Amazon Sponsored Products best practices

Amazon has published comprehensive guidelines for sellers and vendors utilizing its Sponsored Products advertising solution. The documentation, released earlier this month, provides advertisers with extensive information on campaign optimization, targeting strategies, and performance measurement techniques designed to maximize return on advertising spend.

Sponsored Products represent Amazon's cost-per-click (CPC) advertising option that allows professional sellers, vendors, book vendors, authors, and agencies to promote individual product listings on Amazon and select premium apps and websites. According to the documentation, these advertisements appear in shoppers' search results and product detail pages across desktop and mobile platforms.

The e-commerce company's advertising platform requires no upfront investment, with advertisers paying only when shoppers click on their ads. This model provides advertisers with potential access to consumers actively searching with relevant keywords or browsing similar products.

The documentation emphasizes five key benefits of utilizing Sponsored Products. First, the platform enables advertisers to reach shoppers with relevant messaging through flexible keyword and product targeting options. Second, the direct link to product detail pages simplifies the purchasing process for customers. Third, advertisers maintain control over their advertising spend through daily or lifetime budget options. Fourth, the cost-per-click model ensures investment targets engaged customers. Finally, the reporting dashboard provides performance data for campaign optimization.

For new advertisers unfamiliar with digital marketing, Amazon highlights that Sponsored Products campaigns require minimal setup time and no previous advertising experience. According to the documentation, the process involves registering for Amazon Ads, signing into an account, selecting products to advertise, defining targeting strategies, configuring campaign settings, and launching the campaign.

The documentation also reveals significant performance data supporting the use of their suggested products feature. According to Amazon internal data collected from December 2021 to May 2023, "Suggested products are 321 times more likely to generate ad-attributed sales when advertised, compared to products that are not suggested." This statistic applies specifically to sellers with Sponsored Products campaigns running for a minimum of six months post-launch.

Amazon's documentation emphasizes the direct correlation between product detail page quality and advertising performance. Recommendations include ensuring products display the featured offer status, maintaining competitive pricing, confirming inventory availability, creating strong product titles of approximately 60 characters, enrolling eligible products in Fulfillment by Amazon to obtain the Prime badge, advertising products with positive customer reviews, featuring high-quality images, including detailed bullet points, and enhancing product pages with A+ content where eligible.

The document further elaborates on targeting capabilities, offering both automatic and manual options. Automatic targeting, described as "the easiest and quickest way to get started," allows Amazon's systems to match advertisements to relevant keywords and products. This option includes four match types: close match (targeting shopping terms closely related to products), loose match (targeting shopping terms loosely related to products), substitutes (targeting shoppers viewing similar products), and complements (targeting shoppers viewing complementary products).

Manual targeting provides advertisers with greater control, allowing them to select specific keywords or products. Product targeting enables advertisements to appear alongside similar or complementary products, with options for targeting high-performing products, specific categories, or even an advertiser's own product pages to showcase their full range.

Negative targeting functionality represents an additional control mechanism that prevents advertisements from appearing in undesired contexts. As the documentation explains: "You're running an ad for a camera lens. Your advertising objective is for your ad to appear near complementary products, but you find it appearing by a noncompatible camera. By adding this camera as a negative ASIN, you can stop your ad from appearing there and save paying for placements you don't want."

For budget management, Amazon recommends a starting daily budget of $10 or equivalent, which can be adjusted at any time. The documentation clarifies that the daily budget represents a calendar month allocation, explaining: "if you set your daily budget at $100, you may receive up to $3,000 worth of clicks in that calendar month (assuming a full 30-day month)."

Bidding strategies include options for dynamic bidding (with Amazon automatically adjusting bids in real-time) or fixed bidding (using the exact bid amount specified). Placement bid adjustments of up to 900% allow advertisers to remain competitive for premium positions such as top of search results or product pages.

Performance measurement receives significant attention in the documentation, with recommendations to monitor metrics at least twice weekly during initial campaign periods. Key performance indicators include impressions (ad display frequency), clicks (engagement measurement), sales (total value of attributed purchases), cost-per-click (average payment per ad click), and new-to-brand orders (first-time customer acquisitions).

Amazon provides multiple reporting options through its Ads console, including search term reports (identifying customer search queries resulting in ad clicks), targeting reports (providing sales metrics for keywords and products), advertised product reports (reviewing individual product performance), placement reports (comparing performance across different ad positions), and performance over time reports (tracking cost and click trends).

For campaign optimization during the first 30 days, the documentation recommends continuous operation without end dates, advertising at least two suggested products, adjusting budgets and bids based on performance, creating manual campaigns to supplement automatic campaigns, and refining keyword strategies to maximize search match effectiveness.

An additional internal data point from March to April 2023 indicates that "New products are 231 times more likely to generate ad-attributed sales when advertised, compared to products that are not new." This statistic further emphasizes Amazon's positioning of advertising as a critical component for new product launches.

The documentation concludes with recommendations for integrating Sponsored Products with other Amazon advertising solutions, including Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and Sponsored TV. According to the documentation, this combination approach "can help improve your chances of generating more impressions, which attracts more shoppers, amplifies your message, and helps you generate more sales."

The comprehensive nature of the documentation demonstrates Amazon's commitment to providing sellers and vendors with detailed guidance for advertising success. However, the significant performance multipliers cited for suggested and new products also serve to incentivize increased advertising investment across the platform.

As e-commerce competition intensifies, Amazon's advertising solutions represent an increasingly important revenue stream for the company while simultaneously providing sellers with tools to differentiate their offerings in a crowded marketplace. The balance between advertising expenditure and return on investment will likely remain a critical consideration for sellers navigating the Amazon ecosystem.

Timeline

• December 2021 - May 2023: Period during which Amazon collected data showing suggested products are 321 times more likely to generate ad-attributed sales when advertised
• March 26 - April 1, 2023: Period during which Amazon collected data showing new products are 231 times more likely to generate ad-attributed sales when advertised
• Early March 2025: Release of comprehensive Sponsored Products best practices documentation