Amazon Advertising Then and Now (How Advertising through Amazon has Changed in 5 Years)

Jan 27, 2022

More than any other major advertising platform, Amazon loves to try new things. Where platforms like Google and Facebook make changes focused on obfuscating advertiser data, Amazon has made a concerted effort to improve the advertiser’s experience. While far from perfect, these changes have given businesses the ability to drive more successful strategies than any other time in the past. 

With the dawn of a new year, I wanted to review how much Amazon advertising has changed in the past five years. Join me in my time machine, and let’s dive in! 

 

Amazon advertising

  Then vs. Now 

Advertisement

Subscribe to our newsletter

Amazon advertising

Amazon Advertising in 2017 

 

The year is 2017, and Amazon advertising is firmly split into two wildly different experiences. One is for Vendors (those who wholesale to Amazon) and the other for Sellers (those who sell directly to consumers on Amazon). Up to this point, Sellers could only run Sponsored Products Ads while Vendors had access to the additional ad types of Headline Search ads (now Sponsored Brands) and Product Display (now Sponsored Display).   

The biggest downside to advertising as a Vendor was that Ad Console only allowed users to view lifetime performance. Yes, you read that right; Vendors could not track the performance of specific days, weeks, or months. Tough to make that work.

Toward the end of the year, Amazon rolled out Storefronts (or Stores) to Sellers and ungated Sponsored Brands. Sellers were still required to have a Brand Registry to compete with these ads, but this was a huge step to the Seller/Vendor parity. This change made toward the end of 2017 paved the way for the current Amazon Ad Console. 

 

Amazon advertising

 

Amazon Advertising in 2018 

 

Continuing a few months later, in January 2018, Vendors got their upgrade. The Vendor Ad Console was overhauled to match the Seller Ad Console visually. With most features matching between the two consoles, we weren’t too far away from the final merge, but we were still two years away from true parity. 

For the rest of us, the biggest Amazon advertising updates were on the Sponsored Products side. Up until now, we had Auto and Manual campaigns. You could let Amazon choose what search terms to serve ads on with minimal ability to interfere or optimize. Or you could define them yourselves, limited to only searchable terms. Amazon released a major update supporting Product Attribute Targeting (PAT) and Enhanced Auto Targeting (EAT) to upgrade both existing campaign types. 

 

Amazon advertising

 

PAT’s gave advertisers the ability to target ASIN detail pages manually. Not only did this provide all advertisers control on something we’d wanted for years, but it also gave Sellers the ability to compete in Display ad spots. 

On the other hand, EAT’s gave advertisers some much-needed levers to improve Automatic campaigns. The specific change here grouped all potential targets of an Auto campaign into four biddable groups. Two are for product page targets and two for search term targets. This made it much easier to scale Auto campaigns used for research without spending too inefficiently on groups you already knew would not be successful. 

 

Amazon Advertising in 2019 

 

Welcome to Amazon advertising in 2019, where every ad type is equally accessible between brand-registered Sellers and Vendors. Amazon finally released Sponsored Display in full to Sellers, but they made more important development for most sellers. They released a “brand” new ad type with some of the best performances ever seen on the channel. Sponsored Brand Videos rolled out.    

 

Amazon advertising

 

Unlike every other form of advertising on Amazon, creative assets were a requirement to show in this placement. Hence the name; SBV ads used short video collateral in an autoplay format directly on the Amazon SERP. These ads blew away the engagement rates seen in traditional ones. They have up to 12x click-through rates and better average ACoS. Over time, the quality of video ads has improved. For the first year and a half, advertisers could capitalize on these ad types with near-perfect success using silent slideshow videos. 

 

Amazon Advertising in 2020 

 

2020 was a year of influx for everyone. Diving into the world of Amazon advertising, three changes stand out from the rest.   

Placements became the best new feature of Sponsored Products. In my opinion, it’s the most underutilized feature for advertisers today. Where advertisers on Google can set bid multiplier based on device type, Amazon now gave us the ability to bid up based on placement within the Amazon SERP.  So far, there are three placement types in the form of Top of Search (anything within the first row of ads), Product Pages (anything directly on ASIN detail pages), and Rest of Search (anything else). 

 

 

Besides this, we finally achieved the last acts of parity between Sellers and Vendors. 

For one, Ad Consoles were merged. Advertisers can now freely switch between Vendor and Seller ad accounts within manager accounts without needing separate logins. Every agency and aggregator took a shared sigh of relief. 

The other change came in as Amazon Brand Analytics, formerly known as Amazon Retail Analytics. While not an advertising product, this had served as a gated form of information that only Vendors could access (for the low cost of $30K per year). 

 

 

This product provides Amazon 1P data into trends of brand registered catalog performance such as product repeat purchase behavior and alternative purchase behavior. Additionally, it gives advertisers source data of click share, and conversion share of the top searched terms on Amazon. 

 

Amazon Advertising in 2021 

 

Heading into 2021, Amazon made a conscious effort to push more updates to Sponsored Display in an attempt to drive adoption of the ad type further. The biggest advancements made to the ad type were the advent of Audience targeting and Impression based bidding.  

 

 

Audience targeting has upgraded Sponsored Display to a more controllable ad type for remarketing and discovery audiences. This was achieved with a series of In-Market (IM) and time-based audiences (e.g., users who viewed your ASIN in the past 30/60/90 days). 

The jury is still out on the effectiveness of CPM bidding (early indicators show tremendously strong ACoS, but incrementality of sales is highly questionable). They made the changes to align Sponsored Display with Amazon’s programmatic DSP product.  

Outside of Display, Amazon also released another ad placement, this time for Sponsored Products, as Highly Rated Products. This shows up below the fold, right around Sponsored Brands Videos.

 

Amazon advertising

 

Lastly, in Q4, Amazon made a significant move by replacing the top featured ads slot with a widget to show off their own brands, Featured from our Brands. In many cases where four ads would generally show, this was reduced to three. On mobile, where two ads would normally serve, this is reduced to only one. This Amazon advertising change has hurt ad conversion across the board. 

 

Bonus, what are we expecting for 2022? 

 

The past five years have been transformative for Amazon advertising, so what do we expect from Amazon in 2022? At Perch, we’re expecting the following updates. 

  • With new placements like Highly Rated rolling out, I expect Amazon to give us the control to target these more aggressively. This could be supported through the existing Placements tab as a breakout from Rest of Search. 
  • As we continue to see international expansion as a clear opportunity for growth within the aggregator space, I believe Amazon will make accessibility changes to improve the international ads experience. This already started with Amazon, allowing us to duplicate ad campaigns in one country to all others across the region. I hope to see all regions merged into one. 
  • Sponsored Display will certainly continue as a priority for Amazon to grow. As such, I imagine we will see an increase in controlled placements. Pie in the sky, 2022 may be the year to give non-DSP advertisers control over off-Amazon placements. 

 

Conclusion 

 

Amazon rolls out changes at a fast pace. The past involved a lot of parity between Sellers and Vendors, followed by focused pushes to Sponsored Brands, Products, and DisplayWhile we’re not sure what 2022 will hold for Amazon advertising, we’re excited by the prospects of more change! 

Are you interested in selling your Amazon business?  Check out the Perch website to learn more about selling to an aggregator today! 

 

 

About the Author 

Mike Frekey

Mike Frekey is the Head of Advertising at Perch, one of the top Amazon Aggregators in the world. He has been working in Amazon ads since 2016 and focuses on maximizing value from an 8-figure ad budget in his role. You can learn more about the work done at Perch on their website.

Produced by Sellers Alley

sellersalley.com

Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

@2021 Wild PPC Bunch. All Rights Reserved