Hi there,

Welcome back to a new edition of the Reedsy marketing newsletter! As I promised last time, I’m resuming our normal bi-weekly schedule, and will focus the next few newsletters on specific marketing tactics you can immediately experiment with.

Starting with… 🥁… Amazon Sponsored Brands campaigns!

If you’re not familiar with Sponsored Brands campaigns, they’re one of three types of advertising campaigns on Amazon Advertising that authors have access to — along with Sponsored Products (the most popular) and Lockscreen ads (least popular).

Now, until a year or so ago, Sponsored Brands were restricted to a relatively small number of advertisers: authors with at least three different books published — and ideally, three books in the same series.

This meant, for example, that I myself couldn’t use them, since I’ve only published two books so far.

As you may have intuited, this has changed. You can now run two kinds of Sponsored Brands campaigns on Amazon:

1. Product collection ads: these are similar to the old Sponsored Brands ads, with the only difference that they feature an image. They still show up at the very top of search results, and require at least three books.

Example of a Sponsored Brands product collection ad in search results.

1. Video ads: these feature only one book, along with a video. 

This second type of Sponsored Brands is what we’ll focus on today, since it’s effectively available to any KDP author with at least one published book.

Note: Sponsored Brands video ads are not the only new thing on Amazon Advertising since last year. A bunch of other things have changed, which is why I just released an updated 2024 edition of my Amazon Ads book! You can grab it from your favorite retailer here.

So let’s get into it. The only thing you’ll need to run a Sponsored Brands video ad — aside from a commercially viable book — is (you guessed it): a video. This can be a horizontal or vertical video (I recommend the former), and must meet the specs below: 

Note that video ads will always auto-play on mute, so make sure to include text (captions or subtitles) on them, and to hook readers within the first few seconds of the ad.

Now, I can hear the question you’re inevitably asking yourself right now: “But are these video ads more effective than the traditional Sponsored Products ads?”

Well, it depends on what your objective is.

If you’re just starting out with Amazon ads, or if you have a low budget, then I don’t really recommend using Sponsored Brands ads (of any kind). The reason is that you can generally get a better return on your investment through Sponsored Products.

However, Sponsored Brands can be a great way to scale. Once you have some traction with Sponsored Products, and have identified targets (keywords, products, or categories) that work well — then I definitely recommend experimenting with Sponsored Brands campaigns.

Since their placements are more limited (and more prominent), Sponsored Brands ads also tend to be a bit more expensive — meaning you need to bid higher per click than on Sponsored Products. But if you can afford those higher bids, or don’t mind losing a bit of money for the sake of exposure, they can be really powerful.

One important thing to keep in mind when targeting keywords in Sponsored Brands is that match types (exact, phrase, broad) don’t work the same here as in Sponsored Products. In particular, I recommend extreme caution when using “broad match” in Sponsored Brands (or, rather, to avoid it altogether), as it will usually lead to Amazon targeting search terms that have nothing to do with your keywords. 

Don’t believe me? Here’s an example from a campaign of mine (before I swiftly paused all these broad match keywords and replaced them with phrase and exact ones):

How is “zettelkasten” related to “marketing for authors”? Or “free textbooks” to Reedsy? Your guess is as good as mine.

If you’re keen to try the Sponsored Brands video ads, I’ll leave you with a final hint: the video doesn’t necessarily need to be all about your book. In my case, for example, the ad advertises my book How to Market a Book: Overperform in a Crowded Market, but the video itself isn’t about the book — it’s about Reedsy (you can watch it here).

This way, the ad serves a double purpose: it promotes both the book, as well as our Reedsy Marketplace. 

This is a cool trick for writers of nonfiction, in particular, whose books often tie into a larger business. But the possibilities for video ads are really endless, as they finally give advertisers a creative element that they can control and run tests on.

Have you experimented with Sponsored Brands video ads yet? If so, let me know in response to this email!

Until next time,

Ricardo

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