Advertising on Amazon: who, how and where.

By now, no one doubts Amazon's potential as a product showcase. Small businesses and large companies alike have jumped into offering their sales arsenal through the e-commerce giant, transforming the retail world into one big marketplace where everyone has something to offer and, more importantly, someone to sell it to.

However, Amazon, far from being a simple sales portal, is working to become the ideal place to present your brand or products through advertising solutions for all tastes and budgets.

But first of all, why invest in advertising on Amazon? Here we give way to the data, which speaks for itself:

• In 2019, the revenue generated by online commerce in Spain was close to 16 billion euros, and according to predictions, the figure will rise to 23.7 million euros by 2023 (source: Statista, September 2019).
• For its part, Amazon has more than 100 million Prime subscribers worldwide, which indicates the interest and success of this shopping space.
• According to a study by Semrush, Amazon is positioned as the leader of e-commerce platforms in Spain, with 68.6M monthly visits, followed by El Corte Inglés (18.9M visits) and AliExpress (12.9M).
• The majority of its users are between 25 and 34 years of age, a segment of the population that is tempting due to its knowledge of technology combined with its economic capacity.

With this data, it is clear: either you are on Amazon, or you lose the opportunity to be seen by millions of consumers.

Great, but what kind of advertising can you do on Amazon?

Amazon Advertising offers several types of advertisements. They can be used in isolation or together to achieve and promote a variety of advertising objectives.

1. Sponsored Products:

This model is only available for Vendors and Sellers.
It consists of promoting products sold within Amazon so that they stand out in users' searches and on detail pages.
They are bid on a CPC (Cost Per Click) basis.
They are created around keywords (in the case of manual campaigns) or specific segments (in automatic campaigns). In this case there are four types of segments:

Substitute products: your product will be shown to buyers looking for similar products.
Close match: for users searching for keywords that may match your product.
Distant match: for those who enter keywords slightly related to what you offer.
Complementary match: for those who see complementary products to yours. For example, if someone is looking for a sofa, they may be hit with cushions.

Sponsored Products is a perfect format to impact the user during the purchase process, reaching customers looking for related products and standing out from the competition.
It also allows advertisers to choose the different types of match, daily budget and duration.

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2. Sponsored Brand:

Like Sponsored Products, this format is only accessible to brands selling within the Amazon environment.
It includes the brand logo, a title and a carousel with up to three products.
When customers click on the logo or title, Amazon redirects them to a page customised by the brand, similar to a landing page. If they click on a product, they will be redirected to the product detail page. It is therefore a useful option to increase both brand recognition and direct sales.

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3. Sponsored Display:

It is still in Beta and only available for Vendors, although it is expected to be opened to Sellers soon.
Allows segmentation by audiences, products or specific categories.
As in the rest of Sponsored's solutions, the bidding is per click.

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4. Display Ads:

They are similar to the banners that can be seen on any website and allow different formats and locations.
This type of ad is available for brands that do not sell their products on Amazon and redirect to their own website, so they are perfect for promoting brand awareness and generating traffic.
Display Ads allows you to select from the wide variety of audiences offered by Amazon (demographics, by interests, remarketing records...) which allows a comprehensive study of users that helps to refine the strategy.
This type of ad is distributed through Amazon DSP so it is paid by CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) through programmatic buying. Amazon DSP offers its own site and app as well as third party sites and ad exchanges.

5. Video ads:

It offers both in-streaming and out-streaming possibilities.
Video ads reach targeted audiences so the quality of the impact goes beyond what a TV ad can offer and allows to show the brand message or the utilities of a product.

The rest of the features are very similar to those offered by the Display format.

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We know that all this information may seem like an amalgam of formats, bids and audiences. However, we are convinced of one thing: whether or not you sell on Amazon, its advertising ecosystem will be your greatest ally in the digital environment.
Disavowing it is like putting gates on the sea, so it's better to surf on its waves.