October 7, 2025 • 32 mins
The advertising landscape on Amazon is undergoing a radical transformation. Gone are the days when brand owners needed complex campaign structures with thousands of exact match keywords to succeed. Instead, Amazon's algorithm has evolved to become your new PPC manager – and it's proving remarkably effective.
Our latest discoveries reveal that auto campaigns are now receiving substantially more exposure than traditional exact match campaigns, while simultaneously delivering superior performance metrics. This shift mirrors what's already happened on Meta and TikTok, where AI-driven targeting has replaced manual keyword management. The evidence is compelling: four of our top five performing campaigns are now auto campaigns, generating approximately 40% of our ad-driven revenue.
The game-changer appears to be Amazon's increasingly sophisticated audience targeting capabilities. By selecting the "highly likely to convert" audience and applying appropriate bid modifiers, brands can dramatically improve campaign performance without the complexity of traditional keyword management. For cash-strapped businesses or solopreneurs without agency support, this evolution represents an opportunity to achieve 80% of optimal advertising performance with a fraction of the management overhead.
That said, this doesn't mean exact match campaigns and manual optimization are obsolete. Ranking campaigns, brand defense strategies, and competitive targeting still require human expertise. The key is finding the right balance for your specific situation – leveraging Amazon's algorithmic intelligence while maintaining strategic oversight.
For brands looking to capitalize on this trend, we recommend starting with properly structured auto campaigns for each product grouping (not lumping everything together), implementing audience targeting with bid modifiers, and maintaining basic campaign hygiene by separating branded search terms. As Amazon's algorithm continues to improve, this approach will only become more effective.
What's your experience with auto campaigns? Are you seeing similar performance improvements, or are you still finding better results with traditional keyword-based approaches? Share your insights and let's navigate this evolving landscape together.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everybody to another episode of Brand
Fortress HQ.
Today we're excited to talk toyou about something that's kind
of happened on the ad side ofAmazon, which is, you know, is
Amazon becoming your new PPCmanager.
For people that may or may notbe familiar with other ad
platforms, especially meta hasreally transitioned over into
more intent marketing and not asmuch kind of the keyword,
(00:21):
different match types and thosetypes of things that we're used
to.
So this is a great conversationto have today on you know what
does this look like for thefuture of ads on Amazon, and so
with that, Mike, I'm actuallygoing to hand it over to you,
because I know this is somethingyou've been working on quite a
bit lately.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah for sure.
So, just being real, you know,anybody who's been listening to
the podcast for a while knowsthat as a brand, we're kind of
in a rough space with tariffsand whatnot and a few kind of
mishaps that happened thatunfortunately cascaded with the
tariff problem.
It's put us in a real cash flowcrunch, and so one of the
things that that results in iswe just have to be really,
(01:00):
really careful Not that weshouldn't have been in the past,
but it's an absolute necessityright now that our ad costs, in
relationship to the amount ofrevenue that they're bringing
back, really have to be dialedin.
Right now we just don't haveany room for error, and so one
of the things that came uprecently was this I don't know
(01:22):
trend, whatever you want to say,but more and more sellers, and
especially some agencies, arestarting to talk about this idea
where Amazon is moving intothis space, where auto campaigns
are getting considerably moreexposure, let's say, than exact,
match or broad and phrase matchcampaigns, than exact, match or
(01:43):
broad and phrase matchcampaigns.
And in addition to that, amazonhas rolled out some new
features that allow you to,we'll say, give Amazon the
leeway to decide who's seeingyour ads.
Now, of course, an autocampaign already does that right
.
When you set up an autocampaign, essentially what
(02:07):
you're telling Amazon is this ismy product, you figure out who
to advertise it to and thenAmazon is off to the races.
Now what generally would happenin the past and this is still
true, it's not like you don'tstill want to do this, but
Amazon would flood the platformand your product would end up in
front of anybody and everybody,and in the past oftentimes it
(02:29):
seemed like they weren't verygood at figuring out who
actually should be seeing yourad.
Right.
Auto campaigns were notnecessarily a performance
campaign.
They were a harvesting campaignthrough a big net and see what
Amazon put it in front of and beable to see what keywords and
what types of products was yourproduct performing well against,
(02:50):
and then you would exit thoseout to exact match and phrase
match and all of that, and thosewould be the performance
campaigns.
Now I think we're moving into aspace where much more, first of
all, amazon is getting better atputting those ads in front of
the right people.
I would say our auto campaigns,even just left alone, are
(03:12):
performing way better than theyever performed in the past,
without a whole bunch ofnegation.
Now that doesn't mean you'renot going to have to negate.
You're still going to want togo in and negate certain
products and certain key phrasesand things like that.
So you know, don't think thatyou're going to avoid that.
However, amazon is gettingbetter.
But what's even better than thatis that on the auto campaigns
(03:33):
you don't have that opportunityto say you can choose.
Essentially it's an audience andit's kind of a bid modifier
situation where you say, okay,amazon calls it highly likely to
convert is the audience, and ifyou select that, you can give
it a bid modifier, which inother words just says pay more,
(03:53):
I'm willing to pay you more toput my ad in front of that
person that you believe has ahigh likelihood to convert.
And what we have seen is thatthat audience does convert
significantly better than thestandard auto campaign, even
though the auto campaign itselfis performing way better than
the standard auto campaign, eventhough the auto campaign itself
is performing way better thanit used to.
So Amazon's algorithm is gettingway better at figuring out who
will buy your product and if yougive them the space to make
(04:16):
those determinations, roas isgoing way up in comparison to
where it was and, like I saidearlier, to where it was and,
like I said earlier, amazon isstarting to devote a lot more
exposure to auto campaignsversus exact match, and so if
you really want to get as manyimpressions as your product is
capable of receiving, I highlyrecommend that you start moving
(04:38):
into giving auto campaigns alittle more leeway and a little
more budget so that you can giveAmazon that opportunity to put
your product in front of theright people, and that AMC being
added onto that and audiencesis just going to be another
layer that makes that just thatmuch more effective.
But that's kind of where we areright now in our research phase
and what we're trying toaccomplish.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Okay, Matt.
Anything else you want to addto that?
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Well, I mean, the first that I had heard about
this concept of automaticcampaigns getting you know more
love and actually a whole lotsmarter from Amazon was a video
that I saw Chris Rawlings fromSophie Society that Mike
actually shared with me and youknow a couple of.
We mentioned it to ouradvertising agency and a couple
(05:23):
of weeks later I was pokingaround in the campaign manager
and it was fascinating just tosee it live with my own two eyes
just how well those audienceand bid adjustments that Mike
were talking about wereperforming.
So it wasn't just a theory thatyou watched on a YouTube video.
I was able to go into ourcampaigns and actually see how
(05:45):
well different segments of ourautomatic campaigns were
performing, and in some casesthey're some of our highest
performing campaigns.
So it was very eyeopening tosee the actual live performance
of those after hearing thatconcept by Chris Rawlings.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
And also, just to clarify that point, not just our
highest performers in terms ofyou know say point, not just our
highest highest performers interms of, you know, say, roas,
but our highest performers interms of number of orders that
came in.
