Sponsored Display Ads are among the most effective ads on Amazon when it comes to increasing sales with new customers. Sponsored Display Ads are available for merchants, for agencies whose clients market products on Amazon, and for professional sellers who are registered in the trademark registry.
Sponsored Display Ads are designed to motivate potential customers - on and off Amazon - to discover your products, view product detail pages, and ultimately purchase your products. Ads are shown based on target audiences or product strategies on the Amazon homepage, on product detail pages, in shopping results, on Twitch, external websites, and third-party apps.
In this post, we'll share what's new about running Sponsored Display Ads in 2021 and 2022 and explain how they can be useful to you for reaching new audiences.
2021:
Targeting a specific audience
Since April 2021, in addition to product targeting, you now also have the option of targeting specifying audiences.
Brand new customers account for 82% of advertiser sales attributable to Sponsored Display Ads target groups. Developing new audiences is extremely important for brands. Since audience targeting was previously only possible with DSP, this brings Sponsored Display Ads closer to the capabilities of DSP.
Pre-built targeting segments, based on Amazon's buying and streaming signals, help you select the people who have a high interest in buying your product or similar products.
The four targeting segments include "Lifestyle," "Interests," "Life Events," and "In-Market."
The lifestyle segment focuses on the shopping and usage behavior of potential buyers, for instance in Prime Video and other Amazon service. If a buyer recently bought a vegetarian cookbook on Amazon, for example, and you offer products that are suitable for vegetarians, you can select the "Vegetarian" category in your Sponsored Display Ads. Thus, certain behaviors are assigned to different preferences for this segment.
Interests are defined on the basis of search behavior and also purchasing behavior. Interest target groups include, for example, "car enthusiasts" or "coffee lovers".
The life events category includes upcoming vacations or moves, among others. If you sell wallpaper or moving boxes on Amazon, you can select people who have recently moved in this category.
In-market target audiences can be used to target users who have viewed, but not purchased, products from your brand or similar products. In addition, this target group allows you to select specific categories where buyers have searched for products.
At the moment, the selection that Amazon provides for target group targeting is still limited. While it is possible to combine different properties with Amazon DSP, the combination is not yet possible with Sponsored Display Ads. It is likely that this possibility will also be found in Sponsored Display Ads in the near future. An expansion of the selection options for target groups is also planned.
Sponsored Display Ads on Twitch
Twitch is an interactive live streaming service that, as one of the largest platforms worldwide, focuses in particular on streaming video games. In July 2021, Sponsored Display Ads were introduced on Twitch. For all campaigns with Sponsored Display audiences, it is now possible to be placed on Twitch's Browse and Discovery page. With more than 15 million daily users, there are ideal opportunities for Amazon merchants to grow their audience through advertising on Twitch.
CPM Model
In August 2021, Amazon Ads expanded custom bid optimizations for Sponsored Display. It is now possible to set "(bid) optimizations for viewable impressions". Advertisers have the option to assess their campaigns by views with Click+View and pay for the value with vCPM billing. According to CPM, which means the cost-per-mille principle, the costs are paid per 1000 visible impressions.
This function is intended to create product awareness and increase the reach of campaigns. This is especially beneficial for awareness campaigns. Bid optimization can also be useful for agencies that have certain budgets available for their campaigns.
Portfolios for Sponsored Display Ads
Sponsored Display campaigns can now also be organized in portfolios. This enables even better structuring and improves the overview of your campaigns. However, the change currently only applies to CPC campaigns.
2022:
Sponsored Display Video Ads
Sponsored Video Ads were introduced in 2022. This new video format gives you the opportunity to increase your brand and product awareness on and off Amazon. The video features help you tell engaging stories to your customers to convince and excite them about your products. To target the appropriate customers, you can choose between context targeting and audience targeting.
The videos can be up to 45 seconds long. You can choose between different display formats in the Amazon Ads Manager - Amazon Mobile rectangle, rectangle and banner. Additionally, you have the option to add your logo and a custom headline when designing your ad.
Example Display Video Ad (Source: Amazon)
While Amazon focused on Sponsored Brands in 2020, Sponsored Display Ads were a big focus in 2021 and 2022. We are curious to see what innovations we can expect next year.
There were also many innovations in the BidX tool in the last two years. New features like the customizable dashboard, budget automation and scheduling function will help you optimize your PPC campaigns.
