Amazon made some serious strides in 2021 in its advertising offerings, many of which rolled out throughout the last few months. A large majority of these changes can be seen directly in the advertising console but may not be overly overt.
While tracking and implementing these changes may seem overwhelming, our Amazon team at Direct Agents has already engaged in a maximum exploration of their benefits and misgivings. Below we will review some of the most impactful changes and how brands can use them to shape their advertising strategies and goals in 2022.
Understand your Brand’s Presence
The first thing any business should aim to understand when defining advertising goals for a new year is where they currently stand in terms of presence and Brand Awareness. There are a variety of reports and dashboards that can help any brand set a foundation for the year ahead, but one of the newest (and most enticing) additions is Brand Metrics Reporting.
Location: Located directly in the advertising console on the right sidebar you will find the Brand Metrics Dashboard. Press the arrow icon shown below.
The Brand Metrics Dashboard provides insights into how your brand is performing across three areas of the marketing funnel:
- Awareness: Based specifically on branded searches across Amazon, this metric helps brands understand how they stack up against competitors.
- Consideration: Based on detail page views, brand searches, and add-to carts, this metric gives a clearer indication of how shoppers are engaging with your products.
- Purchases: Based on customers who purchased from your brand, this metric gives insight into conversions and subscribe & save customers.
Taking a look at these metrics and comparing your brand to the larger category on Amazon can help you begin to understand where your efforts should be focused this year. If you have a significantly low awareness benchmark, prioritize getting in front of shoppers as much as possible. If you are doing well in that area but are underperforming in engagement and purchase metrics, then implement strategies that will help drive conversions. The Brand Metrics Dashboard can help you identify opportunities and help understand where your focus should be at the start of 2022.
Utilize the Sponsored Display Changes – Reach a Large Audience and Re-engage
Perhaps one of the largest changes we’ve seen with Amazon campaigns over the past three months has been to sponsored display campaigns. One might argue that a benefit of cost-per-click campaigns is that you can better connect your ad units with the point of sale. However, cost-per-click can quickly become expensive if your priority is to drive traffic and overall brand awareness.
There are many instances where your brand can benefit from cost-per-impression models, and on Amazon, this may even look slightly different than other platforms. The obvious upside is broadening your audience reach and getting more eyes on your brand. A cardinal rule of advertising is that a consumer needs to see an ad seven times before they convert. With that in mind, if your brand has a low awareness score you may want to invest more in sponsored display CPM model campaigns that optimize towards impressions.
As a reminder, these ad units now serve on and off Amazon so you can reach consumers without them directly buying on Amazon.
Another (less apparent) option for CPM ad units on Amazon is maximum brand protection. Use CPM model campaigns on Amazon for maximum brand protection on your pages! Direct Agents uses CPM SD campaigns to cross-target our clients’ own product pages.
Pro Tip for CPM-Sponsored Display Campaigns:
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Be wary of an inflated RoAS! CPM campaigns should be reviewed, analyzed, and reported on separately from CPC campaigns. The RoAS for these campaigns may seem inflated since the attribution is based on impressions, not clicks.
Another compelling sponsored display update that came in late 2021 was re-targeting, something that was not available to a large majority of brands on Amazon that were not using DSP. Now you can re-target shoppers directly through the ad console with lookback windows ranging from 7 to 365 days. With views and purchase retargeting options, you can re-engage shoppers this season who interacted with your brand in the past.
Pro Tip for Retargeting Sponsored Display Campaigns:
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Run these campaigns when you are running a promotion or deal on your product. Direct Agents has seen great success with this strategy and it is the perfect opportunity to move a consumer to the final stage of the funnel.
Amazon is continuously improving its ad offerings and not slowing down anytime soon. Direct Agents takes pride in not only tracking these updates but testing them and understanding their impact on our clients’ growth.
Reach out to our team of experts to help grow your brand through Amazon Advertising at [email protected].
Emily Lease, Associate Director of eCommerce