Everything You Need to Know About the Amazon Display Ads

What are the Amazon Display Ads?

Amazon Display Ads offer some unique opportunities for sellers at Amazon. One of these is the ability to remarket your product on third-party websites based on customer views on Amazon (remarketing). However, many advertisers are still unsure how to use it, so many don’t use it. This article explains what Amazon display ads are about and how they can benefit a seller.

What is the purpose of Sponsored Amazon Display Ads for sellers?

A Sponsored Amazon Display Ad is a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertisement. Using Sponsored Display Ads, brands can target their audiences with customised products and categories, as well as advertising that appears on and off Amazon. Remarketing enables advertisers to advertise to shoppers who have viewed product detail pages via Amazon and third-party websites.

How do Amazon’s Sponsored Display ads look?

Advertisers can purchase Sponsored  Amazon Display ads to display their products on the Amazon home page, product detail pages, and search results pages. You’ll see Amazon Display ads on tablets, smartphones, and the Amazon mobile app. By using Sponsored Display views remarketing, you can have your ads appear on third-party sites and apps other than Amazon as well.

How are Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Displays different?

The three types of Amazon PPC ads are listed below in a quick review.

Amazon Sponsored Products: Amazon search results and product detail pages offer keyword and ASIN-targeted ads similar to those offered by Google Ads, allowing advertisers to advertise individual products. The most popular Amazon display ads are Sponsored Products.

Amazon Sponsored Brands: Shoppers see brand-building ads above Amazon search results, including the custom headline, brand logo, and up to three products. Shoppers can Access their Amazon Stores pages or a custom landing page on Amazon when they click through their ad. The new Sponsored Brand video ad format supports linking to product detail pages.

Amazon Sponsored Display: The platform serves relevant ads on its site and external sites and sends shoppers to Amazon product detail pages when appropriate. Remarketing allows you to engage customers throughout their purchase journey by retargeting those who have viewed your product detail pages or similar product detail pages too.

What is the cost of Amazon Sponsored Display advertisements?

Sponsored Display ads are offered to advertisers at a cost-per-click (CPC) rate. A potential customer clicks on an advertisement only when you pay for it. On Amazon, Sponsored Display ads are priced according to a second-price auction. A default bid (the maximum price an advertiser is willing to pay per click) is submitted by every advertiser for their ads. Only $0.01 more is paid by the highest bidder than the second-highest bidder.

What are the benefits of Sponsored Display ads?

A product detail page is one of Amazon’s most valuable real estate, and advertisers can take advantage of that. In addition to cross-selling their products, Sponsored Amazon Display ads allow sellers to target their competitors’ products and sell their products alongside theirs.

4% of shoppers make an immediate purchase, according to an Amazon study. The average shopper will wait approximately six to seven days between initial browsing and purchase. You can remarket your product to customers who viewed your product detail page or a similar product detail page using Amazon Sponsored Display views.

Automation and machine learning are also used to optimise campaigns. While you can still change your bid or pause your campaign, bids automatically adjust based on the likelihood of conversion. The Amazon ads that support Sponsored Display are also ‘retail aware’ which means that they will show an item when it is in stock and a deal is being offered. A sponsored display remarketing campaign can automatically exclude customers who have already bought the advertised product.

In what way do Amazon product ads fit into an advertising strategy?

Sponsored Display Ads (formerly Product Display Ads) can help build awareness at mid-funnel by targeting shoppers based on their interests and retargeting high-intent shoppers who have viewed specific product ASINs.

Amazon Sponsored Display vs. Amazon DSP (demand-side platform)

Even though DSP offers retargeting via display ads, Sponsored Display is more intuitive to set up than DSP’s very manual process. A minimum monthly spend is also required for DSPs, but not for Sponsored Displays.

The audience targeting capabilities of Sponsored Display is currently less flexible than those of DSPs. Advertising with DSPs gives marketers an unprecedented amount of control over their target audience, allowing them to customize campaigns based on specific actions, such as targeting shoppers who viewed a brand’s products but didn’t buy; or shoppers who recently viewed competing products.

Product display Ads Amazon: Targeting options

You have the option to select Audience or Product targeting when creating campaigns. Product Display Ads on Amazon as the seller.

 Sponsored Display Audience Targeting

Advertisers can re-engage Amazon shoppers who visited your site or products similar to yours in the past through audience targeting. You will be shown the promoted products of your products if customers have seen the detailed pages of your products or similar products in the last 30 days.

Customers who have recently purchased a product similar to yours are excluded (such as those who are unlikely to purchase your products). Designs are automatically generated based on the details of your product.

Amazon will adjust your bid upward or downward depending on the likelihood of conversion. This type of ad is available on the desktop, mobile, and mobile apps. Before submitting the ad for review, you can add a custom headline and logo. You are only charged for interest-based ads when someone clicks on them. Cost-per-click ads are billed on a cost-per-click basis. A broad match, a phrase match, and an exact match are the three-match types addressed by these manuals.

Sponsored Display Product Targeting (New Beta)

Amazon believes its new Product Targeting (available in beta to vendors and sellers) will give brands a better view into campaign analytics by targeting specific products or relevant product categories on Amazon.

Among the new beta enhancements are:

• Using one campaign to advertise multiple products

A single product could be promoted in a Sponsored Display campaign using the product targeting feature previously. In the same campaign, you will be able to promote as many ASINs as you wish (up to 10K).

