Introduction to Sponsored Product Ads

If you just started advertising on Amazon, use Sponsored Product Ads because they automatically generate Ads which can bring you significant profit. You can choose various types of targeting and separate Ads into ad groups with different products and targeting. So here is the brief introduction to Sponsored Product Ads which can help you get better advertising results.

Sponsored Product Ads – Automatic targeting

Automatic targeting will match your ads to shopping queries & products and show your ads in shopping results and on product pages. So when you create a campaign you need to set a daily budget, choose your bid and add your ASIN of a product you would like to advertise. Amazon will do the rest automatically.  This is a great start for a new product on Amazon because you can see all of the keywords/products that have brought you sales. This way, you can have a better view on which keywords/products to put as target in the next manual campaign for the same product. 

Automatic targeting has various benefits: 

• Best way for PPC beginners to upgrade their advertising skills on Amazon   
• Great start for new products to advertise
• Collects selling keywords and products for you (this way you can set up manual targeting campaigns more easily and efficiently)
• Easy to set up and optimize

Sponsored Product Ads – Manual targeting

With manual targeting you can choose to target based on keywords or products. This type of targeting can help you: 

• Boost sales and improve your ACoS 
• Have more control over biddings on targeted keywords or products
• Have more ad spots across Amazon and get a better chance to sell

It is always better to start with separate manual campaigns – one with keyword targeting and other with product targeting. When you set up manual campaigns, you need to set a daily budget, choose a bid (default or custom) and add your ASIN of a product you would like to advertise. The difference comes in the section “targeting” where you can choose, as mentioned above, keyword or product. So what are the benefits of using these two types of manual targeting?

Click on the link to see what is the best way to optimize your bid.

Keyword targeting

Keyword targeting gives you the opportunity to target any keyword you would like.  If you are not sure which keywords to put you can always choose some of the suggested in section “Related”. By using this section, you will get Amazon suggestions of some keywords with bids based on the products you choose to advertise. When choosing keywords you need to set their bids (default, suggested or custom).

Keep in mind that you should put some of the keywords as negative exact or, in rare cases, negative phrase so you don’t target and bid for the same keyword twice. If you put a broad keyword it will also catch the same exact, so it is better to have that keyword in negative exact.
Keyword targeting Ads are showing your ads in shopping results and on product pages as automatic targeting campaigns.

Product targeting

With product targeting you can target specific products (ASIN), categories or brands.  With targeting a category you can choose the category where you want your product to show. If you are not sure which category to target there are suggested ones based on your product. This targeting shows your ads on product pages and on targeted categories. 

Individual products targeting also has a suggested section where you can choose to target suggested competitors products similar to yours. You can also manually add a list of products from competitors or even your own products that you would like to target. Each of the products (ASIN), like keywords, has an option for setting its bid. Product targeting shows your Ads on the product page you have set as a target.

Read more about Product and category targeting on Amazon.

To conclude

Difference between automatic and manual targeting campaigns is that manual give you much more options on bids and targets with total control.  Automatic targeting does everything for you and it is automatic as its name says. It is always better to have manual and automatic targeting campaigns in order to get more sales, better ranking and ACoS. 

So, the best option is to start with automatic targeting and then use manual targeting that will cover the most Ad spots in shopping results and product pages. Using these two types of targeting options will maximize your chances to sell and have better ranking positions.