Heads up Shopping advertisers: increased spend by Amazon is eating up impressions for many Shopping accounts ahead of Prime Day 2019.
Here’s what that means and what you can do to fight back.
“What we are seeing is Amazon increase bidding and spend on Shopping placements across many verticals well ahead of Prime Day this year — quite significantly in some cases.”
-Josh Brisco, Sr Director, Growth Media at Tinuiti
Our data shows that Standard Shopping impression share for Amazon.com has risen from nearly 50% to over 70% in the span of just several weeks (June 3rd to June 24th).
What Does It Mean for Advertisers?
Amazon’s increased spend isn’t surprising — after all, it’s what any retailer would do ahead of an important shopping holiday to capture impressions and conversions from users scouring for online deals.
As anticipation for Prime Day grows each year, the competition for impressions has also increased (and so has the window of opportunity with Prime Day now stretching over two days — July 15th and 16th).
Higher bids by Amazon means they are winning more Shopping auctions, beating out retailers who otherwise fail to modify their bidding strategy for the Prime holiday. In many cases, this will cause your Shopping account to lose impression share and revenue during the month of July.
What Can Advertisers Do?
If you are looking to capitalize on the increase impression increases and buying frenzy that is set to take place over the course of the next week, you will want to modify your bidding and promotion strategy to have any chance of competing with the Everything Store.
1. Ramp up bids to combat Amazon
One way to compete with Amazon and fight against receding impression share is to simply juice your bids leading up to and during the Prime holiday.
“You can either ramp up your bids to combat Amazon or hunker down for now until Prime Day is over, though neither is ideal,” explains Brisco.
2. Promote your own sales event
If you can’t beat em’, then join em.’ And by that, we mean to push your own Prime Day sales and promotions.
It’s a strategy that Walmart, Target, and eBay are leveraging to capture on the media buzz and consumer interest in discounted products during July.
“Prime Day doesn’t have to just be for Prime shoppers on Amazon,” says Brisco.
“It has become a national retail holiday whose hype all online sellers should leverage to capture the increased retail demand the day generates.”
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