As Amazon continues to maintain its hold as the Goliath of online retail, more and more companies are joining the marketplace as sellers. With over 100 million Prime members and over 5 million sellers worldwide, Amazon has become a highly competitive marketplace. 

If you are an Amazon seller looking to increase your visibility and performance, Sponsored Products ads may be an option for you. 

What Are Amazon Sponsored Products?

Similar to Google’s paid search ads, Amazon offers their own variation of keyword-targeted, pay-per-click advertisements to promote product listings. Sellers have the option to choose their own set of keywords or use Amazon’s automatic targeting feature, allowing Amazon to choose keywords based on their knowledge of user search data. 

Sponsored Products appear at the top or throughout search results. Amazon has an auction-based pricing model, which allows sellers to determine the maximum amount of money they are willing to pay for an ad click. Sellers with more competitive bids typically show up higher in the search results. 

Are My Products Eligible?

Not all Amazon sellers are eligible for Sponsored Products. There are some account and product requirements that must be met prior to setting up your campaigns:

• Sellers must have an active Amazon professional seller account.
• Seller must have the ability to ship to all US addresses.
• Products must be new. Used or refurbished items are not eligible.

*List obtained from Amazon

• Products must be eligible for Amazon Buy Box.
  • Sellers can check product eligibility on their Manage Inventory page by adding the ‘Buy Box Eligible’ column to their column display preferences.

Getting Started With Sponsored Products

If Sponsored Ads sound like a good fit for your business, use the guidelines below to kick off your first campaign.

• Make your first campaign an automatic targeting campaign. The results from this campaign will allow you to make data-backed decisions on which keywords to bid on. 
  • Relevant keywords that have proven to convert can be transferred to a manual campaign where you can increase your bid and make your ad spend go farther.
• Use keyword planning tools such as Google AdWords Keyword Planner, Sonar and Merchant Words to discover search terms that shoppers may use to find your products.  
• If you sell a variety of products, create campaigns based on similar product groupings. 
  • Create a manual and automatic targeting campaign for each product group, so you can adjust budgets accordingly and transfer converting keywords from the automatic to the manual campaign.
• Track and optimize on an ongoing basis.
  • Set negative keywords to exclude search queries that you do not want your products to show up for.
  • On a weekly or bi-weekly basis, check in on how your ad spend compares to the total sales returned then shift budget or bids based on your results.

Whether you’re just starting out or have been a long-time seller, Sponsored Products is a sure way to get your products in front of purchase-ready Amazon users.