Our Amazon PPC Wish List for 2021

December 31, 2020
By The Badger

2021 is sure to bring with it tons of new features and changes for Amazon PPC.

Admittedly, Amazon has already spoiled us with new Sponsored Brands reports, negative ASIN and product targeting for auto campaigns, and more, but there are still a few things that we’d absolutely love to see.

Without further ado, let’s get right into our wish list for Amazon Advertising!

Better Amazon Support

We know a lot of Amazon sellers will agree with us when we say that Amazon’s support system isn’t always the best. We also know that a lot of Amazon sellers will agree with us when we say that this is a massive understatement.

Google Ads has live chat! You’re able to connect with someone who can help you within a matter of minutes! Meanwhile, paleontologists recently unearthed fossils of early Amazon sellers waiting to hear back from support.

Surely Amazon could step up to the plate and offer a similar level of service with short wait times.

Not only would we love to see more availability from Amazon support, but a boost in the quality of support would be awesome as well. If you’re not making enough cash to get your own point person, you’re pretty much on your own. Sure, Facebook groups like ours are awesome for troubleshooting help, but having someone on the inside would be killer.

Another way that Amazon could improve their support is by making sure that their support is well-equipped and well-informed on the latest in Amazon Advertising updates and practices. Granted, we’re aware that this is a tall order-– the Amazon Advertising landscape changes so frequently that re-training support staff and keeping internal materials up-to-date would be difficult.

Support doesn’t end at fixing errors and disputes either. We’d love to see Amazon support that actively provides resources to advertisers to help them grow and prosper. Google Ads has something similar with their Partner Program, which fosters the growth and success of Google Ads users.

If Amazon chose to implement a similar program, it would do a world of good in terms of aligning the goals of Amazon support and the advertisers themselves.

Better Sync Between Amazon Ad Campaigns

Speaking of getting things in alignment, we have a lot of different Amazon PPC campaign types – Sponsored Product, Sponsored Display, Sponsored Brands, DSP – that are all kind of just doing their own thing. It’s incredibly difficult to compare metrics and performance across different campaign types.

Over the years, Amazon PPC has grown and diversified, giving us many new options for gaining impressions, clicks, and conversions. However, something has been lost with all of this differentiation. The different ad types and campaign types have become almost too distant from each other, making it a struggle to draw meaningful comparisons between data from each of them.

It would be a huge help if Amazon were to unify metrics, thereby allowing us to compare performance across different campaign types and make sure they’re on the same page. With that kind of power, we could keep all our different campaigns working together in one concerted effort. It would also help us make informed decisions on allocating ad spend because we could better determine what campaign types are driving the best results.

New Reporting

Anyone who’s spent more than five seconds listening to us knows that we are shameless data junkies, so the fact that we have reporting improvements on our wish list should surprise absolutely no one.

First of all, the addition of the ability to compare view through orders versus click through orders would be a welcome one. Seeing mobile vs. desktop performance would be awesome as well, as it would clue us into how well our ads are optimized for each and if they need any adjustments.

For a long time, Sponsored Display was left out of the reporting spotlight. It used to have a spot inside Sponsored Products reports, but it was later removed. As a result, campaign managers using Sponsored Display were missing data vital to understanding their performance.

Santa Bezos must have gotten our letter because as it turns out, we did recently get Sponsored Display reporting!

We’re looking forward to diving into these and all the valuable data they have to offer.

Dayparting and Weekparting Data

Being able to see how your metrics change depending on the time of day and the day of the week would be a game-changer. If all of your clicks and conversions are on the weekends, you’re wasting five days’ worth of ad spend every week. With dayparting and weekparting, you could change your bidding strategy to be more aggressive during the times and days when you get more clicks and conversions, effectively optimizing your bids down to the hour.

DSP In Normal Campaign Manager

DSP, while not a part of the Amazon ad type Holy Trinity, is still a vital part of Amazon PPC for those who use it. Placing it inside the normal campaign manager would be fascinating from a data analysis viewpoint because having it alongside other ad types would allow advertisers to unify their data and work with DSP without having to make a mental shift from other ad types to DSP.

Amazon would stand to gain from this as well; if they were to move DSP into the normal Campaign Manager, it stands to reason that more people would start making DSP a part of their advertising. It would essentially open up DSP to pretty much everyone.

Instead of DSP being blocked off to all but a select few with massive budgets like it is now, advertisers could start DSP on their own terms regardless of budget size. Power to the people!

Longer Timeframes

Right now, Amazon only lets you look in-depth at account data that is no more than 60 days old. Yes, we have the lifetime view where you can see a snapshot of your data throughout time, but there’s no way to dig any deeper into that and look at specific time periods.

the lifetime performance view in the Amazon Advertising console. — Want to compare year-over-year data? Better get the magnifying glass.

Being able to show a specific campaign performed at a specific point in time and compare your historical data to your current metrics would be incredible for tracking your growth and adjusting your strategy.

For example, comparing how you performed during Black Friday this year versus last year would be invaluable in helping you prepare and tweak your strategy for the next one. Often, the best way to prepare for the future is to look at the past, and if Amazon let us do that, we could be much more well-equipped to adapt to whatever happens next.

Downbid Placement Settings

As it stands now, you cannot change the bid placement setting for Rest of Search, nor can you downbid any placement.

This makes optimization more difficult than it should be, and this lack of options leads to a lot of unnecessary confusion and frustration for Amazon sellers trying to understand placement settings.

Being able to downbid placements would make it much easier to optimize and provide even more opportunities to lower ACOS.

Amazon Sponsored Brands Video Updates

We get it, Sponsored Brands Video is still pretty brand new. It hasn’t had tons of time to get its sea legs. That being said, there’s plenty of potential for quality-of-life updates within Sponsored Brands Video that would really make it more friendly to advertisers.

For starters, you can’t rename campaigns in Sponsored Brands Video. The ability to edit campaign names would be such an easy feature to implement, and the fact that they haven’t is frustrating. Want to change your campaign goals and the campaign’s name to reflect that? Nope. Trying to heed our advice and rename your campaign something more meaningful? Nah. Made a typo when naming your campaign? That typo will stare you in the face for the rest of that campaign’s life.

Another thing we’d love to see get added to Sponsored Brand Video is Sponsored Brand’s product targeting capabilities. It’s part of what has made Sponsored Brands powerful, so having it added to Video is a no-brainer.

Key Takeaways

In short, there are a lot of changes we would like Amazon to make in 2021.

We have our fingers crossed for some changes that will make Amazon Advertising support more… supportive. Shorter response times, greater support quality, and more knowledgeable support staff are just what Amazon support needs to be a reliable helping hand to advertisers.

Additionally, we really want to see the ability to take a more holistic approach to Amazon Advertising. We hope for changes that will allow comparing and contrasting between different kinds of campaigns, the examination of historical data alongside more recent data, and improved coordination across campaign types.

We recognize Amazon has significantly improved in recent years, but there are many ways it can still grow and evolve. We’re amped to see the Amazon PPC of 2021 and beyond.