So not only is the ROAS ofthose campaigns performing
exceptionally well, but our toplike over the last three, you
(06:21):
know, or month or two out of ourtop five campaigns in in Amazon
PPC, four of them are autocampaigns and one of them is a
brand defense campaign, which isa completely different, you
know, animal and shouldobviously have really good ROAS.
But but four of our top fivecampaigns that are producing the
most orders of anything areauto campaigns and I actually
(06:44):
think, when I calculated it outthe other day, I want to say
that like 40% of the revenuethat came in from our ad-based
sales was those four campaigns.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah, I think this is such an interesting topic
because I kind of mentioned atthe top of the episode.
I mean, this is really whereMeta is already at Like.
They're very intent-based andthey're going to show ads to
people that are going to be thethey think are going to be the
most likely on the purchase offof this.
That's where you have likelookalike audiences, which
they've had for a long time, butthey've really gone even deeper
(07:17):
on that to make meta.
From what I understand andagain I will be the first one to
say that I know only the bareminimums about meta ads it's
been a few years since I've runany meta ads, so definitely not
an expert when it comes torunning anything on Facebook or
Instagram.
That said, I do think thatthere's some things to learn
(07:38):
from what's happening over there, of what we see for the future
of Amazon ads, and I think acouple of things to keep in mind
with what you're saying is that, first, it's just in general
principles, and this has beentrue for years is that for most
brands that are under, let's say, an arbitrary line of like 5
million, 80% of your sales aregoing to come from sponsored
(08:00):
product ads.
So sponsored brand sponsoreddisplay, dsp those are all nice,
but the reality of it is, ifyou're looking at, hey, what's
the 80-20 Pareto principle ofwhat's actually bringing in
sales and revenue?
Most of it is going to besponsored product ads and I
think what really bolsters whatyou guys are saying is that the
auto campaigns are getting moreefficient and the broad match
(08:23):
campaigns are getting moreefficient in how they're
targeting, and that really makessense with.
The other thing to keep in mindis that broad match changed a
couple of years ago to where itwent from being, you know, broad
based on those keywords tobeing like really broad.
And then we had issues wherewe'd have to do, like you know,
(08:44):
for the people that, like methat were really nerdy into it,
what we call broad modifiers, tosay, hey, we actually want like
a little less broad than whatAmazon had pushed out to you in
order to get efficiency out ofthose.
So it sounds like Amazon's kindof figured that out on the ad
side.
Now, what I would say is andthis all depends on the brand
(09:06):
and what category you're in so Ican think of a client that we
just started working with wherethey have a consumable product
and they weren't doing anyremarketing, which is primarily
a sponsored display ad type.
So this is where, again, yes,auto campaigns, broad campaigns,
are probably going to be a goodthing to look into and to be
(09:27):
working for a lot of, again,brands that are under 5 million.
I think that there is like youneed to understand, you know, I
think, most likely customers toconvert is probably an easy kill
.
But then also, thinking abouthow you do those auto campaigns
and you may want to havemultiple auto campaigns in order
(09:47):
to control your spend ondifferent things.
So you might have a campaign,an auto campaign that's just
dedicated to close match mostlikely to convert, for example.
So you might have to, you know,kind of make things more
granular for that perspective,and it really, again, it's going
to depend on what categoryyou're in, how competitive that
category is, how differentiatedyour brand is, some of those
(10:09):
other things in order to get themost bang for your buck, if you
will, out of it.
I think you know and again, thisis as an agency owner's
perspective.
So I you know putting my own,you know, kind of not agency
owner, but brand owner hat on.
I think there's a lot of goodstuff to be had there.
But I also am a little bitcautious that when you start
(10:29):
looking at, you know thosegranular details of how do I
overcome a competitor wherethere's a big difference between
being first and second.
I think that's where there canbe a lot of value in like
thinking about, like rankingcampaigns, for example, like you
definitely, you know, for yourhero product and your other
products should be have tested,you know, regularly, and looking
(10:52):
at ranking campaigns, which isan exact match type.
So I think, in broad strokes,this is actually going to make
PPC a lot simpler and moreprofitable for brands in general
.
That said, I do think thatthere is still a place, and will
continue to be a place forthose brands that have an area
where they need to get to thatlast, you know, from 80% to 99%,
(11:19):
because there's just such a bigdifference in sales between
being first and second.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
I think so I would agree with that.
I think probably the thing tocome away from this with is, if
you're a brand, that's in aspace where you don't
necessarily have the funding topay an agency, right, Because
the thing about it is, with anagency, there's nothing wrong
(11:47):
with going with an agency.
And if you can afford to andyou can find a good agency, I
think you know that's, it can bea good route.
But you then have the ad costand the agency costs.
Now, of course, if you have itin house, you have the ad cost
and you have whatever the costis to pay somebody to set up the
campaigns, you just have thecost of ignorance Right, oh yeah
.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
No, for sure.
So you're trying to figure itout yourself and depending on
how smart you are it depends onhow good you are.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
What I would say is if you are, you know, either,
say, a one-man show or, you know, a small team, but right now
your margins are a little on thethin side and you're wanting to
find a way to bring your costsdown but still get exposure for
your brand and hopefully haveads that at least are performing
profitably.
I think you have an opportunityhere where if you just simply
(12:34):
set up a fairly simple campaignstructure with auto campaigns
for each of those individualproducts and you set it to a
very strong bid modifier forhighly likely to convert, I
think that with that simplestructure you could do
relatively well without reallygetting super advanced.
Now there's stages in that youcould take that and then break
(12:58):
that, as John was suggesting,like you could break that into.
Okay, I want to loose matchauto campaign and I want to
close match auto campaign and Iwant to substitute auto campaign
, so you can figure out whichones maybe are your best fit and
maybe some of them that havethe modifier and some of them
don't have the modifier.
So you can get as complex asyou want.
But again, if you are in thatspace where you just can't
(13:19):
afford the agency and you can'tafford to put a lot of time into
management.
The other thing that's importantto recognize about an auto
campaign 1% bid management,because you're only managing the
bid at the campaign or ad grouplevel and then your modifiers.
There's no keyword bidding thatyou have to manage.
(13:41):
That is a significant hurdlethat you basically bypass by
using an auto campaign.
Now that's not to say thatthere's not going to be any
value in doing exact match orbroad match or any of these
other things.
But if you're trying to keep iton the cheap and you're trying
to see if you can develop somead sales at a reasonable price
that you can manage, it's reallymoving in a direction where you
(14:03):
could pull that off with autocampaigns, I think fairly
effectively.
But then, as John said, ifyou're trying to move the needle
that extra you know, 20% you'reprobably going to either need
somebody on staff who reallyknows what they're doing or
you're going to need an adagency, you know to run those
ads and really you know, pullthat off.
(14:23):
But you know I do think you aremoving into a space where kind
of Amazon really can be that PPCmanager If you keep things
small and tight and you knowyou're really just trying to
control that cost and make sureyou're still getting those sales
.
