A contemporary digital marketer is likely well-versed at this point in the excitement of advertising on Amazon’s Sponsored Ads platform. After all, it’s been a considerable period of time since a new pay-per-click ad platform came along with any significant traction (remember, Google AdWords, now Google Ads, debuted 18 years ago…) While Amazon Advertising is innovating as fast as possible to catch-up, Amazon marketers are facing some growing pains while the platform evolves to be more sophisticated. Analyzing data in the segments and views that marketers are accustomed to is challenging within the current Amazon interface. Amazon has welcomed partnership from agencies and outside partners to bridge the data gap to help deliver the best results for brands advertising on Amazon. This is a smart move of course and one that Amazon marketers will undoubtedly embrace.
Some of the challenges Amazon marketers are familiar with include:
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Reporting up to marketing leadership on fundamental KPIs like investment return (ROAS)
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Performance rending and cross-channel comparison to other media types. (Amazon’s current platform only records data sixty days in arrears for keyword-level data.)
In my experience, I’ve come across platforms that can help but ultimately fall short of an enterprise-level solution. For example, the team at Teikametrics has a solution that allows sponsored ads optimization at a larger scale, and their user interface is more intuitive that Amazon’s. But executing tasks like searching for a keyword within the interface for quick optimization or reporting is not possible currently.
For many eCommerce brands, advertising on Amazon will simply be a necessity to maintain market share. According to Piper Jaffray, Amazon’s ad business operating income will grow to $16 billion by 2021 – surpassing its web services income. What’s more, Amazon’s ad sales grew 72% in the second quarter of this year.
Getting the Data You Need to Win
As an experienced retail advertiser on Amazon’s platform, I’ve searched for a scalable optimization and performance reporting solution for Sponsored Ads at length. Something beyond the bulk upload spreadsheets I’d receive monthly from my AAP rep. My wish list centered on getting the data I needed to understand how my ads and keywords were performing over time. Year-over-year trend comparisons were table stakes. Learning what product categories were performing (or not) and making adjustments to optimizations or ad group bid levels was a requirement for long-term success. Understanding how keywords behaved in Sponsored Ads vs. Google or Bing Ads would allow me to shift investment where ROAS was greater – minimizing the risk of leaving money on the table or inefficiently spending my precious ad dollars. The problem was I simply didn’t have the data at my fingertips to make smart decisions.
Solving the Performance Visibility Problem
Our partners at Rise Interactive have invested heavily to solve the challenges I’ve outlined above – and digital marketers should be very, very excited. At last, there is an intuitive platform that enables smart Amazon advertising investment decisions at scale. Rise Interactive’s Connex Analytics platform now integrates Amazon Advertising Data. Tracking performance data beyond 60 days is now possible, allowing marketers to analyze trends over custom date ranges, MoM or YoY. Incredibly, through Connex, you can compare keyword-level performance across search engines and ad types. Find out how your CPCs in Google compare to Amazon by keyword, and shift investment where ROAS is higher. You might be surprised what you find out – and this amazing tool will empower you as a marketing hero to drive incremental value across the search engines for your organization.
There’s even more possible through Connex, from managing budgets effectively at a product category level in Amazon to optimizing spend among ad types such as Sponsored Products (formerly Headline Search Ad) keywords. Rise Interactive provides a robust suite of Amazon management services, and along with our team at Quad/Graphics - we are ready to help you dramatically improve your ad performance within Amazon’s fast-growing marketplace or wherever else you might need proven marketing solutions.
John Thielmann is a digital marketing veteran and is the Director of Marketing Strategy & Execution at Quad/Graphics, a leading marketing solutions partner that leverages its strong print foundation as part of a large, robust integrated multichannel platform to help clients spend their marketing dollars more efficiently and effectively, both online and offline.