A guide to advertising for international events

Whether local or global, this helpful resource explains how best to advertise during a key event, with Amazon Ads

Here are the themes we’ll cover in this guide

Chapters

Why advertise during events

An introduction to the benefits of advertising before, during and after events

Chapter 1

Opportunity, on a global scale

Amazon Ads solutions have a global reach that you can leverage to advertise in a wealth of countries across the world. Amazon Ads solutions can help make more sales for your business, and there may be a chance you’re missing out on an opportunity to advertise in one of the countries where Amazon Ads solutions are newly available, such as Sweden or Singapore. An off-season in one country might be peak time for another.

For example, if you are a brand who sells decorations, based in the United Kingdom, and are currently selling in the Amazon store and advertising only in the United Kingdom, you could consider advertising to shoppers based in Poland as well.

We can achieve 2 to 5 times higher impressions and 2 to 5 times more orders during the peak shopping season. With increased traffic, the most important thing is to increase your sponsored ads campaign budget and ensure it doesn’t run out during the shopping event.
— Mr Fang, Yiwu Xinrong Tech

Reach more shoppers, during events

Advertising during key shopping events in a different country can be a great way to reach a new audience.

Throughout the year there are multiple key shopping events happening globally, inside and outside your home country. These key events can sometimes lead to an increase in shoppers, which may lead to increased traffic in the Amazon store. These events can be an opportunity to go beyond the globally recognized events, like Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Prime Day, and look at the opportunities around events that are beyond your home country. If you are to build advertising in multiple countries into your strategy, you can help increase your chance of engaging more shoppers, who are ready to buy.

Explore and understand local events

How to reach an international audience, with country specific events

Chapter 2: Part 1

Connecting with international shoppers

Help get your brand and products in front of potentially hundreds of millions of active customer accounts worldwide* by leveraging key shopping events in countries you’re eligible to advertise in, but are currently not advertising in.

Advertising in multiple countries can provide a year-round opportunity to help boost your sales, during these shopping events.

* Active customer accounts represent accounts that have placed an order during the preceding twelve-month period. Source: Q1 2022 earnings release.

Europe

	The Netherlands	Poland	Sweden	Turkey
January
February	Valentine's Day		Valentine's Day	Valentine's Day
March				Ramadan
April	Spring Sale	Spring Deals	Spring Sale	Children's Day ; Spring Deals
May	Mother's Day	Mother's Day	Mother's Day	Mother's Day
June	Father's Day	Summer Deals Festival ; Father's Day		Father's Day
July
August	Back to School	Back to School		Back to School
September	End of Summer Sale		September sale
October
November	Black Friday Week	Black Week	Black Friday, Cyber Monday	Gülümseten Cuma (Smiling Friday)
December	Holiday Gifting	Last Minute deals	Holiday Gift Store	Last Deals of the Year

Middle East

	United Arab Emirates	Saudi Arabia
January
February
March	Ramadan	Ramadan
April	Ramadan	Ramadan
May	Eid Al Fitr	Eid Al Fitr
June
July
August	Back to School	Back to School
September
October
November	11.11 ; White Friday	11.11 ; White Friday
December	Holiday Season	Holiday Season

Latin America

	Mexico	Brazil
January
February	Valentine's Day	Valentine's Day
March		Consumer Week.
April	Children's Day
May	Hot Sale ; Mother's day	Mother's Day
June	Father's Day
July
August	Back to School	Book Friday ; Father´s Day
September
October	Halloween /Día de Muertos
November	Buen Fin ; Black Friday	Black Friday
December	Holiday Season	Christmas

Asia Pacific

	Singapore	Australia
January
February	Chinese New Year
March
April		Big Smile Sale
May		Mother's Day
June		Mid Year Sale
July
August	National Day Sale	Father's Day
September		Big Smile Sale
October	10.10
November	11.11 ; Black Friday, Cyber Monday	Black Friday
December	12.12	Christmas

Visit these calendars for a comprehensive view of all global events:

Chapter 2: Part 2

Discover events across different regions

We recommend choosing products that:

The Netherlands

Holiday Money: Marks the payment employees in the Netherlands receive from their employers at the end of the fiscal year. It is sometimes called “the 13th wage”, as it can be almost equivalent to an extra month's salary.
Sinterklaas is a Dutch holiday, and primarily a children's event, where “Sinterklaas” brings gifts to children on “package night” (5 December). Celebrations include gift-giving and buying Sinterklaas-specific candy.

Poland

Spring Deals (April) and Summer Deals Festival (June) are seasonal events marking the start of a new season, helping retailers sell the season's remaining stock and providing shoppers with great deals.

