How can I optimize my campaign?
Can I influence where my ads appear?
The placement is done automatically by our algorithm in a way that matches your ads to relevant shopper searches. You don’t need to choose keywords or anything else. It is done automatically (if you created a manual keywords campaign you chose the keywords by yourself).
You can however choose to exclude certain keywords that you don’t want for your campaign or add negative keywords.
How do I determine what is a good ROAS?
It depends on the purpose of the campaign and it should be determined in advance before you start promoting your products.
If the purpose is increasing profit, then the ROAS will be determined by the margin of the product. For example, if the product price is 250 euros and it costs you 150 euros, you can set your target ROAS to 500%.
In this case if you spend 100 euros on sponsored products ads you expect to sell 2 items and gain a profit of 100 euros. In this example any ROAS that is higher than 250% is profitable.
If your goal is not only increasing immediate profit but also promoting a new product in order to create awareness and improve its organic visibility, you can compromise on lower ROAS for the short term for the benefit of long-term profit.
What should I do if I get bad ROAS?
If your campaign is getting low ROAS there can be several possible reasons:
- The competition in the category is very intense and the bid prices are high
- The product doesn't deliver meaning that it doesn't get enough purchases - it can be a matter of price, reviews, features, branding etc.
In this case, we suggest to check the competing products in the category and see if your products are competitive (price, features, reviews etc.).
If there is nothing you can do to change any of these factors, we suggest you exclude these products from your campaign or exclude keywords and URL’s that display these product’s ads.
You will usually get better results when promoting products that have lower competition or when your product has sustainable advantages on the competitors (great ranking, reviews, special features or great value for money).
My bid is high so why does my ad hardly show up on one of the categories but shows up almost always on another?
Every time a shopper enters a search result page, a product page or a category page on the website, the ad server examines what sponsored ad to present.
The algorithm takes different factors into consideration such as relevancy, product price, page context and keywords, typical user purchase history and of course the current campaigns in the system and the offered bid.
In other words, you can offer the highest bid for your product and still not get any impressions in a certain category page if our algorithm doesn't find it relevant or finds other ads that are much more relevant and have better chances to get purchased.
Make sure you are using the right description and keywords in your product page. Also make sure your bid is competitive.
When should I exclude keywords?
Here are 2 examples for why and how to exclude keywords or use negative keywords:
- Let say that you are selling large screen televisions. You don't want shoppers who are looking for a small screen TV to see and click your ads. You can do it by choosing negative keywords such as 39’’ 30’’ etc.
- Let say that you are selling pink iPhone covers. If you see that your ad appears when people are searching for Green iPhones covers you could exclude the keyword “green”.
How do I determine what bid I should offer?
Sponsored Products uses a CPC (cost per click), auction-based pricing model, where you and other advertisers bid for getting the best spots in the store for your products.
You can bid on products or on keywords, bidding on products means that you set the amount that you are willing to pay when someone searches for this kind of product and we present your product (so you can use different bid for each product in the campaign).
Bidding on keywords means that you can offer different bids for each keyword that was used to present your products in the campaign.
Your bid is the maximum amount that you are willing to pay when a shopper clicks on an ad for your product. The more competitive your bid is, the more likely your ad will be displayed when a shopper searches for a product that you are selling. If the category is crowded and there are other advertisers who bid with you for more shelf space or if the promoted products are expensive, the average CPC usually goes up and vice versa.
The price you pay for each click is not the price that you offered but the price that the second higher bidder offered so if you offered 1.5 euros per click and the 2nd highest bidder offered 0.95 euros, you will pay 0.95 euros per click.
When you launch the campaign, you will see the average CPC in similar campaigns. This can give you a good benchmark. You can also see the minimum CPC which is determined by the retailers.
If this is your first campaign, we suggest you start with the CPC you are used to in other channels (let’s say Google) and adjust it based on the results, especially in terms of the ROAS.
If the conversion is good and you see that the people who click the sponsored product ads and enter your product page are buying your product, but you are not achieving your budget, you should try to raise the CPC and get more clicks.
What can I do to get more campaign impressions?
If your campaign gets low impressions, there are usually 3 main possible reasons:
- Your bid is too low.
- The competition in your product category is very high.
- The product is not that popular and there are not that many shoppers searching for it.
We suggest that you check that your bids are competitive and are at least 10% higher than the average winning bid (which you can see in the campaign admin).
Also, make sure that your products descriptions are relevant to the categories that you are targeting and that the titles are compatible.
Another suggestion is to try to promote as many products as possible in the category. By doing that you can increase the probability that one of your products will be chosen to appear in the promoted products places.