The year 2020 brought us advertisers on Amazon many innovations. 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 post, 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 apparent when scrolling 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 redirected directly to the product detail page. There is only one sponsored brand video ad per search results page! 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, so that this ad format generates hardly any visibility on mobile devices.
Note: Only one product can be assigned to each video, so you must create a separate SBV ad for each product to be advertised.
Billing is per click (CPC), as with traditional sponsored brand ads.
How do I create sponsored brand videos?
To create an SBV ad, it is important to know in advance that you must have a brand registered with the Amazon Brand Registry. If this is the case, select the item 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 only have to select the product to be promoted and then we can upload a video. The video should not contain website links, nor should a black frame be used for the video. The most important characteristics of the video are the following:
- 16:9 ratio
- 1280 x 720 px, 1920 x 1080 px oder 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 smaller
- MP4 or MOV file
- Main or baseline profile
- Progressive scan type
- 1 Video stream only
After we have uploaded the video and received no error message, the next thing we need to do is enter the keywords 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 in the future it will also be possible to display the video ads on product detail pages.
After we have defined the keywords, the campaign only needs to be submitted for review and approved by Amazon.
Experiences with SBV ads
My experience with SBC ads is mixed. On the one hand, it is a great advertising format to better place products in need of explanation on Amazon, currently the problem is only the number of people reached, as the playout is not triggered for every search query. Likewise, SBCs on mobile devices receive only a fraction of the possible impressions. However, from our daily client work with more than 20 Amazon sellers that we support every month, I can also say that only very few advertisers are currently using SBCs. So a relevant target group can still be reached with relatively little competition.