• View detailed information on advertised ASINs and targeted ASINs, along with targeted categories

Previously, only campaign performance reports were available for Sponsored Display product targeting. The performance of your products can now be viewed individually for each ASIN and target.

• Establish separate bids for each of the target products or categories

You can now target individual products or categories within Sponsored Display. By doing so, you can adjust each bid according to how your advertising targets are performing compared to your goals.

• The relevance of category targeting is improved.

The category selection process has been improved, allowing you to select categories more easily. Your products can now be promoted in any category you choose, and relevance will be evaluated at ad serving time using machine learning models to determine relevance.

• Addition of negative targeting options

Ads for specific brands can no longer be shown on product detail pages when you use negative targeting. To ensure no overlaps, add that brand’s name to the negative targeting list if you also own a partner brand managed from a separate advertising account.

A list of products from which your ads should not be displayed is also available. This can be helpful when using category targeting if you notice that certain products are underperforming and wish to exclude them.

• Enhanced awareness of out-of-stocks

Ads for advertised products will no longer serve if they’re not available for purchase due to improvements to out-of-stock awareness. Even when the product is out of stock or low in inventory, you can still add it to your campaign, confident that you won’t generate clicks on ads that result in an order.

Creating an Amazon Sponsored Display Campaign

The following are the steps for creating sponsored product display ads on Amazon:

1. From your Vendor Central or Seller account, navigate to Campaign Manager.
2. To start a campaign, select “Create.”
3. From the menu, select “Sponsored Display”.
4. Create an ad campaign for an ASIN (Amazon will automatically generate your ad creative and optimise it for performance).
5. Decide how much you’d like to bid on CPC.
6. Name your campaign, determine your budget, and decide the duration.
7. Submit your Sponsored Display Ad after reviewing it.

A product image, price, badge, and star rating can be pulled automatically from Amazon for ad creatives. You can shop now by clicking the “Shop Now” button on your ad. The customer can browse or purchase with just a click. A customer interested in categories related to your product will appear in your ad when Amazon automatically creates audiences based on their Amazon shopping activities.

Amazon KDP product display ads

The advertising for Amazon KDP product display ads differs from other types of advertising. There are several reasons for this, mainly because the product detail pages and the advertising formats are substantially different. KDP advertisers are limited to displaying Sponsored Product Ads and Lock Screen Ads.

In contrast to other product details, the KDP product detail page displays only the cover and back of the book. The platform also allows customers to “look inside” books advertised, though the feature is not always visible.

Amazon automatically generates these previews. In addition, each product can also be described by its title and include seven keywords. A listing for additional product attributes is impossible, nor can you place images beyond the covers or “look inside” previews.

How to optimize Amazon product display ads for best results

For the best results from your product display ads, as an Amazon seller, you can use the following practices:

1. Optimization of bids

It’s important to monitor and adjust your bids to ensure you’re staying within your budget and to ensure you’re hitting your target ACoS. Ensure that your bids are always monitored frequently, so you stay competitive and close to the ACoS you want.

2. Harvesting and disposal of target species

Your Sponsored Products campaign can be used to identify new targeting opportunities through continuous monitoring. There are a few other ways to identify ASINs you can target with Sponsored Display campaigns, besides harvesting targets from Amazon Sponsored Products:

• Take a look at your product detail page’s ‘related products’ section;
• Identify potential complementary ASINs by looking at the ‘Frequently bought together section;
• In Seller and Vendor Central, you can see reports about shopping behaviour and bundling.

3. Advertising products

You will also want to continually update the products you advertise, just as your research and test ad targets. Advertising products with some of the following characteristics is likely to be successful:

• The volume of sales is high
• An Amazon ACoS that works
• The margin of profit is comfortable.

Your advertised products should be put to the test to see how well they perform, as well as your advertising targets. Don’t waste money on what doesn’t work.

4. Refinement of categories

Utilise the refinement options when using category targets. Here are a few suggestions:

• Focus on your biggest competitors when building a brand
• Compare your product’s price with those of your competitors
• Substitutes with lower ratings than yours should be targeted
• A target product that does not qualify for prime eligibility.

5. Using negative targeting

If you use the ‘product targeting’ targeting option in your campaign, Amazon will provide negative targeting. Make sure you add negative targets to eliminate brands or products you don’t want to advertise, especially if you’re targeting a broader category in your store.

In the campaign manager, click the “product targeting” button for a campaign using the targeting option. Click the ad group you want to run the campaign for. On the left-hand side of the browser, a tab titled ‘Negative targeting’ will appear. Then click the tab to start selecting your negative targets.

Conclusion

Using Sponsored Display, the Amazon Marketplace offers advertisers on Amazon the opportunity to advertise on and off Amazon in highly-targeted ways. Amazon display ads, if used effectively, will benefit you in steady revenue generation. Advertisers can also target shoppers who have already considered their products with Sponsored Display, the only PPC ad format that does so.

Take small steps to get started, and the first step is to set up campaigns for just a few of your top-performing ASINs, based on our three-step methodology explained above. Consider experimenting with category targeting if your campaigns are performing well.

Amazon Sponsored Display offers some unique ad slots and refinement options available through PPC advertising on Amazon. You can drive product awareness, boost sales, and increase your brand’s visibility and reach both on and off Amazon by using this tool correctly.