Your checklist for new international ad campaigns

1. Launch in multiple countries with ease with the global Sponsored Products campaign feature. Create a single Sponsored Products campaign and select the countries you want to advertise in, all from one place. You can set unified budgets across regions or customize bids, creatives, and targeting per country to align with local shopping behaviors.
2. View and optimize all your global campaigns in one place with the global campaign manager. Access a centralized dashboard that consolidates performance metrics across all country. Compare results by country, adjust settings instantly, and identify top-performing regions to scale your international strategy efficiently.

Once your first campaign in a new country is running, monitor its performance regularly in the campaign manager. Even if you run the same campaign in multiple countries, the results can be different.

Define benchmarks for your campaign based on:

• Business objectives
• Performance of campaigns in your first country
• Performance metrics specific to each new country

When you’re running ad campaigns in two or more countries, you may need to allocate budgets and bids differently for each country and targeting selection. As a multi-country advertiser, it’s important that you monitor your budget and bids closely and reallocate funds strategically to areas that are working well. Even a small increase in your budget or bid for one campaign can help boost your overall results.

There are three types of bidding strategies to choose from:

• Dynamic bids – down only, where bids are lowered in real time when a click is less likely to convert.
• Dynamic bids – up and down, which can raise or lower your bids depending on conversion likelihood (up to 100% per impression).
• Fixed bids, where your bid stays exactly as you set it.

For your first campaign in a new country, we recommend you choose dynamic bids - down only. With this bidding strategy, Amazon may reduce your bids in real time for clicks that are less likely to convert to a sale.

It helps you control costs and reduce spend for less relevant shopping queries, or placements that don’t perform well. If you’re not quite yet seeing the return on ad spend (ROAS) you’d like, and right now you’re using another bidding strategy, make sure you try dynamic bids - down only.

This can help you control your spend while you are running your campaign for a couple of weeks, analyzing your performance, and getting ready to optimize your campaign.

Review your search term report to see which keywords or targeting defaults perform best for you and make a note of these as potential candidates for a bid increase.

After analyzing your campaign performance, you can adjust bids to improve results. Track impressions and return on a spend (ROAS) in each country, as performance can vary by country. Consider increasing your bids in these scenarios:

• Low impressions: If your campaign isn’t generating enough impressions, you may not be winning enough auctions for your ads to be displayed.
• High ROAS: When your campaign shows strong ROAS, you can increase bids to try to help gain more impressions.

Set a daily budget that allows your ads to run throughout the day. We recommend starting with a minimum daily budget of $10 (or your local currency equivalent) for new country campaigns. Adjust your budget based on campaign performance.

Consider increasing your budget, especially in these scenarios:

• Running out of budget: If your campaigns have depleted their budget multiple times in the past seven days, consider an increase. Be mindful of local seasonality and regional shopping events when planning your budget.
• Low impressions: If your campaign doesn’t meet your impression goals, increasing your budget can help your ads appear in more auctions.

When using manual targeting with Sponsored Products in a country with a primary language other than your language of preference,¹ you will automatically see translations for the suggested keywords in your selected console language.

For manual keyword targeting with Sponsored Products in a country with a primary language other than your language of preference,² you can simply enter your keywords in your language and click the “Add keywords” button next to “Translate to [foreign language] and add.” The feature automatically translates your keywords to the best-matching keywords in the default language of the Amazon site where your ads will show.

There are three match types including broad match, phrase match, and exact match. With broad match your ad may appear when customers shop using all your keywords in any order, including close variations. For phrase match, your ad may appear when customers’ shopping queries use the exact phrase or sequence of words in your keyword. Finally, exact match is the most restrictive match type, but can more relevant and may help result in the highest conversion rates. We recommend using multiple match types to help you discover what performs well for your ads in a new country.

How to use keyword match types

You can use negative keyword targeting to define for which shopping queries not to display your ads. This can help you refine your target audience and maximize keyword relevance, as it prevents ads from appearing on specific shopping results or detail pages.

Another option for you to expand your international campaigns is to use manual product targeting. It’s a helpful targeting tactic for campaigns in your second, third, fourth country, and so on, as you can simply select the products, categories, and brands relevant to yours in the campaign builder. There’s no need to localize anything, and you can use all features exactly like you’d set up product targeting campaigns in your domestic country.

With product targeting, you can help shoppers who are browsing detail pages and categories similar or complementary to yours, or generally looking for products on Amazon, to find your products. With this method, ad placements can appear at the bottom of product detail pages and categories or within shopping results.

With manual product targeting, you can target specific products, categories, or brands that are similar to the product in your ad. This is useful to help you engage shoppers who already have an idea of what product or brand to buy, so they are closer to a final purchase.

1. Select the option for manual targeting when creating a new Sponsored Products campaign in a new country, then select “Product targeting.”
2. There, you can use the category suggestions provided to you or search for specific categories that you want to target. The categories show in your language of preference, which makes selecting the right ones for the specific product easier.
3. To target individual products, you can either select the suggested products or enter the ASINs of products similar to yours. You can refine by brand, star reviews, price, and Prime shipping eligibility. This can help you connect with more customers and relevant audiences.

Fine tune your targeting according to the product price and select higher priced products for which your products could be an alternative for shoppers.

