Amazon broadly has three different types of ads for brands or sellers, headline search ads, sponsored ads, and display ads (as shown above). All of these advertising options are Pay Per Click (PPC) so you only need to pay when someone clicks on your ad.

Earlier, Amazon Sponsored Ads only used to be shown on Amazon properties and users used to be targeted within those properties. However, from May 2018, Amazon introduced Sponsored Ads on off-Amazon properties too. So, you will see an Amazon Sponsored Ad of your product on Instagram and other web properties too. Typical placement of sponsored ads are shown below.

How does Sponsored Product Ads retargeting work?

Your Sponsored Ads automatic campaigns will automatically be activated for off-Amazon retargeting, and your SP ads will be displayed on both Amazon and 3P external sites. The ad format will remain unchanged and your ads will continue to link to the product listing page. Pay-per-click, the auction system, sales attribution, and billing will remain the same. The important variable is – for both on and off-Amazon retargeting, Amazon will also use your same CPC bid for now.

The ability for sellers to extend the reach of their SP ads to off-Amazon sites is a very interesting addition to Sponsored Products. However, how will this change affect the overall PPC ad sales of Amazon is yet to be seen.

No clear data for advertisers on keywords and targeting

Unlike earlier, advertisers now cannot check the keywords for which the impression was delivered. Earlier, Amazon used to provide these keywords in search term report under ‘Advertising Reports’. However, this support is now removed and therefore advertisers cannot know for which keyword the ad is delivered.

Also, the reliance on Amazon’s automatic retargeting means you do not have direct control over where your SP ads will (or will not) appear in the off-Amazon network. The lack of ad display control can be risky for advertisers and will require testing over time to compare the performance of on-Amazon and off-Amazon advertising sales.

The effectiveness of Amazon’s new retargeting feature will also depend on whether Amazon will introduce further campaign retargeting capabilities (i.e. individualized CPC bids for off-Amazon ads), and if they will extend the new feature to PPC manual campaigns.

Product Display Ads continue to be the same…

Product display ads are displayed as related products on detail pages, below bullet points of products and on sidebars.

Hope this is useful, thank you!