I think you can do it,especially for smaller brands.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Yeah, and what I would add to that too is if
you're a smaller brand and Iguess you know, starting with
this, I think, experiencebecause I mean, listen, I talk
to a lot of different peoplethat are Amazon you know brand
owners that are selling onAmazon and a lot you know the
reality of this is that a lot ofAmazon agencies suck.
That's just the reality of itLike they just don't deliver on
(15:05):
you know the results that theypromise.
So I understand from a brandowner's perspective why it can
be incredibly frustrating ifyou're paying for an agency on
top of your ad spend.
And so I think what's alsoreally powerful to think about
with this is if you're having aterrible experience and again,
by all means, I would say youknow and we've talked about this
(15:26):
in a previous episode of setclear expectations, you know,
just like you would with anybodyyou know, any other vendor or
employee or anything like thatlike set clear expectations up
front, you have to give you knowat least, I would say, 60 to 90
days, unless they're doingsomething you know absolutely
horrible, to see if they're anygood or not Beyond that, if
(15:48):
you're not getting the resultsout of it.
I think what's powerful aboutthis is knowing that you could
do the 80% solution withsomething so simple that you
don't need Like it's notcritical that you have an agency
that if you fired your agencytoday, your account, if you of a
(16:16):
sudden, your ACOS is going togo to 200% and your entire
account is going to collapse.
Because I think what you'resaying, mike, and what you're
pointing out with this, is that,as Amazon gets a lot smarter,
it is something that a brandowner can do at a pretty basic
level and still do all the otherthings that you need to do as a
(16:36):
brand owner.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
So we talked about.
You know, most 80% of sales,especially for a brand that's
just getting starting out on theplatform, is going to be
sponsored product ads.
That's true as you start todabble.
So in my opinion, I think thatbid adjustments, bid
(17:03):
optimization, can be run bymostly by an AI tool.
I think it's one of the fewthings in terms of Amazon
advertising that can be run byan AI tool and you feel
comfortable handing thatoperation over because it's
essentially a math equation.
If you get a target ACOS or atarget TACOS, it's a math
equation to figure out what toadjust that bid to.
So computers are good at math,algorithms are good at math.
I think that if you add on atool, some sort of a tool, that
(17:26):
does automatic bid adjustmentsbased on some AI algorithm, I
think you can start to get alittle bit more advanced and
even a little bit further up thefunnel with your ad types and
still keep your campaigns lesscomplex than, say, they are
today, while leaning onautomatic campaigns and having
some exact match campaigns foryou know, ranking purposes and
(17:47):
things like that.
But using a tool to doautomatic bid adjustments I've
used a couple in my day.
There's a really.
Takemetrics is a really reallygood tool that has a really
really good artificialintelligence algorithm that
knows how to adjust bids basedon different external factors.
So you know, I think adding onone of those tools as you start
to kind of go up the further upthe funnel into more complex ad
(18:08):
types is a solid solution thatdoesn't really add that much
more time to a solopreneur'stime or day but gives them the
flexibility to be able to.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
I will just tell you a little bit there, matt.
In the sense that I mean, wecall AI now, but bid automation
has been around for a long timeand, having my own brand,
working with numerous brands,testing a lot of different
platforms, I think we all knowthat there has been a lot of
terrible bid automation toolsover the years, so the one
(18:46):
important caveat that I wouldput on that and this is
something that I feel verystrongly about is that I think
it is great to let the AI orautomation do kind of the
computational math to say, hey,here's my goal, acos, whatever
and there's some differentfilters you can put in there.
Based on this, which bids areout of range or should get
(19:06):
adjusted and by how much.
What I think is criticallyimportant, though, is that there
needs to be a human in the loopthat reviews all of that and
clicks the button that says Iaccept these changes, because
what we find time and time againis is that, if you don't have
that human in the loop, the AIor automations or whatever
(19:29):
starts to do kind of you know,funny things or you know it's
not really on the automations.
Things happen in unintentionalways, because it's really hard
to understand what the impact ofsome of those bid changes are
when it's a completely black boxthat you're not looking at on a
you know at least every.
(19:51):
You know once a week, let aloneonce a month, and all of a
sudden your entire ad accountgoes sideways.
So I do think it's importantthat somebody puts a you know,
human eyes on those bidadjustments.
And I would say again, 90% ofthe time you know 90% of those
you're going to click, you knowokay, on and accept.
But there are those.
You know 90% of those you'regoing to click, you know okay,
(20:13):
on and accept.
But there are those you know10% of cases where you know
things are off and they can beoff drastically, especially when
you're trying to do things thatare a little bit more advanced.
When you start looking atranking campaigns and you start
looking at you know we talked alittle bit about defensive
targeting If you start lookingat offensive targeting, like
there might be a really goodreason why you have a campaign
(20:34):
with a 200% ACoS because yourgoal is to steal as much market
share as possible from a keycompetitor Well, that's really
hard to teach an AI or anautomation to adjust bids for.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true.
I mean, I've used auto bidadjustment tools in the past and
, generally speaking, they doquite well, because again as.
Matt said, most of it is justmath, but I certainly have run
into situations where the AI orthe algorithm whatever it is
(21:10):
that is actually working in thebackground whether it's truly AI
or not makes a decision on aparticular keyword based on
erroneous assumptions.
So, in other words, you knowwe've had keywords that were
really important keywords for usthat all of a sudden weren't
producing anything because theAI made a decision based on a
(21:31):
short window of data that didn'treally line up with what we
knew to be true, and so it madesome adjustment.
And then all of a sudden, youknow, our PPC kind of fell off a
cliff or, you know, went theother direction and did some you
know extraordinary number thatdidn't make any sense, and so we
started spending a fortune onsomething that you know we would
never have spent money on, youknow, to begin with.
So I think you do have to becareful with it.
(21:53):
But the good news is, like yousaid, john, I mean, if you're
using a tool like that, 90% ofthe recommendations that it
gives you, you're just going toclick yes, and that's way faster
than having to go through allthe mental calculations yourself
and make those determinationson your own, and so you're still
going to cut that time on tasksignificantly.
(22:13):
And so the combination ofletting Amazon kind of manage
the auto side of things and thenmaybe having these selected
campaigns for exact match andthings like that, I think is
really a good combination.
And if you don't have thebandwidth for that, then stick
with the auto campaigns, becauseI do think that you can tailor
(22:35):
them enough and do enough of thebasic negations that need to be
done to get them into a spacewhere they're performing very
well for you, and it's a verysimple campaign structure to set
that up.
A couple of other things that Iwould say is one Amazon is not
going to differentiate an autocampaign between branded and
(22:56):
unbranded.
So at the very least, if youdon't separate out your
campaigns in any other way, Iwould make sure that when you
set up the auto campaigns, youseparate out branded search and
brand defense, because yournumbers are not going to be
right if you leave it alone,because I can tell you that our
(23:17):
auto campaigns now this isn'tthe reason they're performing
well.
They're actually performingwell, even if we take this data
out.
