What Are the Different Options Available with Sponsored Display Ads Audiences & Contextual Targeting?

Audiences – Views remarketing

When using views remarketing, sellers can retarget customers who have previously viewed their listings. Re-engaging with customers who have been viewing your products or similar products in your category are more likely to purchase than targeting “cold” traffic through keyword targeting methods using sponsored product or brands advertisements.

These retargeting ads can then be shown to customers both on and off Amazon to hopefully complete their purchase.

Audiences – Interests

This unique targeting option can reach audiences of customers who have in the past shown signs that they could be interested in your products through their interests, views and purchases. 

Putting it simply, Amazon will show your ads to consumers who have viewed products related to specific interests.

Contextual Targeting (Product Targeting)

Contextual Targeting (product targeting), different to audience targeting allows you to specifically target competitors ASINS and product categories in a similar way to sponsored product, product targeting and category targeting ads.

This option provided this ability to reach shoppers who are browsing your product or similar products and categories. You can target potential customers inside of your competitor’s listings by targeting their listing specifically or targeting the category of your product in which case Amazon will show your ad inside the listings of relevant products.

It can be a good idea to use this targeting option to use sponsored display contextual targeting (product targeting) to target your competitor’s listings who receive a lot of traffic to entice them to choose your offer instead of completing their purchase of a competitor’s product.

What are the Bidding Options Available with Sponsored Display?

One of the first choices you will have to make when setting up your sponsored display ad is what you would like your ad to optimise for which will also affect the way your ad is targeting to customers and the bidding strategy you use.

Within sponsored display advertisements there are 3 different bidding options to choose from.

Bids Optimised for Reach

This bidding option uses a vCPM cost type which means that you will place a bid for 1,000 viewable impressions. The objective of this bidding type as stated by Amazon is to drive awareness to your product by showing your ad to relevant audiences on and off of amazon to maximise reach.

Bids Optimised for Views

Unlike bids optimised for reach, the views optimisation uses a CPC cost type like sponsored product and brand ads. The objective here by Amazon is to drive higher page visits to your product by showing your ad to customers who are likely to click on it.

Optimise for Conversions

The conversions bidding option aims to maximise conversions by showing your ad to customers who are likely to purchase your product using a typical CPC cost type.

RJW Thoughts on Bidding Options

It is important to remember that the measurement for bids optimised by reach is viewable impressions is views and not conversions or purchases. Therefore, it is very difficult to trach any ROI on these ad types, and they will likely lead to high impressions but low sales.

Page views will likely get higher ad clicks than conversions but also often less conversions as they are optimised to target customers who often click through but do not complete purchases.

Therefore, typically here at RJW we find conversion ads to be the most effective at driving sales at low ACOS levels but do also use bids optimised for page views at lower bids to drive traffic from customers who have previously reviewed our products.

RJW Conclusion – Are Amazon Sponsored Display Ads Worth It?

In our opinion, YES!  Sponsored display ads give sellers the opportunity to target customers and audiences in ways that sponsored product and brand ads do not offer.

For brands that are achieving tens of thousands or millions of page views per year the ability to re-target customers who have not purchased your products or audiences that may be interest in your offers presents a huge opportunity that should be taken advantage of in a way that only sponsored display ads can offer.

Just like with sponsored brand ads, sponsored display ads are still relatively new with most sellers still not taking advantage of the benefits offered and the additional ad placements that can be achieved resulting in relatively cheap sponsored placements still being available.

But just like any campaign type, sponsored display ads are not a silver bullet and must be created and managed correctly to maximise their potential and play into their strengths.

Here is an example of how sponsored display ads have been working for RJW clients in 2022.