New research: How a full funnel Sponsored Display strategy can help drive sales

July 21, 2020

By Nina Brentlinger
Product Marketing Manager

Today’s shoppers have a wide selection of brands and products to choose from, and few make purchases immediately. In fact, research indicates that 97% of global online retail sessions end without a purchase.1 That’s because for many of us, discovery, research, and window shopping are part of the fun of shopping.

As a place where shoppers look for inspiration and information throughout their journey, Amazon can help facilitate discovery and engagement early in the journey. For example, 52% of online shoppers get their inspiration from Amazon.2 And, 69% of Amazon shopping queries start without a brand3, which demonstrates that Amazon shoppers use Amazon to discover new products and brands.

Our latest research suggests that advertisers who connect with shoppers early and throughout the customer journey see more sales and greater returns on advertising spend (ROAS) than advertisers who focus only on lower-funnel tactics.

We reviewed more than 150 advertising campaigns over a four-month period that used a full-funnel Sponsored Display ads strategy to execute their campaigns. When we say "full funnel,” we’re referring to a multi-goal strategy that encompasses awareness, consideration, and conversion.

We learned that advertisers who added more than one targeting tactic to reach shoppers at different stages of the funnel experienced +3.2% incremental sales and 3.8x ROAS compared to advertisers who only added a single Sponsored Display targeting tactic to their campaigns.

What are the Sponsored Display tactics?

As a reminder, Sponsored Display, currently in beta, is a flexible display advertising solution that puts control in your hands, so you can achieve objectives across the funnel. Sponsored Display includes three targeting tactics to address various stages of the traditional marketing funnel:

  • Interests: Grow awareness among audiences whose shopping patterns indicate interests relevant to your product.
  • Product targeting: Build consideration among audiences considering similar or complementary products and categories to yours.
  • Views: Drive conversion with remarketing placements that appear wherever they spend time and direct back to a product detail page.

Imagine, for example, that you sell cameras. You might use interests to build awareness among audiences with an interest in traveling, product targeting to drive consideration among audiences actively browsing other cameras or complementary products like camera stands, and views to reach and remind audiences who have viewed product detail pages as they continue to research and discover their options wherever they spend time. Our research suggests that this type of multi-goal approach tends to work better than focusing your investment on a single Sponsored Display tactic, like putting all of your Sponsored Display budget into views.

How to get started

If you’re a seller or vendor on Amazon who is already using Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display is a simple way to start building a full-funnel strategy because it’s self-service, there’s no minimum spend, and you can promote an entire product catalog in minutes.

To continue broadening your reach across channels, we recommend adding Amazon DSP, Amazon Streaming TV ads, and audio advertising to unlock incremental audiences. We’ll have more tips on that in future blog posts, so stay tuned.

Ready to start building your full funnel strategy? Learn more about Sponsored Display or get started with a campaign.

Notes on our methodology: Research is based upon 157 Sponsored Display advertisers (90% of whom were already using Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands) with access to Vendor Central. The research period spanned October 1, 2019 to February 9, 2020.

1Statista, 2019.
2The Future Shopper Report, Wunderman 2020
3Amazon internal, May 2019