Powerfully communicate your brand message and increase viewer product recall using Amazon Sponsored Brand Videos.
Sponsored Brands video ads are Amazon’s newest ad innovation, and the retailer claims they are its best-performing ad format to date. On desktop and mobile shopping pages, where purchase intent is strongest, the new creative combines product adverts with video footage to attract user attention.
When watching a video, viewers recall 95% of the message, compared to only 10% when reading it in prose. Because a buyer only sees plain images and product descriptions, one of the challenges with Amazon Advertising is getting your brand message across. Fortunately, Amazon offers Sponsored Brand Videos, which allow you to post video content directly in the search results to aid conversion. This video feature can use keywords to target your audience and send them to your product detail page.
Using a video in search results to deliver your brand’s messaging and persuade customers to buy your product allows you to take up more real estate on the search results page, which can lead to an increase in sales. Let’s take a look at what Sponsored Brand Video advertisements are and how you can use them in your marketplace strategy.
To easily navigate to the different sections of the guide, use the links below.
- What are Sponsored Brands video ads?
- Metrics On Sponsored Brand Video Performance
- Best Practices for Amazon Sponsored Brands Ads
- How to Create a Video Ads Campaign
- Eligibility for Amazon Sponsored Brands Ads
- Conclusion
What are Sponsored Brands video ads?
Sponsored Brands video is a visual ad format that promotes your items on Amazon search results pages and product detail pages. The advertising is keyword targeted, allowing you to target the most relevant audiences, and are paid on a cost-per-click basis, meaning you only pay when a user clicks through to the product detail page after showing enough interest in your ad.
As a result, after half of the player is displayed on the screen, your video clip begins to play automatically, and the film is muted by default. Users can unmute your video and hear the audio by clicking on it, or they can go to the product description page to learn more about it.
The duration of the video might range from 6 to 45 seconds, while Amazon strongly advises selecting snippets of 30 seconds or fewer. In Sponsored Brands videos, the footage loops, so after your clip is finished, it will immediately start playing again.
What makes Sponsored Brands video special?
According to the report, 95% of video marketers claim video has helped boost user understanding of their product or service, while 84 percent of customers say seeing a brand’s video has persuaded them to buy a product or service.
While customers are actively exploring for products or brands on Amazon, Sponsored Brands video advertisements place your footage at the point of highest influence across mobile and desktop browsing.
These people are in the shopping mood and are especially receptive to persuasive messaging that prompt them to make a purchase. Whether you’re seeking to surpass competitors on price, quality, features, or any other selling point, this is where your product’s or offer’s USP may make the largest difference.
Amazon outlines three primary benefits of Sponsored Brands video in terms of video format:
Engaging: Attract buyers with videos that feature your brand story and products to set yourself out from other brands in the shopping results.
Relevant: Target people who are actively shopping on Amazon for products that are similar to yours using keyword targeting.
Integrated: Video is fully integrated into the Sponsored Brands creative builder, making campaign creation quick and easy once you have a video asset.
The success of video commercials has been well acknowledged, and Amazon has its own statistics to back up Sponsored Brands’ video’s effectiveness (shown below). However, it’s also crucial to understand why this is happening, and Amazon is in a unique position to present adverts to buyers at the exact moment they’re shopping.
You may select relevant people with the highest level of purchase intent using keyword targeting and deliver your advertising at the right time in the most engaging way.
Some metrics on sponsored brand video performance
1. Viewable Impressions
A viewable impression is a standard measure of ad viewability defined by the International Advertising Bureau (IAB) as an ad that appears on screen for more than one second and appears at least 50% of the time. The number that sellers might use to assess the percentage of advertising that are really viewed by real people is called viewable impressions.
Viewable Impressions are significant since calculating impressions without taking viewability into account can result in the seller paying for advertising that isn’t being viewed by customers. Viewable Impressions are a better metric for determining how many ads have been seen. When a seller selects the ‘optimize for visible impressions bidding’ option, this option becomes available.
2. View-through rate (VTR)
The VTR of a skippable video ad is the number of completed views divided by the number of initial impressions. It looks like this as a calculation:
Completed Views/Initial Impressions = VTR.
This formula gives sellers a far better picture of how well their advertising is doing.
3. Viewable click-through rate (vCTR)
The amount of clicks as a percentage of viewable impressions is known as the viewable click-through rate. Only when the ad is displayed does this metric count an impression. Clicks / viewable impressions are used to compute it. Because this statistic solely takes into account ‘viewable impressions,’ it gives a more realistic picture of how effective a seller’s ad is at generating clicks.
4. 5 Second Views
The number of times a customer watched the entire video or only 5 seconds of it (whichever is shorter).
5. 5 Second View Rate
The percentage of impressions where the shopper watched the entire video or for 5 seconds is known as the 5 Second View Rate (whichever is shorter).
