According to a report by Statista, Amazon attracts upwards of two billion monthly visitors as of 2022, making it prime property for advertising your products. Despite your best efforts to use Amazon’s ad products, you may not always see results in terms of ROI for two main reasons.
First, it is important to know that Amazon has increased the number of products and ad placements across the marketplace, which can seem quite overwhelming to consumers who are inundated with ads all the time. Secondly, not all of your customers may be searching for you on Amazon in the first place. To solve both these issues, you can leverage the offerings of Amazon’s Demand Side Platform (DSP).
Enter Amazon Demand Side Platform (DSP)
It is designed to identify, target, and engage potential off-Amazon consumers and guide them towards Amazon – a boon for small sellers on the marketplace. These ads are offered in various forms such as mobile banner ads, image and text ads, mobile interstitial ads, in-stream videos ads, desktop display ads, etc.
The great thing about Amazon DSP is that any vendor or third-party seller can use this platform to generate brand awareness and target the right consumers. While the self-managed option has no management fees and allows for flexible campaign investments, the managed component can be a bit pricey.
Wait, wasn’t it called something else earlier?
Yes, it can get a bit confusing keeping track of Amazon’s various advertising platforms and their acronyms. In 2018, Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) allowed small vendors and sellers to advertise on the platform whereas Amazon Media Group (AMG) was dedicated to large-scale vendors both on and off the platform. There was also the Amazon Advertising Platform (AAP), dedicated to its demand-side platform that targeted audiences both on and off Amazon.
In 2018, these platforms were consolidated and rebranded under one Amazon Advertising (AA) platform and turned AAP into DSP. Here are five factors that make Amazon DSP different from Amazon’s Sponsored Display Ads.
- Shopper data: Amazon has a deep reservoir of first-party shopper data, be it on or off the marketplace. And this is available only to Amazon, which means sellers using DSP can leverage the insights offered by Amazon.
- Shopper targeting: While Sponsored Display Ads target shoppers within Amazon, DSP can target shoppers externally too. These ads are run on the Amazon marketplace, Fire TV, Kindle, IMDb, Freedive (IMDb’s streaming platform), apps, publishing partners, and third-party exchanges.
- Pricing model: Unlike Amazon Sponsored Display Ads that follow the pay-per-click model, DSP uses a cost per thousand or cost per mille (CPM) model. This means that you pay for each time an individual sees your ad, whether or not they interact with it.
- Relevance: It’s safe to say that anyone actively searching for a product on Amazon already has the intent to purchase. This is what the Amazon Ad Console usually targets. However, Amazon Demand Side Platform targets relevant users outside of Amazon to create brand awareness, and then retarget them to drive purchase interest.
- Behavioral targeting: Usually, Amazon Sponsored Display Ads function on keyword search, which means that your product will be shown when a user types in related keywords. DSP on the other hand targets behavior. What does this mean? Your ad will be displayed based on what they’ve bought before, the detail pages they frequent, the categories they commonly browse, the specific products they have added to cart but not purchased, among many other behavioral patterns.
While each channel has its advantages, sellers using Amazon Ad Console in tandem with Amazon DSP are able to enjoy the full funnel – right from the stage when consumers have no awareness of your brand to the point they choose to purchase from you.
What are the benefits of Amazon DSP?
When used right, DSP can be pivotal in increasing brand awareness and exposure, boosting sales, and acquiring new customers. Some of Amazon DSP’s features include:
- Advanced targeting features such as demographics, geographic locations, segmentation, as well as date and time scheduling
- Additional targeting through A/B testing, mobile and desktop specific ads, in-market audiences, ad placement and frequency, domains, and PIN codes
- Target customization through unique, user-built audience groups
- Flexible and dynamic campaign targeting
- ASIN retargeting capabilities such as cross-selling, customer re-engagement, customer education, reminders for repurchase, etc.
Interested in learning how Amazon Demand Side Platform can transform your advertising strategy? Reach out to the experts at Tenovia today!
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