Aaron Conant  0:18

Happy Thursday, everybody. My name is Aaron Conant, I'm the co founder and managing director here at BWG Connect a giant networking knowledge sharing group, been around for five years now just have 1000s of brands in the network, and we all kind of network. And now let's share together to stay on top of the newest trends, strategies, pain points, whatever it might be shaping digital, I spend a lot of my time just talking with brands digital strategy as a whole. And when the same ideas and topics come up over and over again, we host an event like this, we've also done kicked off a lot of in person events now usually small format dinners. We also did a big event in New York City last last week. And we're going to add a bunch more of those over the next year. So usually not multi day sessions just a single day, networking before and after. But, you know, we'd love to chat with anybody here on the line today. Always love those brand conversations. It's actually we get the topics for these. And we also you know asking buddy Hey, who's who's working for you, and who's not who your top service providers. And that's where we get the experts for these calls as well. So if you ever need any recommendations, and digital, you know, partners out there from Amazon direct consumer, never hesitate to reach out. couple housekeeping items, we'll get started. Number one, we'd love our sessions to be as educational and informational as possible. So at any point in time, if you have a question, don't hesitate to drop into the chat or the q&a, we'll get it answered, you can always just email me as well, Aaron Aaron@bwgconnect.com. And for that includes an hour after the call tomorrow next week. If you ever want to have a question in the digital space, you just want to chat shoot me an email. The other thing is we're starting in three to four minutes after the hour. And we're gonna wrap up with three to four minutes to go in the hour as well. give you plenty of time to get into your next meeting without being late. With that tons of questions right now. Around You know, DSP. So demand side platform sponsored products, where do I put my money? How do I spend it in this seems to this topic never really goes away? Because it seems to Amazon is adding something new or that changing how it works. And so there's this question out there in we'd like to answer it real time, you know, how should I be divvied up my Amazon paid media dollars. And so we've got some great friends, partners supporters, the network for like five years now, way back to the ark Pacific days over at Media.Monks and so Mike and Jackie you're here. But Mike, I'll kind of kick it over to you. If you want to do a brief intro on yourself. Media.Monks, that would be awesome. And you can kick it over to Jackie, and we'll get started sounded.

Mike Battista  2:45

Sure. Sounds great. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah, hello, everyone. And welcome to the webinar about sponsored ads versus the programmatic approach of the demand side platform here. We're really excited to dive in today. Both Jackie and I have some pretty storied history within advertising in this industry here. So really glad to answer any questions here. Definitely. Again, as Aaron said, throw those in the chat and feel free to reach out. I'm Mike Battista. I'm a former senior advertising manager here at Media.Monks spent some time over at Amazon advertising direct in Seattle. And now I am on the Senior Business Development Manager on the business development team here. Jackie is one of our seasoned veterans within advertising and one of our directors of advertising at Media.Monks. So Jackie, you want to take it away make an intro? Yeah. Thanks, Mike.

Jackie Andreetta  3:42

Hi, everyone. My name is Jackie Andreetta. Like Mike said, I'm one of the Associate Directors here at Media.Monks for advertising. So everything's sponsored ads DSP and in between as relates to Amazon advertising, we've got the the answers to your questions on so looking forward to diving into the specifics here on leveraging both of these in your Amazon advertising strategy.

Aaron Conant  4:07

Awesome. So quick reminder, if you have questions, drop in the chat or the q&a or email them to me and we'll get an answer. Awesome. Cool. Let's jump into it.

