Optimizing Your Amazon Ad Placement

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.

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.