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Amazon Advertising: Ultimate Guide to Amazon Ads [2023]

amazon advertising

With the average American spending over $1000 per year on Amazon purchases with or without Prime, it’s no wonder that businesses are taking advantage of Amazon’s ad platform to increase their ecommerce sales. Amazon ads are an increasingly popular way for companies to get their products and services in front of potential customers. 

However, making the most of your ad spend and creating effective campaigns is essential to maximizing your potential return on investment.

There are many terms and ad types you need to know before getting started with Amazon advertising—all of which we will cover in this article. 

What is Amazon Advertising?

Amazon advertising is one of the quickest and most effective ways to promote your products on Amazon. It allows you to target the right audiences with your ads and optimize your campaigns over time to reach the highest ROI. 

Sellers using Amazon’s advertising platform can promote their products, store, and brand in different places throughout the marketplace, and they only pay when someone clicks an ad. 

There are several types of Amazon PPC ads including sponsored product, brand, and display ads. When creating ad campaigns, sellers bid on keywords and if they win the auction, Amazon will display their ad. Whoever wins only pays one cent more than the second-highest bid which is referred to as a second-price auction. 

What Are the Benefits of Amazon Ads?

amazon ads page

Brand Awareness 

By using Amazon advertising, you can target relevant product categories and refine your targeting based on attributes like category, brand, price, and Prime eligibility to reach your goals. This increases your brand’s exposure to specific types of customers you’re aiming to reach. 

Increased Conversion Rates

By promoting your products through Amazon ads, more and more customers will become aware of your offerings and visit your product pages. Advertising on Amazon allows for greater visibility, ultimately leading to more sales. 

This works especially well when you combine your advertising efforts with listing optimization so customers are more likely to make a purchase after they click your ad. 

Higher Ranking 

Having your product appear high up in Amazon’s search results can give you a huge advantage over your competitors. Amazon ads give you the opportunity to get your ads in front of highly targeted audiences at the top of the search results. And, as you get more conversions through ads, your product’s organic ranking will rise. 

Product Visibility 

Stronger product visibility gives customers more opportunities to discover, identify, and engage with your products. With so many sellers on Amazon, it’s difficult to differentiate yourself and attract attention to your products and brand, but Amazon ads let you skip the line by getting your products in front of the right customers. 

Who Qualifies for Amazon Ads?

Anyone with a Seller Central account can use Amazon advertising. However, you will need a Vendor Central account to access the full range of ads Amazon offers.

Amazon Vendor Central vs Amazon Seller Accounts

Amazon Vendor Central accounts are designed for larger organizations, while Amazon Seller Accounts are designed for individual sellers. 

Seller Central Account

If you are a marketplace or third-party seller with an Amazon Seller Central account, you can sell products directly to Amazon’s customers. There are two ways you can fulfill orders from customers: you can manage the shipping, customer service, and returns yourself, or you can use Amazon’s Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) program to manage it all for you.

Benefits of having a Seller Central account: 

  • Available to everyone
  • Sell directly to consumers
  • Fulfillment options
  • Control over retail pricing
  • Access to analytics

Vendor Central Account

Vendor Central is Amazon’s invite-only web interface for manufacturers and distributors. They are known as first-party sellers because they sell products in bulk to Amazon, which then resells the goods to their customers. 

An indication that you are looking at a product sold through Vendor Central is when you see the phrase “Ships from and sold by Amazon.com” on the product description page.

Benefits of having a Vendor Central Account: 

  • Fulfillment handled by Amazon
  • More advertising options
  • A+ content

Amazon Advertising Categories

amazon brainstorming meeting

1. Amazon PPC Ads (Pay-Per-Click)

  • Sponsored Product Ads: Sponsored product ads are a type of self-service, cost-per-click ad found in shopping results and product detail pages for individual product listings. Through these ads, you can increase the visibility of your product listings. Sponsored product ads are perfect for increasing traffic to your storefront and product listing pages and gaining new potential consumers. 
  • Sponsored Brand Ads: Sponsored brand ads allow businesses to showcase their brand and products with eye-catching advertisements in relevant Amazon search results. Your company’s logo, customized headline, and most popular items can all be used to draw customers’ attention.
  • Sponsored Display Ads: Sponsored display ads are a unique type of PPC ad that lets sellers retarget customers who have previously visited their product pages on or off the Amazon platform. 

2. Amazon DSP Ads (Demand-Side Platform)

Amazon DSP is a demand-side platform that allows you to programmatically buy ads to reach new and existing audiences on and off Amazon. This platform is a great option for both sellers who do and do not sell products on Amazon. This allows advertisers to purchase various types of ads, including display ads and other ad formats. 

