
Sponsored Display Audiences Offers New Control to Amazon Advertisers
Sponsored Display audiences, a new feature of Amazon Advertising’s Sponsored Display Ads is now available in all current marketplaces with the exception of the Netherlands. Sponsored Display audiences is a self-service display targeting strategy available to vendors and sellers registered in the Amazon Brand Registry.
It uses Amazon shopping signals (i.e. shopper behavior) to help advertisers grow their business by not only reaching, but also engaging relevant shoppers throughout their Amazon purchase journey. While Sponsored Display audiences is an entry-level ad targeting feature, it is the first that allows advertisers who are not using the Amazon Demand Side Platform (DSP) to target audiences viewing specific products and categories, rather than just targeting specific ASINs (Product Targeting).
Display advertising is also available through the Amazon DSP as a programmatic solution, rather than the self-service format of Sponsored Display ads. The DSP offers a similar look to the Sponsored Display ads but, in general, is much more sophisticated as it offers a multitude of more insights and benefits.
DSP display advertising is currently available in all marketplaces and allows for much more fine-tuning to advertising campaigns than Sponsored Display ads, but DSP more on this later.
Audiences is the first segment in Sponsored Ads that is reflective of the specificity of the Amazon DSP. Audience actions are made up of the familiar Interests feature and the new Views Remarketing feature. Sponsored Display audiences are divided into two parts based on targeting options:
- this new option allows you to target audiences based on products they have viewed
- allows you to target audiences based on their shopping behavior (for example, those who have recently viewed certain categories). Interests have long been available and are now included under the “Audiences” section
- On-site: Accesses shoppers while they browse on Amazon with placements on results pages and product detail pages
- Control to scale: Advertisers can remarket to shoppers who have viewed products in any category, browse node or brand on Amazon
- Branding: Tell your brand story while leveraging automated creatives thanks to the custom headline and logo features
- Flexibility: Target audiences and set specific bids for those audiences thanks to granular bidding controls
- Accessible to: Vendors and sellers enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry in AE, CA, DE, FR, ES, IT and UK
- The audience: Built on specific categories and products within those categories. You select the categories and products that define this audience. This allows you to leverage more flexible bidding options. Audiences may include shoppers who have: viewed your advertised products or similar products on Amazon in the past 30 days, viewed products within a given category or browse node on Amazon in the past 30 days. Shoppers that have purchased your advertised products in the past 30 days are automatically filtered out to help you efficiently manage your sponsored display budgets.
- Potential reach: Amazon provides advertisers with data that indicates the predicted reach (estimate of how many customers will see the ad, for categories) based on the set bid and historical data.
- Refine: Advertisers can refine certain categories based on price, brand, star rating, prime status and other filters, and refine audiences based on whether they have visited their own or similar products in the past but didn’t purchase. This allows advertisers to engage and re-engage a specific group that have previously shown definite interest in theirs and similar products and gain more control over customizing their targeting strategy.
- Display ads on and off of Amazon
- Cross-device campaigns
- Dynamic pricing based on CPM (Sponsored Ads is CPC)
- Increased KPIs to understand your customer and reportings available with a variety of insights
- Audience targeting based on: age, gender, location and behavior, devices
- Advertiser-specific audiences based on advertisers’ data
- More specific and sophisticated creatives that appeal more specifically to the customer (i.e. different CTA’s like “Add to Cart” for customers with more tentative buying behavior, or including a customer review)
- Go beyond the entry-level ad offered by Sponsored Ads