Amazon Arrives in the Netherlands: The Marketer’s Guide
Last year Amazon finally arrived in the Netherlands. And whether you sell your products on the Amazon store or not, this means big marketing opportunities.
Especially in these corona times, Amazon may be known primarily for its ecommerce, but in fact Amazon advertising is one of its most important segments. In fact, their ad revenue growth rate of 64% in 2020 was bigger than even the growth rate of its corona-boosted online store (at 43%). Revenue is expected to further quadruple by 2023.
Before advertising on Amazon, you need to know where your brand is at
Take a look at our exclusive guide to the stages of startup growth to find out how your brand can go from zero to hero – before you take on new advertising channels.
That’s not all: Amazon advertising is also hugely effective. In fact, reports suggest it has a 20% higher return on investment for its customers (ROI) compared to a brand’s average marketing ROI, according to Analytic Partners. Advertising via Amazon is great for helping creating awareness around your product or brand, driving sales and increasing customer loyalty — even if you aren’t a vendor on Amazon.
These opportunities are now available to marketers in the Netherlands. So how can you utilise the advertising services to harness your goals correctly? Drawing from our own experience growing brands across the world on Amazon, here’s our in-depth guide. We’ll take a funnel approach and show you a whole host of features you can use, whether you’re a Dutch firm or you’re looking to reach users in the Netherlands. After all, the early bird catches the worm!
Quick disclaimer: as FireTV is not available in the Netherlands, we haven’t gone into depth on this here, so we’ll be starting with the middle funnel.
Mid funnel: The Amazon DSP
The Amazon Demand Side Platform (DSP) is a demand-side platform software which allows advertisers to buy display ads across the internet and on Amazon. While this includes websites across the internet, it also includes advanced targeting options leveraging billions of first-party insights across devices and sites. Many people in the Netherlands are already using Amazon to discover and buy products. In fact, Amazon’s DSP enables you to bid on the best ad spaces across the internet, finding the ones suitable for your budget, audience and base/max bid.
The benefits are manifold. It’s easy and automatic; instead of buying an individual ad placement on a website, you buy a variety that spans across many different ones. This also makes it more possible to scale. And with all the Amazon insights on offer, it works best with a long term, big picture strategy. So if you’re a big brand with an equally big marketing budget, take note.
Pay Per Click (Amazon Sellers – PPC)
Now we go to the lower funnel. Here the focus is on ad placements within the Amazon website for brands and businesses selling their products on Amazon via Amazon Seller or Vendor Central. These ads have a PPC buying model and enable brands to build visibility and buy prominent placements on Amazon shopping results and product pages. For consumer facing businesses, it’s a boon. Why so? In comparison to Google ads, where you catch buyers as they are in the researching stage, Amazon is where you can also access buyers right as they are about to make their purchase – that is, a marketer’s ultimate dream.
There are three types of ad formats to consider: Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display Ads. Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands are keyword targeted ads. Then there’s Sponsored Products, a format which gives sellers the opportunity to promote their products in Amazon shopping results and also on product pages. This format allows you to promote one product and usually has lower CPC bid levels for keywords. If you’re after pure performance, these are the ads to go for. Sponsored Brands is a bit different. Brands who sell more than one product on Amazon can use this format for brand building and to promote an array of products. In these ads, a brand can include a headline, a logo and three products in their ad. This one heads straight to the top of shopping results and also links to their Amazon store page. And finally there are the Sponsored Display Ads, which are banner ads for product detail pages on Amazon. These can also go onto external websites to reach shoppers looking at specific Amazon products.
While the main benefit of using this channel is accessing buyers, as well as the PPC buying model, there are a whole host of other benefits. Amazon offers several types of reports that help you to discover new profitable keywords and measure and optimise your campaign based on various KPIs such as Advertising Cost of Sale (ACOS) and CPC. Furthermore, [the reports?] are quick and free to activate. It’s flexible, too. Your sponsored ad could be displayed on mobile, smartphone and tablets, as well as on the original desktop interface.
These are all purchased on a cost-per-click basis, which means you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. And the more clicks you have, the higher your organic placement on Amazon pages.
What about targeting options?
Whether it’s pay per click or utilising the Amazon DSP, you can use the targeting options of Amazon to finetune your campaign. After all, Amazon knows customers better than most! Here’s what’s on offer:
- Reach relevant audiences: This looks into what customers have been browsing lately, including browsing a specific product category over the past 30 days. If there’s some similarities between their browsing history and your product, they’ll be reached.
- ASIN: This goes even more in-depth to reach users that have bought or looked at specific products.
- Lifestyle: Target ads relevant to people who have previously bought from a specific category, whether it’s cosmetics, fitness or books etc.
- Contextual: This option creates real-time relevant ads as people browse the web.
- Remarketing: Target ads to re-engage with customers who previously interacted with your brand or bought your products.
- Audience Lookalike: This option reaches customers who are similar to your current customers.
- Advertiser Audiences: This option uses information from your brands’ data, such as CRM data or a product page with a pixel.
It’s clear the Amazon DSP and PPC present new opportunities for advertisers in the Netherlands. What do we advise? We reckon it’s good to jump on the bandwagon early to reap the full benefits — and with us by your side as experienced experts.
Looking for an expert agency to take on this new advertising frontier? DCMN has many years of experience in Amazon advertising. Get in touch with us here.
