AMAZON ADS & SERVICES FOR VENDORS
Leverage Amazon’s Premium Services to Generate Demand Table of Contents
Introduction 3 Enhanced Premium Content 5
A+ Enhanced Marketing Content 6
A+ Premium Enhanced Marketing Content 8 Amazon Media Group (AMG) 9 Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) 12
Amazon Advertising Platform (AAP) 20
Dynamic Ecommerce Ads 23 Kindle & Fire Experiences 25
Amazon Stores 26 Other Promos & Special Offers 28 Gold Box Deals 29
Lightning Deals 30
Best Deals 30
Vendor Powered Coupons 31
Showcase Ads 31
Amazon Vine 32 Amazon Reporting 35
AMS Reporting 38
Conclusion 40 Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 3
Introduction
There was once a time when vendors had limited control over what happened to their products once they sold them to Amazon.
Those days are over.
It’s time to take ownership of the way your brand is presented and advertised on the platform, and it could make a significant difference in your orders and sales.
One disclaimer before we start—we won’t promise results from a particular ad or service investment, because everything you do on Amazon is interconnected—from Vine reviews to AMS ads.
We call this the “Amazon Flywheel”; where everything you do across the Amazon Marketplace has an impact on your other investments. Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 4
Source: Amazon
For Example: You can’t expect to scale your ROI with advertising However, you can expect to get a quick overview of all of your (Paid Media) if your product detail page isn’t optimized for options, and our recommendations on where to invest. conversion (Owned Media), which in turn will affect your organic search ranking and product purchases if you’re not converting customers (Earned Media) - Everything on Amazon is interconnected. Enhanced Premium Content Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 6
Enhanced Premium Content
You know that it’s important to optimize your product content so it ranks organically—Amazon’s A9 algorithm is only becoming more complex.
But what else can you be doing to optimize your content? The answer: Premium Content.
Think about this--If you’re already getting a decent traffic volume to your ASIN detail page, but looking to incrementally lift sales volume, enhancing your product content with A+ Enhanced Marketing Content can help to increase your detail page conversion rate & drive product orders and sales for your products.
A+ Enhanced Marketing Content
A+ Content integrates detailed product descriptions, rich images, charts and narrative copy to help customers make informed buying decisions.
According to Amazon, A+ Content can increase sales on average 3 to 10% by educating the consumer about your product and brand.
This one’s a no brainer. Not only is A+ content a great way to showcase your brand on Amazon, it’s also FREE for vendors. All you need to do is get your creative together. Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 7
We have created and managed A+ content for many of our clients, and the reactions have been the same. WHOOSH, a tech hygiene brand, is just one example.
A+ Content gave WHOOSH the additional space within their detail pages to answer common customer questions and provide relevant details about their product, which lead to an increase in conversion rate and a better shopping experience for their customers.
“We know that adding quality A+ Content to a product's detail page leads to a higher conversion rate. With Amazon's announcement of opening up A+ Content for free to Vendors earlier in Q1, it should be a no-brainer for brands to work on building quality A+ Content for their top products, and ideally their entire catalog.”
Jordan Gisch Sr. Marketplace Channel Analyst CPC Strategy
“A lot of brands have unique products and have not been able to really tell the story. Amazon traditionally gives little creative freedom to sellers, so A+ content gives sellers the opportunity to create a similar experience to what shoppers expect in Brick & Mortar stores and helps bridge the emotional gap between shoppers and sellers on Amazon.”
Jordan Berry Lead Marketplace Channel Analyst CPC Strategy Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 8
A+ Premium Enhanced Marketing Content
Learn more about A+ Content:
• What is Amazon A+ Content? • Amazon Announces New Free A+ Content for Vendors • The Brand’s Guide To Amazon A+ Content [PDF]
Learn about our A+ Content Creation & Management Solution for Vendors Amazon Media Group (AMG) Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 10
Amazon Media Group (AMG)
AMG (Amazon Media Group) is the umbrella above AMS (Amazon Marketing Services) and AAP (Amazon Advertising Platform).
From home page banner placements to HTML offerings, Amazon Media Group (AMG) is a premium advertising offer available within Amazon Vendor Services.
There are two sides to AMS and AAP—one is geared towards PPC (pay for clicks), and one is geared towards Display (pay for impressions). Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 11
What is AMG?
