Amazon Sponsored Products ads are one of the most powerful for discovering and increasing sales for Amazon sellers. Amazon Sponsored Products are cost-per-click (CPC) ads that drive traffic to Amazon product detail pages. Ad ranking is proportional to Bid amount and CTR of the product which is further divided into many parameters.

Below you’ll get a deep dive into the Amazon Sponsored Products marketing techniques every seller should be leveraging, including targeting options, keyword match types, bidding options, data segmentation, keyword harvesting, and product targeting to maximize paid marketing conversion rate and reduce ACoS.

What are Amazon Sponsored Product Ads?

Amazon Sponsored Product Ads are pay-per-click (PPC) ads based on keywords and product targeting that drive traffic to a desired product detail page (ASIN) within the Amazon platform. Sponsored Products is a campaign type option located within Amazon Advertising console or seller central.

What does Sponsored Product Ads impact?

Sponsored Products impact a seller’s overall marketplace presence by accelerating the growth of newer or low-exposure ASINs, increase discoverability and drive revenue.

Where does Sponsored Product Ads Appear?

Amazon Sponsored Product Ads appear at the top and bottom of the search results page, within organic results and on the product detail pages.

How Amazon define Ad rank of a product?

Ad rank in Sponsored Products depends on Bid value of a keyword x CTR of the product. CTR is further calculated by measuring different factors such as product sale history, the number of reviews and ratings, product A+ content, product images, etc. CTR is calculated every time a user does search on Amazon

What all Targeting Options are available in Sponsored Product campaigns?

There are 4 different targeting options in Sponsored Product campaigns.

• Automatic Targeting – Amazon targets ads to all relevant customer searches based on product information. There are 4 different targeting options within automatic campaigns.
  • Loose Match/Close Match – This option allows the ad to be shown in the search results if ad product closely or loosely matches searches results from shoppers.
  • Substitutes/Complements – This option allows ad on the detail pages of products that are substitutes or complements of ad products.
• Manual Targeting – Sellers manually set keywords in different match types.
• Product ASIN Targeting campaigns – Target customers by specific ASINs (in a similar fashion as Product Display Ads) and apply refinements by Price, brands or star rating.
• Product Category Targeting campaigns - Target customers by specific categories (in a similar fashion as Product Display Ads) and apply refinements by Price, brands or star rating.

What are different match types of keywords in Sponsored Product campaigns?

There are 3 different match types of keywords in Sponsored Product campaigns

• Broad Match – This match type offers ads broad traffic exposure. A customer search term will match if it contains all the keyword terms or their synonyms. The customer search term can contain keywords or synonyms in order.
• Phrase Match – The customer search term must contain the exact phrase or sequence of words. It is more restrictive than broad match and will generally result in more relevant placements for your ad.
• Exact Match – The customer’s search term must exactly match the keyword in order for the ad to show and will also match close variations of the exact term. Exact match is the most restrictive match type but can be more relevant to a customer’s search.

Is it possible to add Negative Keywords in Sponsored Product campaigns?

Yes, sellers can add negative keywords in Sponsored Product campaigns in Phrase and Exact match type.

How to Harvest keywords in the Amazon search Terms report?

The Amazon search terms report provide sellers with data including how many impressions, clicks, sales, etc. each search term received. Sellers can filter keywords on the basis of sales and add them inside campaigns. From search term report sellers can also identify negative keywords and add them across campaigns.

Is it possible to make changes or upload campaigns in Bulk?

Yes, Amazon sponsored product campaigns support Bulk operation feature. Sellers can create campaign structure in CSV format and upload inside the panel.

How to measure the performance of Sponsored Product Campaigns?

Sellers can measure the success of the Sponsored Product campaigns by looking at the Advertising Cost of Sale (ACoS). Here’s how ACoS is calculated.

ACoS = 100 ([total ad spends] / [total sales])

For example: If you spend $100 on advertising and it resulted in a sale of $500, your ACoS would be 100 (100/500) = 20%. A low ACoS is a good thing and rests it will vary by product to product.

• A low ACoS is under 20%. You may want to consider raising your bid to increase clicks and overall traffic for that term/product.
• An Average ACoS is under between 20% to 40%.
• A High ACoS is above 40%. This might happen when a specific keyword is gaining a lot of traffic but low conversions or the CPC for the keyword is very high because of competition. Low CPC of high conversion rate keywords will always result in better results.

What are the bidding options in the Sponsored Product campaigns?

There are 3 bidding options in the Sponsored Product campaigns.

• Fixed Bids – When you choose the fixed bids strategy. Amazon will use your exact bid for all opportunities and will not adjust your bids based on likelihood of a conversion.
• Dynamic Bids (down only) – Amazon will reduce your bids in real-time for clicks that may be less likely to convert to a sale.
• Dynamic Bids (up and down) – In this case, Amazon will increase your bids in real-time for clicks that may be more likely to convert to a sale and reduce them for clicks that may be less likely to convert to a sale.

Sellers can also make placement level bid adjustment in the sponsored product campaigns. This option is available for Top of search results and product pages placements.

Amazon Sponsored Products is one of the most lucrative advertising tools. However, success really depends on a sophisticated strategy that’s based on keywords, adjustments, and optimizations.

Therefore, we at NaranaTech use different tools for keyword harvesting and setting up campaigns. Ultimately, being able to analyze consumer and product data allows our Amazon team to build the most effective and profitable campaigns possible. Our team segment traffic types (branded, non-branded and competitor) with campaign structures which allow us to report on each segment and make swift adjustments based on different segment goals. Amazon Sponsored Products will only continue to increase in competition. It’s time to get an expert's hands-on strategy.