Mike Battista  4:17

Yeah, for sure. Well, and just a little bit about Media.Monks here, right is if anybody on the call is unfamiliar with the, with the organization, we are a worldwide collective of experts in an all things digital, so we handle digital advertising. Our little slice of the world here really focuses on performance eCommerce, born and bred in Seattle, our team here and have leveraged really strong relationships with Amazon and really starting to branch out into other marketplaces as well. We are I think 8000 strong now globally, so really great presence, experts in data experts in eCommerce experts and digital creative as well. So really Glad to again be here with you guys and share our insights. Awesome. 8000 Yeah, medium offices up to 8000. That's, that's incredible growth. Yeah. But I think one of our main first questions here, right. And just to kind of take a look at this agenda, we'll we'll talk about advertising on Amazon in general here. And then we're going to discuss in detail what the differences are between sponsored ads, and the DSP, the demand side platform here on Amazon, of what's going to differentiate these two ad products, when it's right how to kind of budget for that, why it's important to have a holistic advertising strategy. Again, those budgeting best practices are going to be key to understanding how to allocate those advertising dollars on a weekly monthly basis. And very important for forecasting there too. And again, how these two add products are married together, proactive approach with DSP, and a reactive approach with sponsor that. So we are very excited to kind of dive in here. I think, first question, right, just to kind of kick us off here is why are we advertising on Amazon in the first place? This may seem like a pretty basic question fundamentals. But we know that the world's largest online retailer, it is the number one product search platform, we have hundreds and hundreds of millions of searches happening every single month with qualified traffic. And that not only is compiled right of traffic that is there to buy product right now, it is also inclusive of millions of customers who trust Amazon, enough to look at pricing, right to compare pricing, where they've seen around the web on every single industry of products, and to look at quality as well compare and contrast to do research. Look at reviews. This is why the retail readiness aspect of setting up a holistic advertising strategy is so key to success, right. So again, we're buying here, we're browsing here, window shopping, sometimes I'm sure a lot of you guys have experienced that lower conversion rate at times, researching on Amazon. So again, number one destination here in the world for online shopping here, we know that the shelf space will always be full in a digital context, right. So your competition is already there. And especially exacerbated over the last 24 to 36 months where so much more traffic had been coming on the detail pages coming on to Amazon to physically buy product that increased the competition. So pretty fundamental aspect of the flywheel there, the more customers and shoppers that are coming onto the site, the more advertisers are going to come onto the site, and therefore the more competitive it's going to be so savvy marketers with deeper marketing pockets are expanding their Amazon presence and their eCommerce presence in general. And we have 1000s and 1000s of resellers, and players who are new to the space who really kind of want to get a taste and get in front of the eyes of the shoppers that are coming to Amazon. So it's a pay to play platform. At this point. There's really no doubt in that. And that's why budgeting correctly and setting up a holistic advertising strategy is so important. Do we want to talk about the fundamentals here of sponsored ads? Jackie? Yeah, I'll kick

Jackie Andreetta  8:47

that off. Thanks, Mike. So this isn't the first time you're gonna see this funnel on this deck today both as relates to sponsored ads. And then as well as it relates to DSP demand side platform advertising as well. So this funnel is going to be important to visually understand how the customer moves through their journey on Amazon, starting in that awareness phase where you're trying to capture them moving down into that loyalty phase at the bottom. And so how can we reach the customer through sponsored ads advertising, what is sponsored ads advertising and what are the tactics that we use to reach them with within this funnel. So sponsored ads advertising is what we want to consider the fundamentals or the foundation of Amazon advertising. So think of this as kind of the basics and making sure you have this in place a solid foundation here, before expanding into other types of advertising as well. But to dive into the different ad types as well between the sponsored product sponsored brand sponsored brand video as well as sponsored display, look touch on those here as it makes up the foundation of sponsored ads. But the brief back background on sponsored ads on Amazon is that it's search product based targeting. So this is where this is your PPC advertising on your CPC dynamic CPC cost based model. And so when you think of this number one to mind sponsor products, this is your bread and butter of of advertising. We'll dive into kind of the allocation in further in this deck. But sponsored products is going to be the basis of your sponsored ad advertising. This is where there's most available placements on Amazon, Amazon that everyone knows and loves and sees everywhere. Now above the fold, you can't escape an ad these days. And the majority of that is going to be your sponsor product placements. And then moving into sponsored brands and sponsored brand banners as well as sponsored brand videos, these are going to be your brand building opportunities, where you have access to high quality inventory, the very top of the fold in search results video inventory, the only video inventory on the Amazon search results. And these are really important to convey your brand messaging through way back to your brand stores. Using utilizing lifestyle imagery utilizing video, which is really important since it's a CPC model, like I mentioned, you're not paying for any views. And so people just educating themselves through a video watching those videos racking up those impressions is free to use. So it's really important to get those video placement active and and get your brand out there. And then sponsored display is kind of where a lot of some of the overlap is happening now with DSP, and it's kind of branded itself a bit as a DSP light these days with a lot of targeting capabilities, stealing from historic display and programmatic features where it's audience based targeting there. So you can get as broad as lifestyle and in market audiences that you have access to through the DSP console itself, all the way down to ASIN and targeting for your competitor detail pages, your own detailed pages and remarketing as well. And so this ad type also allows you to target on and off Amazon. So it's an important aspect through all levels of the funnel here. And leveraging all four of these together is going to be how you build a successful sponsored ad strategy, which is a portion of just your holistic Amazon advertising strategy as well.

Aaron Conant  12:44

So a couple of questions.

One is just comes in the chat is are we able to send out this deck afterwards?

Mike Battista  12:52

Yep. All right. So everyone has

Aaron Conant  12:53

a copy of the deck afterwards. And I think that's really important. Because, you know, I know a lot of times, just pulling those little nuggets, you know, the people realize, like Amazon is pay to play, right, but also, you know how complex the funnel has gotten over the past two years. The other one is around content, like how much additional content do brands need to pull in for each one of these ads? So you mentioned video, I think that's where it comes from primarily, how important is or is the video portion?