AMG (Amazon Media Group)
AMS AAP
ESS Product Display Sponsored Products Headlines Search Amazon Managed Service (Enterprise Self Service)
PPC: Cost-per-click Display: CPM (Cost per thousand) You pay for clicks! You pay for impressions!
One of the most effective features of AMG is the ability to leverage Amazon customer data to target shoppers off Amazon (on any Amazon Ad Network site). Amazon Media Group can help vendors reach shoppers on desktop, tablet, and mobile.
Here are the details on AMS and AAP. Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 12
Amazon Marketing Services (AMS)
With AMS ads, you’re paying for actual clicks, not just impressions. We might be biased towards PPC (reference our company name).
Here’s a quick rundown of each. If you want to learn more, don’t hesitate to click into any of the in-depth links after each description.
Sponsored Products (SP)
Source: Amazon Sponsored Product ads are either Automatic (content-driven) or Manual (keyword-driven) targeted ads that show up on the top/bottom of SERP. Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 13
Sponsored Product Ads have only grown in competitiveness since Get an edge with the right campaign structures, campaign their start. And for good reason—they’re not only available to harvesting, and the right mix of Automatic (Amazon vendors, but also to 3P sellers. They’re easy to create and they’re algorithmically serves up ads on a search) and Manual (you usually approved within an hour. select optimal keywords to surface an ad) targeting.
They are considered mid- to bottom-of-the-funnel ads because Learn more about Sponsored Products: they appear in locations where the buyer is likely comparing different options for a purchase. • The 2018 Amazon Sponsored Products Guide [PDF] • What is AMS: Sponsored Product Ads Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 14
Headline Search Ads (HSAs) Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 15
Headline Search Ads are keyword-driven and can appear across the top of the SERP.
According to Jordan Gisch, Senior Marketplace Channel Analyst at CPC Strategy, these ads can send traffic to:
1 Amazon Stores - (see “Amazon Stores” section below)
2 Custom URL - Pick any amazon.com URL to drive traffic to; most frequently used to grab the URL of a certain subcategory page of your brand store to send traffic directly there, as opposed to the home page of brand store
3 Create A Page - Hand select each ASIN that you want to be featured (minimum of three) Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 16
A note about HSAs—these ads are considered top-of-the-funnel ads Learn more about Headline Search Ads: because potential customers who click through these banner-like ads are typically at the beginning of their buyer’s journey, and likely • What is Amazon Marketing Services: Headline open to browsing. Search Ads • Headline Search Ads in Seller Central The golden rule with Headline Search Ads is to reduce friction for your shoppers and put the most relevant products in front of them. Keep this in mind as you invest. Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 17
Product Display Ads (PDAs)
Amazon’s Product Display Ads are product-targeted, category-based or shopper-interest-based and can live on your (or a competitor’s) product detail pages. Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 18
Product Display Ads are unique because advertisers must rely on one of the following targeting options:
• Product Targeting • Interest-Based Targeting • Category-Based Targeting
PDAs can show up on a product page, in emails, on the Seller selection screen, and more.
However, a majority of PDA impressions, clicks, and sales come from their placement on a product page, whether it’s yours or a competitor’s.
There are two ways you can use these ads—offensively, so you get on your competitor’s listing, or defensively, so you can ensure your competitors don’t do the same to you.
There are also several types of offers you can use with PDAs:
Coupons Lightning Deals Deals of the Day Best Deals Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 19
Lightning Deal PDA, Source: Amazon
Coupon PDA, Source: Amazon
Leveraging PDAs to promote Vendor Self-Service promotions increases the visibility of those promotions and can make them more effective.
Instead of relying on shoppers finding your promotion on the “Today’s Deals” page or noticing the promotion in search results, you can feature it specifically utilizing any of the three PDA targeting methods mentioned above.
Learn more about Product Display Ads:
• AMS Category Targeting for Amazon Product Display Ads • Amazon Marketing Services: Product Display Ads Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 20
Amazon Advertising Platform (AAP)
AAP is a programmatic display advertising platform—meaning it uses technology to more efficiently buy and manage your display and video advertising mix.
