Introduction

Amazon Advertising is a powerful tool for businesses to showcase their products and reach millions of potential customers. Even today, the majority of Amazon advertising is lower funnel, and yields substantial returns for customers.  Managing Amazon ad campaigns manually can be time-consuming and prone to human error. This is where automation strategies come into play, allowing advertisers to streamline their campaigns, optimize performance and maximize their returns. In this post, we will evaluate automation of Amazon ads, explore the intricacies of automating Amazon ads, available automation techniques, tools and best practices to harness the full potential of this advertising platform.   

Understanding Amazon Advertising: 

Before getting into automation strategies, it's crucial to understand the basics of Amazon Advertising. Amazon offers several ad formats, including Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display ads, each serving different objectives and targeting options. 

1. Sponsored Products: These ads appear in search results and on product detail pages, driving traffic to individual product listings. Advertisers bid on keywords relevant to their products, the ads are triggered when customers search for those keywords. 

1. Sponsored Brands: Formerly known as Headline Search Ads, Sponsored Brands appear prominently at the top of search results. They feature a custom headline, logo and multiple products, allowing advertisers to showcase their brand and drive traffic to their Amazon store or specific product pages. 

2. Sponsored Display: These ads target audiences both on and off Amazon, displaying relevant products to shoppers based on their interests, browsing history and purchasing behavior.  

   
   

The Need for Automation: 

When it comes to Amazon Ad automation, there are different schools of thought. Each of them has a use case. Let’s look at those first:  

1. Manually operating through Amazon Ad console: Most ad managers are used to the Amazon Ad console UI and know their way around it. As a rule of thumb, ad console is a great option for advertising accounts spending less than $5K/month. For anything above that, it becomes difficult to take timely and bulk actions 

2. Rule/ formula-based tools: Rule based tools give sellers and agencies complete control to run ads in their own way. It means that the ad manager has to be aware of the situations that may arise and plan for them accordingly. That is why rule-based, or formula-based tools are usually great for intermediate to advanced sellers/ ad managers.  

   1. Ad automation tools: ad automation tools are those which allow you to change bids and budgets basis certain rules. They also help in automating keyword harvesting and negations helping you with spend efficiency. Pretty much 95% rule based automation tools are ad-automation tools. 

   2. Retail aware ad automation tools: Retail aware ad automation tools are ones that combine seller central/ vendor central data with advertising and allow you to run effective ads. Ex. They will allow you to pause ads when inventory is low OR avoid PPC cannibalization. Ad automation tool, atom11, is one of the only tools in the market that is retail aware.  

      
      

c. AI tools: To be honest, none of the PPC management tools in the market are AI tools at this time. AI is self-learning, which means that the tools should be able to understand the meaning of keywords that they are bidding on, the importance of each keyword and then take action. But the tools in the market are mostly automated-rule-based on certain parameters like target ACOS. These tools are best used for managing large SKU accounts (>500K ASINs).

Automation in any form, offers several benefits: 

1. It’s quicker: Automating routine tasks such as bid adjustments, keyword optimization and budget allocation frees up time for strategic decision-making and campaign analysis.

2. It’s better: Automation tools can analyze vast amounts of data quickly and make real-time adjustments to optimize campaign performance, leading to better results. 

3. It’s accurate: Human errors are inevitable in manual campaign management, but automation reduces the risk of mistakes by following predefined rules and algorithms. 

   
   

Automation Strategies:

Let's explore some key automation strategies for Amazon Advertising:  

1. Automated vs. Rule based Bidding: Effective bidding is critical to the success of Amazon ad campaigns, as it directly impacts ad placement and visibility. Automated bidding strategies leverage machine learning algorithms to adjust bids in real-time based on various factors such as keyword performance and cost per click. Rule based bidding automation takes into account parameters that ad managers want to consider when adjusting bids.   

   
   

2. Keyword and Search Term Optimization  Keywords are the backbone of Amazon Advertising and optimizing keyword targeting is essential for driving relevant traffic to your product listings. Automation can streamline the process of identifying high-performing keywords and eliminating underperforming ones. Key strategies include: Keyword Harvesting: Automated tools can analyze search term reports and identify new keywords based on actual user queries, expanding your keyword portfolio and uncovering new opportunities. Negative Keyword Management: Automatically add irrelevant or low-converting search terms as negative keywords to prevent your ads from appearing for irrelevant searches, thus saving ad spend and improving ROI.  

   
   

3. Creative Optimization  Compelling ad creatives are essential for capturing the attention of potential customers and driving clicks. Automation can help optimize ad creatives by testing different variations and identifying the most effective elements. Strategies include:  A/B Testing: Automatically rotate different ad creatives to determine which combinations of headlines, images and ad copy resonate best with your target audience. Creative Insights: Utilize AI-powered tools to analyze ad performance data and provide actionable insights for improving creatives, such as recommended changes to copy, imagery or call-to-action buttons.  Most of the ad tools do not focus on ad creative optimization. This is because 70% of all ad dollars are invested in Sponsored Product ads, which does not require any ad creatives.   