However, it is serving up adson our detail pages, so they're
essentially brand defense ads,but they're in an auto campaign
instead of a separate branddefense campaign, like they
(23:38):
should be, and so we're negatingthose out.
But then it also shows up onbranded terms like pro-tough
pool poll and things like that.
Well, again, you really don'twant those branded terms in an
auto campaign.
You'd be much better separatingthose out into their own
campaign.
So don't ignore the fact thatthere are some things you want
to negate out, and I definitelyrecommend that branded is one of
(23:59):
them.
You're going to negate that outof your auto campaigns.
Keep those in separate.
You know brand defensecampaigns and stuff, but that is
still a way simpler campaignstructure than what we would
have had, you know, two, threeyears ago.
You know, especially if you'vegot very many products and
that's again that's anotherimportant aspect of this If
(24:27):
you're a smaller brand but youhappen to have a fairly large
SKU list.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
This, the fact that you can run these auto campaigns
, makes your life 90 easier thanyou think it does, and it
really puts you in a position,such an important point, I mean.
I mean, I've seen a brand thatyou know they're doing barely
six figures on amazon and theyhave 200 skews, which is a
little crazy, not something?
Yeah, this is perfect for that.
Yeah, and so again, I wouldmuch rather have somebody set up
an auto campaign for each.
(24:50):
You know, maybe parent, if youwill, and you know, run 10, 20
auto campaigns, rather thancreating one auto campaign and
throwing, you know, all 200 SKUs.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Auto campaign, because your performance across
those you know, those parentASINs, is wildly different.
Where you have some parentASINs where you know they've got
some pretty good traction,they've got some decent reviews
and they're having some you knowsome success, and then you have
others that, quite frankly, arejust duds.
Well, if you put everythinginto one campaign, well, what
(25:26):
Amazon's going to do is it'sgoing to take, say, you have you
know $100 a day budget in there.
It's going to spend that acrosswhatever clicks, not what sells
.
And so now you're reallystruggling in order to adjust
things in order.
You really don't have a wholelot of or a ton of control in
order to push that money in thedirection of like what's working
for you, whereas it's alsogoing to confuse amazon, you're,
(25:48):
yeah, you're confusing thealgorithm at the same time.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Yeah, yeah, so simpler does not mean run a
single auto campaign foreverything, like simpler just
means you don't have 12 000exact match campaigns like okay,
yes, I've got.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
You know, maybe I've got 10 auto campaigns or
something that you know youdon't need an exact match
campaign for every singlekeyword you want to target,
Right?
No, we won't.
That was a cough.
People can interpret later ifthey play it back slow enough.
So, okay, I think this is afantastic conversation.
I think this might be a goodplace to wrap on it, be a good
place to to wrap on it.
(26:22):
So takeaways for you know,brand owners who are listening,
I guess I'll.
I'll start with you, Matt, Likewhat's the, what's the action
item that you'd give to brandowners that are listening to
this?
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Well, I'll, I'll give a little bit different.
I'm not going to answer yourquestion directly, but one of
the things that we haven'ttalked about you know we talked
about meta has gone down thisroute before.
Google's gone down this routeand actually TikTok is actually
right now currently going downthis route.
They've actually removed all theother ad types and now there's
one ad type, gmv max, whichessentially is their automatic
campaign and it's performingbetter than all of the other
(26:59):
manual, more manual typecampaigns were before.
So TikTok just removed accessto all of them and now you have
one ad type and so you give itan ROI target and it meets that
ROI target incredibly well.
So even more proof that thesebig platforms, as they start to
mature, they learn that andthese platforms, their goal is
(27:20):
to make money and they do thatby selling products.
So if they have data that tellsthem which listing is the
highest likelihood to convert,they're going to rise that one
to the top, and that'sessentially what these ad
campaigns are doing, or thesetypes of campaigns are doing is
giving them control, becausethey know who's going to convert
.
So just more proof that this,this is the way that Amazon is
(27:40):
going, for a reason All theother platforms have already
done it way that Amazon is goingfor a reason.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
All the other platforms have already done it,
I think.
For me I would say onerecognize that the evidence does
show that Amazon is moving thisdirection.
It only makes sense that theywould, considering that
everybody else is moving thatdirection and Amazon's got so
much data, obviously they wouldbe able to make these sort of
determinations.
And I would say, because it'strue that it's moving this
(28:09):
direction, you need to get aheadof it, because not everybody
understands this yet and noteverybody is using it.
And even if you don't dismantlethe whole rest of your campaign
structure, if you justrecognize this one point and you
start utilizing this to getmore exposure because, again,
auto campaigns done right cangive you a lot of exposure right
(28:30):
now, more exposure than you'regoing to get from running a
bunch of exact match campaigns.
And there's two things thatthat does for you.
One, if the auto campaign isperforming well, then obviously
that creates more orders thatare profitable.
But secondly, don't forget whatJohn mentioned earlier, which is
sponsored display.
Sponsored display you can usethat as kind of a mini DSP for
(28:51):
remarketing and things like that.
Well, you can't remarket tosomebody that you never had an
ad show to in the first place.
So if you're using sponsoredproducts and you're getting more
ad impressions to the rightpeople at the right price so you
can afford it, then you'regiving more fodder to that
sponsored display campaign forthat remarketing, and so you can
(29:13):
kind of spin that wheel alittle bit.
So I just think it's definitelya space that you need to pay
attention to and also understandAmazon's only going to get
better at it.
It's not as if it's going to godownhill from here.
Also understand Amazon's onlygoing to get better at it.
It's not as if it's going to godownhill from here.
Amazon's going to continue togather more and more and more
data and they're going to getbetter and better and better at
this.
So get ahead of the curve now.
Get your campaign structure setup to take advantage of it, and
(29:33):
I guarantee you, six monthsfrom now it's going to be even
more effective than it is today.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Yeah, and I'll leave it with this, because I think
it's really important that youknow one, that you guys that as
brand owners selling on Amazon,and just you know, being on the
platform that you are, I thinkyou're 100% right, mike.
You're, you know, staying aheadof these things that are
happening and seeing how, that,where this is going with ads,
I'd also add that, or includethat, just as a general
(29:59):
principle, ads is never going tobe, you know, set it up and
then like YOLO, you know YOLO,amazon ads management, like let
it do its thing and never lookat it, never touch it.
But it's also doesn't need tobe the bulk sheet.
You know bid optimization withpivot tables that we used to do,
you know, four or five yearsago.
(30:19):
There is, you know, a, a rightin between there and it's really
going to depend on whatcategory you're in, how big of a
brand you are, what your brandgoal is and a few other factors
on Amazon.
So I think, finding what isthat right level for where
you're at right now with yourbrands, for managing your ads
(30:41):
successfully on Amazon.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Also one last thing before we close.
Don't forget that a lot oftimes, exact match campaigns and
whatnot are used for rankingand obviously at the moment
that's still valid and stilluseful and important.
But AI is becoming the toolthat people are going to be
using to find their products,becoming the tool that people
(31:05):
are going to be using to findtheir products, and so, more and
more, how you rank in theactual search is going to become
less and less relevant.