“Basically, vendors can layer first party data (3P demo data, client
advertising match via Advertiser Audience, and traditional retargeting) Jeff Coleman across exclusive 1P advertising inventory (Amazon & IMDb) and all of VP, Marketing Channels CPC Strategy the major exchanges.” Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 21
These ads can appear in any of the following forms:
• Desktop Display Ads • Mobile Banners Ads • Mobile Interstitial Ads • Image & Text Ads • In-stream Video Ads
While all programmatic ad types can be valuable, we’re especially partial to retargeting. Here are your options:
Pixel based – Shoppers who visit your brand’s site Product remarketing – Retarget shoppers who viewed your promoted products but didn’t convert Brand halo remarketing – Retarget shoppers who viewed other products of your brand Similar product remarketing –Reach shoppers browsing products similar to yours
In addition, you can add in targeting layers to reach just the right audiences. These include:
• Contextual (content of the website) • Demographic (M/F, age, income, education) • Geographic (zip code) • Time of Day (by the hour) • Other (device type, browser, etc.) Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 22
“While AMS is where we are able to drive significant sales volume for clients, we can only drive so much volume until we hit a plateau. Having the capability to retarget customers gives us the opportunity to target past shoppers and stay top of mind as well as prospect in an effort to gain new customers.”
Jordan Berry Lead Marketplace Channel Analyst CPC Strategy
“[AAP] is an exciting mix at the intersection of eCommerce & Advertising, that is and will begin to challenge the duopoly of Google & Facebook.”
Jeff Coleman VP, Marketing Channels CPC Strategy
You can choose to let Amazon manage these ads (Amazon Managed Service) or manage them through ESS (Enterprise Self Service).
ESS is Amazon's Enterprise Self Service portal in which agencies can access Amazon's Display/Remarketing (AAP), rather than going through Amazon's Internal Managed Services team.
Keep in mind brands must go through an agency to gain access to ESS. Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 23
Dynamic Ecommerce Ads
Dynamic Ecommerce Ads take consumer targeting a step further by showing your potential or returning customer an ad type based on their past purchasing behavior.
Generate all available 1 eCommerce Ad Formats*
$3.00 off coupon
Serve optimized ad creative in real time
Analyze what works best across Train Models to predict customer 2 all Amazon data points 3 behavior based on insights
According to Nick Sandberg, Marketplace Program Development Manager Nick Sandberg at CPC Strategy, AMG allows vendors to target a wider range of potential Marketplace Program Development Manager CPC Strategy customers referred to as “in-market” or “lifestyle.” Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 24
Every customer interacts with your ad and values product content differently, which is why Dynamic Ecommerce Ads can be extremely valuable to advertisers.
Within a particular segment, Amazon might advertise to:
• “Head of the Household” – Also known as a shopper responsible for running the household • “Product Researches” – A shopper with lots of purchasing power, yet routinely scrutinize even the smallest online items before committing to purchase. • “Impulse Buyer” – A college student on a strict budget
In this example, Amazon’s DEA model might determine that the “Head of Household” is more likely to act on a coupon offer, but the “Product Researcher” is more likely to respond to a Customer Review ad, and the “Impulse Buyer” is more likely to add items to her cart.
Learn more about Dynamic Ecommerce Ads:
• AMG Display Advertising Targets Shoppers Off Amazon Using Customer Data • Amazon Dynamic eCommerce Ads Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 25
Kindle & Fire Experiences
Amazon offers ads that appear on Kindle and Fire tablet lock screens as well as placement at the top of the Fire TV home screen.
These ads are integrated into the product design and enable vendors to speak directly to their targeted consumers.
According to Amazon, Kindle, Fire tablet, and Fire TV campaigns can drive measurable brand awareness at cost-per-consideration rates at or below similar web-based campaigns.
Vendors seeking brand awareness rather than a distinct ROI can benefit from programs such as Kindle & Fire Experiences since these programs are similar to the way Display Ads work. Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 26
Amazon Stores
Amazon Stores is a valuable feature that allows brands to design and create multi-page catalogs to showcase their products and unique value proposition to shoppers.
According to recent studies, 49% of shoppers start their search on Amazon. Now, there’s a way to reach the other 51%.
“My question to advertisers is: Do you want access to the other 51% of customers?”
Josh Brisco Sr. Manager, Retail Search Operations CPC Strategy
Amazon Stores give you the opportunity to drive brand awareness on Amazon, and traffic from internal ads via AMS.
Perhaps even more importantly, it’s a great place to start driving traffic from other sources such as Facebook and Google.
And once you start sending traffic in, you won’t be left in the dark on performance—thanks to Amazon’s reporting for Stores. Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 27
“Amazon Store Insights should allow us to better quantify how that traffic that we’re sending performs. In the past, even though you could send traffic from Facebook to Amazon, you couldn’t track traffic – meaning you couldn’t quantify how effective the strategy was.”
