Amazon Ad Changes

To start the new year, Amazon made changes to their book advertising features. Below, I provide an overview of the changes and some basic directions on how to use the new functions. The Amazon directions can be found here: Author's Guide to the New Amazon Advertising Features.

The main changes to Amazon Ads that occurred in January 2019 were:

• Amazon retired Product Display Ads, but you can continue to run and edit existing Product Display Ads through February 5, 2019. Your historical data will be accessible in the advertising dashboard, which has also been revamped (see the image below). 

• Lockscreen Ads are new, but are very similar to Product Display ads as far as the ad setup goes. Lockscreen adds have no title for you to select--just the ad body.  You can continue targeting by interest and your ads can appear on Amazon Fire tablets in full-color display. 

• Sponsored Products have an additional product targeting feature that allows you to target by product, so your ads appear in relevant placements, ideally leading to higher clicks and sales. You can target specific ASINs or ASIN groups by category, reaching readers that browse and search for titles like yours. You can also filter your targeting by brand, price, and/or star rating and analyze your campaign to determine performance at both the aggregate and ASIN levels. 

To set up product targeting on Sponsored Product Ads follow these steps:

  1. From your ads dashboard, select Create Campaign

  2. Select Sponsored Product Ads

  3. Under "Settings" set: 

     a. Your ad campaign name, 

     b. Your desired start and end date (if any),

     c. Your daily budget, and

     d. Either “Manual Targeting” if you want to enter (or upload) your own keywords, or "Automatic Targeting" if you prefer that Amazon handle the targeting. 

  4. Under "Ad Format" select either "Custom Ad Text" or "Standard Ad Text." Custom allows you to insert your own text, whereas standard is the Amazon default.

  5. Under "Product" select the book you wish to advertise.

  6. Under "Targeting" select either "Keyword" or "Product" targeting. Depending on which you select, you can select keywords or individual products and categories to target and refine your selections by brand, price, and/or star rating.

  7. Set individual bids for each product or category added (Amazon provides suggested bid guidance).

The level of detail you can select for product targeting has increased and is more focused and in-depth. Whether this will translate into more book sales is yet to be seen. I experimented by setting up new ads for each of the various types and sub-types. In a few months, I'll let you know how I'm doing.