The year 2020 brought us advertisers many innovations on Amazon. One of these innovations is the so-called Amazon Sponsored Brand Video Ads, which for the first time give us the opportunity to display video ads in the search results pages. In this article, I will introduce you to the possibility of Sponsored Video Ads.
Amazon Sponsored Video Ads: What is it?
Sponsored Brand Videos are a special ad format of the Amazon Sponsored Brand campaigns. They are therefore only available to sellers with a registered brand. The ad is displayed in the search results pages below the first organic results. This means that the ad is not visible at first glance, but only becomes visible when you scroll down a little.
Example of a sponsored brand video ad:
In the desktop version, the video appears to the left of the advertised product. When clicking on the video ad, the potential new customer is forwarded directly to the product detail page. For each search results page there are only one Sponsored-Brand-Video Ad! It should also be noted that the display on mobile devices differs from the display on the desktop PC. On mobile devices, the video appears above the advertised product. Furthermore, on mobile devices the ads appear as the last module of a search results page, meaning that this ad format generates hardly any visibility on mobile devices.
Remark: Only one product can be assigned to each video, so you have to create a separate SBC ad for each product to be advertised.
As with conventional sponsored brand ads, billing is per click (CPC).
How do I create sponsored brand videos?
In order to create an SBC ad, it is important to know in advance that you must register a trademark with the Amazon Brand Registry must be stored. If this is the case, select Advertising → Manage campaigns in Seller Central and then click on "Create campaign". This is a sponsored brand campaign. In addition to Product Collection & Store Spotlight, "Video" is now also displayed as the ad format.
Next, we just have to select the product to be advertised and then we can upload a video. The video should not contain any website links, nor should a black frame be used for the video. The most important features of the video are as follows:
- 16:9 aspect ratio
- 1280 x 720 px, 1920 x 1080 px or 3840 x 2160 px
- 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 29.98 or 30 fps
- 1 Mbit/s or higher bit rate
- H.264 or H.265 codec
- 6 -45 sec. long
- 500 MB or less
- MP4 or MOV file
- Main or baseline profile
- Progressive scan type
- 1 Video stream only
Once we have uploaded the video and have not received an error message, the next step is to enter the keywords that we define for playout. Currently, the video ads only appear in the search results pages and not on product detail pages. It can be assumed that it will also be possible to display the video ads on product detail pages in the future.
Once we have defined the keywords, the campaign only needs to be submitted for review and approved by Amazon.
Experience with SBC ads
My experiences with SBC ads are mixed. On the one hand, it is a great advertising format to better place products that require explanation on Amazon, but currently the only problem is the number of people reached, as the ads are not triggered with every search query. The SBCs on mobile devices also only receive a fraction of the possible impressions. From our daily work with more than 20 Amazon sellers that we support every month, I can also say that only very few advertisers currently rely on SBCs. This means that a relevant target group can still be reached with relatively little competition.
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