1. Sponsored Display Video Creative

Sponsored Display is now being enhanced with video capabilities! Before, video creatives were only available for Sponsored Brand campaigns. These types of campaigns tend to perform really well as videos are an engaging and visual way of showcasing a product and growing brand awareness. 

This feature is available for audience targeting which allows brands to use video creatives on Sponsored Display Remarketing campaigns reaching audiences that viewed or purchased specific products both on and off Amazon, as well as for awareness and consideration campaigns.

The creative can be customised with a logo and a headline to further highlight specific features and benefits, and connect with the audience.

Why we love it: It empowers brands to showcase products in an immersive way with video capabilities. It’s too early to call the data, but we are very confident they will perform well based on our experience with SB Video.

2. Sponsored Products campaigns with presets

This new feature allows for quick setup of campaigns by giving you the option to preset campaign settings and is currently available for newly launched ASINs from the last 90 days.

Sponsored Product campaigns with presets take into account current performance as well as other campaign data in order to recommend ASINs showing potential to be advertised. 

It also recommends bids and budgets. Advertisers also receive estimated performance data such as impressions, clicks, and conversions for each campaign.

Why we love it: SP Presets could be a great way for inexperienced advertisers to get started. When starting to work with a new brand, we create a priority ASIN list in order to prioritise campaign setup for ASINs and product lines that are showing the biggest potential. We take into account metrics like overall revenue and seasonality.

3. Amazon Marketing Stream (beta) expansion

Good news! This used to be only available in the US but is now available in all countries that are supported by Amazon Ads API, except for India.

Amazon Marketing Stream offers near real-time metrics via a push-based model that sends a message (vs a pull-based model, where you need to pull data from Amazon Ads API).

The metrics include targeting expression performance by placement, and budget consumption messages.

There are a couple of reasons why this is beneficial:

• Bids and budgets can be adjusted based on real-time performance metrics.
• Brands can analyse click and conversion performance during the day. 

So, if a campaign receives many clicks in the morning but the conversion rate is low, the campaign might be overspending and run out of budget. By adjusting bids this Brand could bid lower in the morning and higher in the evening when the conversion rate is higher in order to optimise spending. 

Why we love it: It will take optimisation possibilities to a whole new level. Near real-time metrics being pushed to an advertiser will allow them to create in-house solutions in order to utilise and act on the data.

4. Expanded product targeting for Sponsored Products

For example, if the individual product target is a coffee maker, enabling expanded targeting may include the targeting of substitute products like other coffee makers, complementary products like coffee filters or coffee beans, and other items that are frequently viewed and purchased along with the coffee maker. 

To enable this, tick the “Expanded” check box.

Why we love it: Expanded product targeting is a more advanced strategy to complement the “usual” targeting. At Unicorn, we perform extensive competitor research and want to target specifically those competitors that we identified.

Expanded targeting is a great tool to complement this research, but we wouldn’t recommend advertisers rely exclusively on this feature without a strong optimisation process as it might lead to overspending and reduce ROAS performance.

5. Performance recommendations for Sponsored Products 

This feature helps advertisers troubleshoot campaigns as it is running in the background! It provides you with custom recommendations based on performance and gives you custom reports on how to fix them. 

It also includes additional information such as learning resources.

Why we love it:  Performance recommendations are useful to complement campaign optimisation and save time spent on troubleshooting. However, we would recommend exercising caution, as with all Amazon recommendations, to ensure that any recommendations are aligned with your brand objectives. At Unicorn, each brand has a dedicated Ads Manager who oversees your account and ensures exceptional performance in accordance with your specific goals. For brands managing ads in-house, this could be a useful tool.

Need some help navigating the new features and how you can best optimise them? We can help!