There are 3 main advertising types in Amazon PPC: 1) Sponsored Products, 2) Sponsored Brands 3) Sponsored Display. Sponsored Display is the newest Amazon PPC ad type, slowly rolled out in 2019; it is now a staple to all Amazon seller/brand owner/ad manager’s advertising strategies. This article discusses the Amazon Sponsored Display ad type, also call Amazon display advertising, in detail.
Sponsored Display shows up mostly on product details on Amazon and across other affiliated Amazon pages. These Amazon display ads show up as a small rectangular or square banner of the product’s main image underneath the bullet points. The banner, unlike Sponsored Brands, only advertises one child ASIN/SKU
On top of the ad placement on the product detail page, it is also in not so obvious placements such as:
Customer Reviews Pages
Top of the Offer Listing Pages
Sponsored Display ads on Customer Review page
In Sponsored Display, there are two targeting options, 1) Product Targeting (also known as PAT) 2) Audience. Product targeting is more specific and manual, allowing the advertiser greater control of where their ads will display. While the Audience option is more automatic and passive of the two targeting options. More on the two targeting options later in the article.
Also of note is that Sponsored Display ads will be paused when the SKU being advertised goes out of stock. Once the SKU being advertised is back in stock, the Sponsored Display ads will resume again. This feature will ensure that you are not spending ad dollars on out-of-stock SKUs.
We have discussed previously on the importance of Amazon Inventory Management, worth a read to help you prevent stock-outs and to maximize your sales.
Eligibility
Like Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display advertising type is only eligible for Amazon vendors and sellers who are registered brand owners under the Amazon brand registry.
In order to enroll into the Amazon brand registry you need an IP of your brand and have it registered with the trademark offices in the following countries:
United States, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia, India, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Singapore, Spain, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and the United Arab Emirates.
You can get more information on how to register your brand on Amazon here.
Product Targeting (PAT)
When you create a new Sponsored Display campaign after selecting the campaign settings and product to advertise, you will have the option to select the targeting type.
The product targeting, also known as Product Attribution Targeting (PAT), allows your ads to show on specific product details pages related to the targeted products, either the specific ASIN or an ASIN within a specified category. Within Product Targeting, you will further be given options: 1) Categories and 2) Individual Products.
Categories
You can have your ads target ASINs in specific categories. Categories are products that are grouped in similarities, like ‘camera cases’.
Obviously, you will select the categories related to your product and select more than one category. This “products target” type is less restrictive than the Individual Products option, as it gives Amazon Advertising only bid and category perimeters to bid on ad placements.
Pros:
Great for branding within your target category
Can get impression quickly
CPC will be relatively lower than individual products
Cons:
Less focused targeting, can be bidding on less relevant ASINs
The individual products option allows you to laser focus your advertising because it allow the seller to bid on specific Amazon product pages (ASIN). In the below screenshot, if you click on “Target” on the specific ASIN, those will be the list of ASIN your campaign will be bidding for.
You can add individual product targets by:
Suggested ➡ Amazon will give you a list of related target based on the selected product to advertise
Search ➡ Search for list of targets via keyword search
Enter list ➡enter a list of ASINs separated by either a space or a comma
Upload ➡ if you have a large list of ASINs on a spreadsheet you can upload it using csv
Pros:
Laser-focused, really narrow on targets you are bidding for
Can really go after your competition’s traffic if you have a better offer
Lower ACoS
Cons:
CPC can be much higher than category targeting
Can get into a bidding war to be placed for popular ASINs
Audience Targeting
Audience in Sponsored Display is a compelling targeting type, as you can target audiences on and off Amazon based on specific behaviors and events. These specific behaviors and events mixed together can be used to create a customized segment for your Sponsored Display advertising campaign.
Views Remarketing
Views remarketing is a subset of the Amazon Sponsored Display audience targeting type. It allows you to re-target shoppers on Amazon that has engaged with your product listing in the last 30 days BUT have not made a purchase on your product. You can choose to target the following engagement behaviors:
Shoppers who have viewed your advertised products on Amazon in the past 30 days.
