Sponsored Display Ads: The Definitive Guide to Amazon Advertising (2024 Update)

Rather than targeting keywords as you do with Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products, Sponsored Display has targeting based on audiences. There are three basic types of remarketing audiences with Sponsored Display ads: views, searches, and purchases. Views remarketing, the newest of the three, allows you to target people who have viewed your products in the past 30 days, but have not purchased from you. You can also target people who have viewed your product detail pages that have specific criteria, like star rating, brand, etc.

Searches remarketing gives you the ability to target people who have searched for keywords related to your product but haven’t specifically seen your product. Rather than the usual CPC, the bidding is based on CPM, or cost per 1,000 impressions. Searches targeting gives you the potential to drive your ACOS insanely low because it counts view-through orders. This means that if someone views your ad and then purchases the product later, that counts toward your sales numbers. Purchases remarketing targets people who have purchased from you in the past. Bidding here is also based on CPM. This is most suited for consumable products and while it has the smallest audience by far, it’s a great tool for increasing your customer lifetime value.

When you’re building your searches or purchases audience in the Sponsored Display Ads interface, Amazon gives you estimates on how many impressions and how much reach you’ll get based on your bid. Where it gets really interesting is how you can fine-tune these to create custom audiences. For example, you can use purchase remarketing to target people who have bought a specific product from you and advertise a complementary product. You can also use view remarketing and hone in on a specific category.

Plus, you pick which of your products are included in your remarketing efforts.