Associate Director, Amazon

Expanding Your Search Strategy with Amazon Marketplace

As search engine marketing’s capabilities grow, brands are gaining a number of new ways to target consumers. We’ve recently discussed a few of these opportunities, such as the increasing adoption of voice search, the importance of taking a signal-driven approach, and the growing focus on mobile. For retail brands, there is a huge opportunity to expand your search marketing efforts within retail media networks, specifically on e-commerce giant, Amazon.

According to BloomReach, 55 percent of online shoppers start their search for product information on Amazon, compared to 34 percent that begin on the top search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo). If your brand currently has a relationship with Amazon, furthering your reach with Amazon Marketplace Ads is an efficient way to get your products in front of prospective buyers at the most relevant moments.

Why advertise on Amazon?

There are a number of reasons Amazon may make sense to enhance your existing paid search efforts.

Less competition
For e-commerce brands, Amazon Marketplace provides a great opportunity to grow revenue and expand your search initiatives. Since there are barriers to entry before launching ads on Amazon (most significantly, you must have an e-commerce relationship with the site, including an integrated fulfillment capability), the market is not yet saturated, as there are fewer competitors in the auctions.

Greater return on non-branded keywords
Additionally, Amazon ads make non-branded keyword tactics viable for a lot of brands. If the return on non-branded keywords is too low on the major search engines, Amazon Marketplace could provide you with a way to test non-branded search campaigns on a platform with less competition. Since you are able to bid on either keywords, items, or customer interest, it also offers different targeting capabilities than traditional search engines.

Opportunity to expand and test keywords
In addition to its unique targeting capabilities, Amazon supplies a great opportunity for retailers to expand tactics that are performing well and re-test tactics that did not prove valuable on other search engines. Since conversion rates and intent are noticeably different on Amazon, this may mean bidding on competitor terms or seeing even greater results from existing keywords.

We recently helped a major retailer launch its first Amazon Marketplace search campaign. In a test with branded and non-branded keywords, we saw an ROAS below $1.00 on leading search engines, but a return of $2.66 on Amazon. While certain keywords did not make sense for the brand to target on Google, Amazon provided an opportunity to reach customers during their moments of intent and the client saw a significant return.

What does Amazon offer in terms of advertising?

Currently, Amazon offers three types of ads that support various targeting goals and budgets. These are outlined below:

Sponsored Products: These are keyword-targeted ads that show up below search results. Brands choose relevant keywords that shoppers might search for to purchase a product on Amazon.com. The ads look like smaller versions of existing product listings and include product details, price, and customer reviews. Along with Headline Search Ads, Sponsored Products are most effective for ROAS and revenue-related goals due to their high visibility.



Headline Search Ads: Headline ads appear above search results and include a custom text headline. Like Sponsored Product Ads, Headline Search Ads include relevant keywords for which Amazon customers may be searching.


Product Display Ads: These appear on a related product detail page. For instance, if a customer is searching for a smartphone and clicks on a page, Product Display Ads would appear on this page, providing users with other, similar smartphones. With this type of ad, you can target complementary or competitive product detail pages. You can also take a consumer interest-based approach and target a shopper interest category to reach a broader audience. Product Display Ads are effective if you are looking to increase traffic; however, the return is not as high, nor is the volume.


As you refine your search strategy for 2017, take a comprehensive approach that considers non-traditional platforms. While search engines are still a vital and valuable part of a successful search program, platforms like Amazon Marketplace can help expand your reach and create additional opportunities to reach your customers at the moments that matter.

For more details, reach out to Rise.

01/17/2017 at 02:54