What Advertisers Need to Know About the Latest Amazon Advertising Services Changes

What Advertisers Need to Know about the Latest Amazon Advertising Changes

On Friday January 19, 2018 Amazon Advertising released an update with two new features for advertisers on their platform.

The first update is a new date range filter functionality. This new feature allows advertisers to quickly see performance metrics and sales data in the campaign management dashboard. Select between pre-defined time periods or a custom date range to analyze metrics on a campaign level. You can find this located in the Campaign Manager section of the Advertising tab.

amazon campaign manager

The second update is a new, self-service reporting section. These downloadable reports provide sales insights and performance metrics on a number of different views (see list below). Custom reporting periods are available as well as pre-defined date ranges. Also, these reports can be segmented by day for more granular insights. You can find this new reporting section called “Advertising Reports” under the Advertising tab.

amazon advertising reports

Below are the different report types:

  • Search term report (60 day look back period): Identify actual search terms entered by Amazon shoppers. Use your search term data to make updates to your keywords that can positively impact campaign performance, or identify under-performing terms to add as negative keywords. Available only for Sponsored Products campaigns.
  • Keyword report (90 day look back period): Analyze sales and performance metrics for the keywords you are bidding on. Use the keyword report to see keyword level sales and performance metrics and how their search volume changes over time. Then, narrow down your keyword list and set your budget for the keywords you really want. Available for sponsored products and headline search ads campaigns.
  • Advertised product report (90 day look back period): Analyze sales and performance metrics for the ASIN’s you advertise. Use the advertised product report to check on product visibility and sales. Available only for Sponsored Products campaigns.
  • Placement report (90 day look back period): Use the placement report to get better insight into your performance across different placement types, and identify campaigns that could benefit from enabling the Bid + feature. Available only for Sponsored Products campaigns.

Bid+ Refresher

Bid+ is a feature of Sponsored Products that helps you increase the opportunity to display your ads in the TOP placement (top row of search result pages). When Bid+ is turned on, Amazon will increase the maximum CPC bid by up to 50% for all your ads that are eligible to appear in the highest traffic placements at the top of Search results. You can select the Bid+ option in the Sponsored Products Manual Campaign Settings tab.

amazon bid+

Amazon Advertising Sales Attribution

It is important to understand the sales attribution model for Amazon Advertising campaigns, especially when reviewing and analyzing the data in the new reports that are available. Amazon Advertising sales attribution is a 14 day look back model. Because of this 14 day look back, it is a best practice to download reports at least every two weeks.

  • Sponsored Products campaigns attribute sales for the advertised ASIN, as well as any other products within the same marketplace or from the same brand. Does NOT include sales from third-party sellers.
  • Headline Search Ads attributes sales for the advertised ASIN and any there products from the same brand, including those sold by third-party sellers.

What does all this mean for Amazon Advertising advertisers?

Amazon Advertising advertisers will greatly benefit from both updates. Using the date range filter, you can quickly toggle between a number of pre-defined time periods for quicker optimizations. Previously, you could only see the lifetime performance of a campaign in the Amazon Advertising dashboard, now you can select: Week to date, Last week, Month to date, Last month, etc. This will make budget management much simpler, by being able to increase or decrease the campaigns daily budget based on more recent performance, rather than lifetime performance.

amazon marketing date range

Additionally, the new self-service reporting section will equip advertisers with more granular data than they had before, which will lead to better and more strategic recommendations that will help maximize advertisers’ business results.

The new changes also have a few other key benefits:

  • The search term report was previously available on the campaign level, but now is available to be downloaded in bulk. This will save agencies and advertisers time, allowing them to focus on strategy and optimization recommendations.
  • The keyword report allows you to download data based on a specific time period, where before the data was only available at the lifetime level. This report will help advertisers analyze their bid levels for induvial keywords to make better and quicker adjustments.
  • The Advertised product report is a new capability that allows you to see the performance of each ASIN you’re advertising. This will help you quickly spot trends and decided whether to add or remove specific ASIN’s from your campaigns.
  • The Placement report is a new capability that allows you to see the campaign performance across the different placement types. Compare “Top of Search on Amazon” vs. other placements, and see how the bid+ feature impacts ad placement.

Want to learn more?

Combined with a strategic approach to marketing on Amazon, these latest changes will go a long way in giving advertisers and agencies more insight into their Amazon Advertising performance and helping them better optimize their Amazon Advertising campaigns. If you want to learn how to use these updates to maximize your Amazon Advertising performance, drop us a line at info@catalystdigital.com.

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