Pat Petriello Head of Marketplace CPC Strategy
Here’s the data you’ll be able to measure:
• Daily visitors: Total unique users or devices that viewed one or more pages on your store in a single day. • Views: Number of page views during this time period. Includes repeat views. • Sales: Estimated total sales generated by store visitors within 14 days of their last visit. Units and sales data are only available as of December 25, 2017. • Units sold: Estimated total units purchased by store visitors within 14 days of their last visit. • Views/Visitor: Average number of unique pages viewed by a daily visitor to your store
Learn more about Amazon Stores:
• Amazon Stores | A Complete Guide (2018) • Amazon Stores Insights: A Deep Dive Into Your Amazon Stores Performance • Why You Should Be Driving Off-Amazon Traffic To Your Amazon Store Other Promos & Special Offers Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 29
Other Promos & Special Offers
There are several other deals offered to Vendors that aren’t quite large enough to merit their own individual sections.
However, they can have a huge impact on sales within specific time frames (think—Amazon Prime Day) or on best-selling products.
Gold Box Deals
On the Amazon home page, you’ll notice a section called “Today’s Deals.” Beneath this banner, there are several different offer options.
We call these “Gold Box Deals,” and they include everything from Lightning Deals to Deals of the Day. Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 30
Deal of the Day
A Deal of the Day is a single item or small set of closely related items discounted for one day only.
Lightning Deals
Lightning Deals are single items paired with a limited quantity of extra savings coupons, available for the time period stated or when all coupons are used.
Deal of the Day Products that are featured in Amazon’s Lightning Deal spaces typically enjoy a significant bump in sales throughout the duration of the deal.
According to CPC Strategy’s Amazon Team, although the seller sacrifices profit in the form of the discount, it's a great marketing tool for raising awareness around a product and/or brand.
Learn more about Lightning Deals in our guide to Prime Day.
Best Deals
Vendors also have access to “Best Deals.”
These have the longest duration of the three “Deals” available (up to two weeks), and have the lowest minimum discount at 15%. They are featured Lightning Deals on Amazon’s “Today’s Deals” landing page, which is similar to Deal of the Day and Lightning Deals. Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 31 Vendor Powered Coupons
Coupons can give you a leg up over other Amazon Sellers who have been limited to Sponsored Products, Headline Search Ads, and other promotional tools found in the Amazon Marketplace Web Service (MWS).
Coupons are now more competitive since 3P sellers also have access, but that doesn’t mean they’re not valuable, particularly for CPG brands.
Recent research shows that coupon clipping hasn’t slowed down in the age of ecommerce. 90% of consumers use coupons both online and offline, and roughly 80% state that a coupon may influence them to pull out their credit card for a product from a brand they haven’t tried. Vendor Powered Coupons
Amazon’s Coupons offer another opportunity to collect real-time data on your customers and insight into how your products will sell. And hopefully, they’ll boost your sales on a product.
Learn more about Coupons and other Vendor promotions here.
Showcase Ads
Here’s Amazon’s definition of Showcase Ads:
The Showcase template is a Campaign Landing Page format that allows advertisers to promote multiple products related to a single topic. The Showcase template may be used to drive product sales of a group of products or to create a branded landing page on Amazon.
Showcase Ads, Source: Amazon Kindle page While we don’t typically use Showcase ads with our clients, we find that Amazon Stores can have a similar impact on brand awareness and sales. Amazon Vine Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 33
Amazon Vine
In 2016, Amazon announced they would no longer permit sellers The truth is, reviews are a significant part of the Amazon to give away free or discounted products in exchange for reviews. Flywheel—they can make or break a products ranking, traffic, and sales performance. Vine could be worth it for you. The only acceptable place for sellers to get those reviews? Amazon Vine. Amazon Vine offers 3 level of services including:
The Amazon Vine program invites reviewers to post their opinions Basic – Allows enrollment of 5 products on (free) new or pre-released items to help shoppers make Plus – Allows enrollment of 10 products purchase decisions. According to Amazon, all Vine reviews are Premium – Allows enrollment of 20 products independent opinions of the Vine Voices (official reviewers) selected by Amazon. Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 34
The fees to access the program will vary depending on the vendor. It is also important to note, unlike some of Amazon’s Premium Services for vendors, A+ Content & Amazon Vine are offered individually (if vendors do not want to commit to the entire package offering).
