Which tactics are top performing advertisers using to grow on Amazon.it?
By: Gregorio Nastasi, Media and Analytics Manager, and Ashton Brown, Technical Writer
In this 2019-2020 study of 561 brands in the Beauty category on Amazon.it (Italy), we compare advertising strategies of top- and lower-performing advertisers. We then use this comparison to derive actionable insights advertisers can use to improve year-over-year growth of detail page views, sales, and branded searches.
Story highlights:
In this study, we analyzed 561 brands in the Beauty category on Amazon.it (Italy) between January 2019 and December 2020. To perform our analysis, we grouped Beauty brands into five clusters, with Cluster One being the most successful and Cluster Five being the least successful in terms of the year-over-year growth rate of detail page views (DPVGR), sales, and branded searches. The Beauty category includes brands selling products such as Shaving & Hair Removal, Fragrance, Hair Care & Styling, Make-up, Prestige Make-up, Prestige Fragrance, Prestige Hair Care, etc.
Our study revealed that top-performing Beauty advertisers (Cluster One) had 1.7x higher detail page views, 1.9x higher sales, and 1.7x higher branded searches than lower-performing advertisers (Cluster Five) year over year.
Top-performers
Higher detail page views year-over-year
Higher sales year-over-year
Higher branded searches year-over-year
To provide advertisers with actionable insights, we used machine learning to analyze 40+ advertising and media attributes that contribute more or less to the year-over-year growth of detail page views, sales, and branded searches.
This article provides insights/best practices on the key attributes or strategies by quantifying the degree to which top-performing Beauty advertisers (Cluster One) and lower-performing Beauty advertisers (Cluster Five) have adopted each key attribute or strategy.
For more on how we performed this study, see the Methodology section at the end of this article.
Top performers were 7.5x more likely to adopt Amazon DSP on Amazon.it
Detail page views and branded searches are sometimes determiners of brand sales, which may be why the adoption of Amazon DSP was one of the key differentiators of top- and bottom-performing Beauty advertisers on Amazon.it. Amazon DSP enables advertisers to advertise on and off Amazon, which can help them reach more customers and, in turn, increase branded searches and detail page views. Our analysis found that 17% of top-performing Beauty advertisers on Amazon.it adopted Amazon DSP, compared to only 2% of lower performers
Percentage of advertisers that adopted Amazon DSP
Top-performers
Lower-performers
Things to consider when using Amazon DSP
In previous research we found that using Fire TV and Twitch are both effective tools for increasing brand reach, which in the case of this research, may mean an increase in branded searches and DPVGR, and ultimately sales.
- Achieve balanced campaign goals: Consider balancing spend between Amazon owned-and-operated inventory (ads on Amazon.it) and offsite inventory (ads off Amazon.it).
- Improve audience reach: Consider investing in inventory like Fire TV or Twitch to help increase exposure of your brand to unique audiences.
Top performing advertisers were 2.1x more likely to adopt Sponsored Brands on Amazon.it
Similar to results seen with Amazon DSP, Sponsored Brands was also revealed to be a key differentiator between top- and bottom-performing Beauty advertisers on Amazon.it. That said, it’s important to note that Sponsored Brands is an on-Amazon.it offering, while Amazon DSP can reach customers both on and off Amazon.it. Our analysis found that 80% of top performers adopted Sponsored Brands, compared to 37% of lower performers.
Percentage of advertisers that adopted Sponsored Brands
Top-performers
Lower-performers
Things to consider when activating Sponsored Brands
- Create a custom landing page: Link to a brand Store to help increase awareness within your brand portfolio, and link to product detail pages to help drive conversion.
Conclusion
As seen in our analysis, in combination with our supervised machine learning model, we identified two key differentiators between top-performing Beauty advertisers and lower performers on Amazon.it: (1) consider adopting Amazon DSP to advertise on and off Amazon.it; (2) consider adopting Sponsored Brands to showcase the full suite of products you have available.
Methodology
We first used a supervised model to identify a list of attributes that help to improve the composite score among 40+ media and retail attributes. Specifically, we followed a five-step process to create a suite of success metrics including: detail page views, sales, and branded searches, and then identified the top advertising and retail strategies with machine learning algorithms to help increase the success metrics.
- Select brands: We studied 561 advertisers in the Beauty category on Amazon.it between January 2019 and December 2020.
- Create success metric: Success was calculated based on year-over-year growth of detail page views, sales, and branded searches.
- Group brands: Advertisers were grouped by composite score (detail page views, sales, and branded searches) into five clusters ranked from highest— to lowest-performing. Using the identified features above, we next applied a k-medoid clustering algorithm to classify these advertisers into clusters. Finally, we ranked the clusters by their composite scores from high-to-low. Cluster 1 is the most successful cluster with the highest composite score, and Cluster 5 is the least successful.
- Identify effective ad or retail actions: We identified top actions to help increase composite score (actions that lead to higher year-over-year growth of detail page views, sales, and branded searches). Actions include customer reviews, ad products (Amazon DSP, Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Fire TV, etc.), ad strategies (negative keywords, always-on, audience segments, etc.), and more.
- Compare brand groups: We identified what strategies top-performing advertisers (Cluster One) use to increase year-over-year growth of detail page views, sales, and branded searches, compared to strategies that lower-performing brands (Cluster Five) are or are not using.