Amazon Sponsored Display Advertising 101

Posted on:

May 12, 2021

In the first part of our ongoing series exploring advertising on Amazon, Compass Marketing and Amazon Advertising hosted a live webinar focused on Amazon Sponsored Display ads. Our discussion explored the basics of Sponsored Display and more in-depth topics, including optimization and use cases. Although the webinar itself was not recorded, this blog post will share some of the main points brought up during the presentation.

What is Amazon Sponsored Display Advertising?

If unfamiliar with Sponsored Display, it is, in short, a display advertising vehicle from Amazon. These ads can be used on or off Amazon. On Amazon, they can appear on the home page, on individual product detail pages (PDPs), or on search results pages.

As an advertising vehicle, Sponsored Display is especially useful for targeting consumers who previously viewed or are currently browsing your products, reaching new-to-brand consumers to help them discover your products, and promoting loyalty and repurchasing behavior.

Using Sponsored Display Ads

At Compass Marketing, we recommend using Sponsored Display as part of a full-funnel approach to marketing on Amazon. We have experienced great success utilizing Sponsored Display alongside Sponsored Product and Sponsored Brand ads to fully leverage Amazon’s rich consumer targeting options. Since all three ad types communicate with consumers in unique ways, Sponsored Display can help fill gaps in the funnel left by Sponsored Product or Sponsored Brand ads. Also, because of lower rates of adoption compared to other ad types, brands using Sponsored Display may see improved performance because of less competition.

The versatility of Sponsored Display allows brands to use unique tactics to achieve a wide range of strategic goals, including acquiring new consumers, driving brand loyalty, cross-selling, and improving awareness, among other goals. In fact, nimbleness and flexibility are two of the key advantages of choosing Sponsored Display over other types of ads, such as Amazon DSP. The ease of starting a Sponsored Display campaign allows brands to quickly launch contextually targeted ads to send consumers to specific product pages.

Remember that, like any other advertising vehicle, only running Sponsored Display ads is not sufficient—these ads should be used as part of an intentional strategy.

Planning Your Sponsored Display Campaign

Before launching any advertising, determine the goals of the campaign. Consider business maturity, product criteria, and category dynamics, among other factors, to guide your decision-making process and to help you figure out what your campaign should be achieving.

Overall, we recommend determining where your brand needs the most support and using Sponsored Display accordingly. While we think Sponsored Display ads are a great way to fill upper-funnel gaps, the vehicle’s unique targeting options and communication tactics are also effective when in lower-funnel activities.

One element that cannot be overlooked are key performance indicators (KPIs). Setting specific KPIs during the campaign creation process is essential to ensure the goals of the campaign match your brand’s intentions. For example, a brand that wants to gain awareness should incorporate metrics like click-through, impressions, and new-to-brand into their campaign.

Ultimately, your brand and team will know which goals your campaign should be pursuing. However, if you have any questions or would like additional guidance, Compass Marketing Account Managers can work with your team from ideation to execution to ensure the Sponsored Display campaign is being leveraged to your brand’s fullest benefit.

Optimizing Sponsored Display Ads

Thoughtful planning makes it easier to both analyze and adjust your campaign according to its performance. Over-analysis, however, can lead to muddled results. At Compass Marketing, we recommend initially reviewing your campaigns about a week after launch to ensure your spend is correct. After your campaign has run for about four weeks, there should be enough data to begin optimizing it to improve performance. Some metrics to pay attention to include spend and sales, impressions, ACOS, clicks, and click-rate.

…we recommend that brands allocate 5-10% of their overall Sponsored Advertising budget to Sponsored Display while testing their campaign.

Although there is no minimum spend for Sponsored Display ads, the size of your budget can affect the amount of testing you can conduct. For brands with smaller budgets, we recommend avoiding complex campaign testing. Instead, we recommend adding new tests over time as the initial rounds of testing set a baseline that can be optimized. Generally, however, we recommend that brands allocate 5-10% of their overall Sponsored Advertising budget to Sponsored Display while testing their campaign.

Streamline Your Campaigns with a Trusted Partner

At Compass Marketing, we take on the hard work of campaign set-up and execution. Compass Marketing Account Managers and our proprietary Compass Digital Analytics Platform (CDAP) work together and play essential roles in campaign execution, management, and optimization. Account Managers work with brands to determine optimization cadence prior to the launch of any campaign, including Sponsored Display. They regularly adjust key levers—products and categories, creative, budgets, bids, and more—to improve overall campaign performance. CDAP easily and automatically optimizes campaign performance to preset optimization goals.

Want to Learn More?

If you are currently working with us, feel free to reach out to your Account Manager to learn more about Sponsored Display advertising, or any other topic related to advertising or selling on Amazon. If you are not a client, but would like to learn more, please use the contact page or email us at info@compassmarketinginc.net.

For the latest updates the ongoing live webinar series with Amazon Advertising, in addition to other blogs posts, webinars, whitepapers, and more, follow Compass Marketing on LinkedIn

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POST TAGS: ADVERTISING, AMAZON

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