Amazon pay-per-click (PPC) Sponsored Products (not to be confused with the now defunct product ads) allow sellers to rank at the top of Amazon’s search results – from day one.
Yes this is “Adwords for Amazon” but with a crucial difference.
Unlike Google, Amazon directly awards higher organic (natural) rankings to products that are successfully selling via Amazon’s PPC Ads.
Getting Started
Amazon have made the process of getting started with sponsored products exceptionally easy.
Sign Up
Simply follow the sign up link that Amazon provide, sign in to your professional seller account and ensure that your current payment method (credit card) is valid.
Don’t forget to avail of your $50 in free ad clicks that Amazon provide to new display advertisers.
Product / Category Restrictions
Unfortunately there are some Amazon categories for which the ability to run these PPC Ads are restricted.
Even if you are currently selling in Amazon’s jewelry category, unless you have already been granted access to run sponsored products then you will not now be able to apply to do so.
In addition – if you sell adult products, or used or refurbished items – they cannot be used as sponsored product Ads.
Amazon PPC – platform limitations
While the sponsored products platform is undoubtedly a powerful tool for third party Sellers, it most certainly has a number of limitations. Most of these limitations will be overcome with time as the product & platform matures.
Location Targeting
If you’ve spent any meaningful amount of time being involved with purchasing paid traffic for e-commerce (at the very least most companies will have been exposed to Adwords PPC) – then you will familiar with the crucial concept of geographic or location targeting.
The maxim that “not everyone is your customer” can be particularly true when it comes to a potential buyer’s geographic location.
While, in theory, that person in Australia who is searching amazon for one of your most commercially important keywords might end up purchasing.. realistically we’d rather not spend a portion of our Ad budget buying their attention (by paying for a click).
Currently it is not possible to limit your Amazon PPC Ads by geographic location.
Device Targeting
Yes mobile traffic is extraordinarily important – and on Amazon in particular it can no longer be thought of as the “poor cousin” of desktop traffic (as is correctly the case with many other e-commerce channels).
However, if you’re in a vertical with particularly high CPCs – or if you sell higher priced or B2B items then ideally you’d have the option to perhaps limit the devices on which your Amazon PPC Ads are shown. Will we see Amazon follow Google’s lead here?
Currently, there is no way to target your Amazon product ads via the device that potential customers are using to browse Amazon.
Ad Scheduling
How are your sales and conversions at 3am? Yeah, thought so.
When we’re operating in pure growth and/or market share mode – we’ll usually be happy for those Ads to run at all hours & days. However if we’d like to be a little more targeted, or prudent, we may wish to control the hours/days when our display Ads run on Amazon.
Or perhaps we’d be happy for our Ads to run at all hours but we’d like to pay a little less for those clicks at 3am. Google respects and allows this via Ad scheduling and bid adjustments:
However, we’re not yet able to achieve this (automatically) on Amazon’s Seller PPC platform.
Like to know more?
To talk about your brand’s existing (or potential) approach to Amazon Sponsored Products / PPC, simply get in touch below.