Optimize Amazon Display Ads With OTT and Brands Video

Making a significant amount of sales on Amazon takes much more than just listing your product and waiting. Advertising on Amazon is arguably the most fundamental aspect of any seller’s business strategy.

Amazon, being the largest marketplace, offers several different ways to advertise and market a product. That is why sellers love it, and so do the buyers.

But, the downside of so many advertising options is confusion. One group of Amazon sellers do not know which advertising strategy works best for them, and the other group does not even know how many different options exist.

So, in today’s article, we’ll cover the best advertising strategies on Amazon and how you can make the most out of them. Let’s start.

Amid numerous advertising options, Amazon offers three different ways to boost the customer engagement metrics of your product. These are

1.     Amazon Display Ads

2.     Sponsored Brands Videos

3.     OTT ads

All these ads have their unique significance in generating sales, but the best advertising strategy involves a good mix of three.

Don’t take our words for it; this is proven by Amazon itself in this recent study, to determine the impact of different ads & combinations of ads on customer engagement metrics like search rate, detail page view rate, and purchase rate.

Here is what they found (Source: Amazon):

1.     When potential customers saw both OTT and Display ads of the same brand, they were 47% more likely to research it on Amazon than customers who saw only one of the ads.

2.     Similarly, when potential customers saw both OTT and display ads of the same product, they were 25% more likely to purchase the product than customers who did not see the same product in OTT and display ads.

3.     This one is remarkable. When brands used all three ads ( OTT, Display, and Sponsored Brands Video) simultaneously, customer metrics were up to 90 percent higher than brands using only display ads.

You should be trying to use at least OTT and display ads simultaneously. And if possible, all three – OTT, Display, and Sponsored Brands video for best sales generation.

Now, we will walk you through each advertising strategy in detail to retain more customer engagement throughout the Amazon purchase funnel.

Before moving further, you should know that some advertising options are only available to brands registered on Amazon. So, if your brand is not registered on Amazon, get it registered ASAP as the benefits it gives you are highly helpful.

You can find everything about registering your brand on Amazon here. Let us get back to our topic.

Also known as Amazon Sponsored Display Ads, these are a highly effective CPC advertising solution offered by Amazon to sellers with registered brands.

The reason why these ads are so effective is due to their placement. These ads can show directly under the Buy Box of a competitor’s product, among other several effective placements.

The above image shows the two most common placements for display ads.

These placements are highly effective for boosting sales and customer engagement metrics as you can directly target your competitor’s audience. Or, you can compliment the product of your competitor by displaying relevant and together-used products.

Now, we’ll explain how you can set up high-quality display ads for your products.

First, go to your seller account and select campaign manager. Then, click on “create campaign” and select the third option, “Sponsored Display,” as shown in the image below.

First, name your campaign that is easy to remember and manage. Second, select a start date for your campaign.

Now, here’s something you should know. We don’t recommend setting an end date as it sends Amazon a negative signal that you are ending your campaign because it didn’t work well. Which, in turn, negatively impacts the results of your future campaigns.

Hence, just set up a starting date, and turn off the campaign manually when you want to end it.

Lastly, determine a daily budget for your campaign. The exact amount varies a lot based on your products, but an amount between $10 – $20 is a decent testing budget.

And remember, the amount you enter here is the maximum amount you are willing to spend every day, not the exact amount you will spend every day.

Now, here are some tips for selecting individual products.

·       Select products sold at a higher price than your product. This is because almost all customers are tight on budget, and they mostly go for the cheaper option if the quality is comparable.

·       Select products that are already a bestseller and try to convey that your product is superior.

·       Select products that compliment your product or are often used together, such as a mouse and mouse pad.

Once you find all the products you wish to target, copy their ASINs and paste them.

Lastly, before you launch your campaign, you have the option of customizing your ad. You can choose to add your brand logo and a headline to the creative.

It is recommended that you add your brand logo and a custom headline. Your headlines should be persuasive and mainly in a human voice.

For instance, if you target a competitor’s product, you can use headlines such as “better product name here”. Remember, try to make your ad stand out.

Let’s move on to the next targeting option.

Audience Targeting:

With this targeting option, you target a specific set of audiences based on their shopping habits and activities while surfing on Amazon. Ads by this option are shown both on & off Amazon.

Once you select Audience targeting, you are further given a choice between three different types of audiences.

Sponsored brands video is a powerful advertising tool offered by Amazon. It allows you to advertise your product in the Amazon search results in the form of a video along with a few products.

Although creating a high-quality video for your products can be costly and quite time-consuming, the amount of sales it can generate is worth it, especially if you are the only one doing it in your product niche.

Why?

There are tons of reasons as to why video ads perform better, but let us discuss a few:

1.     Video ads tend to stand out when compared to almost all other forms of advertisements. That’s why sellers ultimately get a high conversion rate with video ads.

2.     Amazon Sponsored brands videos will automatically play when at least 50 percent of the video is on the screen.

3.     These videos ads allow you to advertise 3 different products of your brand along with one video ad.

4.     These advertisements are shown in both mobile and desktop search results.

5.     These video ads are still relatively new, and not many sellers know how to use them wisely. So, you can take advantage of low competition and low CPC rates to outperform your competition.

Now, let us dive into a step-by-step process of starting your sponsored brand’s video campaign.

The process of setting up a Sponsored Brands Video campaign is similar to running display ads. Go to your Amazon central, select campaign manager, and click on “create a campaign”.

Then, select the middle option “Sponsored Brands”.

Enter a unique name for your campaign and add it into a portfolio if you are running other campaigns also for control purposes. Otherwise, leave it as “no portfolio”.

Next, enter a starting date for your campaign. As explained in the article earlier, instead of entering an end date, turn the campaign off manually when you want to.

Then, you need to enter a daily budget. However, be aware that the daily budget you enter here is not the maximum budget Amazon can use. Amazon can use up to 25% more than the budget you enter here to give you the best results on high-traffic days. So, enter your budget accordingly.

In this step, select the ad format as a video and copy the ASINs of the product you want to advertise. Then, paste it into the products section.

Amazon does not want any random, low-quality, or fluff video in their search results. That’s why they have a strict verification process for all videos.

All the details you need for the video, such as format, pixels, and size, are mentioned on your screen. You can read more about them here.

Make sure you specify all the video details to your editor beforehand. Now, here are some tips for creating a video that Amazon loves and which brings customers.

·       An eye-catching start– A good video starts with something in motion to catch the attention of viewers.

·       No fluff- This is not your YouTube video. So, no intros, no black frames at the start, and no unnecessary stuff to make the video long.

·       Short & Concise- With reduced attention spans, none of us have the patience to watch a 45-second promotional video. So, keep your video around 15 to 30 seconds.

·       Subtitles- The video runs without audio by default. So, unless the viewer toggle, the video will play without the audio. Hence, consider adding small and readable subtitles.

·       Loop-friendly video- As long as 50% of the video is on screen, it will play on a loop. So, add some transitions to your video to make it loop-friendly.

Amazon offers two targeting options:

·       Keyword Targeting

·       Product targeting

The latter has launched only recently, and nobody has enough data on it currently.

So, we recommend going for keyword targeting only.

If you are trying video ads for the first time, we recommend going only for the exact keywords. So, untick the two boxes other than “exact”.

Then, enter your 5-10 best-performing and highly-converting keywords and try the campaign out for a week. If you don’t get desired impressions, just increase the bid and go from there.