Do You Need Both Amazon Sponsored Ads And Google Shopping Actions?
By Zach Morrison, Elite SEM
Long gone are the days of pay-per-click ads living only on Google and other search engines. The battle for your ad spend has come to Amazon, too.
Up to 27% of Google Ad spend in the past year was for Google Shopping Ads, according to a study by Marin Software. But many businesses have already set aside 21.5% of their advertising budgets for Amazon’s new advertising product.
But does Amazon’s platform warrant that much ad spend already? And can Google hope to compete after Amazon has already overtaken so many industries?
The Battle For Your Bucks
Amazon has three main advertising options: sponsored products, sponsored brands (formerly known as headline search ads) and product display ads. Product display ads are products that are related to a product someone is searching for — e.g., if you’re shopping for a camera, you might see a product display ad for a tripod or a bag.
Amazon continues to dominate, especially during the holidays, so it’s crucial for brands to be where their customers are and have clear strategies for using the channel. In fact, eMarketer predicts that Amazon Advertising will grow by 50% each year until at least 2020. By utilizing Amazon sponsored ads, brands can take their Amazon programs to the next level, ensuring they’re front and center on search results pages and product pages when customers are in the research and discovery phase.
More than 37% of digital ad spending still goes to Google for a reason, though. Shopping actions are Google’s direct attempt to take away market share from Amazon and compete with Prime and other marketplaces. It has been onboarding more brands over the past few months, and it expects these product units to increase in volume during peak holiday time. Google makes a commission on these product sales (as opposed to cost-per-click), so it stands to reason that these units will be more profitable to Google and that it will want to expand volume.
If a brand sees significant volume on Google Shopping, it’s imperative that it uses the Shopping Actions program if it wants to protect that volume and continue to dominate the Google search engine results pages. One of the largest value adds for the Shopping Actions program versus Amazon is that Google lets brands keep customer info and CRM data, while Amazon does not. This enables brands to gain valuable insights into their customers and to market to them again.
The retail space continues to get more marketplace-heavy as users prefer the ease of going to fewer places to meet all their shopping needs. By utilizing just Amazon or just Google, though, brands are missing out on considerable market share.
A World For Both
Given the audience tools available from Amazon and Google, businesses have an amazing opportunity to redefine brand marketing. The real battle for your ad spend isn’t between Google and Amazon; it’s between traditional media and new, measurable opportunities.
Both Google and Amazon allow you to measure your return on investment. Traditional media — or non-measurable media — are still used for brand-building, even though companies have no exact idea how well they’re performing. Using both Amazon and Google will give companies the opportunity to build their brands at a time when people need it most: when they’re actively looking for a product.
Here are three ways to successfully integrate both sponsored ads and Shopping Actions into your strategy in order to maximize your advertising spend:
1. Carve a chunk out of your traditional media budget.
You should not only put as much budget as you can toward ROI-driven activities, but you should also carve out a portion of your brand-building budget for Google and Amazon. Because both mediums are performance-driven, look at them as revenue drivers. Then, examine all the opportunities you have available in these performance-focused mediums, and use traditional metrics and more traditional targeting to measure their success.
2. Don’t forget about SEO.
Keywords aren’t as critical to non-measurable advertising mediums, but they’re incredibly important for Google and Amazon. Keyword-targeted advertising plays matchmaker, giving you an opportunity to use keywords to find shoppers by the search terms they use. Google has a free AdWords Keyword Planner to help guide your keyword research so you can easily find your audience. This way, your ads will be in front of the right consumers at the right time.
3. Make changes on the basis of what could work.
Pay attention to what’s getting you the best results and adjust your strategy from there. Then, look at what could work. Typically, “what’s almost working” and “what could work” get cut. In today’s advertising world, many companies believe a strategy either hits goals or doesn’t. But such opportunities can work better and are more effective in driving awareness, recognition of a brand, and sales than traditional avenues. In other words, don’t make your performance-based marketing (e.g., Google and Amazon) solely for performance: ensure that you’re using them for brand awareness, too.
Your advertising spend is no longer about putting your dollars toward traditional mediums and hoping you get some customers as a result. Thanks to performance-based advertising platforms such as Google and Amazon, you no longer need to cross your fingers. So stop comparing the two, and combine them to ensure you can compete for years to come.
Zach Morrison, president of Elite SEM, joined the company in 2005 as a founding member. From its humble roots to the award-winning agency it is today, he has been instrumental in the strategic growth of the company. He has played a pivotal role in the acquisition and management of key client accounts by establishing relationships with executives at Tommy Bahama, Ethan Allen, NFL, Terminix/ServiceMaster, and several others. Recently named Digiday Top Boss 2018, Morrison’s vision for Elite SEM, expertise, and commitment to company culture has resulted in multiple successful acquisitions and integrations leading Elite SEM to a 2018 projection of close to 500 people and 90 million in revenue. Continuing Elite SEM’s transition into a holistic digital marketing agency, Morrison has immersed himself in learning more about integrated media strategies, analytics, and marketing science from the industry’s top experts. His focus on analytics-based strategies has resulted in clients achieving exponential growth and ROI through their partnership with Elite SEM.