It's going to be much moreimportant how you rank in.
What AI tells somebody is theproduct that they want.
So you know, don't ignore exactmatch, don't ignore the
possibility of ranking usingthose tools, but just recognize
that is a dying strategy.
(31:26):
You know like that is astrategy that's going to become
less and less and less effectiveover time.
So I would not be investing amassive amount of time and
effort into that.
If you've got an agency or youhire an agency, obviously in the
short term you're going to wantthem to be doing that because
it's still effective.
But if you're not focusing inon AI ranking, then you're
missing the boat and thatcampaign structure is going to
(31:49):
reach a point where it's notserving your needs and you're
going to fall off a cliff.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
And that's a great segue into something that we
will cover on a future episode.
So stay tuned, because that'sdefinitely something we'll cover
.
Thank you everybody forlistening and we look forward to
seeing you next time on anotherTactics Tuesday.
Welcome everybody to another episode of Brand
Fortress HQ.
Today we're excited to talk toyou about something that's kind
of happened on the ad side ofAmazon, which is, you know, is
Amazon becoming your new PPCmanager.
For people that may or may notbe familiar with other ad
platforms, especially meta hasreally transitioned over into
more intent marketing and not asmuch kind of the keyword,
(00:21):
different match types and thosetypes of things that we're used
to.
So this is a great conversationto have today on you know what
does this look like for thefuture of ads on Amazon, and so
with that, Mike, I'm actuallygoing to hand it over to you,
because I know this is somethingyou've been working on quite a
bit lately.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah for sure.
So, just being real, you know,anybody who's been listening to
the podcast for a while knowsthat as a brand, we're kind of
in a rough space with tariffsand whatnot and a few kind of
mishaps that happened thatunfortunately cascaded with the
tariff problem.
It's put us in a real cash flowcrunch, and so one of the
things that that results in iswe just have to be really,
(01:00):
really careful Not that weshouldn't have been in the past,
but it's an absolute necessityright now that our ad costs, in
relationship to the amount ofrevenue that they're bringing
back, really have to be dialedin.
Right now we just don't haveany room for error, and so one
of the things that came uprecently was this I don't know
(01:22):
trend, whatever you want to say,but more and more sellers, and
especially some agencies, arestarting to talk about this idea
where Amazon is moving intothis space, where auto campaigns
are getting considerably moreexposure, let's say, than exact,
match or broad and phrase matchcampaigns, than exact, match or
(01:43):
broad and phrase matchcampaigns.
And in addition to that, amazonhas rolled out some new
features that allow you to,we'll say, give Amazon the
leeway to decide who's seeingyour ads.
Now, of course, an autocampaign already does that right
.
When you set up an autocampaign, essentially what
(02:07):
you're telling Amazon is this ismy product, you figure out who
to advertise it to and thenAmazon is off to the races.
Now what generally would happenin the past and this is still
true, it's not like you don'tstill want to do this, but
Amazon would flood the platformand your product would end up in
front of anybody and everybody,and in the past oftentimes it
(02:29):
seemed like they weren't verygood at figuring out who
actually should be seeing yourad.
Right.
Auto campaigns were notnecessarily a performance
campaign.
They were a harvesting campaignthrough a big net and see what
Amazon put it in front of and beable to see what keywords and
what types of products was yourproduct performing well against,
(02:50):
and then you would exit thoseout to exact match and phrase
match and all of that, and thosewould be the performance
campaigns.
Now I think we're moving into aspace where much more, first of
all, amazon is getting better atputting those ads in front of
the right people.
I would say our auto campaigns,even just left alone, are
(03:12):
performing way better than theyever performed in the past,
without a whole bunch ofnegation.
Now that doesn't mean you'renot going to have to negate.
You're still going to want togo in and negate certain
products and certain key phrasesand things like that.
So you know, don't think thatyou're going to avoid that.
However, amazon is gettingbetter.
But what's even better than thatis that on the auto campaigns
(03:33):
you don't have that opportunityto say you can choose.
Essentially it's an audience andit's kind of a bid modifier
situation where you say, okay,amazon calls it highly likely to
convert is the audience, and ifyou select that, you can give
it a bid modifier, which inother words just says pay more,
(03:53):
I'm willing to pay you more toput my ad in front of that
person that you believe has ahigh likelihood to convert.
And what we have seen is thatthat audience does convert
significantly better than thestandard auto campaign, even
though the auto campaign itselfis performing way better than
the standard auto campaign, eventhough the auto campaign itself
is performing way better thanit used to.
So Amazon's algorithm is gettingway better at figuring out who
will buy your product and if yougive them the space to make
(04:16):
those determinations, roas isgoing way up in comparison to
where it was and, like I saidearlier, to where it was and,
like I said earlier, amazon isstarting to devote a lot more
exposure to auto campaignsversus exact match, and so if
you really want to get as manyimpressions as your product is
capable of receiving, I highlyrecommend that you start moving
(04:38):
into giving auto campaigns alittle more leeway and a little
more budget so that you can giveAmazon that opportunity to put
your product in front of theright people, and that AMC being
added onto that and audiencesis just going to be another
layer that makes that just thatmuch more effective.
But that's kind of where we areright now in our research phase
and what we're trying toaccomplish.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Okay, Matt.
Anything else you want to addto that?
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Well, I mean, the first that I had heard about
this concept of automaticcampaigns getting you know more
love and actually a whole lotsmarter from Amazon was a video
that I saw Chris Rawlings fromSophie Society that Mike
actually shared with me and youknow a couple of.
We mentioned it to ouradvertising agency and a couple
(05:23):
of weeks later I was pokingaround in the campaign manager
and it was fascinating just tosee it live with my own two eyes
just how well those audienceand bid adjustments that Mike
were talking about wereperforming.
So it wasn't just a theory thatyou watched on a YouTube video.
I was able to go into ourcampaigns and actually see how
(05:45):
well different segments of ourautomatic campaigns were
performing, and in some casesthey're some of our highest
performing campaigns.
So it was very eyeopening tosee the actual live performance
of those after hearing thatconcept by Chris Rawlings.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
And also, just to clarify that point, not just our
highest performers in terms ofyou know say point, not just our
highest highest performers interms of, you know, say, roas,
but our highest performers interms of number of orders that
came in.
So not only is the ROAS ofthose campaigns performing
exceptionally well, but our toplike over the last three, you
(06:21):
know, or month or two out of ourtop five campaigns in in Amazon
PPC, four of them are autocampaigns and one of them is a
brand defense campaign, which isa completely different, you
know, animal and shouldobviously have really good ROAS.
But but four of our top fivecampaigns that are producing the
most orders of anything areauto campaigns and I actually
(06:44):
think, when I calculated it outthe other day, I want to say
that like 40% of the revenuethat came in from our ad-based
sales was those four campaigns.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah, I think this is such an interesting topic
because I kind of mentioned atthe top of the episode.
I mean, this is really whereMeta is already at Like.
They're very intent-based andthey're going to show ads to
people that are going to be thethey think are going to be the
most likely on the purchase offof this.