Sweden

September Sale is a key sales period in Sweden that takes place during the month of September.
Spring Sale is a seasonal sales event taking place in April, marking the start of the new season.

Turkey

Spring Deals is a seasonal sales event taking place in April, marking the start of the new season.

Advertising with sponsored ads in multiple countries in Europe helped me reach and engage customers we could have not reached otherwise.
— Patrick Albus, CEO, Creative Pet Alliance

Middle East: Reach audiences in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia

UAE and Saudi Arabia

Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection and growth, to help those in need, and to spend time with loved ones. It's also a time when Muslims around the world fast during daylight hours for the whole month of Ramadan.
Eid Al Fitr is a religious holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide, marking the end of the month-long dawn-to-sunset fasting of Ramadan. Celebrations include charitable giving, gift giving, gatherings with family and friends, festive meals.
11.11 (representing the event taking place on the 11th November), also known as 'Singles' Day', is an unofficial holiday and shopping day that celebrates people who are not in relationships.
White Friday is a shopping holiday in the Middle East that takes place in November, similar to Black Friday in the US. The four-day retail event is an ideal time to reach new customers.

Latin America: Be part of the largest events in Mexico and Brazil

Mexico

Hot Sale is the biggest online sales event in Mexico. During Hot Sale, retailers and businesses offer discounts, deals, and promotions. With no fixed dates, the event usually takes place on the last week of May, and typically lasts five days.
El Buen Fin is a nationwide shopping event in Mexico, where businesses offer discounts and promotions across all categories. It occurs the weekend before Mexican Revolution Day, which is observed on the third Monday of November. Unofficially, it is considered the Mexican version of Black Friday.

“Mexico’s 2021 Hot Sale event B2C ecommerce sales are estimated at $852 million, with 567 million B2C site visits” – eMarketer, 2021

Brazil

Consumer Week is a sales event to commemorate the World Consumer Rights Day. Retailers offer sales and discounts during the second week of March.

Asia Pacific: High traffic deals events in Singapore and Australia

Singapore

11.11 (representing the event taking place on the 11th November), also known as 'Singles' Day', is an unofficial holiday and shopping day that celebrates people who are not in relationships. In preparation for 11.11, 10.10, also known as 'the Perfect 10 sale', is a shopping event that takes place on October 10th.
Lunar New Year, Chinese New Year or the Spring Festival, is the festival that celebrates the beginning of a new year on the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar.

Australia

Known as the mid-year sale, the end of the Australian financial year (June) kicks off a shopping event where stores offer discounts to shoppers, helping them get ready for the new season.

Ready to engage international customers?

As an advertiser, you have a unique opportunity to engage international customers looking for deals and offers before, during, and after key shopping events, to help achieve your global business goals.

You can explore international shopping events in more detail in the following calendars, that can help you incorporate these events into your advertising plan for the year.

Preparing for key shopping events

How to create an advertising strategy for international events

Chapter 3

Whether an event involves gift-giving, event planning or is a sale and promotions event, shoppers may start browsing and exploring products weeks in advance. Having a high-quality campaign, that considers the local culture and nuances, with fine-tuned keywords can help you maximize the impact of your advertising, and expand your reach during high traffic events.

Define your strategy

If you are already advertising in multiple countries, then you may be familiar with the campaign set-up process. When you are planning your event campaign, make sure you are clear on where you want to run which ads, and how they will support your business goals.

If you are new to advertising outside your home country, shopping events across the world can be a perfect time to set up your first international campaign and start building your global business, with the potential for a significant increase in customers browsing and shopping the Amazon store.

Which products should I advertise?

A good starting point here is the products that are the featured offer and that you are planning to promote during deals events. Advertising can give these products an extra boost and help drive incremental sales. Also, go back to the local demand you researched for defining the countries to advertise in: which products could be popular there? Check that you have sufficient inventory of the products you want to promote, so that you don’t run out during the event.

Which ad solutions should I use?

This depends on your business goals. Do you want to drive sales, or brand awareness, or both? Your strategy might vary from country to country, and in your key location, you might want to use a combination of ad products.

To help you make a decision, here is where each ad solution is available:

Countries where Sponsored Products ads are available

North America	CA-MX-US
South America	BR
Europe	DE-ES-FR-IT-NL-UK
Middle East	KSA-UAE
Asia Pacific	AU-IN-JP-SG

Countries where Sponsored Brands ads are available

North America	CA-MX-US
South America	BR
Europe	DE-ES-FR-IT-NL-UK
Middle East	KSA-UAE
Asia Pacific	AU-IN-JP-SG

Countries where Stores are available

North America	CA-MX-US
South America	BR
Europe	DE-ES-FR-IT-NL-UK
Middle East	KSA-UAE
Asia Pacific	AU-IN-JP-SG

Learn the basics for advertising with Amazon Ads

If you are new to Amazon Ads, start by learning the basics

Chapter 4

Getting started

If you want to learn a few important advertising basics before you get started, look no further than below.