3. Other Amazon Advertising Products

  • Amazon Attribution: Amazon Attribution is a tool for marketers to gain insight into the success of their non-Amazon advertising and analytics campaigns on Amazon. It provides valuable data to help optimize marketing efforts and maximize ROI.
  • Amazon Live: Amazon Live is a mid-funnel marketing or consideration advertising solution, part of Amazon’s suite of brand content tools, that helps you engage shoppers and increase their awareness of your products. You can create your Amazon Live stream free of charge by downloading the Amazon Live Creator app or collaborating with them to produce an Amazon Live stream.
  • Amazon Stores: A store on Amazon is a free, custom-made, multi-page shopping site for individual brands to display their products and tell their story. With its unique Amazon URL, businesses can create a brand store on Amazon without any extra cost.

How to Create an Amazon Advertising Strategy

amazon advertising agency

1. Determine Your Goals and Budget

To figure out your advertising budget, begin by setting your marketing objectives. These objectives should support your business’s marketing plan, from brand awareness or evaluation to generating repeat purchases or brand commitment.
Your goals will affect your ad budget by deciding which advertising channels you utilize or the kind and size of the target audience you intend to reach. There is no single way to determine what an ideal advertising budget is. The best approach is to create a budget tailored to your business’ objectives and long-term plans.

2. Choose The Right Products

To maximize sales, advertise your most successful products in the right category. Evaluate the pricing of these products to ensure they are attractive and competitive, and use an Amazon listing optimization tool to make sure your listings include the right keywords and supporting content. This will increase the likelihood of your ad converting to a sale.

3. Optimize Your Amazon Product Pages

To maximize your product pages’ success, ensure they are as detailed as possible. Add SEO-driven titles with high-quality images that display the product’s measurements and design.For help creating the perfect product pages to drive sales and attract customers, use Sellesta.com. Sellesta will score and optimize your product pages for both SEO and the customer experience, helping to bring more customers to your store and boost your sales.

4. Choos the Right Type of Ads

You can take advantage of the full potential of Amazon advertising by combining any of the three types of ads available, as each one operates differently.

  • Sponsored Brands: Use your brand logo to promote your product to new consumers, especially when you’re promoting more than one product.
  • Sponsored Products Ads: These will appear at the top of the page before the search results, making it a great way to pull consumers away from competitors. 
  • Product Display Ads: These can influence consumers to look at more expensive products and pull them away from consumers. 

5. Research Target Keywords

Keyword research is one of the most critical parts of advertising, especially on Amazon. When optimizing your products, you need to include relevant keywords to be indexed in the correct categories. Indexing influences your visibility, and if not done properly, your product won’t be seen by customers. 

The keywords you use in your product pages should have high search volume, low competition, and be relevant to your product. This means using tools to research popular keywords, search terms, and phrases consumers use to describe products like yours in Amazon’s search engine. 

Sellesta uses powerful AI to find the highest-ranking keywords among your consumers and competitors. You can also get amazing data about product listings with our listing scoring and competitive analysis features. This can help you optimize your product listings and pages to beat your competition and rank higher in the search results. 

Make the Most of Your Amazon Ad Spend

As Amazon continues to grow and dominate the ecommerce market, Amazon advertising has become the standard among sellers looking to earn a greater profit. And while ad clicks are key, an optimized Amazon listing is critical for conversion rates. Tools like Sellesta can help you improve your product listings with data-driven keyword suggestions for bullet points, titles, and descriptions. 

With Sellesta, you get access to: 

  • Listing scoring: Get optimization checklists that provide insights on the main aspects of your listing: product title, product description, images, review count, etc.
  • Keyword search integrated with listing optimization: Maximize organic traffic to your listing by finding the most important keywords to include. 
  • Listing optimization: Use our AI-driven listing optimization to improve your listing title, bullets, and generic keywords. The AI can generate these elements for you, making optimization quick and easy. 
  • Competitive analysis: Automatically identify your direct and indirect competitors and track their BSR, prices, ranking, and listing optimization score – all in real time. 
  • Review analysis: Our AI analyzes key tags and the emotional tone of key tags to break down what customers really think about your (and your competitors’) products. You can see where customers are having issues with your product and make the necessary changes. And, you gain insights on why customers love (or don’t love) a competitor’s product, and how to adjust yours accordingly.

Make the most of your ad spend by creating the perfect Amazon listings. 

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