What is Amazon Sponsored Products?

With around 9.7 million sellers on Amazon in 2022, competition is extremely fierce. Fortunately, Amazon Sponsored Products offer a method to differentiate yourself from the competition and quickly create fresh listings.

Amazon provides businesses with a variety of pay-per-click choices, such as Sponsored Brand, Display Ads and Amazon Sponsored Products (ASPs). ASPs are one of the most effective methods to showcase new products, increase conversion rates and your overall discoverability, so it is no surprise that they account for three-quarters of merchant’s Amazon advertising budgets.

 ASPs appear in the top or bottom of search results and the right-side rail. When a customer clicks an ad, they are taken to the relevant product page, thus helping to increase traffic and sales.

Getting started with ASPs

 To help you start your first campaign, our eCommerce team have noted the important actions to consider before you laund an ad.

Select your campaign type

Firstly, you will need to decide whether you want to run an automatic or manual ad campaign. Automatic campaigns are quick and easy to set up since Amazon automatically selects the keywords for you. Nevertheless, you’ll need to optimise your listings in advance since the Amazon robots match your ads to relevant search terms and products. With manual campaigns, you have greater control over each part of the campaign, therefore taking ore time and effort to set up and optimise. You will set your own keywords and have more control of the bid price ensuring maximum impact.  

Choose your ‘match’ types

Setting match types enables you to tailor your campaigns to your company's objectives. With Sponsored Products automatic targeting, there are four different match types:

  1. Close match
  2. Loose match
  3. Substitutes
  4. Complements

With close match and loose match, your ad will be shown in the shopping results if your product matches the shopping query closely or loosely. With substitutes and complements, your ad will be shown to shoppers who view product detail pages that are similar to or complement your products.

Based on your advertising campaign goals, you can choose from three keyword match types for manual targeting:

  1. Phrase match: Your ads will display when your chosen keywords appear exactly as you entered it. However, the shoppers search can also include non-targeted words before or after the keyword itself.
  2. Exact match: Your ads will only appear when a shopper uses the exact keywords or phrases in the same order. This is the most refined targeting option. It creates highly relevant traffic, higher conversion rates, and reduces ad spend.
  3. Broad match: Your ads will show up for a variety of terms that closely resemble your keywords. Start with broad match to find new keywords and increase ad visibility to a large range of shoppers. 

Set your bids

ASPs offer three bidding strategies designed to give you more control and help you improve your performance. Advertisers who want to manage their own bids can select the “fixed bids” option, while advertisers focused on maximising bid efficiency can choose from two new automated bidding strategies that regulate bids in real time based on the probability of conversion.

Final thoughts

ASPs is an incredibly effective way to advertise your products on Amazon. It gives you the opportunity to promote your products at the top of an Amazon search, for a reasonable cost-per-click. However, APAs is only one strategy for helping you to boost your marketplace sales. If you are interested in how the BDO Eaton Square eCommerce team can help you get started on Marketplaces, click here.