Digital advertising: everything you need to know, before you begin
A helpful resource to guide you through the basics of digital advertising
Here are the themes we’ll cover in this guide
Chapter 1
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Your guide to digital advertising
An introduction to the world of online advertising
Your guide to digital advertising
We understand that digital advertising can be a complicated field when you’re just getting started. We’re here to help you navigate your first steps in the world of ads.
What is this guide about?
This guide is about digital advertising. It takes you through the basics of what you need to know before you launch your first digital ad campaign, and prepares you with the right knowledge to confidently navigate the world of digital advertising. After you cover the basics, you can read on in the latter chapters how you can use and make the most of Amazon Ads.
Who should read this guide?
This guide is for you if:
- You’re looking to learn more about digital advertising
- You want to understand the jargon in the industry
- You want to feel informed and confident before you launch your first digital ad campaign
- You want to give your first campaign a boost
- You’ve started advertising, and want to know how to review performance and optimize ads
What will I know after reading this?
By the end of reading this guide, you’ll know what “CPC” means, understand how to best set your budget, and be ready to hit “launch” on your first ad.
Ready? Let’s get started.
An introduction to digital advertising
What is digital advertising, and why is it important?
A summary of digital advertising
A definition:
Digital advertising: A form of marketing and advertising that uses the internet to promote products and services to audiences.
Digital advertising is the publishing and promotion of online content through a variety of different channels. Digital ads can take many different forms, including text, image, audio, and video.
Businesses advertise online to raise awareness of something, such as a product, a service, or a message. The goals with posting a digital ad is to drive the viewer to take a specific action. This could be buying a product or raising awareness of a brand or service.
Digital advertising can be an effective way to reach a wide, and specific, audience. As of October 2023, there were 5.3 billion* people using the internet across the world. That’s 66% of the global population.
* Source: Statista, WW, Oct 2023
6 key benefits of digital advertising
- A robust online community. Meet audiences where they already spend a lot of their time: online. Your ads can slot into their already existing online experience.
- The power of lasting impressions. Even if your audience doesn’t choose to take your desired action in the moment when they see your ad, they may remember your brand later, when they’re ready to purchase.
- The opportunity to express your brand’s creativity. You can create a unique and authentic ad that communicates your brand’s message, picking from a selection of customizable features, creative ad formats, and advertising placements.
- Budget-friendly options. Unlike other forms of traditional advertising—such as radio or billboards, which can require a significant financial investment—digital advertising is generally accessible, no matter your budget.
- Quick setup and execution. You can quickly launch a campaign, and easily react to your business’s needs and reach audiences at the right place and the right time.
- Real-time results and reporting. Due to the online nature of digital advertising, you can access your impact and results as soon as you launch your campaign—making it possible to optimize and improve as you go—to make the most of your ad investment.
Digital advertising channels: Your options
There are many ways you can execute your digital advertising strategy. In this chapter, we’ll run through some of your options.
Channel overview
There are a few different options when it comes to your channel of choice. Here’s a summary of a few key options.
1. Search engine advertising
Definition: A marketing technique that places online advertisements in search engine results
Search advertising can be a very effective method of delivering relevant content to the user, as the user provides information on what they are looking for. Advertisers can help make sure that ads the user sees are related to these searches, and topics they have shown that interest them. Search engine optimization (SEO) is when online content is written in an optimal way to be discovered when a user is searching for something related to that content. The search engine will pick up keywords people use in their search queries, and deliver them related content that matches their searches.
2. Display advertising
Definition: A visually driven online ad, often comprising of text and images, hyperlinked to a specific website.
There are many different types of display advertising, including banner ads and ad spaces on websites. With all types, the main goal is to capture attention, and encourage the viewer to click on the ad and visit the website in question. The message or product in the ad typically aligns with that of the copy and context on the page in which it is shown.
You can find out more about Amazon Ads Sponsored Display here.
3. Social media advertising
Definition: Using social media to advertise a brand, product, or service, with a visual ad that links to another destination, such as a webpage or social media account
Social media has become an effective (and necessary) digital marketing tool that can help businesses reach customers where they already are. An ad campaign on social media can promote brand awareness and strengthen reputation with new and existing audiences, directly engage with an audience, receive real-time results, and quickly reach a large audience, with a reactive or time-sensitive message.
4. Video advertising
Definition: The use of video content, or moving imagery, to help raise awareness of brands, and sell products or services.
