Amazon Marketing Services Interface Changes to Amazon Campaign Manager in Seller Central

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The Amazon Campaign Manager in Seller central has recently been updated to improve advertising on the platform. The enhancements are meant to make using the tool easier

Changes to the Amazon Campaign Manager

The merge that has rendered Amazon Marketing Services “obsolete” is actually two-fold.

First, Amazon Marketing (including AMS, AMG, AAP, and brand store) now falls under what is known as Amazon Advertising. The names have changed, but the core functionality is the same, and Amazon has added some additional features.

Second, since Amazon is working on merging vendor and seller advertising, third party sellers have been granted access to Headline Search Ads via the Brand Registry after being allowed to use Sponsored Products ads. Amazon wants to blur the distinction between vendor and seller and give all brand owners – both first and third party – access to all its advertising tools.
The Amazon Campaign Manager in Seller central has recently been updated to improve advertising on the platform. The enhancements are meant to make using the tool easier

Changes to the Amazon Campaign Manager

The merge that has rendered Amazon Marketing Services “obsolete” is actually two-fold.

First, Amazon Marketing (including AMS, AMG, AAP, and brand store) now falls under what is known as Amazon Advertising. The names have changed, but the core functionality is the same, and Amazon has added some additional features.

Second, since Amazon is working on merging vendor and seller advertising, third party sellers have been granted access to Headline Search Ads via the Brand Registry after being allowed to use Sponsored Products ads. Amazon wants to blur the distinction between vendor and seller and give all brand owners – both first and third party – access to all its advertising tools.

Advertising on the Amazon Campaign Manager

Nothing much has changed below the surface, but the merge has spurred a couple of trends that will have a greater impact in the long run.

Advertising off as well as on Amazon has become increasingly important for sellers who face competition on the marketplace. Seller Central users can now access many of the same tools that vendors have, so smaller sellers are looking at better chances, being more nimble by nature.

Amazon Advertising is an SPI-based platform, so sellers have to get used to this new system. The new Amazon Campaign Manager tools are programmatic, so using several internal and external tools in conjunction is an easier feat than it ever was before. Sellers will be able to manage more campaigns as functions such as adjusting bids becomes automatic. Advertising efficiency is also boosted, resulting in lower ACoS.

Moreover, niche third party advertising tools are going to start emerging. As more solutions to better advertising evolve, sellers need to figure out which ones are best suited to their businesses. This way, they can remain competitive and/or be able to maximize on their new competitive advantage.

Amazon Campaign Manager tools

Improved Advertising Tools

Sellers will be seeing the following updates in their accounts:

Multi-Campaign In-Line Edits

Sellers can now perform bulk edits on multiple campaigns – adjusting budgets and bids, start and end dates, and statuses just got a lot simpler. Gone are the days of manually opening and editing each campaign, and the bulk edits are done right at the top of the campaign table.

Amazon Campaign Manager Reporting

One of the biggest complaints about AMS was how difficult it was to access account-level data. Advertising reports has to be downloaded and scrutinized to pull relevant data and form the insights needed to improve campaign performance. The recent updates have made efficient analysis possible, as well as made available four distinct reports:

1.  Search Term Report

Like the traditional Search Term Report, this shows actual customer search terms and data on clicks, impressions, spend, ACoS and conversion. What’s new is the Return on Advertising Spend (RoAS) metric that is reminiscent of Google AdWords.

2.  Keyword Report

This report shows changes is keyword search volumes and how often different searches are triggering these keywords. This is very insightful where keyword bids are concerned.

3.  Advertised Product Report

This report gives details on traffic and sales levels by ASIN, which allows sellers to analyze where customers are going and if it’s worth the spend.

4.  Placement Report

This is where sellers can see search result ads placement to determine whether ads are taking the top spots or failing to gain feasible visibility versus spend.

Customized Date Ranges

The new design of the date range selector (and the campaign table itself) is prettier and easier to use. Custom date ranges are still limited to the last 90 days, but selecting presets and start and end dates is quick and simple.

Account Time Zone

This is especially useful for businesses that have virtual assistants from all over the world working on them, sometimes simultaneously. Rather than trying to figure out all those different local times to gauge who worked on what, or risking campaigns going live on the wrong dates due to time differences, accounts now display a single time zone based on the physical location of the business on record.

Additional Updates for Seller Central

All the previous updates apply to Vendor Central as well, but Seller central has a few of its own exclusive features.

Campaign Setup

The campaign creation process has been updated to allow product sorting by star rating or number of reviews. This helps sellers identify the best-performing products so they can easily determine which ads to run. Keyword files can also be uploaded – as opposed to manually entering keywords – to save more time, and add negative keywords right at the start rather than having to launch then go back in and edit.

Campaign Types

Headline Search and Sponsored Product Ads have been consolidated under the All Campaigns view. To see separate data for each campaign type, sellers can use the filters.

Data Table

The data table itself can now be downloaded as a CSV file which retains any customizations made to it prior to the actual export. This enables specific report creation for quick views of progress on any campaigns.

Final Thoughts

These may not be great strides for the Amazon Campaign Manager, but the marketplace has certainly put some serious work into improving ease of use on the platform. Advertising and account management is getting easier almost by the day, making selling on Amazon a more equal playing field for everyone. This is just proof that Amazon is serious about getting up to the level where it can compete as a separate advertising platform with Google and Facebook.

Sellers should certainly start playing with all the available tools and integrations to test them out at this early stage while there’s a chance to get on top without a lot of opposition.

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