several high-quality images. Include the right keyword(s) in your title and make sure your bullet points and descriptions are detailed so there’s no confusion by the time shoppers reach the end. You can use A+ Content to spruce up your page and keep buyers engaged.

Tip: Keep enough inventory in stock to support ad-driven orders.

4) Test both manual and automated campaigns

Different opinions tout different solutions for how best to manage your campaigns. In general though, manual campaigns offer the greatest control over your keyword targeting and ad spend.

That said, Teikametrics’ mirrored approach to campaign structure lets you enjoy the best of both worlds. Taking this approach, you would run one manual and one automated campaign simultaneously for one category, objective, or parent ASIN that you’re advertising. Everything within those campaigns would look the same, except for the way they’re managed.

For example, you could have an automated and manual campaign both target “memory foam pillow” and link to your ad group for memory foam pillows.

Amazon also offers integrated automated campaigns. Here, you simply set your targetingType to “auto,” then Amazon automatically selects and targets keywords for your product. You can use this for ongoing keyword research in your primary campaigns as well.

A well-crafted automated campaign can cast a wide net and help you discover new keywords to add to your manual campaign. Meanwhile, you can test more granular control over the bidding in your manual campaign to gain the highest yield from each keyword.

Wrapping up — Leverage Amazon ads to take you farther

Amazon ads let you cover more ground in the vast marketplace. Like any form of advertising though, you need a clear strategy to reap the benefits.

Decide which ad format will best serve your brand, conduct thorough keyword research, and build listings that cover all angles of your products.

By following the Amazon advertising tips discussed in this article, you’ll be able to take full advantage of Amazon’s advertising options while keeping your budget in check.

Published: Oct 14, 2021 
Updated: April 16, 2024