Products: When promoting products, choose products that are the featured offer and have high quality product detail pages, with images.
Keyword Targeting: Generic keywords help match your products with shoppers who are looking for similar items. You can get started with automatic keywords to learn how customers are finding and interacting with your new product.
Bidding: Your bid is the amount you’re willing to pay when your ad is clicked. We provide suggested bids and bid ranges on the campaign creation page to help you get started. Set the maximum bid you’re willing to pay—ideally at the top of the suggested bid range to remain competitive.
Maximum daily budget: Set a daily budget that’s high enough to keep your ads showing throughout the day. Once a campaign is out of budget for the day, your ads won’t be eligible to run until midnight when the daily budget resets.
Campaign name: Include information on your new product and targeting strategy in the campaign name to organize and measure your campaigns after launch.
Campaign duration: Choose “no end date” to keep your campaign running continuously and to help customers discover your products any time they browse the Amazon store.

Tip: Our automatic settings can help you get started in a few clicks.

Build a campaign, in a new country

Here’s how to set up a campaign for an event, in a new country

Chapter 5: Part 1

Building a country specific campaign

Now it’s time to start building an ad campaign for a specific event, in a country new to you. Setting up a campaign in a new country is easier than it sounds. Amazon Ads offers tools to help, as well as advertising console features to make advertising in new countries simple.

Advertising console language switcher

The language switcher functionality lets you view the advertising console in your preferred language. You can find this under the profile icon on the top right of your page, within the ad console.

Suggested keywords localization

See translations for suggested keywords in your language of preference with Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaigns during campaign set-up, and to help you create global keyword targeting campaigns in minutes.

The translations under suggested keywords are an incredible addition. It seems like a small thing but it saves me a ton of time each time I manage campaigns.
— Ronnie Gesser, EZ SOX

Product and category targeting

For Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display, you have the option to target specific products or categories that align with your brand offering and sales goals. You can select the products and categories you want to target without having to worry about the local language.

Right-sizing your investment

You can start with a small daily budget, to discover the best budget to hit your business goals, and to start gathering insights into which products, generic keywords, and bidding strategies resonate best with shoppers. As you get closer to a key shopping event, and fine-tune your campaigns, it can be helpful to increase your maximum daily budget, to help reach more shoppers.

Budget rules

The budget rules feature can help you optimize your performance when your campaigns hit a certain benchmark. For example, if your campaign is performing well, you can set a budget rule to increase your budget, to help you continue to perform well. You can also set any budget changes in advance for a specific time range, or event. This feature can also help you reduce manual effort spent on adjusting campaign budgets.

After creating a campaign, you can apply budget rules by clicking the relevant campaign in campaign manager, and then selecting ‘Budget rules’ from the side bar.

Chapter 5: Part 2

Review our minimum recommended daily budget for each country, below.

Country	Minimum daily budget (local currency)
United States	$10
Canada	$10
Mexico	MXN 200
Brazil	R$ 50
United Kingdom	£10
Germany	€10
France	€10
Italy	€10
Spain	€10
The Netherlands	€10
Sweden	100SEK
Poland	50 PLN
United Arab Emirates	AED 40
Saudi Arabia	SAR 40
India	₹500
Japan	1,000円
Australia	$15
Turkey	85 TL

Multi-marketplace campaign creation

You can create Sponsored Products auto-targeted campaigns in multiple countries at once, without spending time setting up and translating campaigns for each country where you want to advertise.*

*Feature not available in all countries.

Optimize your advertising throughout the event

How to make sure you’re getting the most from your ad campaign

Chapter 6

How to optimize your campaign

Just before the key shopping event

Remember, traffic in the Amazon store will most likely spike during the key shopping event, and higher traffic can result in more clicks for your ads, which might use up your budget faster than normal. Ensure you increase your daily budget before the event, so that you don’t run out during the event and miss potential sales. Also we recommend you adjust your bids to be more competitive during the event period.

During the key shopping event

During the event it’s important to check on your campaigns regularly. Most importantly ensure your budget doesn’t run out, and that your bids are competitive. If you’re not getting any impressions, consider increasing your bids further to help win the auction for certain popular keywords or shopping queries. Also double down on the keywords that are working particularly well for you, and increase the bids further to help win even more impressions and sales opportunities.

After the key shopping event

After the event, you can reduce your budgets and bids again, because traffic is likely to slow down. Use the key shopping event momentum as a basis to create always-on international campaigns to leverage global sales opportunities continuously, not just around key sales days.

