Key Takeaways
If your Amazon Sponsored Products aren’t showing up, you need to investigate potential issues related to budget, targeting, policy compliance, the quality of your listing and campaign settings. By getting your ad displaying again you can improve your ad visibility and drive more sales.
Discovering Why Your Ad Isn’t Showing
Amazon Sponsored Products is a powerful way to promote your products directly within the Amazon marketplace, increasing product visibility and driving sales by appearing in search results and product detail pages.
However, it’s maddening when ads don’t show up as expected. Here’s a checklist of why it happens and what to do about it when it does. It’s time to unleash your inner Sherlock Holmes…
1. Budget Issues
- Daily Budget Not Reached: If your daily budget is set too low, your ads may stop showing once the budget is exhausted for the day. Check to see if your ad has received any impressions (views) during the day. If it has, but it isn’t showing now, then your daily budget could be the issue.
- Bid Amount Too Low: If your bid is lower than the average bid for your targeted keywords, your ads may not compete effectively for visibility.
2. Targeting Problems
- Keyword Targeting Issues: If the keywords you are targeting are too broad or irrelevant, your ads may not show up for relevant searches.
- Inadvertent Negative Match Conflicts: Trust me, this is so frustrating… and I know because it’s happened to me in the past. Check in your negative match keywords to make sure that there isn’t something lurking in there which isn’t blocking the ad that you want to be showing.
- Product Targeting Limitations: If you are using product targeting but your selected products have low search volume, your ads might not display.
3. Policy Violations
- Ad Policy Violations: If your ads violate Amazon’s advertising policies, they may be suppressed or disapproved entirely.
- Account Health Issues: If your seller account has policy violations or performance issues, it could affect the visibility of your ads.
4. Campaign Settings
- Campaign Status: Ensure your campaign is active and not paused or ended.
- Product Listings: Make sure the products you are advertising are active and not suppressed for other reasons.
5. Ad Copy
Pretend you’re a customer. Search on Amazon for one of your target keywords. How does your ad look?
Would you click on it as a customer?
- Product Title: Is the title appealing? Is it relevant to the keyword you’ve searched for?
- Product Image: Is the image clear?
- Product Price: Is it competitive?
- Product Rating: How many stars are showing? This is crucial because many customers will make split-second decisions about which product to click on. And very visual symbols like Amazon’s star rating will have a big influence on the click-through-rate.
Step-by-Step Troubleshooting Tips
If you’re experiencing issues with your Amazon Sponsored Products not showing up, follow these troubleshooting steps to identify and resolve the problem:
Step 1: Review Your Budget and Bids
- Check your daily budget and ensure it is adequate for your advertising goals.
- Adjust your bids based on competitive analysis; consider increasing your bids for highly relevant keywords.
Step 2: Analyze Your Targeting
- Revisit your keyword targeting;
- use Amazon’s keyword research tools to identify more relevant, high-volume keywords.
- use our free Reverse Engineering Tool to see which keywords your competitors target in their listings. Add these to your PPC keywords.
- Double-check your negative keywords to ensure there’s nothing blocking your ad in there. Check at both the AdGroup and Campaign levels.
- If using product targeting, ensure the products are closely related to your offerings.
Step 3: Check for Policy Violations
- Review Amazon’s advertising policies and ensure your ads comply with all guidelines.
- Investigate your account health in Seller Central to address any performance issues.
Step 4: Verify Campaign Settings
- Confirm that your campaign status is set to active.
- Ensure your product listings are live and have no restrictions that could prevent ads from showing.
Step 6: Improve Ad Copy
- Make sure your title is attractive. Since so many people shop on their phones, focus on mobile-friendly formats by keeping it concise and ensuring that the most critical information appears early, as mobile displays can truncate longer titles.
- Make sure your image looks at least as good as your competitors. Also make sure it is as large as possible within Amazon’s specifications.
- If your price is too high then your ad isn’t going to attract clicks. Experiment with different prices to find the sweet spot of maximum profit.
- If your product’s average rating is too low then you need to find ways to improve it, either by improving the quality of the product itself or by addressing customers’ concerns and complaints before they leave a review.
- If you have too few reviews then try being more proactive about asking for them.
Step 7: Monitor Performance
- Use Amazon’s reporting tools to analyze your ad performance data and identify trends or issues.
- Adjust your strategy based on performance insights, optimizing for better results.
Best Practices for Optimizing Amazon Sponsored Products Campaigns
To ensure your Amazon Sponsored Products campaigns are successful, consider these expert insights:
- Use Automatic Targeting: Start with automatic targeting to gather data about which keywords and products are performing well.
- Leverage Negative Keywords: Implement negative keywords to exclude irrelevant searches and optimize your ad spend.
- Regularly Review and Adjust: Consistently monitor your campaigns and make adjustments based on performance data to improve visibility and ROI.
- Test Different Ad Formats: Experiment with different ad placements and formats to identify what works best for your products.
Recent Changes to Amazon’s Advertising Policies
It’s important to stay updated on Amazon’s advertising policies, as they can change frequently. Recent updates may include modifications to acceptable content, targeting practices, or bidding strategies. Monitoring these changes is crucial to ensuring compliance and maintaining your advertising effectiveness.