That's where you have likelookalike audiences, which
they've had for a long time, butthey've really gone even deeper
(07:17):
on that to make meta.
From what I understand andagain I will be the first one to
say that I know only the bareminimums about meta ads it's
been a few years since I've runany meta ads, so definitely not
an expert when it comes torunning anything on Facebook or
Instagram.
That said, I do think thatthere's some things to learn
(07:38):
from what's happening over there, of what we see for the future
of Amazon ads, and I think acouple of things to keep in mind
with what you're saying is that, first, it's just in general
principles, and this has beentrue for years is that for most
brands that are under, let's say, an arbitrary line of like 5
million, 80% of your sales aregoing to come from sponsored
(08:00):
product ads.
So sponsored brand sponsoreddisplay, dsp those are all nice,
but the reality of it is, ifyou're looking at, hey, what's
the 80-20 Pareto principle ofwhat's actually bringing in
sales and revenue?
Most of it is going to besponsored product ads and I
think what really bolsters whatyou guys are saying is that the
auto campaigns are getting moreefficient and the broad match
(08:23):
campaigns are getting moreefficient in how they're
targeting, and that really makessense with.
The other thing to keep in mindis that broad match changed a
couple of years ago to where itwent from being, you know, broad
based on those keywords tobeing like really broad.
And then we had issues wherewe'd have to do, like you know,
(08:44):
for the people that, like methat were really nerdy into it,
what we call broad modifiers, tosay, hey, we actually want like
a little less broad than whatAmazon had pushed out to you in
order to get efficiency out ofthose.
So it sounds like Amazon's kindof figured that out on the ad
side.
Now, what I would say is andthis all depends on the brand
(09:06):
and what category you're in so Ican think of a client that we
just started working with wherethey have a consumable product
and they weren't doing anyremarketing, which is primarily
a sponsored display ad type.
So this is where, again, yes,auto campaigns, broad campaigns,
are probably going to be a goodthing to look into and to be
(09:27):
working for a lot of, again,brands that are under 5 million.
I think that there is like youneed to understand, you know, I
think, most likely customers toconvert is probably an easy kill
.
But then also, thinking abouthow you do those auto campaigns
and you may want to havemultiple auto campaigns in order
(09:47):
to control your spend ondifferent things.
So you might have a campaign,an auto campaign that's just
dedicated to close match mostlikely to convert, for example.
So you might have to, you know,kind of make things more
granular for that perspective,and it really, again, it's going
to depend on what categoryyou're in, how competitive that
category is, how differentiatedyour brand is, some of those
(10:09):
other things in order to get themost bang for your buck, if you
will, out of it.
I think you know and again, thisis as an agency owner's
perspective.
So I you know putting my own,you know, kind of not agency
owner, but brand owner hat on.
I think there's a lot of goodstuff to be had there.
But I also am a little bitcautious that when you start
(10:29):
looking at, you know thosegranular details of how do I
overcome a competitor wherethere's a big difference between
being first and second.
I think that's where there canbe a lot of value in like
thinking about, like rankingcampaigns, for example, like you
definitely, you know, for yourhero product and your other
products should be have tested,you know, regularly, and looking
(10:52):
at ranking campaigns, which isan exact match type.
So I think, in broad strokes,this is actually going to make
PPC a lot simpler and moreprofitable for brands in general
.
That said, I do think thatthere is still a place, and will
continue to be a place forthose brands that have an area
where they need to get to thatlast, you know, from 80% to 99%,
(11:19):
because there's just such a bigdifference in sales between
being first and second.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
I think so I would agree with that.
I think probably the thing tocome away from this with is, if
you're a brand, that's in aspace where you don't
necessarily have the funding topay an agency, right, Because
the thing about it is, with anagency, there's nothing wrong
(11:47):
with going with an agency.
And if you can afford to andyou can find a good agency, I
think you know that's, it can bea good route.
But you then have the ad costand the agency costs.
Now, of course, if you have itin house, you have the ad cost
and you have whatever the costis to pay somebody to set up the
campaigns, you just have thecost of ignorance Right, oh yeah
.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
No, for sure.
So you're trying to figure itout yourself and depending on
how smart you are it depends onhow good you are.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
What I would say is if you are, you know, either,
say, a one-man show or, you know, a small team, but right now
your margins are a little on thethin side and you're wanting to
find a way to bring your costsdown but still get exposure for
your brand and hopefully haveads that at least are performing
profitably.
I think you have an opportunityhere where if you just simply
(12:34):
set up a fairly simple campaignstructure with auto campaigns
for each of those individualproducts and you set it to a
very strong bid modifier forhighly likely to convert, I
think that with that simplestructure you could do
relatively well without reallygetting super advanced.
Now there's stages in that youcould take that and then break
(12:58):
that, as John was suggesting,like you could break that into.
Okay, I want to loose matchauto campaign and I want to
close match auto campaign and Iwant to substitute auto campaign
, so you can figure out whichones maybe are your best fit and
maybe some of them that havethe modifier and some of them
don't have the modifier.
So you can get as complex asyou want.
But again, if you are in thatspace where you just can't
(13:19):
afford the agency and you can'tafford to put a lot of time into
management.
The other thing that's importantto recognize about an auto
campaign 1% bid management,because you're only managing the
bid at the campaign or ad grouplevel and then your modifiers.
There's no keyword bidding thatyou have to manage.
(13:41):
That is a significant hurdlethat you basically bypass by
using an auto campaign.
Now that's not to say thatthere's not going to be any
value in doing exact match orbroad match or any of these
other things.
But if you're trying to keep iton the cheap and you're trying
to see if you can develop somead sales at a reasonable price
that you can manage, it's reallymoving in a direction where you
(14:03):
could pull that off with autocampaigns, I think fairly
effectively.
But then, as John said, ifyou're trying to move the needle
that extra you know, 20% you'reprobably going to either need
somebody on staff who reallyknows what they're doing or
you're going to need an adagency, you know to run those
ads and really you know, pullthat off.
(14:23):
But you know I do think you aremoving into a space where kind
of Amazon really can be that PPCmanager If you keep things
small and tight and you knowyou're really just trying to
control that cost and make sureyou're still getting those sales
.
I think you can do it,especially for smaller brands.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Yeah, and what I would add to that too is if
you're a smaller brand and Iguess you know, starting with
this, I think, experiencebecause I mean, listen, I talk
to a lot of different peoplethat are Amazon you know brand
owners that are selling onAmazon and a lot you know the
reality of this is that a lot ofAmazon agencies suck.
That's just the reality of itLike they just don't deliver on
(15:05):
you know the results that theypromise.
So I understand from a brandowner's perspective why it can
be incredibly frustrating ifyou're paying for an agency on
top of your ad spend.
And so I think what's alsoreally powerful to think about
with this is if you're having aterrible experience and again,
by all means, I would say youknow and we've talked about this
(15:26):
in a previous episode of setclear expectations, you know,
just like you would with anybodyyou know, any other vendor or
employee or anything like thatlike set clear expectations up
front, you have to give you knowat least, I would say, 60 to 90
days, unless they're doingsomething you know absolutely
horrible, to see if they're anygood or not Beyond that, if
(15:48):
you're not getting the resultsout of it.