6. Video First Quartile
The number of impressions an ad clip received till the conclusion of the first quarter of the video’s total length is referred to as VFQ. The clip will not be tallied again if the viewer resumes it. There will be no first quartile event logged if the customer watches 5 seconds of the clip before stopping and exiting it. There will be no first quartile completion registered if the viewer skips over the first quartile point in the video.
7. Video Midpoint
This is the number of times an ad clip was shown until it reached the halfway point of the video’s overall length (50 percent viewed). An event is logged only once, and it is not tallied again if the viewer resumes the tape. The incident will not be logged again if the shopper replays the first 20 seconds of the video. There will be no midpoint event reported if the customer watches 10 seconds of the clip before stopping and exiting it. In addition, if the viewer goes through the video’s midpoint, no midpoint will be recorded.
8. Video Third Quartile
This is the amount of impressions where the video was watched for at least 75% of the time. The event is noted, for example, if the user plays a 40-second clip up to the 30-second point. An event is logged only once, and it is not tallied again if the viewer resumes the tape. The incident will not be logged again if the shopper replays the first 30 seconds of the video. There will be no third quartile event reported if the viewer watches 20 seconds of the clip before stopping and exiting it. In addition, if the shopper skips through the third quartile point in the video, no completion of the third quartile will be recorded.
9. Video Complete
The number of times the video was seen 100 percent of the time.
10. Unmutes
This is the number of impressions in which a consumer unmuted the video so that the sound could be heard. Even if the shopper unmutes the ad before the video starts, it counts as an unmute. Even if the consumer mutes and unmutes the video many times, just one unmute is tallied per impression. Only unmuted video players are counted. For example, if a shopper unmutes their computer operating system or audio hardware, that action is not counted unless it also controls the video player.
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Amazon Sponsored Brand Ads Best Practices
You should educate yourself with the recommended best practices before putting anything new into your digital advertising plan. To help you plan your marketplace strategy, we’ve put together a list of Sponsored Brand Video recommendations.
- On-screen text: To lay over the video, use a sans-serif typeface like Helvetica over a black box. This allows people who aren’t hearing the audio to read what the voiceover is saying. Make sure your material can be read on both desktop and mobile devices.
- Video Loop: You get 15-30 seconds to express your message in a video loop. Keep in mind that the video will restart after it has finished, so make sure everything is in order.
- Media optimization: Text, logos, and other critical information should not be chopped off if the main video elements remain within the safe region.
- Product-focused: Within the initial few seconds of your video, you should highlight your product and its unique selling point.
- Product ratings: Start with products that have received a rating of 3.5 stars or higher.
- Tell a tale about your product: To stand out in shopping results, employ visually appealing product-focused video material.
- Highlight the following features: Specific uses, styles, or specs of your product should be highlighted.
- Raising awareness: To assist in presenting new products to relevant customers, use broad keywords and categories.
- Accelerate the sales process: To aid early conversions, target branded keywords.
- Recognize your target audiences: Customers on Amazon are looking for products and brands. Your content should be informative, demonstrative, and centered on your product.
- Display your product: Videos that feature the product prominently within the first second have a higher success rate. By fading in from black or opening with an empty frame, you’re wasting your chance to engage shoppers.
Amazon recommends running Sponsored Brand video advertisements alongside other campaign types to not only test and optimize performance but also to improve your exposure in the shopping results. Running several campaign types concurrently allows you to offer different ad formats in different places to different people who may respond differently to different campaigns.
How to Create An Amazon Sponsored Brand Video Ads Campaign?
We’ll walk you through how to set up Sponsored Brand Video advertisements on Amazon now that you know what they are. Make sure your video fulfills Amazon’s standards before uploading it:
- File resolution: 1920 x 1080px, 1280 x 720px, or 3840 x 2160px
- File size: less than 500 megabytes
- MP4 or MOV as a file format
- An aspect ratio of the display: 16:9.
- Video duration: 6-30 seconds long
- Minimum audio bit rate: 96 kbps
Here’s how to get started once you’ve finished your video:
1. Create a new Sponsored Brands “Video” campaign.
2. Choose the product you’re creating the video for from the “New product list page.”
3. Upload your video file and preview the ad in the right-side panel.
4. Select keywords you want to target and set bids.
5. Submit your campaign for evaluation. Approval can take anything from ten minutes to a couple of hours, so keep an eye on your campaign’s progress.
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Eligibility For Amazon Sponsored Brand Ads
Sponsored Brands is open to everyone who has enrolled in the Amazon brand registry, including vendors, book vendors, and agencies. Adult items, used products, reconditioned products, and products in locked categories are not currently allowed to advertise using Sponsored Brand advertisements on Amazon.
Conclusion
You’ll need to test it out for yourself, just like any other Amazon ad kind. The fact that it’s only available to brand-registered vendors and that you get a lot of ad space make it worthwhile to run a video ad. You’ll stand out from the crowd, and we believe that making an investment in differentiating your business is well worth the money.