• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 27, 2019

Increased impressions between Black Friday and Christmas seem natural, but following the holidays, purchases could slow.

Amazon has begun to give advertisers advice on a variety of tactics and topics, a move that Google continually uses to help marketers become more comfortable with its ad technology and platforms.

Opportunities do not need to dwindle, according to Nina Brentlinger, Amazon senior product marketing manager.

The most recent advice from Amazon addresses product page views and how the demand signals are typically more meaningful than metrics such as impressions, because it indicates shoppers are taking action to learn more about the product.

On Amazon’s advertising network, Sponsored Display ads can help advertisers re-market to audiences that have viewed the product’s detail page.

“We recommend prioritizing products with the most detailed page views,” Brentlinger wrote. “Products with the most page views will also be the ones with the largest total potential re-marketing audience.”

Re-targeting is another tactic, Brentlinger wrote.

Research suggests some holiday shoppers discover and purchase products that pique their interest while shopping for others. A recent study from Deloitte found that 51% of consumers shop for themselves while gift shopping for others.

“For the best chance of engaging shoppers who discovered your brand during the holidays, we recommend setting a daily budget that’s high enough to keep your ads showing throughout the day,” she wrote. “If you underestimate the size of your addressable audience, your campaign might run out of budget before the end of the day. If this happens, your ads will pause until midnight, when the daily budget resets, and you might miss out on valuable impressions.”

Also, longer campaigns are more likely to outperform category trends. Amazon research suggests display campaigns should run for a minimum of 90 days.

In a study of 266 first-time display advertisers, Amazon discovered advertisers that ran display campaigns for 90 days or more were 20% more likely to outperform category trends in traffic and 36% more likely to outperform category trends in sales. That's versus advertisers that ran campaigns for less than 90 days.

“Running campaigns for more than 90 days also gives you more time to experiment,” she wrote. “We recommend testing and optimizing to find the right creative and messaging that works for your audience.”

For instance, some customers are more responsive to coupons, whereas others are motivated by “Shop now” calls to action.

Brentlinger suggests cloning campaign and changing one variable at a time to compare two versions of a single variable.