Global advertising: Why it works and how to get started
What is global advertising?
Global advertising, or international marketing, is the process of running ads for your products or brand in countries beyond the home base for your business. This can mean advertising in countries in different regions (like Mexico in the Americas and Japan in Asia) or in multiple countries within the same region (like France and Italy in Europe).
With more customers shopping online than ever before, now is a great time to focus on reaching shoppers around the world. If you want to increase the visibility of your brand and help grow your sales, global advertising may be the solution you’re looking for.
Where can you advertise?
You can use self-service Amazon Ads solutions like Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display to reach customers across the globe.
3 benefits of global advertising
Advertisers see an average return on ad spend (ROAS) of 2.4, 4 months after launching Sponsored Products campaigns in a country other than their brand’s home country.1
1. Reach more customers
Engage shoppers across the globe who are looking for products like yours.
2. Tap into peak shopping seasons around the world
Boost visibility for your products and brand during local and peak shopping events when customers are browsing for items.
3. Create ads in any time zone
Ads can display whenever customers browse for relevant products on Amazon, so your ads will be working hard for you—even when you’re not working.
How to decide where to advertise
Advertising in a new country can feel daunting. Here are some ways to help determine where else you want to start advertising.
Get to know the audience
Familiarize yourself with the shopping habits in different countries. Use the Brand Analytics feature in Seller Central to gain insight into the most popular keywords and shopping queries in different regions. Then launch ads in countries where products similar to yours are popular with shoppers.
Use shared languages to your advantage
Identify countries that have a shared or related language to your brand’s home country, and launch ads based on your groupings. This can help you reduce the need for translations for your ad campaigns. For example, you could start by launching ads in countries with similar languages, like Spain and Brazil (Spanish and Portuguese), or countries with the same language, like the U.S., U.K., and Australia (English). Even if the countries are in different regions of the world, launching ads in locations with a familiar language can help you feel comfortable advertising in new countries.
Try neighboring locations
Countries that are within the same region as your business may have cultural similarities or shared customs, and they may offer similar types of products to yours. If you want to keep shipping logistics in mind, consider advertising in countries that are near each other. Programs like Remote Fulfillment with FBA and Pan-European FBA can help you fulfill orders to customers across North America and Europe, respectively. Remember, there might be some taxes and regulatory fees to consider when selling and advertising in multiple countries.
Tip: Sign up for free one-on-one support from a dedicated Amazon Ads specialist who can help you with your multicountry advertising strategy. They’ll share tailored recommendations and help you start, review, and optimize your international campaigns.2
Features to make global advertising easier
The ad console has tools that can simplify every stage of the campaign process. A recent study on global sales highlights how using tools available in the ad console has helped multicountry advertisers drive 11x higher ad-attributed sales at a 40% lower cost per click (CPC) on average.3 Try these tricks when launching your global campaigns in the ads console:
- Simplify your campaign management and manage your advertising for all countries in a single account.
- The days of creating campaigns one by one in each country are over. Use the multicountry campaign creation and copy feature to save time copying and setting up new campaigns across countries.
- Skip researching keywords in other languages. Instead, let us provide a list of a suggested keywords in the local language of the country where you’ll run your ad campaign.
- If you want to make an informed decision about which keywords to add to your campaign, try sorting your suggested keywords by estimated clicks or sales volume with custom keyword ranking.
- Already have a list of keywords you want to use? No problem. Simply enter your keywords in the keyword localization feature and translate them into the local language of your campaign. We continually audit our keyword translations to ensure we’re bringing you the most relevant keywords for your campaigns.
Aakriti Malhotra, senior marketplace manager, foodspringWe’re currently based in six countries, and we’re always adding more. Over the last few years, Amazon Ads has launched so many different multicountry tools and features that help make our tasks way easier.
What to do after you launch global ads campaigns
It’s important to review your campaigns and optimize them based on performance. After you’ve launched in multiple countries, use our checklist for international ad campaigns to set yourself up for long-term success:
1. Select “dynamic bids—down only” as your campaign strategy
We’ll control costs in real time by reducing spend on clicks that are less likely to convert to a sale.
2. Strategically increase your bids
When your campaign is generating a high return on ad spend (ROAS), you can double down on this success by increasing your bids to win more impressions and drive sales. When your campaign is generating low impressions, maximize your chances to show your ads to shoppers by increasing your bids.
3. Keep your campaign always-on
Set a daily budget that’s high enough to keep your ads showing for the entire day so you don’t miss out on potential sales.
4. Use keyword match types with manual keyword targeting
Broad match helps you generate the widest traffic exposure and discover new shopping queries relevant to your campaign. Phrase match is good for longtail keywords—the longer, more specific phrases that highly interested customers typically use. Exact match can help drive conversions. We suggest adding exact match keywords only after you’ve figured out which shopping queries perform well for you.
5. Add negative keywords to your manual keyword targeting
Help increase ROAS and control your costs by preventing ads from appearing on specific shopping results or detail pages that aren’t relevant to your products.
6. Launch a manual product targeting campaign
Engage shoppers who are closer to a final purchase by targeting specific products, categories, or brands that are similar to the product in your ad.
Tip: Fine-tune your targeting according to the product price, and select higher-priced products for which your products could be a lower-cost alternative for shoppers.
7. Use negative product targeting to filter out specific products from your campaign
Make your campaigns more effective by excluding brands or products you don’t want your ads to show against, so you won’t reach shoppers looking for those specific brands and products.
Global advertising examples to inspire you
Case Study
German health and nutrition company foodspring used the multicountry features and tools from Amazon Ads to save time launching campaigns in new countries and help meet their goals to grow internationally.
Case Study
After successfully advertising in the U.S., home decor company Warm Home Designs recognized they had an opportunity for their products to reach new audiences in Mexico. They used Amazon Ads tools and features to help create successful campaigns in Mexico.
Case Study
When a China-based company, Luftzeuge, was looking to expand their offering and advertising efforts into Europe, one of their main challenges was translating their existing creative assets to enable them to advertise in different countries and languages. They used Amazon Ads localization services to translate their creative assets in order to grow their business in Europe.
Case Study
Learn how Caffè Vergnano, one of the oldest coffee roasting companies in Italy, used Amazon Ads to help increase sales and build brand awareness across Italy, Spain, Germany, and France.
Learn more about global advertising
Learn more about how to advertise globally in these resources:
1 Amazon internal data, WW, Dec 2021 – May 2023. Limited to sellers with minimum SP campaign duration of 6 months post launch.
2 This 1:1 benefit is currently open to a limited number of eligible advertisers that have an active professional selling account in good standing with Amazon.
3 Amazon internal data, EU, NA, Jul 1, 2021–Feb 28, 2022