Mike Battista  13:23

Yeah, exactly. So no, go ahead. I was just gonna say a video at this point is one of the most impactful, impactful things to implement. Within this ad product mix. I have seen such strong engagement from a click through rate standpoint on on sponsored video. The other thing is that it's a little bit less competitive, right, because it's kind of in its own bucket. So you're really only competing with other advertisers who are using that video in that particular category. And especially at the beginning, right, the cost per clicks were relatively lower. And even more important, you were able to take up some really valuable real estate on page one without having to build up relevancy over time, from an organic share standpoint to actually earn your your placements on page one. So that real estate drives so much additional sales velocity clicks, traffic and interest within that brand. That we we see this as an indispensable product at this point. So I don't know if you know from a creative standpoint, right. We typically like to see a pretty short style of a video short, quick to the point have your branding included within that video and then really kind of try to tell the story of a particular brand quickly or try to differentiate a certain product quickly, there's a couple different creative ways that you can engage interest across the board. But sorry, Jackie.

Jackie Andreetta  15:09

No, sounds great. I was going to touch on a lot of the same points with on the content side with Mike what he's recommending as well. With really successful sponsor brand video, a lot of people aren't unmuting those videos so relying on a relying on audio is not going to be good here, you're going to want to make sure you're having the text overlays to call out those features. Short and sweet. Like Mike mentioned around that 15 second mark is where we see the highest video completion rates, highest engagement, those are kind of the sweet spots for content when it relates back to video. And in general, like Mike said, this is a lot of smaller brands or, or up and coming brands don't have videos accessible. So it kind of weeds out some of the people that are able to utilize sponsor brand video. And so it's really essential to create those videos, since it is a bit of a barrier to entry that some brands don't have access to that gives you a leg up.

Aaron Conant  16:09

Now love is so key takeaway one is you know, the these brand video, the ads are just crushing it right now. But nobody's turned on the the sound. So know, if you're going to do anything, make sure that you're doing making sure the words show up. I almost think that somebody needs to do a study on the TikTok effect. Because I think TikTok, you know, just 88 minutes a day is the average amount of time people spend on TikTok The TikTok user spends, and how much that is driven, what I think of a couple years ago, you know, not even a huge push by Amazon to get into video. And now it's just performing phenomenally. I don't know, it's just me thinking like, there needs to be a deep study on how TikTok has changed advertising. Because yeah, people are engaged in it more than they are in a normal so so anyways,

Mike Battista  17:03

totally agree. I mean, it clearly drives or just drives interest, right? It's having static imagery, and making sure that that static imagery is, you know, falling in line with the retail readiness model with Amazon and following. Enhanced branded guidelines is very, very important to tell the story, but there are just limitations to what you can convey in a really quick manner, right with a static image. You know, you can be a lot more creative with implementing video and how you're differentiating yourself in an ever crowded space. Right. So yeah, I mean,

Aaron Conant  17:42

we did, we did a call with like 3d AR imaging cadets getting into the metaverse and all this other fun stuff. But they did a deep study on just video and images. And that now more in video and images are higher converting factor than bullet points and reviews at this point in time, which is super interesting. It's just it's all when all the data points align. That's what I love. They're all lining. So

Mike Battista  18:09

make sense? Yeah. And, you know, I just wanted to add one more quick point just to kind of bolster the importance of having sponsored ads fundamentally sound on Amazon, and we discussed this last week at our at our event, Aaron, but we know that about between 63 and 65% of purchases are happening from clicks on the first three products on within the search results, right. So one that tells us that most of the traffic is purchasing based off page one. So it only further demonstrates the argument that we need to understand how to grow our products organically and how to stay on page one for that visibility and for conversion rate. But again, with with those first three products, getting a majority of the purchases based on those clicks, you know, we cannot now at this point, you know, let off the reins and let our foot off the gas on really trying to you know, ensure that the fundamentals of sponsored ads are there, right, we need to show up on within those placements. Awesome. Love it.

Aaron Conant  19:17

So everybody jump in to the videos. Oh, great.

Mike Battista  19:22

Absolutely. I mean, I didn't know I

Aaron Conant  19:23

mean, I didn't realise that they are performing that well. But it all makes sense. All the data points are