Video ads are designed to be eye-catching to quickly draw a viewer’s attention. They are one of the most effective forms of advertisements, as moving images can be easier for customers to recall than static images or text.
5. Audio advertising
Definition: In the context of digital advertising, audio ads are ads that play before, during, or after online audio content, such as streaming music or podcasts.
This type of advertising can help brands reach a wider audience. Audio marketing can also help brands build awareness campaigns, allowing you to communicate your brand message programmatically before or during audio streaming content, like when audiences listen to music or news.
6. Streaming media advertising
Definition: Also known as over-the-top (OTT), these are a specific type of video ad that appears in streaming media content delivered over the internet without satellite or cable.
Streaming TV ads, also known as OTT ads, are the advertisements delivered to viewers within this video content. OTT, or streaming TV, ads offer an opportunity for advertisers to reach new audiences at scale as more viewers lean into streaming video content in lieu of traditional cable and broadcast TV.
Glossary of advertising terms
The top terms you need to know to navigate your first ad campaign
Digital advertising metrics terms
- Pay-per-click (PPC) – A system in which the brand only pays when their ad is clicked
- Impression - Number of times an ad has been served
- Conversion – When a shopper takes a brand’s desired action, e.g., clicks on an ad or purchases a product
- Click – When a shopper clicks on a brand’s ad
- Click-through-rate (CTR) - Clicks on a product ad, calculated as clicks divided by impressions
- Bidding – How much a brand is willing to spend on serving an ad
- Reach - How many viewers are shown a brand’s ad
Digital advertising result metrics terms
- Conversion rate: How many times customers performed a desired action after viewing your ad
- Return on ad spend (ROAS): Revenue a brand receives from their advertising investment
- Return on investment (ROI): How much net profit you earned from your ad campaign in relation to how much budget you spent
- Cost of acquisition: Dividing a brand’s ad spend by the number of customers acquired through that spend
Amazon specific terms
- Featured offer: The offer near the top of a product detail page
- New-to-brand orders: The number of first-time orders for products within the brand over a one-year period
- Sales attributed to advertising: Total sales value of orders from customers after clicking your ads
- Shopping terms: Word combinations and phrases customers use to look for items or services on Amazon
- Advertising cost of sales (ACOS): The ratio of ad spend to ad-attributed sales
How your ads get displayed
Learn how your campaigns appear online once you’ve launched your campaign
How your ads appear online
It’s important to consider the delivery of your ads when creating your campaign. After you’ve clicked “launch” on your ad campaign, your ads then go through several steps to then appear in the most relevant place possible.
Tailoring your ad campaign
Tailoring your ad campaign is the way you define the context in which you want your ads to appear. It enables you to define the group of consumers who see your ad, based on things like an audiences’ shopping signals. It’s an important part of the campaign set up process to get right, as the more relevant they are to customers’ interest, the higher the chance they’ll click it.
Here’s a few of the top ways to tailor your digital ads:
- Audience tailoring: Helps your ad reach relevant audiences, based on their interests and shopping signals, and what your ad is communicating or selling
- Keyword tailoring: Word combinations that you define to enable your ads to appear alongside content that is aligned to those keywords
- Location tailoring: Uses geolocation technology to serve your ads to eligible audiences that visit, have visited, or are near a location you’ve specified
- Remarketing: Shows display ads to audiences who visited your site and then left without completing a purchase
- Contextual tailoring: Displays ads based on a website’s content, placing the ad there due to its contextual relevancy
How your ads get chosen to appear
Generally, your ads go through a form of auction to be in with a chance of appearing online. This often involves a cost-per-click (CPC) bid, which is the highest amount you are willing to spend. Your ad’s placement also considers the relevancy and quality of the ad, in relation to the webpage where it’s being considered to be served. Combined, this means you can reach a relevant audience, within a budget that suits you.
How you pay for your ads
While how you pay for your digital ads can vary, most often you only pay when your ad has been clicked on. This is called pay per click (PPC). Every time someone clicks on your ad and gets taken to the page you’ve defined, you’ll pay the business hosting that website.
How it works in practice
Here’s a short overview of how your ad appears online after you launch it.