   
   

4. Budget Allocation and Campaign Management  Managing advertising budgets effectively is crucial for maximizing ROI and achieving campaign objectives. Automation can help optimize budget allocation across campaigns, ad groups and keywords to ensure optimal performance. Strategies include:  Rule-Based Budget Management: Set predefined rules to automatically adjust budgets based on performance metrics such as ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend), sales volume or ACoS. Campaign Structure Optimization: Automatically optimize campaign structure by grouping products with similar performance metrics together, making it easier to manage bids, budgets and targeting settings.  

   
   

Tools for Automation:

Several tools and platforms are available to streamline the process of automating Amazon ad campaigns. Here are some popular options:  

1. atom11: atom11 is the only retail aware amazon PPC software in the market today. Along with table stakes ad automation features like keyword harvesting, negation and bid automation, atom11 brings together retail data and analytics.   With the increasing cost of advertising, it is essential that ad spend is managed effectively. With atom11, you can combine inventory, organic rank and pricing data with ads. This not only helps in improving spend efficiency, but also total sales.   

   
   

   If you are looking to onboard to a PPC automation tool, feel free to check out atom11 demo.

   
   

   
   

   

2. Pacvue: Pacvue is one of the priciest tools in the market for ad automation. It’s rule based ad automation software enables you to set up any kind of rules that you want. It also employs machine learning algorithm for bidding optimization  

3. Perpetua: Perpetua is an automated tool to manage ads using target ACOS. It uses a different approach to manage ads – i.e goal-based approach. Instead of campaigns, you build goals on Perpetua. Goals are created on ASINs, and they automatically change bids on keywords, to match target ACOS provided by ad manager. However, their approach ends up overriding any changes that you make on Amazon ad console. Hence you are always at the mercy of the software to take action on advertising.   

4. Teikametrics: Teikametrics is an AI-powered platform that helps sellers and brands optimize their Amazon advertising campaigns. It offers features like automated keyword bidding, campaign optimization and competitive insights to maximize ROI and drive growth.  

5. Scale Insights: Built by 8 figure sellers themselves, scale insights is an effective rule-based software. You can set up any kind of rules on scale insights. However, there is a steep learning curve associated with it and little support available. Also scale insights limits its data availability to ads only.   How to select the right tool for your ad automation.

Criteria to select the right ad automation tools:

Following are 5 criteria that can help you finalize the right ad automation software for your needs:   

1. Basis Skill: For beginner ad managers, it may be great to stick to either ad console or AI based softwares. It will ensure that there is consistency in managing accounts and important actions are not missed due to human error.  

2. Basis level of Control: You need to assess whether you want convenience or control. While AI/ ML based tools give you convenience, Rule based, and formula-based tools give you control. More advanced ad managers usually require control over their software.  

3. Basis support requirement: You need to evaluate how much support you’d need from the software company you subscribe to. If you need initial or ongoing support, then ensure that it is available during the onboarding process. 

4. Basis specific requirement: This cannot be missed. Of course if there are specific features that you are looking for, then you’ll need to ensure that your software provides it. For ex.: 

   1. Inventory-aware ads: atom11 lets you pause ads when inventory is low. If you are looking for efficiency, then this is an important feature to consider.  

   2. Organic ranking aware ads: atom11 lets you increase/ decrease bids using organic ranks. If you are looking to build ranking campaigns, then this is an important feature to consider.  

   3. Share of voice aware ads: Perpetua and M19 have a feature that lets you change bids using share of voice as a feature.  

   4. Competition tracking and alerts: If you are looking to track competitors and take action on keywords and target bids, then atom11 provides that functionality.  

5. Basis cost: There are different types of pricing models available in the market.  

   1. % of ad spend: Most common pricing model. It is calculated as 1.5-4% of ad spend. This is used by tools like Pacvue, M19, Perpetua, Teikametrics etc.  

   2. #ASINs managed: It is based on number of ASINs that your account has. it is used by tools like PPC Ninja and Scale Insights 

   3. Fixed and tiered fee: A very new model in the market. Atom11 provides this pricing model to enterprise clients as well as agencies with over 80K$ ad spend.    

If you are looking to onboard to a PPC automation tool, feel free to check out atom11 demo.

Automating Amazon ad campaigns offers countless benefits, from saving time and improving efficiency to enhancing accuracy and performance. By leveraging automation strategies and tools effectively, advertisers can optimize their campaigns, drive sales and maximize ROI on the Amazon Advertising platform. 

However, automation is not a one-size-fits-all solution and it's crucial to tailor your approach to your specific goals, target audience and market dynamics. Experiment with different automation techniques, monitor results closely and iterate based on insights gained from data analysis. 

Atom 11 specializes in making your life as a seller/ agency easy! For the first time ever, you can combine retail data with advertising and run more efficient ads. Everything from thorough data analytics, providing quick insights into the root causes of sales fluctuations, competitor analysis, to helping put out the most effective ads, Atom 11 has got you covered! Check out atom11's interactive demo. If you are interested, you can book a call with us here.