Mike Battista  19:27

lying. Okay, great. And so we talked about right what this foundation looks like. It's certainly important to understand, you know, within sponsored products within sponsored brands within these different ad types sponsored display, what percentage should we be allocating our budget to each one of these to actually see a holistic a holistic campaign and a holistic effort actually come to fruition and make an impact? Our position is here and this has been tested, tested and learned from and iterated on, is that sponsored products, since there are so many placements there and so highly visible should be about 65% or so of your allocation of your budget. This is again going to be that reactive way to entice customers into and potential customers into your detail pages while right up against your main competitors within the space and against your other products as well. But we also need to ensure that we are showcasing this brand if we have many different silhouettes of products, a sponsored brands banner ad that's going to lie at the top of that screen is crucial to reaching and providing a touch point to shoppers who don't necessarily know what brand perhaps they're going to go with. large majority of the of the searches that are happening on Amazon, I believe it's about over 70% or non branded searches, we need to be able to touch those shoppers who don't have a brand loyalty preference quite yet, or who maybe need a little bit more insight into what your brand is so that we can build trust these banner ads at the top which we would recommend that at least 25% of your allocated budget are going to draw more shoppers into your detail pages and onto your brand store as well. Very crucial to if at all possible if you have, especially if you have a larger catalog to have a lot of attention to detail on your brand store. This is again right the digital version of of a brick and mortar store where we need to build trust with net new customers. So this particular app product right along with sponsored brands video is meant to drive incrementality reach net new customers and bring more and more net new customers into your brand and perhaps even steal some market share away from your competitors brand and some brand loyalists to try your products as well. So a balanced allocation here is definitely key. Lastly, here sponsored display that that cost per click based ad product that Jackie was speaking to earlier, that kind of mirrors DSP in a way. And we'll kind of get into that. Typically, what the information that we're getting from Amazon is that most advertisers are underspending on sponsored display, probably around between three and 7% of their of their current allocation, we would recommend a 10% allocation here for sponsored display for a couple reasons. One reason is that this particular app product continues to be iterated on with more and more, more and more value to be added to be able to reach customers strategically. One thing we can do is advertise on our own detail pages, perhaps block out some of the competitors there who are will certainly be advertising on your detail pages from across merchandising Avenue from that perspective back and keep people on our detail pages or give a shopper an additional product to maybe find the right one that's for them within your catalog. And secondly, what does conquesting look like right what sponsored display. What we can do now amongst many other things is we can engage in retargeting. The lowest hanging fruit that was traditionally meant for programmatic buys, where we would target shoppers who have already shown strong interest in your brand by clicking on your detail pages, but have yet to buy yet. Again, we would look at that as low low hanging fruit, and so to retarget those particular shoppers, or even if they're looking at a specific competitor page that is very similar to your asin is really going to be crucial to again at that incremental revenue and incremental traffic to the detail pages. Lastly, I'm sponsored display. Other really cool iterations that have come out within the last year, year and a half or so is the ability to filter where these ads are actually going to be placed. So

my favorite my favorite filters to be able to use was price point and star rating. So if you have a price point an item at let's say $50 And your main competitors are at 75 or 100 minutes a similar product you can choose to actually advertise on those detail pages knowing that that can catch the eye of a shopper who is looking at a $75 item and maybe looking to save a little bit of money that day with a similar product, right or even a product that has more brand equity built into it there. Same thing with star rating you have five Star ASINs, you should absolutely be placing these ASINs on competitor similar products that are more or less to entice more trust and entice more shoppers to click on that app. We've seen really great success with that. Awesome. So

Aaron Conant  25:16

just a couple questions that I want to jump into here. Well, I think we untangle pretty quick, do you think TikTok advertising is limited to certain product categories? No. But certain product categories performed better? That's a that's probably a podcast episode we could do. And or another whole, another whole call as a whole? And we'll get into TikTok I mean, we've done in the past May, we'll just take it out to the group, if you want to, if you want to listen to that recording. The next one is How can I complement my Amazon campaigns with a social media campaign? So this brings out I think, a couple of things. One, is that balance that people want to do the front end, I think is how are people define their Amazon budget? Do you see it's part of the total paid search social budget? Or is it tied more closely to how much is moving through Amazon like 7%? Of GMV? Or 10%? How are they first defining how much they're spending on Amazon? And what do you see as best practice? And then then we can get into how does that? How do you compliment Amazon campaigns

Mike Battista  26:21

with a social media campaign? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I can certainly speak to mirroring in this way. This is really important. When when you think when you put yourself in the shoes of the shopper, and you're maybe thinking about navigating through certain social media platforms, and through Amazon, people don't go to Amazon to say happy birthday to their aunt, like they do on Facebook, or they don't go want to look at somebody, you know, twerking or doing some dance like they perhaps are doing on TikTok, you know, a little bit more. There's a little bit more to that, right. But the point is, they're going to come to Amazon at some point, to compare and take a look at that product. Because there's trust inherent trust built within those shoppers, we know that a large majority of those shoppers are already Amazon users, if not prime users. And so they're going to maybe see a product for sale across social media platforms. And they're certainly going to check Amazon for different prices, looking at reviews, looking at more photos of it. So to mirror those campaigns, right. So maybe using very similar creative, similar messaging, similar brand story will bridge the gap right and provide some continuity from platform to platform and back on to Amazon, we should see a higher conversion rate as a result of that continuity.

Jackie Andreetta  27:49

But I would add there as well is where we've seen a lot of success clients leverage how they can leverage their social media with Amazon advertising as well is Amazon attribution, which probably been touched on a few times and in other webinars as well. But using this, if you're driving back to Amazon, you can create custom attribution tags so that you could measure the different sources of traffic, whether that's coming from Facebook, email campaigns, Instagram, whatever the off Amazon source is, you can create those custom tags to then see what the associated clicks, your detailed pageviews, your add to carts, your sales, all of those metrics are as relates back to Amazon to then measure what sources are most successful for you in driving. That consideration driving that conversion, part of the funnel is leveraging that. If you're driving that traffic back to Amazon, any Amazon landing page can can work with an Amazon attribution link that you could really measure success tangibly there.