- Users arrive at a website or app
- Ads are requested from the ad server, with a list of criteria on what ads are suitable for such users
- Criteria may include the size of the ad slot, the previous behavior of the users, the date and time of day, or the geographic location (for eligible users)
- The server selects an ad to be shown to the users, based on the criteria
- The selected ad is served to the website or app, for the users to see
- If your ad is clicked, the server tracks it, and you will pay for those clicks
KitchenSmart example
KitchenSmart is a fictitious kitchen appliance brand we’ll use throughout this guide to share examples of the points we’re discussing.
For example: KitchenSmart might define their tailoring strategy as:
- Audience: 40+ years old, all genders
- Keywords: kitchen, utensils, kettle, appliance, coffee machine
- Location: WW
Advertising with Amazon Ads
Check out your options for advertising with us, to help give your products in the Amazon store a boost.
Our advertising solutions, for you
With hundreds of millions of active customer accounts worldwide,* Amazon has a deep understanding of how shoppers engage with products and brands as they discover and purchase online.
When you advertise with Amazon Ads, you’re leveraging insights based on more than 20 years of observed shopping behaviors in our store. Our offerings help you achieve your advertising goals while staying true to one philosophy: If it’s right for the customer, let’s explore it.
Target by keyword or product to help reach relevant customers as they’re browsing shopping results and product detail pages. When clicked, ads link directly to your product detail page, where customers can learn more about your newly launched product and purchase. Whether it’s your first time advertising in the Amazon store or you have experience using sponsored ads, launching your new product with Sponsored Products is a simple and effective way to get started.
Choose this product for:
- Performance marketing
- Goals; consideration, purchase
Target by keyword or product with Sponsored Brands to help customers discover your brand and product portfolio. Ads feature your logo, a customized headline, and a collection of your products, and can drive to your Store. With the potential to appear at the top of shopping results, these ads can help you build awareness early in the product launch. If it’s your first time using sponsored ads, try starting with Sponsored Products and expanding to Sponsored Brands after two weeks of campaign results. If you have more experience, we recommend building a Sponsored Brands campaign to further establish your brand, and showcase your products in action with Sponsored Brands video* for the launch.
*Products and features may not be available in all countries.
Choose this product for:
- Brand marketing
- Goals; awareness, loyalty
Target by interest, category, or product with automatically generated display ads that showcase your new product. They can appear both on and off Amazon for the opportunity to reach audiences wherever they are in their purchasing journey.
*Products and features may not be available in all countries.
Choose this product for:
- Performance marketing, brand marketing
- Goals; awareness, consideration
Stores*:
A self-service product to create a dedicated destination for your brand in the Amazon store. Create a unique page in your Store for your product launch and use Sponsored Brands to connect traffic to the page.
Note: Sellers already selling in the Amazon store in the country where they wish to advertise can create a Store at no additional cost. Otherwise, selling fees apply.
- Brand marketing
- Goals; purchase, loyalty
Amazon Ads also offers display, audio, and video advertising. Check out the following links for more information:
KitchenSmart example
KitchenSmart is a fictitious kitchen appliance brand we’ll use throughout this guide to share examples of the points we’re discussing.
For example: KitchenSmart would choose Sponsored Brands as a solution. This could help catch shopper attention with their custom, brand-centric creative ads, and help raise awareness with shoppers looking at relevant products. It complements their objective of brand awareness and a goal of awareness.
Overview of solutions
Sponsored ads work together to help increase visibility and impact during your launch by reaching customers at different points in their buying journey.
| Ad product | Ad placement opportunities* | Business objective |
|---|---|---|
| Sponsored Products | In shopping results and on product detail pages | Explore • Help interested customers easily discover your new product in shopping results • Helps increase visibility and consideration of individual products as customers are browsing the Amazon store |
| Sponsored Brands | Within shopping results and on product detail pages | Discovery • Encourage customers to discover and engage with your brand • Boost brand awareness within shopping results with custom creative |
| Sponsored Display | On product detail pages and sites anywhere customers spend their time | Reach and re-engagement • Drive awareness, consideration, and conversion with placements that appear anywhere customers spend their time • Help reach relevant audiences for your business |
| Stores | Appears as a unique page in the Amazon store | Retention • Tell the story of your product in the context of your overall brand • Showcase your full product portfolio with content that can educate and inspire customers |
*Please note these ad placements are not guaranteed when using any of these advertising solutions.
Defining the objective of your ad campaigns
Before you launch an ad campaign, make sure you’re clear on the objective
Planning your campaign objective and goals
Digital advertising can help you do many things, but you need to be clear on your objectives, before you launch your campaign.
