Amazon Targeted Ads are powerful pay-per-click advertising campaigns that allow you to target potential readers based on keyword search terms, categories, consumer interest, bestselling titles within your genre, and other related products. Amazon offers a range of different types of ads, which allows you to reach readers across desktop, mobile, and Kindle devices, and displays the ad in promotional emails, search pages, product/book detail pages, and across other pages on Amazon.

Pay-per-click advertising enables you to set your own budget and adjust as needed. Amazon’s PPC advertising also ensures that you’re reaching readers who are most likely to buy and are as close to the point of purchase as possible, which increases sales and makes the most efficient use of your budget. Aside from selling directly to consumers, the Amazon Targeted Ads are the only advertising available that provide direct sales data and link tracking for up to 14 days as long as the user does not clear their cookies, meaning a direct return can be calculated.

Some commonly used terms and metrics we monitor when managing campaigns include:

• Pay-Per-Click Advertising
  • Pay-per-click advertising is a form of digital advertising in which advertisers pay each time a user clicks the ad. Rather than “earning” clicks to the book page organically, this form of advertising basically buys visits to the page. The goal is to convert these clicks to sales.
• Retail Ready
  • Retail ready is a term used by Amazon to refer to a product page that’s complete, optimized, and ready for advertising. This includes making sure the “Look Inside” feature is active, all book data is complete, and that there are at least 12 consumer reviews with an average star rating of at least 3.5 stars and 15 verified reviews.
• Impressions
  • Impressions are the number of times ads were displayed on the screen. Since the ads are PPC based, impressions to target readers are essentially free, yet are valuable as it typically takes multiple impressions to convert to a click.
• Clicks
  • Clicks are the number of times the consumer clicked on your ad and was directed to the book page for purchase. The clicks to the book page—even without converting to a sale—contribute to the book's category ranking, can help achieve and maintain bestseller status, and lift the overall book visibility. Because Amazon Targeted Ads are pay-per-click advertising, the amount of clicks in a campaign relies on consumer engagement.
• Average Cost of Sale (ACoS)
  • ACoS is the main metric used to determine campaign efficiency. 00% means that the ad spend and sales are breaking even. Anything lower than 100% is profitable in terms of sales. Benchmark ACoS depends on a variety of metrics, including genre, competition, and timing and will vary by campaign.
• Sales Units
  • For the book being advertised, Amazon reports a combined sales unit number for all formats sold.
• Sales Dollars
  • Amazon reports the total amount consumers have paid for the advertised product. This is not to be confused with the amount in royalties the author will receive.

Amazon Targeted Ads are a great way to optimize Amazon for success. Frequent activity on the book page, like clicks, reviews, and sales, impact the category ranking, which increases the exposure of the book to new readers and boosts Amazon's algorithm to place your book higher in keyword search results. We recommend Amazon advertising because it:

• Provides detailed sales reporting and metrics
• Reaches consumers who are ready to buy as close to the point of purchase as possible
• Captures PR efforts by selecting targeted keywords being used in coverage
• Drives clicks, which impacts Amazon rankings and helps achieve and maintain bestseller status
• Builds a pipeline of verified reviews, which are weighted more heavily by the algorithm

If you are interested in running an Amazon Targeted Ad campaign for your book, check with your publisher or log into your KDP account. If you’re a Greenleaf author, reach out to your Marketing Strategist or contact marketing@greenleafbookgroup.com for more information on how we can manage your Amazon Targeted Ad campaign.