Measure your success, refine your campaigns

Explore the results of your campaign to learn and apply your insights

Chapter 7

Time to learn, and optimize

Find out what’s working for you and your business, and build on what you learn from your customers, to help optimize your campaigns.

After your product launches and your campaigns have been running for at least two weeks, review your advertising reports to understand your performance, keeping in mind the goals you set earlier.

Are customers discovering your new product and engaging with your ads?

If creating product awareness and engagement was your priority, review impressions, or the number of times your ad was shown, as well as clicks and click-through rate.

If your campaign has few impressions but a high click-through rate, try increasing your bids and budgets for the opportunity to win more impressions.
If you’re seeing high impressions but a low click-through rate, take another look at your main product image, title, and price. You can also test new creative elements for your Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display ads.

Are customers discovering and engaging with your brand?

To learn how your Sponsored Brands ads are connecting customers new to your brand, review the suite of new-to-brand metrics to measure orders and sales from first-time customers of your brand in the Amazon store. Use these metrics to learn how many new customers you’ve reached, estimate the cost of acquisition, and develop the right strategies for growing your customer base.

Try reviewing the new-to-brand keyword metrics to identify keywords with the highest percentage of new-to-brand orders and sales. Consider investing more in these keywords by increasing your bids to help generate even more new-to-brand orders.

Are customers purchasing your products, and how did sponsored ads help complete these sales?

If your key goal was to drive sales, measure how many clicks converted into orders, as well as your return on ad spend (ROAS). For a new product with limited awareness, it may take additional budget to drive sales, resulting in a lower ROAS.

If your campaign has high volumes of clicks but low conversions, review your product detail page again using our recommendations in the Get your products ready for advertising section.
If your ACOS is at an unsustainable level for keyword targeting campaigns, continue investing in keywords that are driving clicks and sales, while pausing low-performing keywords.

Are customers engaging with your new product in the context of your overall brand story?

To learn if your Store is resonating with customers and supporting your goals, you can access a range of metrics in your Stores insights dashboard. Select a date range to see the number of visitors and views. Sales, units sold, and orders are the estimated totals from Store visitors within 14 days of their last visit. Your insights dashboard also provides a breakdown of metrics by traffic source. You can view traffic generated from your Sponsored Brands ads, traffic originating from your byline on product detail pages, traffic coming from your Store’s source tags, and traffic from ‘other sources’ (not categorized).

Here are some ways to apply that insight:

Shoppers:

A shopper can visit from more than one traffic source and visit more than one page. You can use this insight to understand which traffic sources shoppers use to arrive at your Store, and which pages they visit. That can help you determine if, for example, traffic increase from a paid source correlates with a traffic increase from Amazon non-paid sources, so you note if there’s a halo effect.

Page view/visitors:

This insight can help you identify, on average, how many pages Store visitors view per day. A high number of visits to a single page in one day, followed by low page views per visit, could indicate that a lot of the traffic arriving to the first page doesn’t continue to explore your Store. You might want to consider refining your traffic sources (for example, linking a Sponsored Brands ad to your Store) to drive more relevant traffic, or optimizing the landing page you’re driving traffic to.

Sales, units, and orders:

With these, you can calculate sales per visitor, sales per order, or units per order. Use the insights to identify pages and traffic sources that yield both the best and worst sales performance. If the sources or pages are performing well for you, consider comping these strategies with your low-performing sources and pages—or removing them if they’re not producing results in line with your goals.

Next steps

Here are your options for expanding your reach even further

Chapter 8

Taking the next step

We’re excited you are looking for ways to continue to grow your reach. Here are some options for how you can do that.

I am new to advertising and want to get started in a new country

Once you sign up for advertising in the country you sell in, use this step-by-step plan to guide you for the first 30 days
Tailoring your marketing plans to the local habits and key events can help you maximize your reach. This calendar will help you incorporate these events into your advertising plan for the year.

I want to start advertising in more countries

You can sign up to advertise in a country you currently sell in, here
Tailoring your marketing plans to the cultural nuances and key events can help you maximize your reach. This calendar will help you incorporate these events into your advertising plan for the year

I currently advertise in all the countries I sell in

Great news. Make sure you are checking in on the performance of your ad campaigns, and look for opportunities to optimize them. Check our event calendar to see if you can incorporate cultural specifics, to help better engage your primary audience
Here’s a guide to grow your brand using Amazon Ads

Thank you for reading

A guide to advertising for international events

North America	CA-US
Europe	DE-ES-FR-IT-UK
Middle East	UAE
Asia Pacific	IN-JP