Mike Battista  28:57

Yeah, I so so totally agree with that chalky. There's, and I think that over the next five years, right, and even sooner than that, because we're seeing it happen now, there's going to be more demand and more need to understand that path purchase, and how to stay retail coordinated across multiple channels. You know, gone are the days where Amazon is the only player in town, we need to be and brands recognize specially established brands in the space recognize that they need to be on a variety of different places, serving ads to a variety of different customers to add to that incrementality. So absolutely crucial to try to find tools to find those answers and implement those strategies. Yeah, awesome.

Aaron Conant  29:49

Yeah, I know that retail media is blowing up everybody. I mean, it's secret. It's incredible how difficult it's gotten for marketers, digital marketers over the past two years and the challenges that they're facing At the same time, every other day, there's a new retail media outlet that's asking them for money. And by the way, you know, third party cookies are going away and iOS 14.5 update. So anyways, right, but I completely agree, a holistic branded strategy, right in looking at that path to purchase and on every platform making sure that your brand is telling the story, it needs to tell them that that platform with with the right congruency. So when they discover it on TikTok, and they end up on Amazon to buy it. Like, it seems like it's the same brand, right in that continuities huge, massive.

Mike Battista  30:39

Absolutely. Yeah, so talked about sponsored ads quite a bit here. We do want to dive into the programmatic approach for Amazon, which is DSP, which I think Jackie's gonna speak to. Yes. So

Jackie Andreetta  30:54

the fundamentals of demand side platform or DSP, as it's better, better known, or programmatic, display all of those names. So what is DSP advertising is display advertising. So this is advertising based off of audience targeting based off of a CPM cost model. So instead of customer searches, PPC, asin, asin, targeting on detailed pages, this is going to be Amazon target, or audience targeting where you have access to inventory to serve inventory, both on Amazon as well as off Amazon. And this opens up the advertising possibilities to advertisers that sell on Amazon, as well as people that sell off of Amazon as well. So this opens up an opportunity for non endemic advertising also, which are people that aren't selling on Amazon don't have physical products to sell such as, like insurance companies, for example. There's no and Amazon landing page for that. And so this also presents an opportunity for customers like that to use Amazon data paired with their own advertiser their own brand data to make custom built audiences, and also allows you to have access to Amazon placements on Amazon itself, Amazon publisher services, so high quality inventory, as well as their highly high quality audiences with all the data they collect are based off of their in market and lifestyle segments that you can then pair with your your Amazon data itself. So overall, brief intro before we dive into the Amazon funnel on what Amazon DSP is, but really big differentiator there is that this is kind of where you can get a lot of a lot broader with your targeting as its audience base. So this is really, when you think of Amazon sponsored ads versus DSP, this is really an awareness driver and able to refill that funnel, if you think of it in those previous slides, and how you can bring more people into that funnel through proactive tactics here.

Aaron Conant  33:12

Great, we have some questions rolling in, keep dropping them into the chat and q&a. But I want to make sure we get through this portion first, and then we'll make sure that we have time at the end to crank through. So keep dropping the questions in the q&a or in the chat. We'll get them answered.

Jackie Andreetta  33:25

Awesome. Yeah, so Jackie, let's dig in. So yeah, this is the same funnel you saw before before but how it relates back to DSP. So like I mentioned, DSP is really going to be focused on moving people through this funnel through the awareness to the consideration to the purchase and loyalty phases here. And so when you think of from an audience perspective, that's where your in marketing lifestyle audiences are gonna come into play for the awareness and consideration bucket. So people that are either unaware of your brand but aware of the category or even not even in the category itself, and really looking to bring them in to showcase your brand and your products to then the purchase funnel where people you're wanting to reengage with those shoppers through retargeting and loyalty, being customers that you've already purchased, and you're getting them to repurchase. And so what are the what are the different KPIs that we see for success here on each of these funnels when it relates back to DSP, just to start from the top. So, awareness and driving the awareness is really measured by impressions, click through rates, video completion rates, if you're running video display, that's going to be really key in what is effective to drive that awareness and engage the customer at that that top level and it's important to have different KPIs. For each of these sections of the funnel as well, so you're not going to be measuring something like row as at the top of this funnel because you'll be hitting them and each level here as they move down and in row as is something you'll focus on when it gets more when you narrow down your audience. But moving down into consideration, your main goal here is going to be driving people to consider your brand so what does that look like higher detailed page views higher detailed page view rates, and branded searches. So really, people making the effort to do research on your products through detailed page views and and branded searches that then pushes them to the purchase funnel where sales row is new to brand sales, this is going to be your measurement of success that hopefully the people from the awareness bucket move through all of these phases and then you you'll tend to see a lot of purchases have happen in this stage of the funnel with your retargeting campaigns where more sales and realize is captured a lot there and then loyalty is to build up that Subscribe and Save audience if that's something that makes sense for your products and building up more repeat purchasers and building up that that loyal brand audience as well.