Shoppers who have viewed products similiar to your advertised products on Amazon in the past 30 days.
You definitely would want to be bidding on the ‘Advertised products’ engagement type and make a strong bid on it because it can potentially be a low-hanging fruit. This is an audience that is already considering your product (bottom of the funnel). In a lot of cases, you need that extra nudge to complete the purchase. Re-engaging these audiences will be ad dollars well spent.
Pros:
Allows you to re-engage previously engaged shoppers
CPC for the lower-funnel shopper is relatively low compare to other re-targeting options (Facebook)
Harder to get into a bidding war
Cons:
Conversion rate can potentially be very low
Might conflict with the Amazon attribution window
Amazon Audiences
Amazon Audiences is the newest audience sub-type targeting. It is a targeting type that can display your ads, both on and off Amazon. The Amazon audience will have hundred of pre-built audience segments that can help Amazon sellers reach new prospective customers through awareness and brand building. Currently, there are four targeting strategies under the Amazon audience umbrella.
In-market ➡ audience whose recent activity suggests they are likely to purchase a product in a certain defined product category
Lifestyle ➡audience whose shopping and content consumption indicate interest in a lifestyle, for example, shipping on Amazon, browsing on IMDb or streaming on Prime Video.
Interests ➡ audience whose recent activity suggests they have durable interest in certain categories. A key difference between interest and In-market will be the durability of the interest.
Life Events ➡ audiences with recent activity around life moments such as moving or getting married
Pros:
Allows you to target off Amazon audiences and life events that can be relevant to your product
Cons:
Conversion rate can potentially be very low
The quality of some Amazon audience can be low
Creatives
You can create a custom creative that you want to display for your ads. Although “custom” is a bit of a misnomer, you can really only add your brand logo and a short headline.
If you do not select the “customize your creative” check box than your ads will just have the main photo and the first part of your product listing title, without the logo and headline.
With the headline you can test different headlines copies that can catch shopper’s attention. But it does need to follow the following rules:
Check for typos, misspellings, and grammar mistakes
Avoid excessive punctuation such as “!!!” or “?!”
Avoid random punctuation such as “Your. headline.”
Avoid extra spacing such as “Y o u r h e a d l i n e.”
Sentence case is recommended
We’ve test different headline copies, from calling attention to discounts, benefits, calling out the competition, and where the product is made. We found that the headline pointing at one key benefit does better than other headline copy types.
Also, if you are using seller coupons, the corresponding discount for that ASIN, will show up on the ad creative. We found this coupon call out to have a positive effect on the ad performance.
Analyzing your Sponsored Display performance
Besides looking at the metrics on your Amazon advertising dashboard, such as CPC, ACoS and Sales. You can also run Amazon advertising reports for Sponsored Display. There are 4 types of report that you can run for your Sponsored Display ads:
Campaign ➡ Show performance by the campaign for the selected date range.
Targeting ➡ Show performance by the most granular targeting level, either in its most lowest level category or product (PAT)
Advertised product ➡ Shows the performance metrics for the ads that were shown an impression, it will identify trends/performance of certain ad types and titles down to the SKU level.
Purchased Product ➡ This report shows the performance metrics on the product/SKU that was actually purchased from the advertised SKU. This is quite useful if your listing is heavy on variations.
These reports can be requested on your seller central dashboard 🡪 Reports 🡪 Advertising Reports.
How to use Sponsored Display Ads Strategically
Sponsored Display has some unique targeting options that Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brand don’t have. So it would be best if you did not use the same exact strategies as you would with your Sponsored Products and Brands campaigns, but some crossover strategies can be applied. Below are some objectives you can achieve with Sponsored Display Campaigns.
Target Direct Competitors
Target a list of 5-10 ASINs of direct competitors. Most of the ASINs in this list should have been picked up from your previous automatic campaigns that have resulted in a sale, so you know these ASINs are of strong relevance to your product. You can refine this list a bit further, to make sure that the offer is better than the targeted ASIN by either price, features, listing copy or number of reviews.
