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Optimizing Your Amazon Ad Placement
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In addition to the fixed and dynamic bidding options that Amazon has unveiled, the online retail leader is letting brands and retailers that advertise on Amazon set placement bid adjustments for Sponsored Products campaigns for the top of the search page and product page placements. Just like with bid adjustments in Google Ads, for example, the ad is multiplied by the bid adjustment that is set.
How About Bid+?
When it comes to picking the bidding strategy for your Sponsored Products campaigns, pick the one that most closely aligns with your campaign’s objective. The setting that you choose applies to all bids within the campaign. With Amazon’s Bid+ Sponsored Products feature — which they have phased out — advertisers had the opportunity to increase the likelihood of their ads to show in the top of search results. When the feature was on, Amazon increased the default bid for your ads by up to 50% when they competed for the top of search results placement.
For example, if your default bid was $0.50, Bid+ would raise your bid as high as $0.75 to compete for impressions at the top of search results. When the Bid+ feature was active, it was only available for the top of search results placement and manually targeted campaigns.
Adjusting Bids by Placement
Amazon has replaced Bid+ with an “adjust bids by placement” feature. The limitation with Bid+ was that you could only set a 50% increase for the top of search, first page placement. With this feature, you can set up to a 900% increase for top of search, as well as for product detail placements. Existing campaigns that used Bid+ are now automatically translated to the new settings of bidding “dynamic bids – down only” strategy and the top of search placement adjustment is 50%.
Now, you can differentiate your bids and view their performance according to three placement groups: top of search, rest of search, and product detail pages. Top of search refers to the ads at the top of the first page of search results. Rest of search refers to the ads shown in the middle or at the bottom of the results page and in the second page of the results and beyond. Product detail pages refer to the placements on those pages, and certain other placements off search results like the Add to Cart page.
When you do this, your bids will increase by the specified amounts when your ads compete for opportunities on those placements. This setting can be used to increase the visibility of your ads and generate additional impressions for a specific placement. It is important to note that it is possible that bidding by placement can negatively impact your ACoS, as you are bidding higher just for placement and not necessarily increasing conversion.
When to Use the Adjust Bids by Placement Feature
There are three scenarios where it might make sense to experiment with the “adjust bids by placement” setting:
1. Along with dynamic bidding strategies to act on sales and non-sales objectives. For example, maybe your primary goal is conversion, but are also focusing on increasing your impressions for a particular placement. For solely short-term, sales-focused goals, you should leave the placement adjustments at 0%.
2. With the “fixed bids” bidding strategy to focus your impressions on a certain placement. If your goal is to maximize exposure of your products by winning impressions on the top of search results placement on the first page, set a low bid for your keyword or ad group, and a high top of search adjustment. Doing so will make your ad more competitive for top of search opportunities, while limiting impressions on other placements, as your base bid is low.
3. To increase ad exposure for a specific placement.
Final Thoughts
Different placement groups are bound to have different performance metrics (such as click-through rates and conversion rates) due to their different locations on Amazon. If your business objective is not entirely short-term sales, using the “adjust bids by placement” feature will allow you to shift your ad impressions to a particular placement.