After the extraordinary growth of its business in 2022, Amazon Ads is showing no sign of slowing. Recently the company has announced new launches and features available in some of the regions covered by Amazon Ads. Most of the improvements are related to Sponsored Display Ads, but all of them without exception open up new opportunities for advertisers and make their interactions with customers much easier.
Some of the most striking launches are those related to video advertising, and here we can trace the strategy Amazon announced at this year’s unBoxed event, namely to make the video advertising available to more brands, regardless of their size or level of resources. It seems that Amazon is steadily moving towards its goal, and still does not forget about the other niche aspects of advertising.
Amazon has expanded its Sponsored Display creative offering to include video capabilities for contextual targeting campaigns. Now advertisers who use contextual targeting and Sponsored Display audiences in their campaigns can showcase their products and raise brand awareness through video format. This feature allows advertisers to upload videos up to 45 seconds long and provides links directly to product detail pages.
Reach-optimized display campaigns that also include video creatives will now support view metrics. This will give advertisers access to key metrics to measure and optimize the effectiveness of video campaigns, namely: video first quartile, video midpoint, video third quartile, video complete and video unmute.
By tracking, for example, video completion rates, advertisers will be able to measure the number of customers who watched the video ad to the end, which, in turn, will show which video content customers like the most. These additions mean increased customer engagement and conversion of advertising campaigns.
The new carousel format will help improve the customer shopping experience and the effectiveness of brands’ advertising campaigns. This is the first interactive experience in Sponsored Display, and it aims to give merchants the opportunity to present their product information in a slightly unconventional way, adding even more space for lifestyle images and additional product information, while keeping up with social media trends. The carousel is expected to boost brand awareness as well as create a more engaging experience for potential customers.
Campaigns based on cost per thousand viewable impressions (vCPM) that are optimized for reach are now part of the Sponsored Display portfolio functionality. This innovation will give advertisers the ability to use portfolios to organize their display campaigns alongside other campaigns in a collection that reflects the structure of their business. Campaigns can be organized by brand, product category, product line, organizational structure or season. As a result, it will significantly simplify the invoicing process and make budget management easier.
Previously, this feature was only available for campaigns that are optimized for clicks and conversions with cost-per-click (CPC) billing. Now, by adding campaigns optimized for reach, advertisers will be able to control all costs and access information about the effectiveness of all campaigns combined in the portfolio.
Sponsored Display now has a new API in the Amazon Ads API that helps forecast impressions for display campaigns with contextual targeting and Amazon audiences. With the forecasting capability, advertisers will be able to easily find the bid to reach trade-off and understand its impact during campaign creation.
Advertisers will now be able to see the minimum and maximum range of available impressions inventory for a set of selected products, optimization type, targeting, and bid values. As a result, it will help sellers not only create effective campaigns, but also understand the scale and predict the return on investment even before the launch.
From now on, the demand and supply side missed bid reason codes will be included in the campaign management table at the order and line item level for deal inventory. There have also been 15 new demand and supply side missed bid columns introduced. These metrics aim to help traders identify the reasons that cause missed bids from both the supply and demand side.
Sellers will now also be able to view troubleshooting metrics against each individual deal as deal and breakdown will appear as nested rows under orders and line items in the campaign management table.
Last but not the least, the Deal Opportunities Insight Card which provides a summary view of the missed bid reasons, will now be situated above the campaign management table and next to the charting component.
Up to now, there has been no troubleshooting metrics available in the UI. These changes will help advertisers identify and understand the reasons for under-delivery issues for deal inventory.
Available through the Amazon Advertising Console (AAC) for self-service advertisers, the Fire TV Sponsored Screensaver is a full-screen content forward placement that launches and displays 5 screensaver images once the device has been idle for 5 minutes.
As each image stays on the user’s screen for 30 seconds, users will be able to click-through the placement by pressing the Play/Pause button on their FireTV remote, now in the Netherlands too.
Previously available through the ‘Recommendations’ page, the ‘Increase maximum average CPM for line item(s) on underpacing order’ guidance cards can now be viewed and actioned directly from the guidance column on the Entity/Advertiser-Order level campaign management pages in self-service ADSP.
However, the ‘Recommendations’ page is still available. It can be accessed from the order/line item level guidance column of campaign management tables or from Entity-Advertiser level mainline navigation.
In addition to the innovations of early 2023, Amazon Ads has many more important features and functions that advertisers should keep an eye on if they want to stay one step ahead. Small at first glance changes can significantly affect the development of your business and brand awareness. So can our Amazon Ads experts when it comes to successful development of your advertising strategy. Reach out to them and get first-hand consulting and practical advice now.