Aaron Conant  36:22

Yeah, I want to there's some questions specific I do want to at the end make sure we get to Amazon attribution, but there's some specific questions around this funnel as a whole. In in one of them is there an advantage to Amazon DSP versus general programmatic advertising. And another one is which one is better? You know, do for DSP here retargeting or in marketing lifestyle because I can see in a lot of cases just because I think DSP is underutilized, where all of your budget in DSP might go to retargeting and just you know, there's there's so much you know, food on the table right now, and low hanging fruit that you could dump it all in the retargeting and, and just keep converting until you run that well dry. And then anyway, so we'll talk about those and then the last one in that out, we can keep jumping around here but I want to make sure we get to the slide. Why do you use DSP to reach purchase funnel when product search would likely fill that niche better? And maybe it's a different target on the audience but so I'll repeat them which is better for these in marketing lifestyle or retargeting and then I'll keep reading them off so let's

Mike Battista  37:30

tackle that one first. Yeah, I mean that's a it's it's subjective right that's going to that's going to change from strategy to strategy product to product and advertiser to advertiser and I think they're both really important to implement at any given time. You know as you you're on button right with with DSP retargeting you more than likely want to exhaust your efforts there and trying to continue to to message the shoppers who have already shown intent to buy the buy the product by landing on your detail pages and not and not particularly buying there. We have to factor in sales cycles there. How long is it going to take for a product to actually sell how many times how many messages does each consumer actually need before they pull that trigger? How many reminders DSP retargeting acts as a reminder, you know, more than a lot of things. So you right, so you compare product to product, if you're selling a higher average selling point product, that's going to take more consideration, and more consideration period more messaging, it would make sense to continue to run retargeting on you know, those, those same customers there. If you have more of an impulse buy right product closer to that realm of products or a lower average selling price 20 30 bucks. We certainly want to exhaust efforts with with DSP, but we absolutely want to target shoppers who have shown interest in your competitors products, right? And through their consumer behaviors on Amazon, we know exactly who those customers are, because they're bucking ties. And we can choose those audiences and kind of plug and play those audiences within DSP advertising, doing testing. So that's really that's the key, right? We have to do a B test on in market and lifestyle that conquesting going after those net new customers and a B test quite a bit within retargeting to see what's going to be the most effective for us. Again, this is not a short, shorter term advertising solution. It takes a little bit more budget, which we'll talk about in a moment and takes a little bit longer to actually get those results back in that data back so that we can continue to make data informed decisions moving forward.

Jackie Andreetta  40:00

and something that that Aaron you touched on as well, it's, um, why why not just focus on that purchase stages, I'm trying to drive purchases, but like you mentioned that well eventually runs itself dry. If you think of this as a funnel, if you're not refilling that funnel, you're eventually if you're targeting people that have viewed but not purchased, eventually, ideally, you get a really small audience there have, you need to put that funnel fill that funnel back up with people who are viewing and not yet purchasing. And so using those awareness and consideration buckets of either targeting competitors, like Mike mentioned, targeting these and marketing lifestyle audiences, to bring them back down to your detail pages, where you can then be that reminder for them is going to be really important. And so using all of these tactics together is going to be the ideal recommendation for DSP strategies, as opposed to just focusing on on one section of this.

Aaron Conant  40:58

Awesome, I want to make sure we get through the content here. And then we'll keep tackling these questions.