Another way to get a strong list of ASINs is to search by using the Amazon search bar. Use a hero keyword in the search and grab the first 5-10 ASINs in the search result.
Complimentary Products
You can also target product that are complimentary to yours, such as if you are selling yoga pants, you can also target yoga mat products as well. This type of campaign would require you to have an initmate knowledge of your product and the target audience. One cool way to find complimentary product is to look at the frequently bought together portion of your listing.
Re-engage Shoppers
As mentioned before, you can use the views remarketing target options to re-engage shoppers that have:
Visit your product listing in the 30 days that have not purchased
Viewed products similar to your advertised products on Amazon in the past 30 days that have not purchased your product
Interest and Event Targeting
If your product falls within the In-market, Interest, or Lifestyle events in the new Amazon audiences targeting, you can now target these segments. It is advisable to have only one in your ad groups, so you have a clear way to attribute the performance of these segments.
There are thousands of segments in Amazon audience to choose from
In-market segments
Kindle Books
A creative way to use Sponsored Display is to target the books category on Amazon. If a book interest and topic aligns with your product that you want to sell, you can use Sponsored Display to target the book ASIN or ISBN number. For example if you are selling yoga equipment, than you want to target yoga books, or if you selling travel related accessories, than you will target travel books. Use you imagination in term of where you want to place your ads on the Amazon place.
Brand Awareness
Using the category targeting option, you can target the entire high level category that is related to your product. For example, if you want to bring awareness to your Yoga brand you can target the entire yoga category on Amazon. Also of note, these campaigns objectives is for brand building and use should expect relatively higher ACoS.
How SellerMetrics can help you Scale and Optimize your Amazon Sponsored Display campaigns
There are different choices for Amazon PPC software for the average Amazon sellers/brand owners to choose from, but not all Amazon PPC software are Sponsored Display supported.
At SellerMetrics made an important decision to make sure that we are Sponsored Display compatible before launch, which means we can make automatic bid adjustments, reporting, and rules creation on Sponsored Display campaigns.
Automated Bidding
On our Automated Settings page you can enabled automated bidding on your Sponsored Display campaigns. By setting an ACoS goal, our advance algorithms can make bid changes daily to each product targets (PAT) and audience.
Manual bidding
One of our best feature to allow the user certain level of control in their optimization. Our manual bidding page allows you to make manual changes to the bid of the Sponsored Display target. As long as bid automation is not enabled in the campaign, than the user can change the bid according to the following:
Decrease/Increase $ from bid
Increase/Decrease % from bid
Decrease/Increase $ from cpc
Increase/Decrease % from cpc
Analytics and Reporting
A clean and organized Analytics and Charting page that allows you to analyze data by date range and account. We offer reporting function by the following:
Campaign
Campaign Placement
Ad Groups
Keywords
Products (PAT)
Search Terms
Rules Settings (Search Term Harvesting)
Using our rules settings, you can create rules around your Sponsored Display campaigns. For example, you can set to harvest ASIN to a Sponsored Display campaign from a Sponsored Product auto, using the following perimeters:
Order Threshold = 1
Max AcoS = 45%
Automate = Enabled
Every time there is 1 order that is less than 45% ACoS in the source campaign, it will be automatically added to the destination campaign/ad group.
Conclusion
By using Sponsored Display you can target Amazon shoppers in way that Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products can’t. This uniqueness allows the Amazon advertisers to set really unique campaign objectives that will allows you to scale with low ACoS. As with always in Amazon PPC, do not afraid to test, especially if you are using SellerMetrics to optimize your Sponsored Display bids on a daily basis to make sure there is no leaky adspend.
If you have questions or insights to share, please feel free to post them via the comments section. Please also consider joining our Facebook Group where we discuss any questions you may have about running an Amazon business.
We are SellerMetrics, our Amazon PPC Software helps Amazon sellers, brands, KDP Authors and agencies navigate Amazon Advertising PPC via bid automation, bulk manual bid changes, and analytics.
