Amazon has emailled sellers today announcing that the Amazon Product Ads programme will be discontinued in October this year.
This is a surprising move because it has proved popular with Amazon merchants. Here’s what Amazon has to say in the email sent to “Product Ads partners”:
“Effective October 31, 2015, we will be discontinuing Amazon Product Ads. While your ads will no longer be visible on Amazon as of that date, you may access your performance reports through December 31, 2015. Any unused promotional credit will expire at latest on October 31, 2015.
We recommend you download your relevant performance data in Seller Central (Reports/Advertising Reports). You will find more information on our FAQ page. If you have questions or need assistance, Seller Support is available to help you. If you are not already an Amazon Seller and interested in selling your products on amazon.co.uk, we encourage you to consider Selling on Amazon, which includes other advertising solutions like Sponsored Products
Thank your for advertising with Amazon Product Ads, we value your business and regret any inconvenience this change may cause. We wish you continued success.”
How will this change affect your Amazon business? Did you use Amazon Product ads?
6 Responses
We were really surprised to get this email – we get through a few hundreds of pounds with them a month, has a far higher CTR than Google Product Ad’s and because it isn’t swamped with merchants conversion rate was high.
They’re still taking on new merchants and giving you £50 free credit, I would recommend the service whilst it’s still around!
https://services.amazon.co.uk/services/product-ads/pricing.html
Note that this closure will only impact Product Ads. The Sponsored Products program will continue, and it is thriving. I suspect Amazon wants to quit sending customer traffic off of Amazon, which was what happened when a shopper clicked on an Product Ad. Sponsored Products ad clicks send customers to the seller’s Amazon listing.
Yes, we use it and find the conversion is a lot better than Google. I think the writing was on the wall for Amazon Product Ads after the UK government stopped Amazon from enforcing price parity in the UK. Amazon rules used to state that your website couldn’t be any cheaper than the product you were selling on Amazon. But the UK government banned the practice because it was stifling competition.
So at the moment you can advertise your product as a seller on Amazon and also advertise it on your website using product ads. Both ads go in the same page, so if your website price is cheaper inevitably some customers are going to buy it from your website rather than Amazon.
I think Amazon have realised that they are losing extra sales commission because of this.