How a CPG brand upped their lower-funnel game on Amazon Ads

Up until recently, a CPG parent brand only utilized static banners to drive down-funnel actions with their Amazon DSP campaigns. This multi-brand’s product lines include household, baby, beauty products, and more. During promotional periods, the team created static banners to include copy highlighting specific deals, like “Save 40% off of razors.”

While static ads are strong drivers of awareness metrics, this creative type lacks the benefit of Responsive eCommerce Creatives’ machine learning capabilities, which allow for strong down-funnel performance.1 Responsive eCommerce Creatives auto-optimize to pick the best-performing creative variation (Shop now, Add to cart, Coupon) and product to render within the ad unit. Responsive eCommerce Creatives are customizable, in that they can include either a custom image, or a logo and tailored headline. Auto-generated Responsive eCommerce Creatives pull the product name, pricing, and product image directly from the detail page on Amazon.

By incorporating Amazon Ads’ eCommerce display creatives, this parent CPG brand also unlocked additional efficiencies. Responsive eCommerce Creative ads allow for up to 20 associated products to rotate in the ad unit, and will automatically “hide” products that are out of stock. eCommerce display creatives will also pull in any active deals into the dynamic portion of the ad, reducing creative production lift required to include copy into the static creatives.

Given the many valuable facets of eCommerce display creatives, the brand decided to test this ad format in their campaign strategy to optimize display campaigns on Amazon across EU locales.

Creative testing with eCommerce display creatives

Working with the Amazon Ads team, the brand set up a creative experiment to understand how leveraging eCommerce display creative ads could impact performance.

To start, the team ran a split test for one of their products in Spain. Three types of ad formats were implemented in this test: static banner with discount details, a custom image eCommerce display creative ad, and an eCommerce display creative ad with logo and tailored headline.

The results of the experiment showed that the eCommerce display creative ad with logo and headline outperformed other creative types, driving 356% higher return on ad spend (ROAS) in comparison to static banner versions.2

graph visualizing 356% increase in ROAS

Spain, toothbrush brand: increase in ROAS when using logo + headline eCommerce display creative instead of static image ads

The advertiser replicated the same test with one of their products in France, and similarly found that the eCommerce display creative with logo and tailored headline drove 200% higher ROAS.3 In Germany, the brand observed a 182% uplift in ROAS during the week of Black Friday when comparing both auto-generated and custom eCommerce ads to static banners.4

graph visualizing 200% increase in ROAS

France, baby brand: increase in ROAS when using logo + headline eCommerce display creative instead of static image ads

graph visualizing 182% increase in ROAS

Germany, baby and personal care brands: increase in ROAS when using auto-generated and custom eCommerce display creative instead of static image ads

Driving scalable results

Given the promising results from this initial creative experiment, the multi-brand tested eCommerce display creative ads in other locales across EU with some of its other CPG products.

Results from these additional tests continued to indicate that eCommerce display creatives helped to drive strong down-funnel performance for their various CPG brands versus static banners. In Italy, purchase rate was 341% higher across brands when comparing auto-generated eCommerce display creative banners to statics.5 Similarly, in the UK, they found that the Responsive eCommerce display ad format with a mix of auto-generated and logo + headline version for a hair product brand outperformed the static creative by 130%.6 Both purchase rate and ROAS were measured by splitting traffic evenly between the static and eCommerce creative banners within the ad campaign. These results reflect weighted averages based on impression totals per creative type.

graph visualizing 341% increase in PR

Italy, hair and personal care brands: increase in purchase rate when using auto-generated eCommerce display creative instead of static image ads

graph visualizing 130% increase in ROAS

UK, hair brand: increase in ROAS when using a mix of logo + headline and auto-generated eCommerce display creative instead of static image ads

Looking ahead

The CPG brand has adopted eCommerce display creative ad formats for both always-on campaigns and promotional activations, including Prime Day, and continues to test different display strategies across brands and locales. Implementing eCommerce display creative ads into their creative strategy not only allowed for improved down-funnel performance but also unlocked additional efficiencies, reducing creative production and campaign launch timelines.

Visit the creative type insights guide to see more insights on creative type performance per locale and campaign goal, or reach out to an account executive to get started.

1 Amazon Internal, US, 2021
2-6 Amazon Internal, EU and UK, 2021

Results are representative of performance of one advertiser and is not indicative of future performance. Please refer to the creative type insights interactive guide for average results per locale and KPI and note that those data are not specific to the CPG vertical.