Amazon: advertising challenges

Amazon, the leading purchase channel today continually enhances its advertising options. But despite its fast growth and wealth of ad choices, per a recent study by Stepmiles Inc, nearly half of the Amazon retailers indicated that they were struggling with selecting the most effective ad options for their brands and leveraging audience data. In addition, advertisers were lacking confidence when it came to best practice implementation.

To address these challenges, brands need to focus on how the customer journey evolves across the Amazon platform, as well as on the other channels that are part of the journey. Moreover, they must keep an eye on the top performance points along the path. After all, what makes the giant the most appealing online shopping platform today is its ability to target all aspects of the customer journey: from product research to purchase. So, being there, with the right message and CTA (“call to action”), at every step is vital.

Notably, Amazon offers full transparency into its conversion data. These insights are highly advantageous for reaching the right audience and hitting the target sales goals. Knowing what happens with your ads, whether they are converting into a purchase of the advertised product, or of a related one, is very important part of the advertising decision-making.

Certainly, putting audience data to work and upping their Amazon game is in essence a matter of deep understanding and experience and brands are in the process of investing more and more into additional team training and guidance of specialized consultants contributing to the transfer of knowledge.

While many advertisers found it challenging to leverage audience data and are at the stage of implementing solutions, per the Stepmiles research, a significant number of brands’ advertising teams are already making good use of ad formats to increase brand awareness and sales with Amazon DSP (43%) and Sponsored Products (40%) – the 2 prevalent options.