Comments on: Amazon Product Ads: Good Idea? Bad Idea?

By: Dani

Dani — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 06:26:09 +0000

Woops… the cpc was $.10, not $.15

By: Dani

Dani — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 06:24:31 +0000

My experience with product ads so far, is this: I’m holding out hope for it, but in it’s present state, it leaves a lot to be desired. I do have a low profit margin product, so the product ads seemed like a perfect alternative to the much more expensive seller account.

While the actual explanation of how to set up your product ad is unclear and cumbersome, help is only seconds away with Amazon’s ‘phone’ > “call me now” feature. No sooner did I click call me now, then my phone was ringing. The prompt response was very appreciated and easily talked and walked me through the technical details, but the biggest problem is that after an entire day of setting this up, I still can’t find my ads displaying anywhere on any highly related categories> products>> and keywords.

My ad page is live, and I sent a few friends to the link and had them click through to my site. My cpc bid was set to 10x the minimum (minimum is $.15, so I set it to $1.00) and I was only charged the $.15, so that tells me the bid is high enough.

Support could not provide me with any information regarding where my ads are being displayed, and so far, the only traffic I have, is the traffic I sent to it just to test the ppc bid to see if that was the problem, which it obviously wasn’t.

I really want to see this program succeed, but right now, my experience with it indicates that it needs a lot of work before it’s worthwhile to me.

By: Rob

Rob — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 19:06:56 +0000

Amazon product ads is a total sham.

Not only do they:

1) Have a terrible ROI
2) Refuse to refund credit cards that have been incorrectly charged, and instead credit accounts for MORE useless clicks

But they moderate their forums so that no one can complain about it.

Terrible company.

By: sneakerclub

sneakerclub — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 04:09:28 +0000

good idea!

By: Grow, baby, grow. Your traffic and your business. (Small Business E-Commerce Link Digest - 3/13/2009)

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:33:03 +0000

[...] Explore new products – Facebook launched a new behavioral-based ad program. So did Google (they call it “interest-based“). Yes, opinions are split, with Mashable arguing in its favor, while GigaOM is more skeptical. But, the point is, lots of new opportunities exist to improve your marketing and have it produce results. Even Amazon has a new product ad tool. [...]

By: Marifer Vergara

Marifer Vergara — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:36:29 +0000

As a data feed management consultant, I recommend testing Amazon product ads to those clients who do not have UPC/MPN data in their product data feeds and cannot get a UPC exemption. I also recommend it to those clients who would be placed in high commission/fees categories where Amazon can charge up to 15% commission. The CTR is good and the ROI can be good if you do your job right.

By: Linda Bustos

Linda Bustos — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:47:01 +0000

That sounds like my experience with Facebook Ads

By: Ryan Douglas

Ryan Douglas — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:44:26 +0000

In my experience using Product Ads as a retailer, I did see good CTR and rather high ROI on this channel over other cost per click engines when used for top performing products. It definitely beats paying x% commission rate to Amazon for marketplace listings. Amazon is always testing the algorithms that display and relate products from Product Ads to regular Amazon listings. It seems to work best right now with hard product categories where UPC, MPN, etc are available. I think there is appeal to merchants with low margins to try Product Ads, and Product Ads also makes it easier for merchants to get exposure, traffic and sales from Amazon.