Clicks to Cash: Your 2024 Guide to Amazon Sponsored Products Ads and More

Amazon Sponsored Products Ads are one of the most popular forms of Amazon PPC ads, and are used by most sellers on the platform. However, that doesn't mean all those sellers use them effectively.

Your Amazon advertising can be a money-maker, or it can be a money-waster. Many sellers will learn lessons about effective and ineffective Amazon ads the hard way. However, our guide can get you started without all the bumps, bruises, and lost time! Let’s jump in.

Amazon Sponsored Products Ads: A Primer

Amazon Sponsored Products Ads can closely resemble organic listings in search results and product listing pages. That alone gives your ads increased visibility, trust, and click-through rates. Since they are PPC ads, you only pay when customers click through, making them powerful and cost-effective tools.

To maximize your return on investment (ROI), you must look at how you build and implement your ads. This is true for any kind of ad, but particularly true for Amazon Sponsored Products Ads. First, you need to understand the two basic types of campaigns available to you: automatic and manual targeting ads.

What are Automatic Targeting Ads?

Automatic targeting ads provide the keywords for you. This campaign approach enlists Amazon's own algorithm to match your ads with keywords and product pages based on product information and consumer behavior.

Automatic targeting provides:

• Easy setup and a quick start with minimal effort.
• A low learning curve to reach optimization.
• Keyword discovery even for experienced sellers.

The disadvantage of automatic targeting is the control you give up. However, you can still tweak things a bit, even after you create the campaign.

If you want more control over automatic targeting campaigns, you can:

• Set how closely the algorithm should follow the product description when deciding keywords.
• Limit the products in each campaign to ensure more precise targeting.
• Adjust bids for optimal ad placement.
• Add negative keywords to prevent your ads from showing up where they are not getting the right attention.
• Use dynamic bidding strategies to influence how your bids are adjusted based on the likelihood of conversion.

What are Manual Targeting Ads?

Manual targeting ads put you in the driver's seat. You have all the control, but that also means you have all the work and responsibility. You choose every keyword and product you want your ads to appear for.

Manual targeting gives you:

• Complete control over where your ads will and will not appear.
• The ability to adjust your bids as the campaign progresses for better ROI.
• Efficiency for advanced users with a strong strategy based on past ad campaigns.

Those advantages are also the biggest disadvantage of manual targeting ads. With great power comes a ton of work. However, sellers have options to help ease some of the added strain of manual targeting campaigns.

To lessen the workload of manual targeting, you can:

• Employ keyword research tools or use data from automatic targeting campaigns to narrow your possible keywords.
• Use the Amazon console's bulk upload and editing features to minimize the time it takes to adjust keywords and bids.
• Start with a structured ad strategy that employs high-priority keywords and organizes campaigns into product categories, ad groups, and targeting types.

Optimizing Your Ad Spend

You can't be afraid to try something different or new if you are going to achieve your potential with Amazon ads of any sort. Experiment with different ad types and campaigns. Push the envelope. However, ensure you have an organized and meticulous strategy for getting the most out of those experiments.

A strong ad campaign strategy includes:

• Daily budgets that hit where they matter - Amazon's suggested bids are often significantly lower than what will be effective. Use them as a starting point, but be ready to adjust up from that starting point.
• Patience for gathering data - You should let a campaign run for at least two weeks before drawing conclusions or making adjustments. That also means setting ads up long before seasonal time frames and timed events, so you have the time to find out how effective they are.
• Careful analysis of past performance - The details are what will get you every time. Just because something looks like a complete success or utter failure at a glance does not mean there isn't more information to find that can help you craft better campaigns.
• Negative keywords - It is easy to overlook the impact of negative keywords. As you are adjusting your campaigns, negative keywords are a powerful way to keep ads from showing up around irrelevant topics without losing the impact of a good positive keyword.
• Competitor analysis - You can learn from your competition's success, but pay as much attention to where they are not going as where they go. The better you know what top competitors are doing, the more likely you will be to find opportunities they are missing.

Putting Amazon Ads to Work for You

No matter what approach you take to Amazon PPC ads, you have your work cut out for you. Like everything else as an Amazon seller, what you put in will determine what you get out, and even automatic targeting requires your attention and effort to optimize.

However, every task or process you automate or outsource gives you that much more time to focus on the parts of your business that require your direct attention. That's where Mayan's cutting-edge platform, powered by advanced algorithms and AI, comes in. We take the guesswork out of Amazon advertising and free your time to invest where it matters most.

Sign up today to take your Amazon ads — and your FBA business — to the next level.