In this chapter, we lay out how to decide on the objective of your campaign, and how best to define what your specific goals should be.
Defining your objective
Let’s look at the two specific types of marketing: performance marketing and brand marketing. Understanding these two different approaches will help you define your advertising strategy.
Performance marketing
The Performance Marketing Association’s definition of performance marketing is:
A comprehensive term that refers to online marketing and advertising programs in which advertisers (aka “retailers” or “merchants”) pay marketing companies (aka “affiliates” or “publishers”) when a specific action is completed, such as a sale, lead, or click
Some benefits of performance marketing are:
- Getting immediate, and typically short-term, results
- Potentially reaching a specific audience on one of the already available performance channels
- Only paying when the desired action is taken, which is often that "the ad is clicked or seen, or the product is viewed or purchased"
- Optimal if your marketing budget is focused on helping to maximize return on investment
Metrics to measure
With campaigns that use performance marketing, there are some key metrics you should track, including:
- Click-through-rate (CTR)
- Cost-per-click (CPC)
- Return-on-ad-spend (ROAS)
- Cost of acquisition
Paying close attention to these metrics will help you monitor the performance of your campaigns, and enable you to adjust if you’re not hitting your performance goals.
Some Amazon Ads solutions that can help you improve your advertising performance include:
Brand-building advertising
Brand marketing is all about building and enhancing positive consumer perceptions of your brand.
Brand marketing is a slower pace compared to performance marketing. A lasting relationship between a brand and consumers is built up over time, and therefore, while it can cost more, the benefits last longer. This is because consumers are more likely to return to purchase from your brand, even when they don’t see your advertising.
Some benefits of brand marketing are:
- A contribution to a long-term plan for growth
- A complementary element to a performance marketing campaign, creating a balance of short-term sales, with lasting relationships with returning customers
- An opportunity to communicate your brand values and messaging
Metrics to measure
With campaigns which focus on brand building, there are some key metrics you should track, including:
- Cost per mille (CPM)
- New-to-brand customers
- Reach
Paying close attention to these metrics will help you monitor the performance of your campaigns, and enable you to adjust if you’re not hitting your performance goals.
Some Amazon Ads solutions to help you build your brand include:
KitchenSmart example
KitchenSmart is a fictitious kitchen appliance brand we’ll use throughout this guide to share examples of the points we’re discussing.
For example: KitchenSmart want to increase their brand awareness as a high-quality kitchen appliance brand, with the aim of engaging shoppers across the world. Based on this, they’ll choose brand marketing as their objective.
Deciding on your goals
Setting goals can help you optimize your results and grow your business. Your goals should always help you work toward your business objective.
Before you launch your first campaign, it’s important to define your business goals so you can monitor your performance to check you’re heading in the right direction to reach your desired outcome.
There are four ways you can define your goals.
Awareness
Awareness goals focus on expanding your audiences so more people discover your brand and products. You want to help customers learn your brand story and keep your brand top of mind while they shop.
Consideration
For consideration, you want to engage shoppers as they shop during the decision-making process before they buy. Help customers understand what sets your brand or products apart from other options, and why they should choose you when they make their purchase.
Purchase
Purchase or conversion goals focus on driving sales. Help potential customers make the decision to buy your product.
Loyalty
If loyalty is your focus, then your goal is to engage your existing audience to help them become repeat customers. You’re showing them why they want to return to your brand and buy from you again.
KitchenSmart example
KitchenSmart is a fictitious kitchen appliance brand we’ll use throughout this guide to share examples of the points we’re discussing.
For example: KitchenSmart would choose awareness as their goal, as it would help keep their campaign strategy focused on reaching a broad audience, and complement their objective of brand awareness.
Review and improve your performance
Once your campaign is launched, regularly monitor its performance to see if you can improve it.
Check in on 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 previously set.
The best way to find success with your digital ad campaign is to keep testing variables to optimize performance. Staying up to date with how your ad campaign is performing, so you can see what is working and what isn’t, can be an efficient use of your ad spend.
What to do
1. Troubleshooting your campaign
In case you’re not seeing expected results, here are some tips:
My campaigns have few/no impressions or clicks
Review your budgets: The bid might be competitive and your ads are not showing.
Review your targeting strategy: You might be reaching customers not looking for products like yours.
My campaign has few/no sales
Review your product detail pages: This helps the customer decide.
