Put Amazon Sponsored Display Audiences to Work for Your Brand

An engaged audience for your e-commerce business is essential to drive more sales and reach more potential customers. For Amazon sellers, Amazon Sponsored Display audiences can be one of the most effective ways to improve visibility on the world’s largest online marketplace and maximize ROI in digital ad campaigns. 

This critical feature of PPC advertising allows sellers to create targeted, highly relevant ads tailored to individual customers’ shopping behaviors or preferences, enabling them greater control over who sees their products and increasing the chance of conversions. In this article, we’ll take a detailed look at Amazon audiences to understand better how it works and how you can use it to support your Amazon brand.

Amazon audiences are key to Sponsored Display Advertising

The origins of this Amazon advertising began in late 2019 when the site launched Sponsored Display ads, a self-service advertising solution available via both Vendor and Seller Central. A Sponsored Display Ad was unique from other Amazon product display ads in that it could reach targeted audiences on and off the platform. In 2020, Amazon expanded the offering to include the enhanced targeting of Sponsored Display Audiences. The advertising options have continued to evolve in recent years, and the services available to companies enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry are now simply known as Sponsored Display. 

By using Sponsored Display Audiences, you are putting your products in front of people who are more likely to make a purchase. This hyper-targeted advertising can lead to increased sales and brand awareness. 

Sponsored Display audiences campaigns are designed to reach shoppers based on their behaviors and preferences, not just when they’re on Amazon. Rather than limiting the display ads to the search results and detail pages of specific products, advertisers can use Amazon audience targeting to engage or reengage prospective customers. These tactics target shoppers who have previously viewed relevant products and categories or attempt to introduce an item to new customers who are likely to be interested. Amazon allows brands to create custom-built audiences or use pre-built audiences, depending on the goal of the Sponsored Display Campaign. 

The custom audience options offer a detailed refinement of these remarketing efforts. It is a marketing approach that targets users primarily on historical purchase behavior. Purchase remarketing can drive repeat purchases or cross-sell to existing customers by focusing on audiences who previously bought the same or complementary products. Views remarketing is similar, but rather than targeting past buyers, it homes in on shoppers who have viewed particular items but not yet purchased them. These Amazon tailored audiences can also be improved by utilizing Amazon’s “Lookback windows” to designate the time period when the initial consumer purchase or view occurred, up to 90 days in the past for views remarketing or a full year before when utilizing purchases remarketing.

Amazon’s pre-built advertiser audience targeting offers brands thousands of segments to help them target new customers based on their interests and behaviors. These are grouped into four major categories to simplify the process of building an effective campaign. For example, in-market segments are shoppers who are currently shopping in a selected product category. Lifestyle segments can be used to target customers who exhibit behaviors that map to identities such as “foodies” or “sports enthusiasts” based on shopping, browsing and streaming history. Like lifestyle targeting, interest segments drill down more specifically to a single interest. Meanwhile, life event segments are also available for companies interested in reaching customers based on things like a marriage or the birth of a child.

Amazon Sponsored Display Audiences can help you reach your goals

With Sponsored Display Audiences, you can improve customer engagement with a new audience of people who have shown similar interest in products like yours, which significantly increases your chances of converting them into actual customers. Plus, the cost-per-click is incredibly affordable, making it an efficient way to get more eyes on your products. So if you want to step up your Amazon advertising campaigns and grow your brand, Sponsored Display Audiences can help you achieve your goals.

It’s common for brands to consider Sponsored Display to advertise established products, but new products can also benefit from a well-designed campaign. The targeting capabilities can allow companies to reach the buyers and shoppers of complementary products or introduce the item to audiences that are likely to be high-interest customers. 

Furthermore, a campaign that uses product targeting to increase traffic and audience targeting to remarket to those visitors can be an extremely effective approach to launching a new product and ramping up sales quickly. 

Sponsored Display can benefit both large and small businesses due to its targeting and cost flexibility. It can increase brand awareness and accelerate conversion, with adjustments available to emphasize either or a multi-pronged approach to do both. A Sponsored Display campaign also offers metric reporting that can be used to improve current advertising and inform decisions about future campaigns, Amazon optimization and even product improvements. 

Target Amazon Sponsored Display Audiences correctly

Setting up your campaigns in Amazon Sponsored Display Audiences may seem challenging initially, but with the right strategy, it can bring immense benefits. It all starts with identifying your target audience and defining your campaign goals. From there, you can narrow your targeting, set your budget, and create captivating ads that grab customers’ attention. 

