Amazon PPC (Pay-Per-Click) is a powerful paid advertising platform that allows sellers and brands to promote their products directly on Amazon. With PPC, advertisers only pay when a potential customer clicks on their ad, making it a highly cost-effective tool for targeting shoppers. Here’s a breakdown of how Amazon PPC works and key strategies for getting the most out of your campaigns.
How Amazon PPC Works
Advertisers bid on keywords that customers are likely to use when searching for products. When a customer types a search term that matches the advertiser’s keyword, the ad appears in the search results or on product pages. Ads are shown based on the bid amount and relevance, and advertisers only pay when their ad is clicked, not when it’s simply displayed.
Ad Types
- Sponsored Products: These ads appear in search results and on product pages.
- Sponsored Brands: These ads appear at the top of the search results and showcase multiple products with your brand logo.
- Sponsored Display: These ads are shown across Amazon and on external websites, retargeting potential customers.
- Video Ads: Dynamic and engaging, these ads can appear within search results and capture customers’ attention.
Campaign Types
- Automatic Campaigns: Amazon uses its own algorithms to automatically match your ads to relevant search terms and products.
- Manual Campaigns: Advertisers have full control over which keywords or product categories they want to target. This allows for more precise control over your ad targeting and budget.
Keyword Match Types
Advertisers can choose how closely the customer’s search term needs to match the keyword:
- Broad Match: The ad will appear for searches that contain your keyword in any order.
- Phrase Match: The ad will appear for searches that include the exact keyword phrase.
- Exact Match: The ad will only appear for searches that exactly match the keyword.
Negative Keywords
Negative keywords allow advertisers to exclude irrelevant terms, preventing their ads from showing for searches that are unlikely to convert. This optimizes the Campaign Bidding Strategy and reduces unnecessary ad spend.
Key Metrics to Track in Amazon PPC
Here are the essential metrics and terms every Amazon advertiser should understand to track the success of their campaigns:
- Impressions: The number of times your ad was shown.
- Top-of-search Impression Share (IS): The percentage of times your ad appeared at the top of search results.
- Clicks: The number of times your ad was clicked.
- Click-through Rate (CTR): The percentage of impressions that resulted in a click.
- Spend: The total amount spent on the ad.
- Cost-per-click (CPC): The average cost for each click on your ad.
- Detail Page Views (DPV): Number of visits to the product’s detail page from your ad.
- Orders: The number of sales generated from your ad.
- Sales: The total revenue generated from your ads.
- Advertising Cost of Sales (ACOS): The percentage of ad spend relative to sales (Spend ÷ Sales).
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): How much revenue you earn for every dollar spent on ads (Sales ÷ Spend).
- New-to-Brand (NTB) Orders: The number of first-time customers acquired from your ad.
- % of Orders New-to-Brand (NTB): The percentage of your total orders that are from first-time customers.
- New-to-Brand (NTB) Sales: Revenue from first-time customers.
- % of Sales New-to-Brand (NTB): The percentage of total sales that came from new customers.
- Viewable Impressions: The number of times your ad was visible to potential customers.
- Cost per 1,000 Viewable Impressions (VCPM): The cost per 1,000 impressions where the ad was visible.
- Video Metrics (First Quartile, Midpoint, Third Quartile, Complete, Unmute): These track how much of your video ad was watched and whether the sound was turned on.
- View-through Rate (VTR): The percentage of impressions that resulted in a conversion.
- Click-through Rate for Views (vCTR): The number of clicks divided by the number of views on your video ad.
Budget and Cost Type
Advertisers can set a daily budget for each campaign to control how much they want to spend. The cost type (CPC or VCPM) determines how they are charged—either per click or per 1,000 viewable impressions.
Maximizing Results with Amazon PPC
By understanding and optimizing these key metrics, Amazon PPC can help sellers enhance visibility and boost sales, all while maintaining control over their budget. With tools like Portfolio to group campaigns and the ability to set specific Start and End Dates for ads, advertisers can create highly targeted and efficient campaigns. Amazon’s New Feature updates also make it easier to track additional metrics like Video Completion Rates and VTR, giving advertisers even more insight into the effectiveness of their campaigns.
With the right strategy, Amazon PPC is an invaluable tool for growing your business and reaching new customers.