Mike Battista  41:05

For sure, so talked about budgeting a little bit. And it's going to depend, right, like having a set budget, it's going to vary forever, for bid for different business models for different industries, how competitive the category is looking, what your catalog is looking like, right, and how you know how much we actually need to invest, to hit our goals, right? But the baseline of budgeting is, is also going to be centered and tied closely to retail readiness, right? We're looking to build long term sustainable growth on the platform, ensuring that your catalog and the business remains buoyant, long term, not looking at row as an eight costs in a silo is certainly the best practices for what you what do you need to have in mind, right when you're trying to create that budget? Right. Other things in terms of retail readiness to keep in mind when you when you are budgeting right is what are your detail pages looking like? What is the customer experience looking like? Is it beneficial to you know, blast through a bunch of advertising dollars month over month and drive a lot of traffic to detail pages that really are not up not up to stuff or don't look as good as your creditors detail pages are really don't tell a brand story? Probably not? Right? We don't want to burn through advertising dollars that way. So foundationally, we need to set ourselves up for success by putting our positioning our brand in the right way. So taking a look at that content, and those aspects of account management, there are absolutely crucial. Other things to consider, right, is how much are we winning the buy box on particular products, same same kind of conundrum that we could we could possibly be in if not winning the buy box on some of our key ASINs. That absolutely takes precedence over how much we should be driving traffic to those detail pages, right. And then also inventory, we know for sure, over the last couple of years really all kind of woke us up into how important that supply chain. And that inventory flow being in stock affects our performance effects, advertising effects, or organic ranking there. So in your efforts to forecast to, to plan for demand, this will also be a main factor in what you want to budget for these particular add products. They're typically we we the best practices for reinvestment on the platform from Amazon is between five and 8% of what you're bringing in on the platform, what you expect to bring in on the platform, that number can't really be set in stone, because obviously different business models are going to operate differently. And again, this is going to be a should be a slower ramp up. I like to say it's not a Lamborghini, we're not going zero to 60 on day one with setting a larger budget or when planning to scale your budget. Now, it's more of a heavy machinery, right, we're going a little bit slow, more slowly to ramp up, building up momentum, ensuring that we're checking the boxes of retail readiness and holistic advertising strategy as we go as you become more and more competitive within the space or if you're already in a very a very crowded space on Amazon right like CPG and supplements and you know health foods and things like that there's plenty of them to go around. We would recommend that the percentage of advertising in general should be a It turned up a little bit right between probably 10 and 14 or 10 and 15% investment of what you are bringing in from a net standpoint on the platform. But again, that's going to depend on whether you're new to Amazon and released trying to press on the gas to steal some new market share, or you're an established brand that already has a solid amount of organic traffic coming in. If the latter is the case, then you may not need to spend as much as someone who is launching brand new products to market or just introducing their own brand to market because they haven't really created that brand resonance or brand awareness in eCommerce yet. So a lot of things to be able to keep in mind there when, when you know, planning for your budget.

Again, just to reiterate there right by box, ensuring inventory flow is there, ensuring that your product catalog is well allocated. And going back to those basics of sponsored ads and how to allocate those per your ad budget is very crucial here, as well, depending on whether your goal is to increase incrementality, right, or maybe you need to adjust and do a little bit more brand protection, all of these things are going to come into play. That's certainly for sponsored ads DSP, right we it's a little bit longer of a return cycle with DSP, it is not all focused on row as, as we were just explaining, there's many different KPIs that we need to look at to judge for success there. So to kind of put a set number on it, right, you want to have a robust enough budget to last a couple of months, minimum a couple of months, right. But you really want to plan for a little bit longer sales cycle there, once your foundation of sponsored ads is set. And you this is going to depend on category data. But you know, probably want to start off with at least 510 $1,000 A month minimum, depending on what kind of product mix you're looking to. You're looking to showcase there you're looking to get more traffic on. And then you'll take some time, take a look at that data, analyze that, and then make sure that you're a B testing so that you understand where to place the ad dollars in the future, right? What audiences are going to be a little bit more profitable for you what audiences are really engaged with this particular product, things like that. And then you can work to scale the budget with DSP. So it's a little bit longer of a process there, but a lot of things to be able to keep in mind as well. And then, you know, oh, yeah, go ahead, please. Oh, no, no, I

Aaron Conant  47:46

was just saying awesome. Love it.

Mike Battista  47:50

I believe we have one more that we probably want to get to. Yes.

Jackie Andreetta  47:58

So just to wrap everything up and kind of looking at everything sponsored ads DSP from a whole less holistic perspective. What is the recommendation here? How can we pair these best effectively together? I think, obviously, if money wasn't an option, or if there's room in the budget, I definitely recommend the sponsor ads and DSP strategy. Combined together, that's where you see the most, it's the most proactive approach, the best way to fill all portions of that funnel from that we talked about throughout this deck from awareness down to loyalty. And ideally, it's going to be best to be pairing these together. And budgeting budgeting that way. But I also also want to touch on that, like sponsored ads is the foundation and so spreading ourselves too thin across both of these channels isn't just to participate in both isn't going to be an effective strategy. You want to make sure you're budgeting properly, so that you're able to have an effective penetrate the market effectively using each of these ad types and using each of these strategies with with any type of advertising, it's not worth investing if you're just going to be barely dipping your toes into into the water there. So something you definitely want to touch on and as well as like with DSP, and a great option with that we've touched on with sponsored display, if there isn't budget to fully invest into DSP strategies, a lot of the capabilities with DSP in the DSP lite version of sponsored display. That's a great avenue to take if you don't have the budget to invest into DSP and that will allow you to do some of these on and off Amazon targeting as well as doing some of this retargeting capabilities. You can't get as granular with the audiences that you're bill. molting and the levers that you're able to pull with DSP, but it's a great option, so that you can still take advantage of those audiences on Amazon as well. So really want to make sure that part is hit home as well, because obviously the partnership of sponsored ads and DSP works best on, on Amazon to advertise both together, they both lift each other, you see higher conversion rates when they're paired together, usually utilizing the different strategies there. But spreading yourself too thin and not properly investing into both is not going to set yourself up for success either. So sponsored ads really is always going to be the foundation that and then DSP is where you want to kind of incrementally add value to your sponsored ad strategy.

