This blog post covers Amazon Ads unBoxed 2022 Conference Key Learnings. Account Managers from Goat Consulting attended the 2022 Amazon Advertising UnBoxed conference to learn about new Amazon Ads products and insights into Amazon Advertising strategies. The conference covered some actionable best practices and different techniques to try to reach specific goals like driving awareness, sales, and loyalty. Improved ad strategies on Amazon can better match sellers to appropriate customers who have a need for their product, leading to more sales. Failing to effectively Advertise on Amazon can result in losing out on sales from key customer groups. This Blog post outlines some of our key takeaways from the conference, new Amazon Ads products, and recommendations for how your business can use these strategies to drive sales on Amazon. We will discuss how to stay involved with special shopping events to drive sales in 2023, how to continue to leverage and improve your Sponsored Brands Video Ads, and how to use Sponsored Display Amazon Audiences to reach relevant customers and achieve goals for selling on Amazon.
Stay Involved with Special Shopping Events to Drive Sales in 2023
A key learning from unBoxed 2022 is to stay involved in key shopping events. A big consideration when it comes to your annual Advertising Strategy is what e-commerce event and holidays you will participate in. Following Black Friday and Cyber Monday, there are several other shopping events in the year you will want to consider participating in. Your Amazon Ads can benefit from increased traffic on Amazon during these days and should consider running sales or coupons to make the most of your ad impressions. Shopping events include New Years, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Prime Day, back-to-school, and more. It is important to understand your customer and seasonal trends and specific purchasing events. If you sell items that are commonly gifted, be sure to participate in shopping events before the holidays. If you sell backpacks, sports equipment, and classroom supplies, ensure you focus on back-to-school. Fitness and health items are commonly most popular during the New Year. At unBoxed 2022, Amazon provided a variety of insights on these shopping events that can help inform your strategy going into 2023:
73% of Amazon Sellers who participate in 4+ unique shopping events in a year while paired with ad solutions saw a year-over-year growth in revenue on Amazon.
Participating in sales during Black Friday, Holidays, New Year, Mother’s Day, etc., and pairing that with an Amazon Ad campaign leads to increased brand awareness and performance.
According to Amazon, 71% of consumers switched brands at least one time in the past year so building customer awareness and loyalty for brands is crucial.
A big factor to success during sales events is updating your Amazon Store. Sellers who refresh their Amazon Store and use new imagery during these shopping events also saw better results. Amazon recommends updating your storefront at least once every 3 months to keep customers engaged.
Based on these takeaways, we recommend that you offer a sale or coupon during shopping events (New Years, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Prime Day, back-to-school, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, other Holidays) and update your Amazon Store frequently to highlight new products or event-specific content. During these shopping event days, ensure you are running your Amazon Sponsored Brands campaigns consistently to promote your products and Store.
Amazon Will be Further Exploring Interactive Videos in the New Year
One of the most exciting things that Amazon shared during the unBoxed Ad Conference was the rise of interactive Ads. Amazon is working on a new product to provide more Advertising solutions that include interactive features for potential customers to get involved with. This includes audio ads, where customers can ask Alexa to add the item to their cart, visual ads that include a scannable QR code that leads to the product page or add to cart, and clickable ads that allow customers to interact with a feature of the Ad or select “Add to Cart”. Amazon stressed the importance of meeting customers at the right moment and ensuring that you are catering your content to match where customers are viewing it. If you are advertising on Amazon.com, consider keeping your ads more educational, product-focused and informative. Whereas if you use DSP to serve ads on twitch, IMBd or other platforms, consider changing your ads to be more game-focused, theatrical, or reflective of that platform. Below is some information Amazon provided on how to make the most of these interactive ads once available.
Currently in beta, Amazon Ads is exploring offering interactive videos. Providing ads that meet consumers in the moment and include a clickable link, scannable code, Alexa prompt or other interactive features will take advertising to the next level
The Average US consumer spend 103 minutes per day watching videos on devices, and 88% of consumers say they were more convinced to buy after watching a brand’s video, meaning video creative continues to be imperative
Amazon Ad solutions has made video ads more accessible by simplifying the video builder and by offering cost-effective creative services for sellers.
