Amazon Ads Audience Bid Boosting: Here’s How to Use it?

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This year’s Amazon Ads Unboxed event introduced a range of exciting features, from a revamped DSP console to the ability to leverage AMC audiences in Sponsored Ads. Among these, one standout feature is AMC Audience Bid Boosting for Sponsored Product and Sponsored Brands ads. When used effectively, this feature can transform how advertisers optimize their campaigns, leading to better ROI.

In this blog, I will outline what the AMC Audience Bid Boosting feature is, how it can be utilized to its full potential, and how to implement it strategically for better advertising outcomes.

What is Amazon Ads AMC Audience Bid Boosting for Sponsored Ads?

In simple terms, Amazon Ads Audience Bid Boosting works like adding a special modifier to your Sponsored Ads campaigns. Imagine it as a Placement Modifier where you assign a percentage increase for visibility in three placements. Here, you’re doing something similar by adding a bid boost for specific audiences created in Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) and linking them to your campaigns. You can adjust these bids anytime based on performance.

Key Features

Audience Segmentation

Advertisers can:

  • Create targeted audience groups, such as first-time buyers or viewers of streaming TV ads.
  • Use Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) to customize and refine these audience segments, allowing for more tailored marketing efforts and increasing conversion chances.

Bid Optimization

Through bid optimization, advertisers can:

  • Adjust bids for specific audience segments.
  • Focusing on key audience groups enhances the effectiveness of ad campaigns and drives better product visibility and increases potential conversions.

Sponsored Ads Compatibility

This feature works with:

  • Both Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products ads.
  • Seamlessly integrates into existing campaign setups to enhance targeting precision.

Limitations

Amazon has launched the capability to bid boost, but we cannot specifically target these audiences; targeting is only applicable in Amazon DSP ads and Sponsored Display Campaign (launched in unBoxed as well).

Additionally, Amazon has not introduced the ability to negate or exclude audiences in Sponsored Ads; this is only possible in Amazon DSP.

However, the feature is still quite useful, as you can increase bids on various audience cohorts through Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands, thereby enhancing your chances of appearing on the results page for users who fall within these audience groups.

Another limitation of this feature is that we can only add one Amazon Marketing Cloud custom audience to a campaign, which limits our ability to target and test different audiences within a single campaign. I hope that, moving forward, Amazon will address this issue.

How to use the Sponsored Ads Bid Boost Feature?

Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) provides valuable insights that can help you refine your ad strategies. For example, if you sell jewelry, you might discover that users searching for “men’s stud earrings” have a high Add to Cart rate. You can create an AMC audience targeting those who added these items to their carts but didn’t complete their purchase, and even see what items they added to their carts.

With this information, you can set up a Sponsored Products ad campaign using an Exact Match targeting “men’s stud earrings” and apply the AMC audience for a bid boost. Additionally, you could discount these products, making your ads more appealing to price-sensitive shoppers, which can help improve your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

You can also create various audiences, such as targeting shoppers who viewed your product detail page multiple times through Sponsored Ads but didn’t convert, or those who are new to your brand or resemble your current customers. The key is not the type of the audience but the relevance of your ads, ensuring they appear at the right time.

Another example could be if you discover that conversion rates are higher when users see your Sponsored Product ad after a DSP ad. You can create a custom audience of people who saw your DSP ad but didn’t convert, then use that audience to bid boost your Sponsored Product ads for specific categories or products.

NOTE: Amazon has yet to introduce the ability to include these audiences directly through the Ad Console, and currently, they can only be linked via the API.

How Sponsored Ads Bid Boosting can be Implemented through API?

Advertisers can access created audiences in Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) using the Targetable Entities API for audience discovery.

In Sponsored Products Campaigns:

  • Use the Audience ID with the SP V3 Campaigns API to create campaigns.
  • Set and adjust bids for those audiences.

For Sponsored Brands:

  • Use the SB Campaign API to create and manage campaigns.
  • Adjust bids and audiences similarly to Sponsored Products.

How to Track the Performance of These Audiences?

Currently, Amazon hasn’t launched any features in the API or the Ad Console for tracking this. Advertisers can track performance using a new field in the AMC sponsored_ads_traffic table. By examining the matched_behavior_segment_ids column, they can identify when Amazon applied a bid increase.

In Which Countries Is It Accessible?

This feature is available to Sponsored Ads advertisers with active Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) accounts and is accessible in various regions, including North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific.

Ready to get started with Adbrew?

Use Adbrew's AMC dashboard to view new-to-brand metrics for all your sponsored and DSP campaigns with ease.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Yes, in this year’s Unboxed event, Amazon introduced the integration of AMC audiences in Sponsored Display ad types as well. Since Sponsored Display campaigns already operate on an audience-targeting model, you simply need to create custom audiences through AMC and target them when you run Sponsored Display ads, similar to how you would with Views or Purchase Remarketing.

Amazon has introduced around 18 new features at this year’s Unboxed event, such as:

  • Amazon DSP Performance+ Beta
  • Interactive Ads Expansion to Streaming TV Campaigns.
  • New Amazon AI Creative Studio.
  • And many more.

To know more about the launches, you can visit the AMC Unboxed Updates.

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