If you sell on the Amazon marketplace, you know how crucial Amazon ads can be to the success of your business. Whether you want to quick-launch a product, revive an old listing from the dead, or reinforce the algo-regulated feedback loop to grow your online store sales further, Amazon advertising can be one powerful tool if used the right way.
Unfortunately, though, nearly half of Amazon sellers struggle to keep track of their advertising data, rendering the execution of their Amazon ad campaigns ineffective.
This can, however, be overcome with a strong understanding of Amazon advertising reports – how to access, read, and analyze them.
Amazon advertising reports are a set of ad measurement solutions that provide you with valuable insights about your live ad campaigns and their performance. You can find all the relevant ad metrics for your advertised products in these reports and use the information to improve your marketing and advertising efforts.
It’s important to understand that no two products are similar. Even if you are selling in the same category, your ASINs could respond in different ways to the same market inputs. Therefore, tracking ad data and measuring the results of your individual ad campaigns become highly crucial to ensure the success of each product.
Think of an Amazon advertising report as a North Star for your ad campaign!
So how do you exactly put Amazon advertising reports to practical use? Here are just a couple of ways Amazon advertising reports can help you set your ad strategy and execute your ad campaigns more effectively:
i) Know your audience better: Understanding your target audience is one of the prime challenges when running an ad promotion. So much so, almost one in three advertisers say they lack confidence in their efforts to reach out to the right prospects and leads for their ad campaigns. Amazon reports help solve that. You can literally investigate on the keyword level and see what audience search terms are driving the most impressions, clicks, and conversions for your ads. You can then double down on these search phrases and amplify your campaign performance.
ii) Chart out the impact of your advertising investment: High-level executives often struggle to demonstrate the tangible benefits of their organized advertising efforts. This creates uncertainty, putting business owners off from investing further into their company’s ad future. However, with the help of Amazon advertising reports, you can chart out the results of your ad campaign against relevant KPIs and make an informed decision moving forward.
Surely, these Amazon advertising reports look a handful, eh?!
Now, before we actually get down to discussing how to access and read Amazon advertising reports, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the essential Amazon advertising terms and acronyms. This will help you navigate your way when using these reports down the line.
Next, let’s check out the different types of advertising reports available under different Amazon ad types.
Advertising reports on Amazon are grouped by ad types. Some of these reports are unique to a specific ad category, while others are commonly available across all. You can run your desired advertising report by choosing the appropriate ad type.
While Amazon offers multiple ad products to sellers, Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display ads remain the most popular advertising options due to their effectiveness, affordability, and ease of implementation. You can find the following advertising reports under these ad categories:
All professional sellers can use Amazon advertising reports for campaign tracking, measurement, and analysis. However, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display reports can only be used by sellers enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry program. If you haven’t signed up for Amazon Brand Registry yet, click here to get started.
How can you access Amazon advertising reports?
To download an Amazon advertising report, follow these steps:
i) Log in to Seller Central
ii) Click on the three horizontal lines on the top left of your Seller Central dashboard to open the main menu. Go to Advertising > Campaign Manager
iii) Next, select Measurement & Reporting from the sidebar of your Campaign Manager. Click ‘Sponsored ads reports’
iv) Inside the Reports console, click on the Create Report button
v) Choose the ad type and select the advertising report you wish to download for your ad campaign
vi) Set the time unit (‘Summary’ or ‘Daily’) and the reporting period. For what it’s worth, you can get the advertising data for up to the last 3 months through the Amazon advertising reports API
vii) Enter your email address if you want Amazon to alert you once the report is ready. This is optional, however. Finally, click on the blue Run report button on the top right of your screen to start the report generation process
viii) Amazon will take you to the Reports page, where you can monitor the status of your requested ad report. Once the report is processed, download and open it in a spreadsheet program for data tracking and analysis
Which Amazon advertising reports should you focus on?
All Amazon advertising reports provide you with useful insights for your live ad campaigns. However, some offer more value than others. These are the reports to prioritize when analyzing your advertising performance.
What is the Search Term report?
The Amazon Advertising Search Term report shows you the customer search terms that trigger your ads and generate at least one click for your product listing. Furthermore, you can see which of your current targeted keywords are being allocated to those search terms and use the findings to reinforce your advertising performance.
In addition to helping you identify the relevant search terms for your ad campaign, the Search Term report also lists down the competitor ASINs that lead customers to your listing. You can add these ASINs to your target list for your ASIN targeting campaigns.
The Search Term report has 22 columns, including:
The Match Type column contains data about your corresponding keywords and competitor ASINs, while the Customer Search Term column has info on all the relevant search terms.
The ACoS, RoAS, and Clicks columns hold high importance when analyzing what keywords to retain, add, or drop from your ad campaigns. Keywords that fail to register any sales can be added to the negative keywords list and help you cut down on your ad spending.
You can download the Search Term report for your Sponsored Product and Sponsored Brand campaigns.
Here is a snapshot of an Amazon advertising Search Term report template:
Targeting Report
The Targeting report contains data about all your targets, including keywords, categories, and ASINs. This makes the report look quite similar to the Search Term report. However, unlike the latter, it doesn’t show the customer search terms for your ads.
