Here are 4 factors why your Amazon Ads KPIs might look great, but your overall business lacks growth.

1. Too much focus on branded traffic‍

Branded traffic KPIs always look great. But does this really lead to incremental sales? We recommend to use branded traffic either for brand protection or (which we prefer) to showcase new products. In the end it is always a mix, so make use of branded and unbranded traffic in your Amazon Ads strategy.

2. Ads for products with high organic rank‍

Some products have a great organic rank on specific keywords. So, advertising such products on these keywords will quite likely lead to a higher overall CPO. Similar to brand keywords, it makes sense to use the traffic wisely - either for protection or to strategically position other (alternative) products.

3. Inaccurate usage of audience targeting (vCPM)‍

Audience targeting is on the rise. Amazon Ads is heavily pushing (v)CPM formats in Sponsored Ads and in the DSP. But you should be aware that it works differently. Conversions are view-attributed, so a shopper does not need to click on the ad to make sales attributed to the campaign. In many cases this means that only 10-15% of the sales is comparable to a CPC-campaign. We recommend to use such view-targeting for mid and upper funnel campaigns.

4. Strong Brand halo sales on non-focus products‍

A campaigns does not only generate sales on the advertised (promoted) products, but also on other (brand related) ASINs. Such brand halo sales might be incremental or rather non-incremental (e.g. accessories). In DSP you can easily see the different KPIs (ROAS vs. Total ROAS, reports on sold products). But in Sponsored Ads, the Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) is needed. Anyways, you should be aware of a campaign's impact.

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