Amazon's advertising has always been an issue of great concern to sellers. The company has been constantly adjusting the improvements in advertising, and has made some changes recently. Overall, advertising is still very necessary for sellers, and it is also the most reliable way to increase sales. If advertising is done well, it can save you a lot of money and make it easier for you to make a profit.
In the past few days, Amazon's advertising backend has cancelled Bid+ and added new advertising campaign bidding strategies and placement adjustments. To grab the top ad spot, you can increase your bid 10 times!
Which features have been radically changed?
1. The product has a greater chance of generating associated traffic.
We all know that if we want to gain exposure for our products and achieve a certain sales volume, it is far from enough to rely solely on passive methods such as keyword "search traffic". Therefore, some sellers will use some black technology to add other people's products and their own products to the shopping cart at the same time, or even actually pay for them to generate related traffic. That is, the "bundle sale" looks like this:
For example, placing Product A on the page of Amazon competitor Product B with the slogan “Frequently Bought Together” or “Customers who see this also see”. Through multiple real purchases by buyers, A and B are associated, thus achieving the effect of bundling sales.
2. Changes in advertising space
Amazon recently announced several updates to Sponsored Brand Ads (formerly Headline Search Ads), including ad placements on desktop and mobile, expanded bidding capabilities, and enhanced reporting insights.
Behind these functional updates is Amazon’s undisguised advertising ambition. Why do I say so? Orange believes that Amazon does not have many high-bid ad slots open, and sellers can basically only open Bid+ on a voluntary basis and bid 1 times higher than the default single click to get the top position on the homepage of keyword search results.
However, Amazon now divides available ad placements into four categories:
● Top Search – The top 3 search results on the first page of a keyword search
● Rest of Search – Other ad positions outside the top three on the keyword search results page, including: ad positions in the middle and bottom of search results;
● Product Pages – Product details page (Listing Page) or shopping cart page
● Headline ads can place 1-3 products + 1 brand flagship store at a time
In theory, for merchants looking to increase brand awareness and drive incremental sales through Amazon’s advertising business, product exposure and clicks will be greater than other ads.
3. Bidding (billing) method
Bidding is a concern for many advertisers. If you bid too high, you worry about losing out; if you bid too low, you fear missing out on a good opportunity. The biggest change in Amazon CPC is in its billing model.
1) In the past, the deduction was mainly based on the click of keywords.
Now, depending on the type of ads you place, you will also be charged for ad clicks generated by categories and specific ASINs;
2) In the past, Amazon would allow sellers to voluntarily activate Bid+ and bid 1 times higher than the default bid for a single click to get the top position on the homepage of keyword search results.
Now, Amazon allows you to bid 10 times higher than the default price to compete for this position;
3) Similarly, Amazon now considers “product detail page” ads equally important (i.e. associated traffic), and you can also bid 10 times higher than your default bid to compete for the top position of product detail page ads;
Maybe you are a little scared after hearing the above bidding method, because Amazon seems to have increased the advertising price 10 times! However, Amazon has set three automatic optimization rules for advertising optimization (reducing ACoS and increasing conversion rate), namely:
● Dynamic bidding – only decrease (automatically adjust the ad bid down based on conversion rate)
● Dynamic bidding – Increase and decrease (floating) (automatically adjust bids up and down based on ad placement and conversion rates)
● Fixed bid (the default bid you set will remain unchanged)
The editor briefly analyzed this:
① Bidding strategy for advertising campaigns: If the original advertising bid is $1, if the ad performs well, Amazon can help you raise the bid to grab a top display position, up to 100%, which is $2. Therefore, the bid for a good ad will fluctuate between $1 and $2. If the performance is not good, the opposite will happen. In short, your ad bid will fluctuate between 0 and 2 US dollars.
② Adjust bids using display position: The purpose of this should be to grab display on the homepage and product pages. If you set a 50% price increase for the homepage position, then if the increased price can directly grab the homepage, Amazon will not change your price.
If that is not enough, then combined with the above functions, Amazon can help you raise the price by up to 100% to grab the homepage, 1*1.5*2=3 US dollars. If you can grab it, then the money will be spent. If you can't grab it, you don't pay. It is similar to the previous bid+. You can increase the bid by up to 900%.
Amazon deliberately sets up this display position. For sellers, if they do not want to grab the homepage, they can use the first dynamic bidding strategy to increase the display position of good advertisements to increase exposure and sales. If they want to grab the homepage, they can increase the price below. (It’s inevitable that it feels like another wave of burning money)
How do the new advertising features affect sellers?
Why is Amazon making such a big adjustment to its advertising this year? Orange thinks it is mainly due to the following three reasons:
1. Amazon advertising no longer only focuses on search traffic, associated traffic is equally important; (Great, we can finally use bundling sales openly.)
2. The competition for keyword advertising on Amazon has become increasingly fierce, and high-quality advertising space has become a scarce resource. In short: Amazon also wants to make money.
3. Amazon sees that the continued rise in advertising costs will lead to higher costs for sellers and the loss of a large number of high-quality sellers. Therefore, Amazon has specially introduced AI and Machine Learning technologies (that is, the automatic optimization rules mentioned above) to help sellers reduce advertising costs and improve conversion rates.
Accurate interpretation of advertising data is also critical
In order for advertising to be effective, accurate interpretation of advertising data is also crucial. Many sellers who first start selling on Amazon will advertise a bunch of products, and then one advertising plan will include all the products. Such utilization of the value of advertising will only be counterproductive. Therefore, when placing advertisements, the following points should be followed:
First, you should carefully select the listings for advertising. Only focus on the listings that you have focused on. It is better to focus on the listings than to disperse them.
Second, for multiple products in the same series, only launch the ASIN that you are currently focusing on. Once one product is successfully launched, you can launch the next one. If you launch too many products at once, you will not have enough energy to take care of them properly, which will waste money.
Third, for variant listings, you should select the ASIN that best suits the public’s aesthetic tastes. Evenly distributing each sub-item will only waste money.
Fourth, for the convenience of viewing data, it is recommended to launch only one ASIN for each advertising plan.
The core of advertising operation lies not in delivery, but in reviewing the data after the advertisement is running and analyzing the data to find out what needs to be responded to.
Friends, please be reminded that Amazon will set all advertisements opened before January 1, 2020 to the "only lower the default bid" advertisement type by default, so please be sure to open new advertising campaigns based on actual conditions, observe the performance of previous advertisements under the new billing method, and make real-time adjustments.
