Amazon Sponsored Video ads

Amazon video ads when done right are a superpower. If you can get it right you can clean up your whole competitive landscape in a way that nobody else can. The reason is that this is one of the few aspects of Amazon that comes down to raw creativity. It's something that you know suppliers and direct factories in China don't have and can't compete with because they can compete on price they can compete on even quality, but they can't compete on the creativity and the way to communicate with the customer.

In this Article I will explain what Amazon sponsored videos are, how to create video campaigns and will share a formula to make great video ads so that all sellers can use and can get some excellent results.

Amazon Sponsored Videos

Sponsored videos it's something you may have noticed yourself when using Amazon. Video ads are a very powerful way to promote your products. Amazon video ads on average convert between two and a half times for the click-through rate, so they have two and a half times a greater click-through rate than regular sponsored product ads which show up in the same place in search results, and they have between two times more conversions and lower ACOS.

If you have noticed these videos appearing as part of the search results. I am sure many of you have, so it doesn't matter what device you're using you might see it in a slightly different format, but you will see the video alongside the product itself.

It has a really low ACOS, for this it's really good for getting attention when you look at the search results something like that is always going to stand out.

Sponsored videos they've got the desktop version, and they've got the mobile version and a large percentage of their traffic does come from mobile usage, so it is really important to know the guidelines especially screen text guidelines the type of fonts to use and how to space it and stuff like that. Here is the link to the Amazon sponsored video guidelines https://advertising.Amazon.com/en-gb/resources/ad-specs/sponsored-brands-video                                    

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It is definitely worth reading through these guidelines and if you're not familiar with making videos they have got a really helpful spec sheet here about kind of the dimensions you can use and the file formats you can use as well.

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Where do you actually create these video campaigns?

In Amazon seller central when you create a new campaign make sure you click on sponsored brands and that will take you through to the correct section.

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Here we are on the create campaign page all you need to do is pop in your own campaign name choose whether it's part of an existing portfolio or not, the start date will usually be the date you're creating the campaign and then pop in your daily budget.

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The most important thing here as I scroll down is make sure you select the video beta box here.

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Because when you select this change the options that are below it, so select your video box here then on the left-hand side will load all the products you sell. Then add them the ones that you want to target so usually one product at a time you're targeting add them here.

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You'd list your products, you'd add the one that you want to promote and as you scroll down further it will then ask you to upload the video.

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Now this is different to creating a normal PPC advertise on Amazon usually with a keyword or product campaign there's no approval process to go through you just create your campaign and as the advert itself is created based on your product listing there's no approval process which with the video as you could literally be uploading anything this does go through a manual review process. It takes around 8 to 12 hours for Amazon to approve them so once your video is uploaded, don't expect it to start straight away. It will stay pending and hopefully Amazon will approve it so don't expect to see immediate results it needs to be approved and then give it a few days at least to support deciding whether that advert is working for you or not.

And then once you scroll down you'll see the usual kind of keyword targeting tools you'd associate with creating a PPC campaign.

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You can either use their suggested keywords enter the list of your own, or you can upload a file if you've already done some keyword research. So it's kind of very similar to creating a normal campaign just with the approval process and the fact you've actually got to create the video itself it's not something that Amazon's going to automatically generate.

How to make your videos above average?

There is a certain formula that works. You have to apply the creativity. Every product and every category are different so let's go into it.

Formula To Make A Great Video Ads

1.  Visual Clickbait

Amazon product videos show up in the middle of search results. It's like this on desktop, and it's like this on mobile. The video itself takes up the entire width of the screen on desktop. The primary image of the product you see when you run an Amazon product video ad not having visual clickbait.

Now one thing that's super important to notice is that sometimes the video plays as soon as you scroll onto it or when 50 of the frame has entered the screen and on mobile you know this happens more often that sometimes you have to click to play the video. Now why am I going to click a video that's showing me a screen that doesn't look interesting at all. This is one of the biggest mistakes that sellers make is not having interesting visual clickbait on their product video. Clickbait is just something that gets them to click.

2.  Action

The very first thing in the first couple of seconds has to be action. Don't start off with something boring. Now what can action be? Action is something anything striking. It does make you want to see what's going on, like it makes you curious to see what's going on. It shouldn't be a static background what it shouldn't be is just the product sitting there this is not enough action the first few seconds the only goal for the first like one and a half to five seconds is to get them to watch the rest of the video and the total video time should be between 15 and 45 seconds.

3.  Problem-Solving

After the action you immediately show the problem being solved by the product. Your ad should show for which problem your product is capable for providing solution. It has to say enough about the product or shows the product in action and shows the problem being solved.

4.  Visual text

There should be enough visual text showing the features and benefits of the products in the video and this is what many sellers don't do it in a right way. You don't just blast them with features and benefits and all kinds of cool stuff. You can do that later the first thing you do is different. Ad should be entertaining something that you want to watch and continue watching.

5.  Show features and benefits together

After this we're going to show shots that show features and benefits together. This is what you can only do with video when you're typing out text the way to do it in the bullet points. You're showing the benefits that you either solve a problem or feed a passion and then the features that deliver those benefits. In video, you can actually do both at once, since it's a live moving dynamic system of video you can show the features delivering certain benefits live.

6.  Text overlay

Now one important fact of this is that there has to be text overlay because you're not going to communicate verbally with a significant portion of the viewers of this video. More than half majority will not be using audio on the video, so you have to be able to show these features and benefits visually through the shots and with text overlaid.

7.  Show the brand

So the bulk of the video showing the problem being solved in real life and showing the features and benefits together of the product and there are a lot of creative ways to do that, and we're going to walk through a couple of those the last thing that you do is show the brand. So brand logo and any other brand assets that you have or anything related to the brand but definitely the logo and tagline.

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Main Purpose of Amazon Sponsored Video

The main purpose of the sponsored video is not to sell the product to the customer, but it’s to get them to click on the product listing. It's not about selling but it's about to get them to click. Once they get onto the product listing everything that you show on a product listing from the video to the images to the text is all about selling. But this is about clicking not about selling. So it has to have some interesting cool tweaking features that are not just entertaining for the sake of entertainment but are entertaining in a way that connects a curiosity and some kind of inspiration or emotional connection to the product. Not just in general it has to connect that excitement or that entertainment or that information to the product.

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Conclusion

Amazon sponsored videos are doing really well, they're getting lots of attention, and they are converting very well. If you've got a product selling on Amazon, and you're currently using PPC or maybe if you're not using PPC because it's too expensive it may be worth experimenting with these sponsored videos to see whether you can get some good results from them.

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Taib Bilal

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