I think what's powerful aboutthis is knowing that you could
do the 80% solution withsomething so simple that you
don't need Like it's notcritical that you have an agency
that if you fired your agencytoday, your account, if you of a
(16:16):
sudden, your ACOS is going togo to 200% and your entire
account is going to collapse.
Because I think what you'resaying, mike, and what you're
pointing out with this, is that,as Amazon gets a lot smarter,
it is something that a brandowner can do at a pretty basic
level and still do all the otherthings that you need to do as a
(16:36):
brand owner.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
So we talked about.
You know, most 80% of sales,especially for a brand that's
just getting starting out on theplatform, is going to be
sponsored product ads.
That's true as you start todabble.
So in my opinion, I think thatbid adjustments, bid
(17:03):
optimization, can be run bymostly by an AI tool.
I think it's one of the fewthings in terms of Amazon
advertising that can be run byan AI tool and you feel
comfortable handing thatoperation over because it's
essentially a math equation.
If you get a target ACOS or atarget TACOS, it's a math
equation to figure out what toadjust that bid to.
So computers are good at math,algorithms are good at math.
I think that if you add on atool, some sort of a tool, that
(17:26):
does automatic bid adjustmentsbased on some AI algorithm, I
think you can start to get alittle bit more advanced and
even a little bit further up thefunnel with your ad types and
still keep your campaigns lesscomplex than, say, they are
today, while leaning onautomatic campaigns and having
some exact match campaigns foryou know, ranking purposes and
(17:47):
things like that.
But using a tool to doautomatic bid adjustments I've
used a couple in my day.
There's a really.
Takemetrics is a really reallygood tool that has a really
really good artificialintelligence algorithm that
knows how to adjust bids basedon different external factors.
So you know, I think adding onone of those tools as you start
to kind of go up the further upthe funnel into more complex ad
(18:08):
types is a solid solution thatdoesn't really add that much
more time to a solopreneur'stime or day but gives them the
flexibility to be able to.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
I will just tell you a little bit there, matt.
In the sense that I mean, wecall AI now, but bid automation
has been around for a long timeand, having my own brand,
working with numerous brands,testing a lot of different
platforms, I think we all knowthat there has been a lot of
terrible bid automation toolsover the years, so the one
(18:46):
important caveat that I wouldput on that and this is
something that I feel verystrongly about is that I think
it is great to let the AI orautomation do kind of the
computational math to say, hey,here's my goal, acos, whatever
and there's some differentfilters you can put in there.
Based on this, which bids areout of range or should get
(19:06):
adjusted and by how much.
What I think is criticallyimportant, though, is that there
needs to be a human in the loopthat reviews all of that and
clicks the button that says Iaccept these changes, because
what we find time and time againis is that, if you don't have
that human in the loop, the AIor automations or whatever
(19:29):
starts to do kind of you know,funny things or you know it's
not really on the automations.
Things happen in unintentionalways, because it's really hard
to understand what the impact ofsome of those bid changes are
when it's a completely black boxthat you're not looking at on a
you know at least every.
(19:51):
You know once a week, let aloneonce a month, and all of a
sudden your entire ad accountgoes sideways.
So I do think it's importantthat somebody puts a you know,
human eyes on those bidadjustments.
And I would say again, 90% ofthe time you know 90% of those
you're going to click, you knowokay, on and accept.
But there are those.
You know 90% of those you'regoing to click, you know okay,
(20:13):
on and accept.
But there are those you know10% of cases where you know
things are off and they can beoff drastically, especially when
you're trying to do things thatare a little bit more advanced.
When you start looking atranking campaigns and you start
looking at you know we talked alittle bit about defensive
targeting If you start lookingat offensive targeting, like
there might be a really goodreason why you have a campaign
(20:34):
with a 200% ACoS because yourgoal is to steal as much market
share as possible from a keycompetitor Well, that's really
hard to teach an AI or anautomation to adjust bids for.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true.
I mean, I've used auto bidadjustment tools in the past and
, generally speaking, they doquite well, because again as.
Matt said, most of it is justmath, but I certainly have run
into situations where the AI orthe algorithm whatever it is
(21:10):
that is actually working in thebackground whether it's truly AI
or not makes a decision on aparticular keyword based on
erroneous assumptions.
So, in other words, you knowwe've had keywords that were
really important keywords for usthat all of a sudden weren't
producing anything because theAI made a decision based on a
(21:31):
short window of data that didn'treally line up with what we
knew to be true, and so it madesome adjustment.
And then all of a sudden, youknow, our PPC kind of fell off a
cliff or, you know, went theother direction and did some you
know extraordinary number thatdidn't make any sense, and so we
started spending a fortune onsomething that you know we would
never have spent money on, youknow, to begin with.
So I think you do have to becareful with it.
(21:53):
But the good news is, like yousaid, john, I mean, if you're
using a tool like that, 90% ofthe recommendations that it
gives you, you're just going toclick yes, and that's way faster
than having to go through allthe mental calculations yourself
and make those determinationson your own, and so you're still
going to cut that time on tasksignificantly.
(22:13):
And so the combination ofletting Amazon kind of manage
the auto side of things and thenmaybe having these selected
campaigns for exact match andthings like that, I think is
really a good combination.
And if you don't have thebandwidth for that, then stick
with the auto campaigns, becauseI do think that you can tailor
(22:35):
them enough and do enough of thebasic negations that need to be
done to get them into a spacewhere they're performing very
well for you, and it's a verysimple campaign structure to set
that up.
A couple of other things that Iwould say is one Amazon is not
going to differentiate an autocampaign between branded and
(22:56):
unbranded.
So at the very least, if youdon't separate out your
campaigns in any other way, Iwould make sure that when you
set up the auto campaigns, youseparate out branded search and
brand defense, because yournumbers are not going to be
right if you leave it alone,because I can tell you that our
(23:17):
auto campaigns now this isn'tthe reason they're performing
well.
They're actually performingwell, even if we take this data
out.
However, it is serving up adson our detail pages, so they're
essentially brand defense ads,but they're in an auto campaign
instead of a separate branddefense campaign, like they
(23:38):
should be, and so we're negatingthose out.
But then it also shows up onbranded terms like pro-tough
pool poll and things like that.
Well, again, you really don'twant those branded terms in an
auto campaign.
You'd be much better separatingthose out into their own
campaign.
So don't ignore the fact thatthere are some things you want
to negate out, and I definitelyrecommend that branded is one of
(23:59):
them.
You're going to negate that outof your auto campaigns.
Keep those in separate.
You know brand defensecampaigns and stuff, but that is
still a way simpler campaignstructure than what we would
have had, you know, two, threeyears ago.
You know, especially if you'vegot very many products and
that's again that's anotherimportant aspect of this If
(24:27):
you're a smaller brand but youhappen to have a fairly large
SKU list.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
This, the fact that you can run these auto campaigns
, makes your life 90 easier thanyou think it does, and it
really puts you in a position,such an important point, I mean.