Why use the Targeting report?
The Amazon advertising Targeting report is perfect for campaign analysis if you are looking to cut through the clutter and focus on aggregate data only. Compared to the Search Term report, it’s simpler and easier to read. It also comes in handy for finding duplicate keywords for your ad campaign.
As stated earlier, the Targeting report has all the columns that you find in a regular Search Term report, except for the Search Term column. Also, like the Search Term report, it is available for Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brand ads.
What about the Targeting report found under Sponsored Display?
The Sponsored Display Targeting report contains information about your target audience and products and shouldn’t be confused with the Targeting reports for Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brand ads.
Here is a snapshot of an Amazon advertising Targeting report template for a better understanding:
Placement Report
Next, we have the Placement report.
Available for Sponsored Products PPC ads, the Placement report shows the performance data for your different ad placements across the Amazon marketplace.
It’s important to recall here, Amazon allows you to show your PPC ads at different locations – top of the search, in the middle or near the bottom of the results pages, and on competitors’ listings. The final placement depends on your bid percentage settings.
Using the report findings, you can gain visibility into the ad placements that bring the most clicks and sales for your business, compare their performance relative to the ad spend, and optimize your campaign accordingly. Likewise, you can look at the ad placements that trigger the most impressions and use the data for your branding campaigns. Conversely, you can identify the placements that are eating up your ad budget but not generating significant results and evaluate them for further action.
The Placement report has fifteen columns, including:
The Placement column shows the location of the ads, while Impressions, Clicks, CPC, etc. contain analytical data for each corresponding metric.
Here is a snapshot of an Amazon advertising Placement report template:
Advertised Product Report
The Advertised Product report shows the performance of your advertised ASINs across all campaigns for a particular ad-type, registering at least one impression. It gives you a bird’s-eye view of your overall advertising performance and helps you make informed decisions about your Amazon advertising strategy moving forward.
You can download the report for Sponsored Product and Sponsored Display ad campaigns.
The Amazon Advertised Product contains 21 columns, including:
The Campaign Name column lists down all your live campaigns for a specific ASIN. You can analyze the performance metrics, such as conversion rate, impressions, click-through rate, ACoS, etc. for each campaign in a single spreadsheet.
Here is a snapshot of an Amazon Advertised Product report template:
Matched Target Report
Finally, there is the Matched Target report. This report is exclusive to Amazon Sponsored Display advertising and shows the product listings on which your Display ads appear.
You can use the Matched Target report data to identify the right substitutes and complements for your product targeting campaigns. If you see a set of ASINs generating a high number of ad impressions, you can target those ASINs to get your product more visibility on the Amazon marketplace. Likewise, if you see a high number of clicks and sales coming from a particular group of ASINs, you can add those to your target list to improve your advertising performance.
Previously, you could only see how your products performed under Display ad campaigns on the category level.
The Sponsored Display Matched Target report has 16 columns, including:
The Targeting column contains information about the category pages on which your ads appear, while the Matched target column narrows down your hit targets to the ASIN level.
Here is a snapshot of an empty Sponsored Display Matched Target report template:
Overwhelmed by the amount of data available in these Amazon advertising reports? Well, you can always keep your analysis simple by monitoring the key baseline ad metrics.
The key baseline ad metrics provide you a nice summary of your Amazon advertising performance, helping you to quickly identify the strengths and weaknesses of your ad strategy.
What are they?
Impressions are the ad views. Whenever a user views your ad, Amazon records the moment as an impression. A high number of impressions can be a good thing for your advertising campaign as they show your product or brand is getting increased exposure. However, impressions without clicks or conversions can be a sign of a problem.
A click is an instance when an Amazon user interacts with your ad and lands on your product page. A high number of clicks shows that your audience finds your ads relevant and compelling.
Click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage ratio of the total number of clicks your ad receives to the total number of impressions it gets. It’s important to have a healthy CTR for your ad campaigns.
Cost per click (CPC) is the amount you pay for every ad click to Amazon. It is calculated based on your bid settings and the amount your competitors are willing to pay to have their ads featured on the Amazon marketplace.
Conversion rate (CVR) is the ratio of clicks to your ad sales and is expressed as a percentage. A high conversion rate shows that customers find your product helpful and are happy to purchase it.
Advertising cost of sales (ACoS) is the percentage ratio of ad spend to your total Amazon ad revenue. It is calculated as follows:
ACoS = CPC ÷ (Average order value x Conversion rate)
So, for example, if your ACoS is 60%, it means you are spending $0.6 on ads to make $1 in sales. While these numbers may look decent at first glance, you are unlikely to make any actual profit with this high ACoS when you factor in your cost of sales. Therefore, the lower your ACoS, the better.
Return on Advertising Spend (RoAS) is the inverse of ACoS and tells you how much ad revenue you generate for every $1 in ad spend. It is an ad ROI metric.
Anything between 3x and 10x is considered a good RoAS for an Amazon PPC campaign. However, it really comes down to the type of product you sell. Some categories like Electronics tend to have higher RoAS compared to others.
And that’s it. That’s basically what Amazon advertising reports are all about. Bet you thought it would have been much more difficult to understand them, isn’t it?
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