While success with a Sponsored Display campaign depends on many factors, including planning, familiarity with Amazon’s targeting options and the products being promoted, the steps to create a campaign are relatively simple.

• Choose a campaign name – It’s best to use something straightforward that reflects the advertised product, including the Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN) and the campaign goal. This approach can make it easier to differentiate among multiple campaigns in the future. 

• Select the start and end dates – While campaigns should be reviewed regularly for effectiveness, Amazon recommends leaving end dates open to avoid an abrupt end to a campaign and ensure that product sales data are appropriately attributed. 

• Set the budget – Campaigns require a daily budget that can be adjusted at any time. Expect to spend $40 per day or more to start with for a campaign with the reach necessary to achieve noticeable results. If a daily budget runs out, the ads will stop displaying until midnight when it resets. 

• Create an ad group – Ad groups allow you to organize multiple campaigns that use the same targets. This can make it easier to manage and monitor the performance of advertising efforts. 

• Choose your targeting tactic – As discussed earlier, any Sponsored Display ad must opt for either a product or audience targeting approach. 

• Add the products to advertise – Choose one or more products from your lineup to add to the campaign. If a product is out of stock or loses the Buy Box to an alternative seller, the ads will no longer display to shoppers. 

• Optimize the bid strategy – The final step before launching a campaign is to select a bid strategy. Brands must choose between CPC and vCPM billing methods and the optimization goal that best fits their campaign.

Keep in mind that optimizing your campaigns is an ongoing process, and it’s essential to regularly monitor your performance metrics to make informed adjustments. With the right approach, your Amazon Sponsored Display Audiences campaigns can help you increase brand awareness, boost conversions, and drive sales.

Make the most of Amazon Sponsored Display Audiences

As more and more businesses flock to Amazon to sell their products, it becomes increasingly important to fine-tune your targeting strategies for Sponsored Display Audiences to stay ahead of the competition. Luckily, there are several common tactics that an expert marketer can employ to get the most out of Amazon’s advertising platform. 

One way to increase the effectiveness of a Sponsored Display is to add ten or more ASINs to the campaign. Having a variety of products will result in more impressions and better data to evaluate the performance of the ads compared to each other, which can reveal strengths and deficiencies. 

Segmenting audiences by browsing behavior or purchase history can also help marketers tailor their ads to the right audience at the right time. Similarly, utilizing Amazon’s vast wealth of demographic data can help identify the key attributes of your target audience, allowing you to craft your messaging better. 

You must also contribute an appropriate ad spend to any Amazon display ads. Campaigns that run out of budget before the end of the day will be challenging to evaluate and adjust effectively. Comparing the effectiveness of Sponsored Display, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Product ads simultaneously can also be helpful. Using similar targeting strategies and budgets across these types of sponsored ads can provide valuable insight. 

Finally, it’s crucial that the data that Amazon makes available from its advertising solutions and listings is used to guide future advertising decisions and set campaign goals. Remember to experiment with different targeting tactics and review all of the metrics to identify what’s working and what isn’t. But be careful not to react too quickly. Instead, give an ad placement multiple days or weeks of impressions before making adjustments. Similarly, novice marketing campaigns often need as much as three months of tweaking to begin producing the desired results. 

Analyzing and understanding reporting data from Amazon Sponsored Display Audiences

Diving into the reporting data of Amazon Sponsored Display Audiences is one of the most essential steps to creating a successful PPC campaign. Not surprisingly, it requires a wealth of knowledge and analytical skills to accurately interpret the insights provided by this tool. But through constant refinement and experimentation, advertisers can unleash the full potential of Sponsored Display Audiences by understanding which metrics matter the most and how to glean actionable insights from them. 

Ultimately, mastering this skill can make all the difference in your advertising efforts, leading to higher click-through rates, conversions, and a greater return on investment. The targeting capabilities can allow companies to reach the buyers and shoppers of complementary products or introduce the item to audiences likely to be high-interest customers. A campaign that uses audience targeting to remarket to visitors can be an extremely effective approach to launching a new product and ramping up sales quickly. Done well, it can increase brand loyalty, accelerate conversion, increase Amazon optimization and even lead to product improvements. 

Amify can help

When you’re struggling to push your product to its full potential, the learning curve of Amazon Sponsored Display can seem daunting. That’s why the expert team at Amify is here to help guide your brand through the complexities of targeting, optimization, data analysis and content creation. 

Trust our experience and knowledge to help you build the best possible listings and an  Amazon PPC plan that supports your goals. Together, we can achieve the desired results faster and with less frustration, not to mention at a lower cost than you thought possible. Get in touch with us today to learn more.