The Amazon advertising platform is a self-serve ads tool that people who are selling on Amazon can use to promote their products and increase sales. For anyone who has used other social media and search ads platforms, you’ll likely see many similarities to Google Ads, though find Amazon advertising to be a much simpler version of Google Ads.

Let’s walk through the process of creating an Amazon ad.

How to Create an Amazon Ad

From Advertising.Amazon.com, click to start an ad campaign. First, you will choose between Sponsored Products and Lockscreen Ads. Lockscreen ads are for Kindles and Fire tablets, so your exposure will be much more limited with that ad option.

On the next screen, give your campaign a name, a start and end date, a daily budget, and choose between Automatic targeting and Manual targeting options. Your campaign name is for your purposes only; label each campaign in a way that makes it easy for you to keep organized in the future.

Note: You will need to select a product to advertise from the list of products associated with your account. If you are an author with Kindle and paperback versions of your book, for example, each version is treated like its own product. 

Amazon Ad Targeting Options

When advertising on Amazon, you have the choice between two targeting options: Automatic and Manual. Automatic targeting is based on keywords and products that are similar to your product, and managed completely by Amazon. Manual targeting, on the other hand, gives you the option to target your ad by keywords or products of your choice.

And within the Manual targeting choice, you can choose between targeting by keyword or by products.

Keyword Targeting

Amazon will suggest some possible keywords for you to target, you can search for and add your own, or you can opt to upload a keyword file. As you begin typing your keyword choices, Amazon will auto-populate keyword suggestions for you to choose.

Additionally, you can choose to broad match, match by phrase, or exact match the keywords you are adding for targeting.

Once you have selected your keywords, click to add them to your targeting. At this point, Amazon will show you its suggested range for your keyword bids, and what you currently have your bids set at. You can click to apply their suggestions or manually make the bid change. You can adjust your bid on a keyword by keyword basis.

You can add negative keywords, too.

Note: Your keywords can be topics, first and last names, and product names.

Product Targeting

Product targeting, currently in Beta, allows you to target by product category or individual products. As you begin to type, Amazon will auto-suggest possible choices for you.

Lastly, you’ll choose between adding custom text to your ad or to advertise without that custom text. You are given 150 characters to personalize should you choose to add custom text.

Amazon Ad Bidding

Amazon will suggest a default bid amount by each keyword or product you choose to target. You will be able to adjust your default bid, as well as adjust bidding on a keyword by keyword or product by product basis. As your Amazon ad runs, your suggested bid price will shift up and down.

As you begin to watch your ad results, please note that campaign reporting can be delayed up to 12 hours.