Amazon display ads are not just shown on Amazon marketplace pages, though. Many consumers and businesses are unaware of the advertising capabilities that Amazon boasts across its different platforms. That means that adverts can run not only on the Amazon ecommerce site, but also on Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Prime, IMDb websites, and even the kindle.
While you might want to target many of your display advertisements directly on the product listings pages on Amazon, you should not disregard the many platforms and devices that Amazon can help your advert appear on.
Perhaps most exciting of all, display ads from Amazon can be placed across the web – and not only on Amazon-affiliated channels. This is a game-changer for those brands that are looking to increase their visibility and their reach beyond the product listing pages on Amazon.
As the example image shows below, it’s possible to share an Amazon-originated display advert on websites across the internet – including blogs, news channels, and popular websites that cater towards specific audiences that you’re looking to reach with your adverts.
If you are new to digital marketing or new to Amazon’s own brand of digital advertising, then it’s worth getting your head around a few industry terms before we get started with piecing together your own display ad campaign.
First, the cost. On Amazon, adverts are Pay-Per-Click (PPC). This means that you will only be paying for your advertisement if a consumer clicks on it and is routed to your product listings page. For advertisers on Amazon, this means that you will not feel like you’re wasting money on a live campaign that’s not generating many clicks.
Alongside the PPC mechanism that Amazon Display Ads are run against is your maximum bid per click. Adverts on Amazon are shown to consumers in several different forms and in different locations on the website. Through programmatic marketing, you are encouraged to bid for the attention of consumers on Amazon. The highest bid – in an auction that takes place instantaneously in Amazon’s back-end – has their display ad shown.
Why does this matter? Because if you are most keen to show your display ad to relevant, targeted consumers, you’re going to need to outbid your competitors, who are working on a similar campaign strategy. Low bids mean that your display ad is rarely shown; high bids will mean it is commonly shown – but that you may be wasting cash on outbidding your rivals.
Finally, you are able to control how much your display ad marketing campaign spends in a single day. This is a relief to those businesses that might otherwise see a surge in clicks on their Amazon display ads without a parallel surge in purchases. Putting a cap on your daily spending will mean your marketing campaign is always under control.
The product that you are advertising in a display ad on Amazon will ordinarily show only the basic information that a consumer needs to make a decision about clicking on the ad. This includes only:
- Your main product pictures
- Your produce headline/title
- The product reviews (stars)
- The product prices
- Whether the product is available for Amazon Prime delivery
This means that your Amazon display advert is only a snapshot of your product. There are two lessons from this that Amazon advertisers should bear in mind. You should keep your product listing representative, for clicks to stand the highest chance of conversion into sales. You should also, meanwhile, balance this representativeness with eye-catching photos and succinct titles – as well as price points that will impress consumers.
Now you are aware of the benefits of Amazon display ads, and you’re up to speed with exactly how they work, it’s time to walk you through how to create your own. As mentioned above, you will need an Amazon business account to access Campaign Mode in Amazon Advertising. The only alternative – spending $35,000 with the help of an Amazon consultant – helps non-Amazon seller buy adverts on Amazon.
So, first, get logged in to your Amazon account, and head over to Campaign Manager. This is the interface you will always use to run Amazon adverts, including display adverts.
Next, you will be presented with a choice of three advert categories. You are going to click on the last one: ‘Sponsored Display’ adverts, as they’re now called by Amazon
The interface will now ask you to select a product that you would like to boost with display advertising on Amazon. The quickest way to select your product is to type in the title you know it is sold under on Amazon. Select your product once you find it in Amazon’s system.
You will now be asked to target your Amazon display ads. This is an important step, as you will be deciding which group of end-users your ads will be shown to. You have two choices: product display ads and interest display ads.
Product display ads allow you to select from the products that are similar to yours which you would like to be displayed alongside. If your product is a book, then you’ll be able to advertise alongside books of a similar genre, theme, or subject matter, which will help your product achieve more sales based on the products that end users are searching for.
Meanwhile, if your product is a bicycle helmet, you might find that advertising alongside other bicycle products – like lights, reflective clothing, bike locks, or bike equipment – might be useful, too. You will be jogging the memory of consumers who are also on the lookout for your product – in this case, a helmet. You can select products that you would like to be advertised alongside from across Amazon – including by searching across Amazon’s product categories.
Interest display ads work slightly differently. They allow you to expose your display ads to end-users who show the kind of shopping behaviors that you believe will align with your product. So, when you are selling your bicycle helmet, you’ll be looking for end-users who are into sport and leisure, or who enjoy outdoors activities. If you are selling a book, you want to find demographics likely to purchase books like yours online.
Like other large advertising firms, Amazon boasts a wide array of interest advertising categories for you to choose from. They are designed to help you display your adverts to the consumers who matter the most to you – ignoring those who are unlikely to purchase a book, a bicycle helmet, or whatever product you’re advertising.
Next up is your Cost-Per-Click (CPC) bid amount. This figure represents what you are prepared to bid to be seen – and potentially clicked – by consumers that you’re targeting. As a general rule, you should start with a low figure, and work up as you observe your impressions and engagements data improve – more on that later.
There’s an excellent guide on CPC strategies from BigCommerce, which is worth getting to grips with if this is to be the focal point of your campaign. If you are happy to start low and to be patient with the number of clicks you generate over time, then you can go ahead and enter a low figure as your CPC bid. You can always come back to change it later.
Finally, you are going to need to add a campaign name – so it’s easily identifiable in your advertising dashboard – as well as a budget and a duration.
With regards to your budget, remember to set a daily cap that you can genuinely afford. It is damaging and challenging to recover from a couple of weeks over which you’ve been paying through the nose for advertising, without the sales revenues generated to pay for your display ads. Amazon’s system is not set up to let you down like this – and you’d expect clicks to convert into purchases, on the whole – but this cap is your failsafe – your safety net.
Meanwhile, you can set your campaign duration. To leave your campaign live and ongoing, leave this box blank; otherwise, you can specify an exact time at which you would like to stop paying for this particular display ad campaign on Amazon. This feature enables you to experiment with Amazon display ads without committing to a month’s spending.
Amazon has specified that the minimum daily budget for your display ad is $1, while the minimum bid amount is $0.02.
