Amazon is revamping its advertising services for indie authors and renaming the whole operation as Amazon Advertising, with the previous name of Amazon Marketing Services being phased out.
The move makes a lot of sense as Amazon is pushing hard into the advertising market but it can still be fairly confusing to navigate the various options available.
You can now use the Amazon Advertising website at advertising.amazon.com, to access your account and manage your campaigns using your KDP log-in. This site replaces the Amazon Marketing Services website ams.amazon.com. No action is required on your part and active campaigns will not be affected.
Amazon previously used the names Amazon Media Group (AMG), Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), and Amazon Advertising Platform (AAP) but all these will be rolled into Amazon Advertising over the coming months.
Product names are being ‘simplified to align with their functionality’. For example, Headline Search Ads will become Sponsored Brands.
The Amazon Advertising Platform becomes the Amazon DSP to represent the capabilities of this programmatic ad buying tool.
Amazon Advertising’s product portfolio includes:
- Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands allow advertisers to promote their products or brand to make it even easier for customers to discover and purchase products on Amazon.
- Display Ads reach relevant audiences on Amazon and third-party sites and apps using customizable brand or e-commerce creatives, and actionable insights to help advertisers optimize ads to achieve various objectives.
- Product Display Ads are also available for advertisers who sell products on Amazon to drive traffic to their product detail pages.
- Video ads help advertisers tell their brand story and engage customers in brand-safe environments through trusted channels such as Amazon and IMDb, on exclusive Amazon devices such as Fire TV or Fire tablet, and across third-party sites and apps.
- Stores allow vendors and sellers to create their own website, with its own branded URL, on Amazon. Vendors and sellers can use a Store to showcase a brand story and product portfolio in a curated customer destination.
- Measurement solutions, including campaign reporting, retail insights, and third-party reporting, help businesses understand advertising’s impact on shopper behaviour — whether they run on Amazon or on third-party sites and apps — so they can optimize marketing strategies to achieve results.
- Amazon DSP is a demand-side platform that allows advertisers to programmatically reach their audiences both on Amazon sites and apps as well as through our direct publisher relationships and third-party exchanges. Advertisers can manage, optimize, and report on their programmatic display and video campaigns through the Amazon DSP console
Some of these services are not applicable to KDP authors, who focus on Sponsored Products and Product Display Ads.
Display Ads (not to be confused with Product Display Ads) and video ad campaigns require a budget of $35,000 in the US, so that probably rules out most indie authors.
Product Display Ads and Sponsored Ads are cost-per-click ads, so you pay only when someone clicks on your ad and you control your campaign budget.
Sponsored Ads now seem to contain three sub-categories — Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Product Display Ads — and they are all available to KDP authors.
Sponsored Products is a cost-per-click, keyword-targeted advertising solution that enables you to promote the products you sell with ads that may appear in placements on Amazon.com. You select your products to advertise and choose your keywords or let Amazon’s systems target relevant keywords automatically.
You control how much you want to spend on your bids and budgets and can measure your ads’ performance. The ads serve on desktop and mobile browsers as well as on the Amazon mobile app. When customers click your ad, they are taken to the advertised product’s detail page.
Sponsored Brands used to be called Headline Search Ads and are keyword-targeted ads that appear in search results on Amazon. They allow brands to promote multiple products or titles with a custom headline and logo within the ad creative. Ads drive customers to a product detail page or Store.
Product Display Ads are self-service display ads for individual ASINs. They are displayed based on relevant products, product categories, or audience interests. Product Display Ads show within product detail pages to on either complementary or competing products.
Kindle Direct Publishing authors and book vendors may also target ads by related products (books or otherwise) or by customer interest (genre) and include a custom text headline. The ads serve on desktop detail pages and campaigns targeted by audience interest may qualify for additional ad placement on Kindle E-readers.
The reports available to help you to assess your return on investment are:
• Sponsored Products: account, campaign, product, and keyword-level sales reporting.
• Sponsored Brands: account, campaign, and keyword-level sales reporting.
• Product Display Ads: account and campaign-level sales reporting.
Amazon recently added new tools for authors to customize their Sponsored Products Ads, including more keyword match types, bid guidance for keywords and auto-bid for the top of search results.
It’s over three and a half years since Amazon introduced advertising schemes for indie authors and self-publishers in January 2015 and many authors have had great success with their promotional campaigns.
You can get more details about the new moves at the Amazon Advertising site.
I’ll be looking further at the changes and aim to be publishing an article in the near future giving a simple and up-to-date guide to what’s available for authors and what’s working.
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