When considering your video style, you want to meet customers it the moment, meaning your video should reflect the style of the platform it is on. When advertising on Twitch, sellers saw better success with video game-related content. When advertising on Amazon with Sponsored Brands, Amazon recommends keeping it educational and product-focused, and ensuring you are optimized for a sound-off environment (no voiceover).
While interactive ads are still in beta, we recommend ensuring your video ads are up to date in the meantime so you can reach customers in the moment. For Sponsored Brands Videos Ads, we recommend keeping it educational and product-focused and optimizing your ad for a sound-off environment, ensuring there is no voice-over or necessary audio. Since 88% of consumers say they were more convinced to buy after watching a brand’s video, we also recommend adding a Product Video to your detail page. If you do not have short product videos available, you can create them with Amazon Sponsored Brands Video Builder. If you need help creating a video on Amazon, reach out to Goat Consulting to learn how we can help.
Achieve Omnichannel Goals Using Sponsored Display Amazon Audiences to Reach Relevant Customers
Amazon ads continue to expand its audience targeting features. At unBoxed, they recommended taking an omnichannel approach when it comes to eCommerce advertising and ensuring all of your channels are working toward the same overarching goal. For many, that goal is reaching new and relevant customers with your ads. Omnichannel metrics for on and off-Amazon purchases were just launched in DSP, which allows those users to see how all their ad channels are working together. One way to achieve this goal and reach more relevant groups is through Amazon audiences. This Sponsored Display ad campaign serves on and off Amazon, and can help you reach relevant groups, can drive by the outcome, and can predict shopping intent with a variety of attributes. Amazon Sponsored Display Audience targeting now includes 6 different segments: views remarketing, purchase remarketing, interested, lifestyle, in-market, and life events. Amazon outlines these audiences as:
Views remarketing: audiences who have viewed your products or similar products, or within a chosen category in the past 30 days, but have not purchased your products.
Purchase remarketing: audiences that purchased products similar to your products, or within a chosen category in the past 30 days.
Interests: Interest-based audiences allow you to raise awareness with customers based on what they browse and buy. Examples include “interested in hockey” and “interested in interior design”.
Lifestyle: Lifestyle audiences reflect a variety of aggregated shopping & viewing interactions, including shopping on Amazon, browsing on IMDb, and streaming on Prime Video or Twitch. These interactions reflect shared preferences and map to lifestyle segments such as “foodies”, “sports enthusiasts”, “tech enthusiasts”, and more.
In-market: In-market audiences allow you to engage audiences who are “in-the-aisle” and have been recently shopping for products in a given category.
Life events: Life events audiences give you the opportunity to serve ads around life moments, such as “traveling soon” for shoppers going on vacation.
In Beta, Amazon also has launched contextual targeting. This will allow you to automatically target additional groups or products based on a certain contextual product or group. Exploring these Amazon Audiences in Sponsored Display can help you achieve the omnichannel goal of increasing awareness and reaching new, relevant customers for your products.
Goat Consulting team at the Amazon Ads unBoxed 2022 Conference
Amazon Ads unBoxed 2022 Key Learnings Conclusion
At Amazon Ads unBoxed 2022, we were able to hear firsthand from Amazon Ads leadership and customers about new products and actionable insights to apply to advertising strategy. Not only did we dive into improvements to ad solutions we already use today, we also learned new techniques to help grow your brand and business. Some key learnings from this conference include staying involved with shopping events through an updated Storefront, continuing to leverage Videos Ads while meeting customers in the moment, and achieving the omnichannel goal of reaching new addressable customers through SD Amazon Audiences. Quoted from the unBoxed 2022 Conference:
“Standing still is moving backwards”
Failing to stay up to date on Amazon Ad strategy can result in your Brand and products falling behind. Improving your Amazon Ads strategy improves the experience of customers on Amazon, by providing a more tailored and direct ad experience. In turn, reaching more relevant customers will improve sales. If you are looking for help with your Amazon Ad strategy, please reach out to us with the button below.