It would appear that Amazon Product Ads are coming to the UK in the very near future. Whilst Amazon told us they have nothing to announce at the moment a Product Ads information page has appeared on Amazon.co.uk.
Amazon Product Ads is an advertising programme giving customers access to products available on your own ecommerce website. As a seller, you simply upload your catalogue of products you wish to advertise and set your cost-per-click bids and budget. Amazon will then display your ads to customers when they shop for your product or related products.
How do Product Ads differ to selling on Amazon
The big difference is that Amazon send the customer direct to you. Customers who are interested in buying your product can click through to your website to purchase, giving you a direct relationship with the customer.
You’ll get full control over the buying experience which enable merchandising of related products, post sales marketing, control of payment methods and full ownership of the customer. That’s something that simply doesn’t happen when they buyer purchases from you as an Amazon marketplace seller.
What are the costs?
The minimum cost-per-click can vary from £0.10 – £1.35 and varies from category to category. One thing to watch for is that your maximum daily budget can actually be exceeded. The maximum daily budget determines the amount you can spend in total in the month, so it does mean that if on some days your clicks don’t use your entire budget then on later days in the month you could spend more than your maximum daily amount.
How do I get started?
If you want to be amongst the first then you’ll need to apply to list Amazon Product Ads, although currently we don’t know when the program will be fully launched. Sellers outside the UK can apply to list Product Ads on Amazon.co.uk, but they’ll need an English language website with prices in £s and the ability to ship to all UK addresses.
To create your Amazon Product Ads you’ll need to create a product file, Amazon provide a product file template. You’ll also need an active Amazon seller account even if you don’t currently sell on Amazon.
What’s in it for Amazon?
The obvious answer is profits. But you’d be wrong to think that’s the only reason Amazon would be willing to pass their customer across to you. It goes deeper than that.
Amazon want to be the only shopping channel that you use – They don’t want you to search Google to locate products. Obviously Amazon’s preference would be to have the product in stock themselves. As an alternative they’re more than happy for a third party seller to have listed the product for sale on Amazon, preferably with FBA, and Amazon then take a cut of the sale price.
Failing being able to supply the product either directly or through a third party seller, Amazon would much prefer to direct their buyers to an external website than show an out of stock or null result. Product Ads will enable Amazon to offer buyers a purchase choice when stock isn’t available on the site.
This is especially key for mobile consumers – if Amazon get them accustomed to searching on Amazon’s mobile app and can always provide buying options there’s little reason for committed Amazon customers to ever search Google for shopping results.
4 Responses
Great spot! Amazon Product Ads is a really great format, we are already working with it in US and can’t wait to have it in UK.
I’ve been meaning to look into whether this was possible on Amazon.co.uk. – Thanks for saving me a job!
Any idea how worth it this will be though? Like, if it has been successful for sellers on amazon.com?