New bidding and targeting options for Sponsored Products

JANUARY 9, 2019

By Patrick Hutchison, Sr. Product Manager
and Scott Collins, Product Manager

We recently launched new bidding and targeting features for Sponsored Products, giving you more options to optimize your advertising campaigns. The combination of these new features helps you manage your Sponsored Products campaigns better by giving you more control over where your ads may appear, how you target, and how you bid.

Bidding strategies. Sponsored Products now offers three bidding strategies designed to give you more control and help you improve your performance. Advertisers who would like to manage their own bids can choose the new “fixed bids” options, while advertisers focused on maximizing bid efficiency can choose from two new automated bidding strategies that adjust bids in real time based on the likelihood of conversion. Best of all, you can get started in just a few clicks. To learn more about this strategy, watch this short video.

Placement multipliers. This control allows you to set bid multipliers between 0% and 900% for placements at the top of shopping results (first page) and on product page placements. When your ads are eligible to serve in these placements, your bid increases by the percentage you set, helping you better compete for those opportunities.

Product targeting. This feature is for manual campaigns and allows you to target by ASIN or product category. Product targeting gives you greater control over when your ads appear in Amazon search results and product detail pages. For example, you can now target specific ASINs or product categories with refinements for price, brand, and star rating to ensure your ads serve to relevant audiences.

Automatic targeting improvements. We’ve also launched enhancements to campaigns that use automatic targeting. Your ads will continue to automatically reach Amazon customers based on keywords and products, but you can now adjust the keyword and product targeting defaults in the campaign manager to meet your campaign goals. Turn different defaults off or on, or bid up or down depending on your advertising cost of sales (ACOS) and reach goals.

To learn more about product and auto targeting, watch this short video.

Let’s explore a few examples of how you can use the new bidding and targeting features together.

Example 1. Take your hands off the wheel—let us target and bid for you.

Why: Save time and let our tools do the work. When you choose automatic targeting, our tools manage and optimize your Sponsored Products bidding and targeting for you.

To get started: Create a new Sponsored Products campaign, then choose automatic targeting and one of the dynamic bidding options. When you use these two features together, we find relevant keywords and ASINs to target based on the product you're advertising. Your bids will be raised (by a maximum of 100%) in real time when your ad may be more likely to convert to a sale and lowered when it's less likely to do so.

Example 2. Bid for the top of search with placement bid adjustments.

Why: Influence how often you’ll appear at the top of shopping results on the first page by setting a bid multiplier for this placement.

To get started: Create a new Sponsored Products campaign, then select manual targeting. Choose a few of your best-selling products to advertise, and then select a placement bid adjustment for the top of shopping results. Your base bid will apply to all other placements. You can enter up to a 900% increase to your base bid.

Example 3. Expand your ad presence in important categories with a few clicks.

Why: Finding the right combination of keywords to cover entire product categories can take extensive research and continual refinement. With product targeting, you can now reach entire product categories (collection of ASINs) or subcategories in just a few clicks.

To get started: Create a new Sponsored Products campaign and choose manual targeting. After selecting your products and setting your bid strategy, you can select product categories to target. Additionally, you can narrow your audience by refining your product category targeting to specific brands, price ranges, or star ratings.

These options help you make the most of the new features available for Sponsored Products. Sign in or register to get started today by creating a new Sponsored Products campaign.