Consider expanding your targeting (other products and keywords): There is potentially opportunity to reach other customers interested in your product.
2. Understanding your campaign performance
Scenario 1: Customers are discovering your new product and engaging with your ads
If creating product awareness and engagement was your priority, review the impressions, 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.
Scenario 2: Customers are discovering and engaging with your brand
- To learn how your Sponsored Brands and/or Sponsored Display ads are connecting new customers 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.
Scenario 3: I want to review my sales performance
If your key goal was to drive sales, measure how many clicks converted into orders, as well as your ROAS. For a new product with limited awareness, it may take additional budget to drive sales, resulting in a higher 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 ROAS is at an unsustainable level for keyword targeting campaigns, continue investing in keywords that are driving clicks and sales, while pausing low-performing keywords.
Scenario 4: I want to know how customers are engaging with my new product in the context of my 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/or 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).
KitchenSmart example
KitchenSmart is a fictitious kitchen appliance brand we’ll use throughout this guide to share examples of the points we’re discussing.
For example: KitchenSmart would be looking to see if and how shoppers are discovering and engaging with their brand (Scenario 2), and want to measure if their awareness has increased since running Sponsored Brands. In this instance, KitchenSmart should be looking to see if their orders and sales have increased since running Sponsored Brands ads. They should explore their new-to-brand metrics to find this insight.
Here are some metrics and figures you can review to help you better understand your performance with advertising.
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 where you’re driving traffic.
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.
KitchenSmart example overview
We’ve referenced our fictitious brand, KitchenSmart, throughout this guide to help you apply our recommendations and guidance to your own campaigns. Here’s the full overview of our examples, to help you see how they all work together.
The KitchenSmart campaign
Objective 1
KitchenSmart wants to increase their brand awareness as a high-quality kitchen appliance brand, with the aim of engaging shoppers across the world. Based on this, they’ll choose brand marketing as their objective.
Goals
KitchenSmart would choose awareness as their goal, as it would help keep their campaign strategy focused on reaching a broad audience, and complement their objective of brand awareness.
Targeting
KitchenSmart might tailor their ads campaign as follows:
- Audience: 40+ years old, all genders
- Keywords: kitchen, utensils, kettle, appliance, coffee machine
- Location: worldwide
Amazon Ads solution
KitchenSmart would choose Sponsored Brands as a solution. This could help catch shopper attention with their custom, brand-centric creative ads, and help raise awareness with shoppers looking at relevant products. It complements their objective of brand awareness, and goal of awareness.
Campaign review
KitchenSmart would be looking to see if and how shoppers are discovering and engaging with their brand (Scenario 2), and want to measure if their awareness has increased since running Sponsored Brands. In this instance, KitchenSmart should be looking to see if their orders and sales have increased since running Sponsored Brands ads. They should explore their new-to-brand metrics to find this insight.
Objective 2
KitchenSmart decides later that they need to increase sales across the world. Based on this, they’ll choose performance marketing as their objective.
Goals
KitchenSmart would choose consideration and purchase as their goal, as it would help keep their campaign strategy focused on driving sales with interested shoppers.
Targeting
KitchenSmart might tailor their ads campaign as follows:
- Audience: 40+ years old, all genders
- Keywords: kitchen, utensils, kettle, appliance, coffee machine
- Products targeted: other brands products related to kitchen, utensils, kettle, appliance, coffee machine
- Location: worldwide
Amazon Ads solutions
KitchenSmart would choose Sponsored Products and Sponsored Display as a solution. With Sponsored Display, the brand would re-market audiences that are on the consideration phase, as they have visited their product detail pages but have not done a purchase. With Sponsored Products, the brand would set a keyword targeting campaign, leveraging from terms that have proven to be successful on driven sale in the past.
Campaign review
KitchenSmart would be looking to see which Sponsored Display audience is bringing the most attributed sales and ROAS, as this means the strategy is effective on driving sales. At the same time, KitchenSmart would review the keyword strategy to refine the terms based on which are bringing the highest conversions. This will help improve the ROAS over time.
Let’s get started with Amazon Ads
You’ll need an account with Amazon Ads to launch your first ads. If you already have an advertising account, you can sign in from here to create your first campaign, or register to set up your account.
If you wish to continue learning, in a different format, we have a series of videos available that introduce you to the basics of digital advertising, including how a digital ad is created and displayed to shoppers.
Thank you for reading
Digital advertising: everything you need to know, before you begin