New Sponsored Display Product Targeting Option in Beta Open for Sellers

Amazon Sponsored Display is Amazon’s newest self-service display advertising solution, allowing brands to promote, target, and retarget shoppers both on and off of Amazon with auto-generated, product-focused ads.

Benefits of Running Sponsored Display Ads

With the newly added product targeting option, you can promote product discovery and launch new products in a more efficient way. The ability to run display ads targets in relevant products and categories allows you to measure performance and gain insight into campaign optimization.

For example: if you sell automatic soap dispensers, there are a few ways to fully utilize Sponsored Display ads. You can target the broader “Home & Kitchen” category or a niche “bathroom countertop soap dispensers” category, focus on relevant competitor products, or even target your own product when you have a version 2.0 dispenser.

STEP 1 – Create Your Campaign

Navigate to the Campaign Manager section located under the Advertising tab. Select the third campaign titled “Sponsored Display (Beta)”. This will take you to the campaign settings section.

Insert your campaign name, start and end dates, daily budget, and ad group name for your campaign. Remember to have a naming convention in place so you don’t waste time trying to figure out which ad campaign is tied to which product and its type.

Pro Tip: Choose no end date to ensure your ads stay active so you don’t miss out on impressions or clicks. You can tweak your campaign based on the conversion rate to improve your sales.

STEP 2 – Choose Your Targeting

Sponsored Display ads now allow you to separately manage the two default audience segments for views targeting tactics.

The second is product targeting which focuses on specific products or categories to target your ads. Note that product targeting focuses on placement within Amazon’s marketplace while audiences targeting focuses on placement outside Amazon. Unfortunately, neither targeting option allows you to customize your creatives. Amazon might introduce this feature in the future.

Whether you choose to target audiences, products, or categories, you are required to select a product (ASIN or SKU) to advertise.

Amazon shows a preview of where your ads will display when targeting products and categories. For a better understanding, here are the 10 spots along with illustrations of where your sponsored display ads will appear on Amazon when you choose to target specific products or categories.

1. Amazon Product Page Right
2. Amazon Product Page Middle
3. Amazon Mobile Rectangle
4. Mobile Leaderboard
5. Wide Skyscraper
6. Medium Rectangle
7. Leaderboard
8. Billboard
9. Large Rectangle
10. Amazon Top Stripe

Next, you need to decide on your bid. There is a slight difference between audiences and product targeting as detailed below,

1. Audience Targeting – Dynamic bids (up and down) where Amazon will increase your bid for clicks that may be more likely to convert and lower the bid for clicks that are less likely to convert.

2. Product Targeting – Dynamic bids (down only) where Amazon will only lower your bids when your ad may be less likely to convert to a sale.

Once you set your bid, it’s time to select either relevant categories or individual products to target. For split testing purposes, create multiple ad groups with different targeting and tweak your ads accordingly. Remember to use the 80/20 rule and focus on ad targetings that convert well.

STEP 3 – Launch Campaign

The third and final step is to double-check to see if you made any mistakes before you click on the “Launch Campaign” button. Once your campaign is live, remember to monitor it frequently to avoid running out of daily budget.

Pro Tip: In case you run out of daily budget and can’t afford to increase it, consider reducing your bid to help maintain visibility throughout the entire day.

Remember to keep your ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales) within your desired range, consider adding more products, or increase your bid to boost the opportunity for your ads to win more auctions and expand your reach. For your product targeting campaign, remember to add negative keywords from search term reports to remove unwanted impressions. This improves your ACoS and avoids unnecessary clicks.

To learn more about how to use Amazon search term reports to optimize your ad campaigns, check out our blog post HERE.

Final Thoughts

Keep in mind that your Sponsored Display ads campaign may perform differently compared to Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaigns, since views campaigns run off Amazon, rather than in placements across Amazon. Benchmark your campaign performance against your goal. For instance, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, focus on the impressions of your ads.

As usual, feel free to reach out to our support team with any questions, and best of success selling on Amazon.