Aaron Conant  50:50

Awesome. And I think that answers one of the questions that comes in, why would you use DSP to reach purchase funnel? When search would likely fill that niche better? So awesome. tackle that one? Is there a benchmark? And so we're gonna try to rip through these pretty quick here? Is there a benchmark or a recommendation on percent of POS to spend on advertising on Amazon and off Amazon linking to Amazon?

Mike Battista  51:15

Yeah, so question is, what should we allocate in terms of a budget for Amazon, and then what should we allocate to a budget to link to Amazon, it's, it's, it's going to depend on what your product mix looks like, right. And it's going to depend on some of those other things that we kind of discussed when thinking about how to set up this budget. Again, the best practices from Amazon, not set in stone, but a minimum of five to 8%, if you want to stay buoyant on the platform, but you know, if you want to really try to scale the business, again, if you're in a very competitive category, then it's going to take a little bit more, a couple more percentage points to nudge you over the edge and to continue to reach new customers to increase your organic ranking and penetrate the market a little bit further to get to page one. In terms of the external budget, you know, I wouldn't say that it totally has to match, right. But the more budget externally, I have seen, the better the results are on Amazon, because you're not only providing brand awareness, externally. So then you can expect more branded searches to happen on Amazon, which typically have a higher conversion rate. You know, you're also just drumming up, I'm just saying, right, you're drumming up additional interest within this product, you can drive directly to the site. So the more the merrier for sure. But not a specific percentage, I would say it's really contextual. They're

Aaron Conant  52:47

awesome. A couple of questions come in on Amazon attribution. So I'll read them off, does Amazon attribution track the actual sale or just landing on the detail page? I use Amazon attribution, but see very little conversion, it'd be good to know benchmarks. I'm given Lee and not not necessarily trusting the Amazon attribution data.

Jackie Andreetta  53:05

It does track conversions, it just track the sales, the pure, you're tracking your catalog through those campaigns that you make. within Amazon attribution. I'd say it's hard to tie benchmark since the driver is the off Amazon store. So it's more so looking at like, what are the Facebook benchmarks? What are the Instagram benchmarks driving back to Amazon. So it's really, it's hard to leverage benchmarks there. I feel like it's going to vary and I recommend testing out different sources for your Amazon attribution strategies. I know brands other than outside of social media have seen success using attribution to link their email campaigns to measure the conversions and consideration off of that, as well as if you're featured in online articles. Those articles can link back to Amazon using attribution links. So there's different creative ways that you could leverage attribution to see what drives most success for your brand and your products. So yeah, hard to really benchmark and benchmark based off of off Amazon traffic, but I think a great, great tool to leverage So

Aaron Conant  54:15

is there an advantage to Amazon DSP versus general programmatic advertising? It's another question that comes in.

Jackie Andreetta  54:22

So Amazon DSP is going to let you one serve on Amazon itself, so you can't access Amazon inventory. So whether that's within the search results, that you see those kind of skyscraper banners on the left on the detail pages themselves, that inventory is just specific to advertisers on Amazon. So running through Amazon DSP, or sponsored display placements as well, as well as the Amazon audience data. So Amazon has a huge audience that you have access to their first party data as well and that is a big benefit and those To kind of paired together really build a successful strategy. And when you're comparing to other

programmatic,

Aaron Conant  55:08

awesome, and I see we're like right at time here, I want to make sure we get everybody you know, off to the next meeting without being late. Again, you know, everybody, thanks for the great questions that came through, there's a couple we didn't get you more than happy to connect you with the team over at Media.Monks are great friends, partner support is the network. As you can tell, this space has gotten incredibly complicated over the past few years here. And so they're helping a tonne of brands and the network out and come highly recommended. So if you need any kind of help, advice, wanna have a chat on anything Amazon advertising, or Amazon has a whole 100% Worse, having a follow up conversation with the team over at Media.Monks, you know, my like, last little key takeaway here, and then we'll wrap it up.

Mike Battista  55:45

I think the key takeaway here is that it is ever important to keep very close eyes and very close hands on keyboards when coming up with your budget for Amazon. And when looking at the strategic ways that you should be trying to scale your business within eCommerce in general, it's getting more and more difficult every year, the more proud of the space gets. So the more that you can pay attention to it, the better for sure. And now we have lots and lots of tools at our disposal to further growth and to ensure that advertising dollars are spent in the right way for the right customers. So any additional questions anybody has we can certainly certainly feel those. Give us a call at any day at any any anytime.

Aaron Conant  56:36

Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks, Mike. Thanks, Jackie. So much for your time today. We're going to hang up here right at 4pm Eastern time. Hope everybody has a fantastic Thursday. Have a great rest of your week. A fantastic holiday weekend here. Everybody take care, stay safe and look forward to having you on a future event. Thanks, everybody. Alright, thanks, guys.