Negative product targeting lets you exclude brands or products that you don’t want your ads to appear. This prevents your ads from showing alongside irrelevant products or items that generate clicks but no sales.

To implement this suggested action:

1. Go to ‘Campaigns’ in your campaign manager.
2. Select a product targeting campaign and an ad group, then go to “Negative targeting.“
3. Click ‘Add negative product targets.’ Then you can select the products and brands that you do want to exclude from your targeting.

The targeting tab shows how automatic targeting defaults (close match, loose match, substitutes and complements) perform in each country. It helps you decide where to cut spend and where to scale.

• Pause low performers that drive spend without sales.
• Raise bids on strong performers with strong sales and ACOS, guided by suggested bids and daily bid ranges.
• Check ads regularly so your adjustments continue to drive positive results.

Download the search term report for your automatic targeting campaign and find the keywords that are generating clicks and sales conversions for your brand and products. Select top-performing ones and add these to a campaign with manual keyword targeting.

Whatever route you choose to add your keywords to your international campaign, remember to leverage all different match types: exact match, phrase match, and broad match.

The search term report is especially valuable in new countries because it reveals the exact queries shoppers used to find your products. It helps you quickly identify where to focus and where to cut back.

1. Add high-performing terms (good sales, strong ROAS, acceptable ACOS) to your manual keyword campaigns using broad, phrase, and exact match.
2. Exclude underperforming terms (e.g., high clicks, but no sales) by setting them as negative keywords to avoid wasted spend.
3. Review regularly to refine targeting and ensure budgets go toward the queries that matter most.

When running manual keyword campaigns in new countries, consistently track your performance to refine your strategy quickly.

• Compare CPC with your bids. If your current bid is very close to the average cost-per-click (CPC), consider adjusting it slightly to help capture more impressions and clicks.
• Use suggested bids and bid ranges. These update daily based on competition in each country and provide a helpful benchmark for getting started.
• Check performance by match type. Pause combinations that drive spend without sales, and raise bids on those that generate efficient results.

Over time, Advertising cost of sales (ACOS) may be slightly higher in new countries as you build visibility. Once campaigns mature, refine your goals and optimize more aggressively.

Manual product campaigns let you refine which products and categories to target, helping you put ads in front of the most relevant shoppers.

1. Refine targeting by adjusting categories, price range, or star ratings to better align with shopper intent.
2. Use reports to guide targeting: add high-performing ASINs and negatively target low-performing ones to focus spend.
3. Check sales and ACOS regularly to ensure product-level targeting stays efficient across countries.

When advertising in a new country, start by creating a Brand Store to introduce your brand to new audiences. Shoppers may not yet know who you are, so your Brand Store is your chance to tell your story and build trust. In fact, shoppers who visit a Brand Store purchase 53.9% more often and spend 71.3% more per order on average.³

Think of your Brand Store as an educational hub: a destination that explains your mission, values, and product range.

• Focus on a strong homepage with a compelling header, informative image tiles, and engaging videos.
• Make sure your “above the fold” experience is mobile-friendly and visually consistent with your brand.
• Include at least three subpages so shoppers can easily explore your full selection.

Next, use Sponsored Brands to expand visibility and connect your Brand Store to your ads. Link your Sponsored Brands campaign directly to your Brand Store to guide interested shoppers from search to your full brand experience.

1. When setting up your campaign, choose the drive page visits goal to help boost sales by encouraging exploration.
2. Once established, test the grow brand impression share goal to increase awareness by reaching new shoppers in top-of-search placements.

Take your storytelling further with Sponsored Brands video ads: a high-impact format for showcasing your products and brand story through auto-playing visuals.

Sponsored Brands Video campaigns with Brand Stores as landing pages had a 23% higher average conversion rate relative to campaigns with Detail Page landing pages.⁴

Pro tip: If you don’t already have video assets, Amazon’s AI-powered Video Generator makes it simple to create professional-looking videos in just minutes, helping you bring your brand to life for international audiences.

• Launch a global Sponsored Products campaign for all the countries you want to advertise in.
• Once you’ve mastered automatic targeting, launch a manual product targeting campaign to engage shoppers browsing similar items.
• Use manual keyword targeting with a mix of broad, phrase, and exact match types.
• Use the Dynamic bids - down only bidding strategy (at least for your first campaign).
• Add negative keywords to make ads more relevant.
• Apply negative product targeting to exclude irrelevant or non-performing products/brands.
• Review the search term and targeting reports regularly; pause low performers and boost strong ones.
• Increase bids strategically when impressions are too low or when ROAS is strong.
• Adjust daily budgets if campaigns run out of spend or underdeliver on impressions.
• Reallocate budgets and bids across countries based on actual results.
• Create a Brand Store early to introduce your brand and tell your story.
• Link Sponsored Brands campaigns to your Brand Store to drive page visits and awareness.
• Use Sponsored Brands video to showcase your products and brand story.

To complete your suggested actions, visit the campaign manager.

Sources

¹ This feature may not be available in all languages.

² The feature does not currently support all possible combinations of secondary languages and countries, please check your advertising console to find out which ones are available to you

^3-4 Amazon internal data, WW, 2024