Amazon's New Sponsored Products Bid Optimization Features

Amazon has recently released three new bidding and reporting features into Sponsored Products that will help advertisers to see insights to campaign performance along with enhancing bidding strategies based on ad placement within search results. With over 50% of product searches starting on Amazon, competition for visibility is fierce, and advertisers should make use of every tool available to stay ahead.

The new bidding and reporting features are:

• Dynamic Bidding – Automatic auction-time bid adjustments
• Placement Adjustments – Bid multipliers for ad locations or placements
• Placement Reporting – New tab available within each campaign

Dynamic Bidding

Dynamic bidding will allow Amazon to adjust your bid up or down in real time by 100% based on the likelihood of a conversion. There are 3 different forms of dynamic bidding.

1. Dynamic Bids – Down Only (Default Setting): Amazon will reduce bids in real time for clicks that may be less likely to convert to a sale. This bidding strategy will lower your set bid to the amount needed to win the placement if a conversion is likely. Where you lose control with this strategy is if you are trying to target terms that Amazon thinks you are less likely to convert on.
2. Dynamic Bids – Up & Down: Amazon will increase your bids in real time for clicks that may be more likely to convert to a sale, and also reduce them for clicks that may be less likely to convert to a sale. Your bids will not be increased more than 100% for placements at the top of the first page of search results, and not more than 50% for “rest of search” and product pages.
3. Fixed Bids: Amazon will use your exact bid for all opportunities and will not adjust your bids based on the likelihood of a conversion. By preventing the Amazon algorithm from dynamically changing bids for the keyword terms, this campaign strategy can be used to gain more product visibility.

Placement Adjustments

The placement adjustment now allows you to adjust your bids by placement for “top of search” and product pages. Bid+ was retired and replaced by a user input value. You can adjust bids from 0% to 900% on both product page and “top of search” placement. Previously using Bid+, you could increase the bid dynamically by 50% to capture the top of search placement.

Placement Reporting

Placement reporting provides performance data by “top of search,” “rest of search,” and product placement. Instead of downloading a report, an additional placements tab can be found in the campaign settings.

What Does All This Mean For Advertisers?

The new targeting features will give you a bigger and more detailed picture on ad performance concerning where your ads are showing up and what the performance metrics are for each placement. Advertisers can gain valuable insights into campaign performance by placement and use these metrics to adjust bids based on how their different campaigns are performing to maximize their Amazon marketing efforts.