Amazon PPC: All you Need to Know

For e-commerce retailers, Google Shopping is the go-to platform. But, with sales growing 16% on Amazon in the past year (up to $4 billion), you’re missing a huge potential market if you’re not advertising on the retail giant.

A paid media campaign on Amazon can transform your performance on the platform. Amazon’s PPC is not a million miles from Google Adwords, making it an easy transition for most sellers who have a little experience of the PPC landscape.

So what are the basics you need to know? Well, Amazon’s PPC ads appear within the website search results page. These adverts commonly appear as ‘sponsored products’ or ‘headline search adverts’ or ‘product display adverts’ in highly visible placements within Amazon, triggered by a user’s search query.

Similar to Google PPC, sellers only pay when a user clicks on the advert- allowing retailers to generate huge amounts of impressions and click-through to products without needing large amounts of budget upfront.

What Types Of Amazon PPC Adverts Are There?

There are three main types of advert: sponsored products, headline search adverts and product display adverts. Sponsored product listings show a product, but headline search adverts are more advanced, allowing the seller to use custom headlines and logos within their advert to make the listing more persuasive. Product display adverts are targeted via interests and product search intent from users who have searched for similar products or categories.

Setting Up An Amazon PPC Campaign

There are two types of targeting methods, automatic and manual. Automatic targeting means that Amazon decides which user search queries will make your advert show. As the seller you set the maximum bid price, and Amazon’s algorithm controls the rest (it’s important to ensure you’ve created a good product listing, full of rich relevant keywords, so that Amazon can interpret it correctly).

With manual targeting, you select the keywords you want to trigger your adverts. Similar to Google PPC, Amazon’s PPC platform allows you to target keyword match types; meaning you can stick to a similar keyword strategy if you already have one in place on Adwords.

Why Should I Use An Amazon Sponsored Product?

Using a PPC strategy on Amazon is a great way to generate a good ROI (return on investment) for your e-commerce offering. If you have seasonal items or promotions it can be a useful way to generate traffic to your product, to increase product visibility, to launch a new product or to help increase your organic listings (the increase in traffic has a positive impact on these).

Getting To Grips With ACOS

Unique to Amazon is the metric ‘ACOS’ (advertising cost of sale). This is generated by dividing your sales by your spend. So for example: if you’ve sold £100 but spent £10, your ACOS would be 10%. This is useful to calculate which of your adverts are breaking even or profitable.

Unsuitable Products For Amazon Listings

Not all products are supported by the Amazon PPC platform. Adult products, used and second-hand products or refurbished product (like up-cycled furniture) are ineligible to be listed. Products in closed categories are also excluded.

Certain products, like alcohol have restrictions: alcohol display adverts for example can only displayed between 12pm and 6am only, and must include the statement ‘for the facts about alcohol visit www.drinkaware.co.uk. In America, alcohol display adverts are not permitted at all. For a list of all advert restrictions, visit Amazon’s advertising policies.

Amazon Retargeting Campaigns

Similar to Google Adwords, e-commerce retailers on Amazon can also retarget their products to users – showing products they have previously viewed. And it looks like Amazon is expanding into the PPC digital landscape even further with the launch of its own new retargeting product, which is rumoured to run on third-party sites.

Want help launching your Amazon strategy? Get in touch with our friendly team today.