Pro-Tip: “Amazon vine is also only allowed for specific products. If you are a vendor selling perishable items, you will not be able to enroll your products into the vine program.”
Jordan Berry Lead Marketplace Channel Analyst CPC Strategy
Learn more about getting reviews on Amazon:
• The End of Amazon Incentivized Reviews – What’s Next? • Amazon Vine Program Amazon Reporting Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 36
Amazon Reporting
All vendors focused on growing their partnership with Amazon need to be invested in an ongoing, data-driven process to manage their Amazon operations.
Unfortunately, many brands struggle to balance Amazon’s pace of innovation, processes, and often ambiguous motives. This dynamic makes it difficult to proactively manage operations and drive sales growth.
“Amazon is constantly changing. Every day there’s new advertising features, new content opportunities and much more. All these changes will create operational stress — unless you are prepared for it,” Pat Petriello, Head of Marketplace at CPC Strategy said.
Vendor central reports come in two forms: Amazon Retail Analytics Basic and Premium.
While both offer unique insights on your ad spend and sales performance, Amazon Retail Analytics (ARA) Premium is an add-on suite of additional operational reports which Vendors have access to through Vendor Central. Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 37
These additional reports (also downloadable as .csv files) provide information regarding
Operations Customer Behavior Sales Geographic Performance Market Trends Customer Reviews
The Main Benefits of Vendor Reporting
Avoid Inventory Stockouts Extrapolate the Data to Optimize for Purchase Order Growth Assessing Your Amazon Buy Box Share Leverage Operational Data to Inform Advertising Efforts Save You Money By Identifying Chargebacks
There are two paths to gaining access to ARA Premium. The first is through subscribing to Amazon’s Vendor Premium Services package, which starts at approximately $30k/yr. Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 38
The second is through a support case in Vendor Central.
We highly recommend Vendors invest in premium. Because reports can be difficult to decipher, we’ve written a blog post that should help clear it up, along with examples of reports you should pay attention to.
“Depending on the relationship that you have with your Vendor Manager, you can negotiate to get a free trial to ARA Premium. I always recommend sellers take advantage of this, because the reporting we receive from Amazon is very limited. ARA Premium provides a wealth of data that can not only be leveraged to create successful AMS campaigns, but also to analyze the shopping behavior of their customers to support marketing efforts outside of Amazon.”
Jordan Berry Lead Marketplace Channel Analyst CPC Strategy
AMS Reporting
If you’re managing your campaigns using Amazon’s interface, you’ve probably run into some challenges with reporting on your Headline Search, Product Display, and Sponsored Products ads. Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 39
Fortunately, Amazon has drastically improved some of these features. For instance, in January 2018, they added new custom date ranges and reporting features.
Here are some of the capabilities of each AMS report:
Report Look Back Product Description Optimization Tips Type Period
Keyword report Sponsored 90 days Sales and performance See how well keywords are performing over Products & metrics for keywords in all time to adjust bids, change match types, and Headline Search campaigns that received at expand your list of keywords. Ads least one impression.
Advertised Sponsored 90 days Sales and performance Use this report to identify trends in overall product report Products metrics for advertised performance over time for promoted products ASINs in all campaigns and product variations. that recevied at least one impression.
Search term Sponsored 60 days Actual search terms entered Use this report to identify high-performing report Products by shoppers searching on customer searches that can be added as new Amazon.com that resulted keywords or add under-performing search in at least one click. terms as negative keywords to help increase campaign performance.
Placement Sponsored 90 days Campaign performance on Use this report to get insights into performance report Products top-of-search compared to across different placement types, and identify all other placements Sponsored Products campaigns that could benefit from Bid+.
Pro-Tip: Get access to reporting software that we developed for our internal Amazon experts: CAPx AMS and CAPx Sponsored Products. Here are some reasons why you might need extra tech. Amazon Ads & Services for Vendors 40
Conclusion
Congratulations—you’ve made it to the end of this guide. Now the real work starts.
Amazon has been pushing vendors to take ownership of marketing and advertising on the platform, and if you don’t know what options are available, there’s no way you can compete.
Dive deeper into the additional resources we’ve linked to above, and get a closer look at the options that are right for you. We’ve written a blog post that should help clear it up. Ready to dive in?
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