Amazon PPC Advertising
I hosted Ritu Jave, CEO of PPC Ninja to talk about Amazon PPC Advertising. This 2 episode webinar provides a good overview and understanding of Amazon Advertising.
Amazon PPC Advertising 101 (Part 1 of 2):
Amazon PPC Advertising 101 (Part 2 of 2):
You can find more info about PPC Ninja's tools, free 6 week mastermind, and other Amazon advertising tips at ppcninja.com.
Amazon Advertising Campaign Types
There are several types of Amazon Advertising Campaigns. These are:
Sponsored Products are used most often as they are the main advertising campaign types available to all sellers on the Professional Selling plan.
Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display are more advanced ad types that are only applicable with Amazon Brand Registry.
- Sponsored Products
- Sponsored Brands
- Sponsored Display
Sponsored Products are used most often as they are the main advertising campaign types available to all sellers on the Professional Selling plan.
Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display are more advanced ad types that are only applicable with Amazon Brand Registry.
Sponsored Products is where you run Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertisements to promote your product(s) to Amazon shoppers searching with keywords related to your product, or viewing a relevant product category or other similar products on Amazon.
Under Sponsored Products, you can create campaigns with automatic or manual targeting:
Under Sponsored Products, you can create campaigns with automatic or manual targeting:
For both targeting types, you can target KEYWORDS and/or PRODUCTS.
Keyword targeting ads bid to run when a customer searches a keyword phrase that is related to keywords in your product copywriting (for automatic campaigns) and the keyword phrases you specify (for manual campaigns).
Product targeting ads bid to run when a customer is looking at a related product.
For Automatic Campaigns, there are 4 ad targeting types:
a) Close match
b) Loose match
c) Complements
d) Substitutes
Close and Loose match targets mainly target keywords. Complements and Substitutes always target other products.
Keyword targeting ads bid to run when a customer searches a keyword phrase that is related to keywords in your product copywriting (for automatic campaigns) and the keyword phrases you specify (for manual campaigns).
Product targeting ads bid to run when a customer is looking at a related product.
For Automatic Campaigns, there are 4 ad targeting types:
a) Close match
b) Loose match
c) Complements
d) Substitutes
Close and Loose match targets mainly target keywords. Complements and Substitutes always target other products.
- Example of a complements: If you sell a bedsheet set, your ad shows up on the product page of a quilt that a customer is looking at.
- Example of a substitutes: Your bedsheet set shows up as an ad when a customer is on the product page of another bedsheet set.
Negative Targeting
How is negative targeting useful?
Negative targeting is particularly useful for automatic campaigns because you cannot pick the keywords or products targeted by the automatic ad algorithm. However by using negative targeting, you can specify keywords or products to be omitted from automatic campaign targeting.
Negative targeting is not essential for manual campaigns because you can simply stop (pause or archive) specific keyword or product targets in manual campaigns.
After running ad campaigns for 2 weeks or more, I like to check on their performance. This can be done 2 ways:
To tune my ad campaigns, I look for the following:
Negative Keyword targeting has been available for years, but Amazon just added Negative Product targeting on 30th July 2020 (see the screenshot below)! Before that, there was no way to stop automatic ad campaigns from targeting products that had many clicks but poor sales.
Negative targeting is particularly useful for automatic campaigns because you cannot pick the keywords or products targeted by the automatic ad algorithm. However by using negative targeting, you can specify keywords or products to be omitted from automatic campaign targeting.
Negative targeting is not essential for manual campaigns because you can simply stop (pause or archive) specific keyword or product targets in manual campaigns.
After running ad campaigns for 2 weeks or more, I like to check on their performance. This can be done 2 ways:
- Online using the Amazon Advertising Console.
- Downloading the Search Term report for the last 14 to 60 days as a spreadsheet.
To tune my ad campaigns, I look for the following:
- Campaigns with high ACOS, or worst, campaigns with no ACOS because there are clicks and spend but zero sales. I prioritise dealing with campaigns with high spend, no ACOS (but with clicks and spend), then ACOS from highest to lowest.
- Within each campaign, identify the customer search terms and product targets (ASINs) with ≥8 clicks and no sales (if the listing is new with no reviews, then give it more leeway, perhaps ≥12 to 15 clicks with 0 sales before taking action as the conversion rate will generally be lower relative to social proof). For automatic campaigns, find these by clicking on Campaign (Name link) > Ad Group (Name link) > Search terms (in the left menu bar), then sort by the table header for Clicks or Spend (click twice on the table header to sort by descending, highest to lowest).
- For manual campaigns, if I feel these poorly converting targets are important/relevant and want to keep advertising, then I might reduce the bid by 10%-25% so the ads are kept running but at a lower cost-per-click.
- For automatic campaigns, you cannot adjust bids for specific keywords or products.
- For automatic campaign targets that have poor conversion (≥8 to 12 clicks with no sales, or ACOS that is too high), such as irrelevant keywords, irrelevant products, or competing substitutes that are too strong (lower price than you, more reviews), these can be added to negative targeting so that no more money is wasted on ads that result in non-converting clicks.
Negative Keyword targeting has been available for years, but Amazon just added Negative Product targeting on 30th July 2020 (see the screenshot below)! Before that, there was no way to stop automatic ad campaigns from targeting products that had many clicks but poor sales.
Jul 30, 2020: Negative product targeting is finally available for Amazon PPC campaigns!
By adding negative keyword and negative products to advertising campaigns, you can stop ads targeting keyword phrases and products that cost a lot of money (many clicks), but do not convert well (low or no sales). This will help control your ad campaigns to achieve lower ACOS and therefore better return on investment (ROI). That means more profitable sales!
More about Amazon Advertising... I've often been asked about Amazon advertising, for help to understand it, advertising software recommendations, etc.. While I am part of a very advanced Amazon PPC course (some course members say it's like a PhD in Amazon PPC ads), I do not think it is suitable for the majority of sellers as it is very spreadsheet intensive and requires a lot of work with Excel files for bulk uploads. Most people would be lost by the first 2 hours out of the 40+ hours of video to grasp the spreadsheet sorting, formulas and processes.
The main help I do provide with Amazon Ads is as part of training program, particularly during the 1-to-1 sessions because that's when it is most productive to help setup ad campaigns and analyze ad reports, by working with live listings so actual campaigns can be launched and subsequently analyzed and tweaked. I run training in small groups from time to time and more info can be found at my Amazon Seller Live Training page.
The main help I do provide with Amazon Ads is as part of training program, particularly during the 1-to-1 sessions because that's when it is most productive to help setup ad campaigns and analyze ad reports, by working with live listings so actual campaigns can be launched and subsequently analyzed and tweaked. I run training in small groups from time to time and more info can be found at my Amazon Seller Live Training page.