When is it worth working with an Amazon PPC agency?

Should every seller (Seller & Vendor) on Amazon work with an Amazon PPC agency? Absolutely not! As a rule, working with an Amazon PPC agency is only recommended for 10-20% of all active sellers & vendors.

As an Amazon PPC agency, what do we look out for before working with a client?

As an Amazon PPC agency, we always pay attention to the following points before a possible collaboration with a customer: Checking the feasibility and the goals of the account. The first step is to check whether we can really help the potential customer. The answer here is regularly "no". We only work with clients who we can say with certainty that our work can have a significant impact. We generally avoid conflicts of interest with similar products by not working with clients with identical product portfolios. In order to avoid potential conflicts of interest, we must therefore reject all inquiries that offer products that are currently already being sold by a client we support. Checking other factors influencing the campaign performance of Amazon PPC is just one of many levers for achieving sales success on Amazon. We regularly discuss and answer questions about shipping logistics, product selection, product presentation and internationalization with our customers.

What does an Amazon PPC agency cost?

The costs of a PPC agency depend on the needs of the client, which can be completely different. Factors influencing the costs include the size of the company, the objectives, the number of products to be advertised, the competitive situation and many other factors. For this reason, we cannot prepare standard offers without a prior consultation. Every customer receives an individual offer from us that is tailored to the customer's current situation.

What tasks does an Amazon PPC agency take on?

As a PPC agency, we take care of the placement of paid advertisements on Amazon. Our aim is to display our clients' products as effectively and efficiently as possible. Different customers have different objectives, which is why each customer requires a separate approach to ensure that the desired objectives are achieved via PPC campaigns on Amazon. As the placement of advertisements is only one of many criteria for success, we also advise our customers on Amazon SEO and listing optimization.

What is Amazon PPC?

Amazon PPC (pay-per-click) advertising describes advertising formats that are controlled and displayed via Amazon and billed per click. The advertisements are mostly displayed on the Amazon website. An alternative to Amazon PPC is Amazon DSP (Demand Side Platform), which is billed according to CPMs - i.e. a price per thousand contacts. There are currently three different Amazon PPC campaign types that are available to both Seller Central and Vendor participants for advertising their own products.

Amazon PPC campaign types

The three different campaign types available to advertisers on Amazon are:

• Amazon Sponsored Product campaigns
• Amazon Sponsored Brand Campaigns
• Amazon Sponsored Display campaigns

Amazon Sponsored Product campaigns:

The Amazon Sponsored Product campaign is the advertising type that generates the most clicks, orders and sales. It is therefore the main campaign type and belongs in every advertising account. As a rule, Sponsored Product campaigns account for around 50-80% of advertising costs and advertising sales across all Amazon PPC campaign types. This is because the placement of the Sponsored Product campaign has been chosen so favorably by Amazon that these ads receive the majority of the attention.

There are two types of Sponsored Product campaigns, the so-called automatic and manual campaigns. When choosing an automatic Sponsored Product campaign, the advertiser defines the products to be advertised, the daily budget and the maximum CPC bid. 

In contrast, the advertiser has significantly more work with manual campaigns, but also significantly more creative freedom. The placements can be freely selected and all placements, whether search term or product detail page, can be controlled using individual CPC bids. When using manual campaigns, the advertiser can either control the placement for predefined search terms or carry out the placement on product detail pages. The analysis and optimization options for manual sponsored product campaigns are much more extensive than those of automatic campaigns. 

As a best practice tip, sponsored product campaigns should be defined according to the chosen focus. For keyword campaigns, it may be advisable to structure PPC campaigns according to generic terms, private label terms and competitor names in order to facilitate performance evaluation at account level.

Amazon Sponsored Brand Campaigns:

The second type of Amazon campaign is the sponsored brand campaign. As the name suggests, the focus here is on promoting the brand and the entire product range. Sponsored brand campaigns can only be created and played out by vendor participants and sellers with a registered brand.

Sponsored Brand campaigns are not divided into manual and automatic campaigns. All campaigns are manual in nature.

However, the following design options are available:

• Sponsored brand product collection ads

In the product collection ads, three of the brand's products appear next to the brand logo and the headline. Clicking on one of the products leads directly to the product detail page. Clicking on the logo or the headline takes the customer directly to the brand store of the brand.

• Sponsored Brand Store Spotlight Ads

           Instead of three products, three different categories of the brand store are displayed in store spotlight ads. A headline and a logo are also displayed here. However, clicking on the ad always leads to the brand store.          

• Sponsored Brand Video Ads

The latest sponsored brand advertising type is brand video ads. The ad is placed after the first four organic placements on desktop and after the first two organic placements on mobile. In addition to an advertising video, the advertised product is linked. Clicking on the advertised product takes the customer directly to the product detail page.

Display types of sponsored brand campaigns:

Sponsored Brand campaigns can be applied to both keywords and product detail pages, regardless of the selected design option.

A comprehensible campaign structure - generic terms, own-brand terms and third-party brand terms - should also be used when designing sponsored brand campaigns.

A significant difference to sponsored product campaigns is the possibility of advertising even without an existing BuyBox. For sponsored product campaigns, the presence of the BuyBox at the advertiser is a basic prerequisite for campaign playout. 

Sponsored display campaigns

Finally, we now come to the last Amazon PPC campaign type, the sponsored display campaigns. In sponsored display campaigns, a display ad is played that shows either the product alone, the product with the brand logo and a headline or a lifestyle shot of the product.

Here too, the prerequisite is that the seller has a registered brand in order to be able to use this type of campaign. However, a BuyBox as with sponsored product campaigns is not necessary.

A significant difference to the two previous campaign types lies in the display of sponsored display campaigns. On the one hand, sponsored display ads are only available in manual campaign form, and on the other, there is no keyword targeting as with sponsored product and sponsored brand campaigns.

For sponsored display campaigns, advertisers have access to both the familiar product targeting and the relatively new target group targeting. With target group targeting, the advertiser can access the Amazon target groups and reach predefined groups of people with display ads. For some time now, it has been possible to target users who have seen the advertiser's products but not purchased them (classic retargeting).

Advertisers also have these three different optimization options at their disposal:

• Optimization for visible impressions (CPM billing)
• Optimization for page impressions (CPC billing)
• Optimization for conversion (CPC billing)

As a rule, optimization for conversion is recommended. 

Sponsored Display campaigns usually have a relatively small share of the total Amazon PPC advertising costs. In most cases, the share of Sponsored Display campaigns is around 10% of the advertising costs of an advertising account.

In particular, retargeting for products that require explanation and buyer retargeting for consumer goods are features that belong in every professional campaign setup.

Which brand goals can be achieved with Amazon PPC campaigns?

Amazon PPC campaigns are used to present the advertised products to customers who are ready to buy. Ultimately, Amazon PPC is not much more than placing your own products on a premium shelf space. As in stationary retail, there are visible placements and not-so-visible placements. Amazon PPC only ensures that the advertised products are visible.

Marketing goals that can be achieved through the use of Amazon PPC are:

• Reaching new customer groups
• Increase in market share
• Presentation of new products
• Sale of articles
• Increase of the organic ranking

As we can see, Amazon PPC can be used for much more than just the crude optimization of a ROAS value. It is therefore advisable to align the use of Amazon PPC campaigns with your strategic marketing goals. As an Amazon PPC agency, we support you with your ads.