In the ever-evolving landscape of Amazon Advertising, it’s important to stay on top of any new changes coming through. The latest changes have been the use of expanded brand and product targeting in Amazon PPC, as well as broad match campaigns continuing to pull in irrelevant traffic. Let’s go through each of these new targeting types, as well as a strategy to help rein in your broad matches.
Expanded Brand Targeting Definition and Use Cases
Expanded Brand targeting is available for Sponsored Brand and Sponsored Brand Video only. When making new Sponsored Brand campaigns, these two expanded targets are added to your keyword targets by default:
The “Theme” match type, “Keywords related to your brand,” is where Amazon determines which keywords are related to your brand that shoppers would use to find your brand. Similarly, the “Keywords related to your landing pages” theme is when Amazon determines which keywords are more likely to show up in searches that lead customers to your product pages.
These themes are entirely optional. You can remove them simply by clicking on the “x” next to them. If you decide to keep one or both of these themes, you can adjust the bids on them as with any other keyword target.
Testing out new features in Amazon Advertising can lead to discoveries of what works for your brand and in the case of these expanded targets, can also help with keyword research. Since this is still in beta, keep a close eye on campaigns using these themes to make sure traffic is relevant, and spend is at normal ranges.
Expanded Product Targeting Definition and Use Cases
If you’re not using product targeting in your Sponsored Product ads now, it could very well be a missed opportunity. Not using advanced targeting techniques, such as product targeting, is one of the main pitfalls in Amazon Advertising.
Product targeting is where an advertiser can target a specific product ASIN or group of ASINs, regardless of whether or not they are your ASINs or those of your competitors. This type of targeting is helpful in both brand defense and offense.
According to Amazon, “Expanded product targeting helps you discover additional products related to the items you’re already targeting.” Expanded product targeting is when Amazon not only targets the product ASIN you chose but also advertises against other products the algorithm deems to be closely related to your target. Similar to automatic targeted campaigns, this can include products shoppers engage with that are related to the original product, such as complements and substitutes to the target ASIN.
When you’re creating a Sponsored Product ad and choose product targeting, you have the option of adding individual products. This is where you’ll see the expanded product targeting type. The “Expanded” box is checked by default going forward. If you would rather only target the exact ASIN you chose, simply click the “Exact” box and make sure the “Expanded” box is unticked.
It’s important to note that Amazon updates what they determine to be expanded products daily, making it crucial to monitor the performance of expanded product targeting. If you’re seeing certain products coming into your searches for these ads with the expanded targeting, you can add those ASINs as negative matches at the ad group level to refine the ad.
Modified Broad Match Keyword Targeting Definition and Use Cases
Broad matches continue to be an important yet frustrating part of Amazon Advertising. JumpFly’s Amazon Account Manager Shannon O’Connell took a deep dive into quarterly trends of ad spend and ad sales across broad, phrase, and match types, which further illustrates that utilizing negative match keywords in broad match campaigns is an important safeguard.
Another safeguard to use is modified broad match targeting. This is not a button or box you can click or tick within the Amazon Advertising console, but it is something that you can add manually to your broad match keywords.
When you’re adding your broad match keywords to your ads, you can put a plus sign in front of the words or phrases you’re using.
This ensures that you’re still casting a wider net with broad match while keeping more relevant customer searches triggering your ad. You can format this depending on the keywords you’re using. Keep in mind that the rule is that any words that follow after the plus sign must be in the customer’s search or incredibly close to the customer’s query for your ad to show up.
For example, you want to cast a wide net for a new product you’re launching, such as a pink eraser:
- If this is formatted as “+pink+eraser,” both the words “pink” and “eraser” would need to be in a shopper’s search query for your ad to show up.
- If this is formatted as “pink+eraser,” “eraser” would need to be in your customer’s search query, but not necessarily “pink”.
Modified broad match keywords, plus being diligent and proactive in adding negative keywords to such campaigns will help refine your ads and keep less relevant searches out while still reaping the benefits of broad match types.
Whether you’ve noticed that your ads are dead in the water and they need invigoration, or you want to take advantage of all the match types available to you, keep these expanded and modified targeting and match types in mind!
