For a few years now, Amazon has been championing the benefits of Sponsored Brands Video ads to Amazon Advertising customers. Brands can choose either Keyword Targeting or Product Targeting for the cost-per-click ads, which show up initially muted in product search results and begin to auto-play once 50% of the ad is on-screen. Each ad can be 15-30 seconds long with customized logos and call-to-actions. Originally, clicking on Sponsored Brands Video ads only directed customers to product pages, but now Amazon also allows for the ads to direct to Brand Store landing pages.
By expanding the Sponsored Brands Video ads format from one that only promotes specific products to one which drives traffic to Stores, it is now possible to use the videos to support shopper engagement and inspire brand discovery and exploration. Now, advertisers can decide the strategy that best suits their needs: driving awareness and consideration (the mid-top funnel) and/or conversion and purchases (mid-low funnel). With branded videos directing customers to branded stores, brands can tell their story in their own voice on Amazon without the distraction of other brands or offerings.
How Effective are Sponsored Brands Video Ads?
When we last covered Sponsored Brands Video ads back in 2021, the format was still relatively new so Amazon had not yet offered any hard statistics on its performance. Now, Amazon has given some data to back up the ad format’s efficacy.
According to Amazon, advertisers using a combination of Sponsored Brands video, Store Spotlight, and custom image ad formats saw:
- 5% increase in return on ad spend (ROAS)
- 57.8% increase in conversion rate
- 108.1% increase in CTR
We have seen tremendous success in using both Keyword-Targeted and Product-Targeted Sponsored Brands Video ads for our clients so far. We’ve found that leveraging video ads with both targeting options can help clients simultaneously drive consideration for their products and build new-to-brand and audiences for the brand.
Both strategies were implemented with excellent results for one of our luxury beauty brands. In this campaign, we found that while Keyword Targeting led to better click-through and conversion rates, Product Targeting led to a higher new-to-brand percentage, ranging from 75% -80%. With both strategies used in tandem, this brand was able to implement Sponsored Brands Video ads to simultaneously increase sales and improve discoverability for the brand as a whole.
What Do Brands Need to Get Started with Sponsored Brands Video Ads?
Amazon insists that brands “don’t need a big budget, film sets, or special effects to make a successful Sponsored Brands video.” Sure, but they do need the capacity to make a clean, modern-looking video in-house, or else they’re going to have to go elsewhere for help. Brands that can’t produce rich media in-house should consider working with an agency like content26 that specializes in advertising on Amazon and is specifically set up to create this kind of content.
Regardless of who creates your Sponsored Brands Video ads, the very first question about its content remains the same: What do you hope to achieve with it? Are you looking to make a video to drive content for a single product or for overall brand awareness?
Once you’ve narrowed that down, then it’s time to create a story for your video. Whether the focus is on a single product or on the entire brand, these videos need engaging product shots that differentiate your brand from the competitors. If you’re focusing on a single product, try to show it in the first 2 seconds of the video and name the most important product feature within the first 5. Many people will see these videos on their mobile device, so make sure the product images are large enough in the frame to distinguish on a small screen.
Sponsored Brands Video ads automatically loop, so special consideration needs to be paid to the music and video seamlessly replaying. There’s a delicate balance that needs to be achieved between attention-grabbing and jarring.
There are a lot of factors that go into creating a perfect Sponsored Brands Video and Amazon wants yours to be as good as it can be. To facilitate this, they offer a variety of free Amazon Bootcamp classes to help get your videos whipped into shape.
Our Tips for Optimizing Your Ads
We’ve found that for single-product video ads, it is important to test the video with multiple products to find the optimal product and video combination. We have tested a variety of color and size variations and in one case found that our branded keyword video campaign performed stronger with a larger-sized variation product (higher price point), while our non-branded keyword campaign performed stronger with a smaller-sized variation product (lower price point). These are insights you can only gain for your own products by testing and adjusting.
And as we mentioned before, it’s important to also experiment with both Keyword Targeting and Product Targeting for your campaigns. We saw huge success with both the targeting types for our clients, letting brands find the right balance between promoting single products and driving brand discoverability based on their goals.