I mean, I've seen a brand thatyou know they're doing barely
six figures on amazon and theyhave 200 skews, which is a
little crazy, not something?
Yeah, this is perfect for that.
Yeah, and so again, I wouldmuch rather have somebody set up
an auto campaign for each.
(24:50):
You know, maybe parent, if youwill, and you know, run 10, 20
auto campaigns, rather thancreating one auto campaign and
throwing, you know, all 200 SKUs.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Auto campaign, because your performance across
those you know, those parentASINs, is wildly different.
Where you have some parentASINs where you know they've got
some pretty good traction,they've got some decent reviews
and they're having some you knowsome success, and then you have
others that, quite frankly, arejust duds.
Well, if you put everythinginto one campaign, well, what
(25:26):
Amazon's going to do is it'sgoing to take, say, you have you
know $100 a day budget in there.
It's going to spend that acrosswhatever clicks, not what sells
.
And so now you're reallystruggling in order to adjust
things in order.
You really don't have a wholelot of or a ton of control in
order to push that money in thedirection of like what's working
for you, whereas it's alsogoing to confuse amazon, you're,
(25:48):
yeah, you're confusing thealgorithm at the same time.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Yeah, yeah, so simpler does not mean run a
single auto campaign foreverything, like simpler just
means you don't have 12 000exact match campaigns like okay,
yes, I've got.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
You know, maybe I've got 10 auto campaigns or
something that you know youdon't need an exact match
campaign for every singlekeyword you want to target,
Right?
No, we won't.
That was a cough.
People can interpret later ifthey play it back slow enough.
So, okay, I think this is afantastic conversation.
I think this might be a goodplace to wrap on it, be a good
place to to wrap on it.
(26:22):
So takeaways for you know,brand owners who are listening,
I guess I'll.
I'll start with you, Matt, Likewhat's the, what's the action
item that you'd give to brandowners that are listening to
this?
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Well, I'll, I'll give a little bit different.
I'm not going to answer yourquestion directly, but one of
the things that we haven'ttalked about you know we talked
about meta has gone down thisroute before.
Google's gone down this routeand actually TikTok is actually
right now currently going downthis route.
They've actually removed all theother ad types and now there's
one ad type, gmv max, whichessentially is their automatic
campaign and it's performingbetter than all of the other
(26:59):
manual, more manual typecampaigns were before.
So TikTok just removed accessto all of them and now you have
one ad type and so you give itan ROI target and it meets that
ROI target incredibly well.
So even more proof that thesebig platforms, as they start to
mature, they learn that andthese platforms, their goal is
(27:20):
to make money and they do thatby selling products.
So if they have data that tellsthem which listing is the
highest likelihood to convert,they're going to rise that one
to the top, and that'sessentially what these ad
campaigns are doing, or thesetypes of campaigns are doing is
giving them control, becausethey know who's going to convert
.
So just more proof that this,this is the way that Amazon is
(27:40):
going, for a reason All theother platforms have already
done it way that Amazon is goingfor a reason.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
All the other platforms have already done it,
I think.
For me I would say onerecognize that the evidence does
show that Amazon is moving thisdirection.
It only makes sense that theywould, considering that
everybody else is moving thatdirection and Amazon's got so
much data, obviously they wouldbe able to make these sort of
determinations.
And I would say, because it'strue that it's moving this
(28:09):
direction, you need to get aheadof it, because not everybody
understands this yet and noteverybody is using it.
And even if you don't dismantlethe whole rest of your campaign
structure, if you justrecognize this one point and you
start utilizing this to getmore exposure because, again,
auto campaigns done right cangive you a lot of exposure right
(28:30):
now, more exposure than you'regoing to get from running a
bunch of exact match campaigns.
And there's two things thatthat does for you.
One, if the auto campaign isperforming well, then obviously
that creates more orders thatare profitable.
But secondly, don't forget whatJohn mentioned earlier, which is
sponsored display.
Sponsored display you can usethat as kind of a mini DSP for
(28:51):
remarketing and things like that.
Well, you can't remarket tosomebody that you never had an
ad show to in the first place.
So if you're using sponsoredproducts and you're getting more
ad impressions to the rightpeople at the right price so you
can afford it, then you'regiving more fodder to that
sponsored display campaign forthat remarketing, and so you can
(29:13):
kind of spin that wheel alittle bit.
So I just think it's definitelya space that you need to pay
attention to and also understandAmazon's only going to get
better at it.
It's not as if it's going to godownhill from here.
Also understand Amazon's onlygoing to get better at it.
It's not as if it's going to godownhill from here.
Amazon's going to continue togather more and more and more
data and they're going to getbetter and better and better at
this.
So get ahead of the curve now.
Get your campaign structure setup to take advantage of it, and
(29:33):
I guarantee you, six monthsfrom now it's going to be even
more effective than it is today.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Yeah, and I'll leave it with this, because I think
it's really important that youknow one, that you guys that as
brand owners selling on Amazon,and just you know, being on the
platform that you are, I thinkyou're 100% right, mike.
You're, you know, staying aheadof these things that are
happening and seeing how, that,where this is going with ads,
I'd also add that, or includethat, just as a general
(29:59):
principle, ads is never going tobe, you know, set it up and
then like YOLO, you know YOLO,amazon ads management, like let
it do its thing and never lookat it, never touch it.
But it's also doesn't need tobe the bulk sheet.
You know bid optimization withpivot tables that we used to do,
you know, four or five yearsago.
(30:19):
There is, you know, a, a rightin between there and it's really
going to depend on whatcategory you're in, how big of a
brand you are, what your brandgoal is and a few other factors
on Amazon.
So I think, finding what isthat right level for where
you're at right now with yourbrands, for managing your ads
(30:41):
successfully on Amazon.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Also one last thing before we close.
Don't forget that a lot oftimes, exact match campaigns and
whatnot are used for rankingand obviously at the moment
that's still valid and stilluseful and important.
But AI is becoming the toolthat people are going to be
using to find their products,becoming the tool that people
(31:05):
are going to be using to findtheir products, and so, more and
more, how you rank in theactual search is going to become
less and less relevant.
It's going to be much moreimportant how you rank in.
What AI tells somebody is theproduct that they want.
So you know, don't ignore exactmatch, don't ignore the
possibility of ranking usingthose tools, but just recognize
that is a dying strategy.
(31:26):
You know like that is astrategy that's going to become
less and less and less effectiveover time.
So I would not be investing amassive amount of time and
effort into that.
If you've got an agency or youhire an agency, obviously in the
short term you're going to wantthem to be doing that because
it's still effective.
But if you're not focusing inon AI ranking, then you're
missing the boat and thatcampaign structure is going to
(31:49):
reach a point where it's notserving your needs and you're
going to fall off a cliff.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
And that's a great segue into something that we
will cover on a future episode.
So stay tuned, because that'sdefinitely something we'll cover
.
Thank you everybody forlistening and we look forward to
seeing you next time on anotherTactics Tuesday.
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