Increase Your Visibility with Amazon Sponsored Display Ads | JumpFly Digital Marketing Blog
Sponsored Display Campaigns are Amazon’s newest addition to advertising campaign types. With this expansion comes new targeting methods, opportunities for increased visibility, and remarketing options that have previously been unavailable to Amazon advertisers that are not using Amazon’s Demand-Side Platform (DSP).
Those who have been advertising on Amazon for five years or more may recall that display campaigns are not exactly new as vendors previously had access to this type of campaign. However, the previous iteration had very minimal options — no keywords and no options for refinement beyond adjusting bids and budgets — and was phased out in 2017. These prior display campaigns only allowed advertisers to set a bid, budget, a maximum of one advertised product, and targeting — nothing more.
Now, Sponsored Display has been relaunched and is a completely different campaign type with more versatility and refinement options available. As with Sponsored Product campaigns, Sponsored Display campaigns are dependent on the buy box for the ads to be delivered. The buy box will look a little different based on your selling method on Amazon: Seller or Vendor.
To be the featured offer for the buy box, the Amazon algorithm evaluates different metrics including your price, fulfillment method, shipping speed, customer feedback rating, and other factors. If your listing is the best out of all the listings for a particular product, you win the buy box. This will then allow your Sponsored Display ads to be served.
For sellers, Sponsored Display ads will only serve when their seller offer is in the buy box. Vendor ads, on the other hand, will only serve if Amazon.com is the featured offer in the buy box for any of the Amazon Standard Identification Numbers (ASINs) in the display campaigns.
For example, in the image above on the left, you can see highlighted in red that seller Pulp Story Juice has won the buy box. As a result, if Pulp Story Juice was running Sponsored Display campaigns for this product, they would be allowed to display. If another seller had won the buy box, Pulp Story Juice’s ads would not be allowed to display.
In the vendor example on the right, however, Amazon has won the buy box. As a result, that vendor’s Sponsored Display ads would be allowed to show for every product ASIN in the display campaign that is currently winning the buy box.
Sponsored Display campaigns do not use keywords for targeting, the way Sponsored Product or Sponsored Brand campaigns do. Instead, audiences are used for targeting, more in line with how Facebook or Google Display does targeting.
As is the Amazon way, the options differ a bit whether you are a seller or a vendor.
Sponsored Display Ads for Sellers
Sellers that are the registered brand owners on Amazon can target Amazon audiences based on views or products.
View Targeting
Product Targeting
For sellers using Sponsored Display campaigns, multiple products can be added to a campaign; previously this campaign type could only feature one product. We recommend grouping similar products together in one campaign and creating a new campaign for different product groupings.
For example, group staplers together as the targeting options are likely to be the same, and group printer ink in a different Sponsored Display campaign. This division gives you more precise control over where your ads show and how shoppers are targeted.
Sponsored Display for Vendors
Along with view and product targeting, Amazon has included interest targeting — an additional level to view targeting — for vendors using Sponsored Display campaigns.
Interest Targeting
For example, if you’re a bookseller and want to advertise to true crime readers, you can target shoppers who have shown an interest in Mystery and Thrillers or Nonfiction books. Or, if you’re selling computer keyboards, you can target shoppers who fall into the interest groups of Computer Mavens in the Lifestyle, Hobby and Professional section.
All Amazon Sponsored Display ad targeting methods allow you to customize your ad by offering the option to include a brand logo and a 50 character headline to appear with the auto-generated product image and title from the product detail page. Keep in mind that Amazon reviews these customized ads and it could take up to 24 hours before the campaign is approved and live. Campaigns without customization typically go live within 1-2 hours of creation.
With the rebirth and growth of the Sponsored Display campaign type, we are seeing Amazon focus more resources on its success. New features are regularly being rolled out and we expect to see previous purchase and search targeting roll out soon. Amazon’s goal is to make this an integral ad type, so start making these part of your campaign strategy now.
This content was originally published here.
