eCommerce Partner Talks Exploring Amazon Ads PPC Automation

Amazon is known around the world as an eCommerce giant - but consumers may not necessarily be aware that it is an advertising one too.

Based on revenue, Amazon is the third-largest digital ad platform in the world, behind Google and Facebook, with reach that extends beyond its own site, recently announcing that it will now place sponsored product ads on Pinterest, Buzzfeed, and other third-party sites.

As further evidence of Amazon’s reach, half of all US adults admit that they start their product searches on the site. In other markets, the figure is even higher, with 65% of shoppers in Germany starting their searches on Amazon.

Unsurprisingly, this has resulted in the increasing adoption of Amazon Ads across all markets in Europe.

Since you’re here, we know you get it, that while it is necessary to advertise on Amazon to grow, scale, and expand your audience, achieving this depends on being able to optimize your advertising campaigns at scale. That is, of course, where agencies and marketers come in, below, we explain exactly how to do this.

Your Amazon Ads options

Amazon Ads offers several different products and the right one for you will depend on your goals and ambitions. Advertisers can choose from sponsored brands, products, or displays, as well as multi-page stores, or video/audio ads.

Goals may include awareness, such as sharing your brand story, conversion, or strengthening loyalty.

• Sponsored displays, for example, can help create brand awareness, drive purchases, and even strengthen loyalty with relevant audiences. Brands can engage with audiences browsing specific detail pages, whether this is on the Amazon home page, on Twitch, or on third-party apps and websites.

• Sponsored branding, on the other hand, makes use of creative ads that appear in relevant Amazon shopping results. This works by allocating cost per click budget to relevant search terms. Shoppers can get to know your brand by driving traffic to the brand store.

• Sponsored products, help boost sales of individual products by generating ads from your product listings and offering automatic targeting so you can start advertising with no experience necessary.

Depending on the size of the advertiser, many are starting to realize that Amazon is no longer a nice to have, but an essential element of the entire media landscape.

As such, there’s been a growing awareness that using Amazon Ads is about more than simply launching a campaign and watching orders roll in. But whatever the specific goal you’re looking to meet through Amazon Ads, data is likely to help you achieve it.

Challenges and opportunities

Even with the huge benefits available to advertisers using Amazon Ads, there are challenges too.

This includes balancing organic and paid initiatives, gathering reviews, prioritizing owned channels over Amazon, and evaluating product mixes, as well as pricing and competitor analysis.

Nuances in languages can also really make a difference if brands work with native speakers to determine which keywords to focus on.

However, these challenges shouldn’t stop you from accessing the wealth of opportunities that Amazon Ads provides. These include the way that the marketplace brings branding, display ads, organic listings, and paid listings together as part of a single platform.

As long as you are willing to invest the necessary time to understand the platform and the relevant tools in detail, or hire the right team, Amazon Ads offers a way to manage campaigns holistically.

Of course, not all advertisers will have the skills to optimize their campaigns with Amazon Ads. If that’s the case, it may be a good idea to work with a third-party ad consultancy instead.

They may have the expertise to combine data management and digital marketing to help advertisers craft a go-to-marketplace strategy, set up and launch their campaigns, and manage their portfolios more effectively.

Agencies and automation

Amazon Ads can play a leading role in the optimization of a brand’s campaign but only if the right solution is employed. Third-party agencies can leverage their knowledge to help brands here. For example, they can advise brands to use a sponsored display, sponsored branding, or sponsored products, depending on which is most likely to help them achieve their goals.

Another major upside to working with an agency, is getting access to the latest expertise. Amazon’s advertising platform can be complex and a little daunting if you have a vast catalog of items to sell.

An agency can guide you and make things easier to digest. An agency will help with strategy development, data analysis, and optimization to help you achieve a better ROI. Agencies can also help with time schedules and financial budgets.

Working with third parties can help brands unlock the secrets of Amazon Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. That’s why so many brands choose to work with Channable. Our customers are characterized by their large assortment of products, which can make both campaign creation and campaign optimization challenging.

Our simple, automated solution allows brands to automate all aspects of campaign creation and optimization. It means they can easily apply advanced strategies while remaining in control - without doing all the manual labor

Tooling like that provided by Channable is not just great for advertisers either. It can help improve the experience for sellers and customers too.

To stay ahead of the competition, Amazon sellers must constantly optimize their strategies and advertising efforts - but across thousands of products and multiple countries, this adds up to a time and resource-intensive process.

Fortunately, Amazon Ads is part of Channable's end-to-end solution, so you can enjoy automated campaign optimization and reach your goals.

To find out more about the world of Amazon Ads and hear from industry experts like Amazon’s Mike Vroegh, Daniel Stenitzer from Artefact, and our very own Jochem Timmers be sure to check out our eCommerce Partner Talk. You can hear about Amazon PPC automation in more detail and how agencies and tools can help you optimize your campaigns.