What is Amazon Demand Side Platform (DSP)?

Almost everyone from Amazon world knows about PPC (pay-per-click) advertising on the platform. But today I will cover another option you have as a seller to advertise your products - Amazon Demand Side Platform. It allows you to run on & off Amazon ads to drive customers back to Amazon or your website. You can see this as your normal Display Ads but on steroids. 

Amazon Demand-side platform is basically an advertising platform that lets you buy display and video ad placements on both on and off Amazon. 

On the left side you can see standart amazon ad console. These are campaigns most of the sellers are running. They are CPC (cost per click) based.

On the right side you can see Amazon DSP (demand-side platform) which is based on CPM (cost per thousand impressions). 

Where can you see DSP ads? 

They range in shapes and sizes, displaying products and services across the web. 

You can use Amazon DSP to reach audience on:

Amazon DSP used to be available only through Amazon managed services, which meant that it’s someone from Amazon who managed DSP ads for brands. You had to spend a minimum of 35.000 EUR over a three month period to be accepted for running DSP ads.

However, Amazon has changed their strategy regarding DSP, and now it’s available on a self-service basis, where agencies can set up and manage ads for clients without any limits in budget. You can start running DSP ads even with 500 EUR.

What can DSP Do?  

DSP uses a programmatic system to serve your display and video ads based on your desired goal. Goals are broken down based on where in the purchase process you are trying to reach customers. In addition you can segment those customers by different audiences:

• Audience Insights - Leverage Amazon data to learn more about your brands audience and interactions with your products on Amazon.
• Amazon Audiences - Audiences around behavioural, contextual or demographics data built direct from shopping behaviours of billions of shopper interactions on Amazon.

Differences between DSP and Sponsored Display Ads

“Sponsored Display Ads Campaigns are self-service, no minimum, low barrier to entry, and easy to build. The ease of use and simplicity of these campaigns are both their strength and their downfall.

Amazon DSP ads, on the other hand, give us the control and the precision that we are missing from Sponsored Ad Display.

With DSP we can decide who, what, where, and when you serve ads.Making DSP unlike any other marketing channels available on Amazon.“

A beloved function of this tool is the ability to serve relevant Amazon DSP ads to our relevant audiences. To better understand why this is so powerful, here are some examples of audiences we can leverage to drive additional sales & nudge new-to-brand customers into our customer funnel.

• Create audiences based on Amazon shopping interactions.
• Create audiences based on pixel traffic.
• Create an advertiser hashed audience.
• Create a lookalike audience.
• Target pre-built In-market and lifestyle audiences created by Amazon based on shopping behaviour.

Types of DSP Ads:

• Desktop display ads. 
• Mobile banner ads.
• Mobile interstitial (full-screen) ads.
• Image and text ads.
• In-stream video ads.

eCommerce display creatives

Amazon Advertising’s eCommerce display creatives automatically optimize ad formats to meet a campaign’s goal. Amazon Advertising offers two types of eCommerce display creatives: Dynamic eCommerce and Responsive eCommerce creatives, and each of them support a variety of rotational ad formats.

The variation of eCommerce creative services will be optimized via machine learning and selected line item goal type, such as click-through rate, purchase rate, or detail page view rate. Both creatives utilize the primary product image found on the Amazon detail page. The dynamic eCommerce creative can include a custom background (not available in Responsive eCommerce creative).

Amazon Advertising optimizes between various creative elements to drive the best performance for your e-commerce creative, and the best experience for shoppers. At times, Amazon Advertising may test variations of the eCommerce elements, copy, layout and design. 

Amazon DSP is best for brands who want to:

• Expand their customer reach beyond core PPC Amazon advertising.
• Reach custom audiences built from Amazon data.
• Advertise to customers both on and off Amazon.
• Utilize their existing customer base to reach similar Amazon audiences.
• Be ahead of the competition in reach and frequency. 

Conclusion

Amazon PPC should remain your core advertising channel. It’s still the most effective because it’s direct and there’s fewer steps to get shoppers to purchase.

But Amazon DSP makes a great addition to brands that already having a healthy ad budget and are looking to continue scaling and maintaining year-on-year growth by harnesses the power of Amazon’s first-party shopper data to attract new customers, and retain existing customers, from the vast world of shoppers that lie beyond the walls of Amazon’s marketplaces on the rest of the internet.

We at INNELS consider Amazon DSP as the next level in advertising your catalog of Amazon products.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about Amazon DSP or would like some help with growing your business on Amazon! 

Email: info@innels.com