Merkle launches bidding platform tailored for Amazon sponsored brand ads

Sponsored brand ads can appear at the top of Amazon search results in addition to several other spots on the platform.

Performance agency Merkle has developed an automated bidding platform designed specifically for Amazon sponsored brand ads. Announced Thursday, the technology can update bids on sponsored brand inventory as often as 48 times per day, leveraging the Amazon advertising API.

Why you should care

Amazon sponsored brand ads (previously called headline search ads) have become an increasingly important ad unit for sellers on the ecommerce platform. Merkle says the bidding platform employs machine learning to calculate a base bid informed by a client’s KPIs. However, it’s not left entirely to automation. Strategists adjust bids “according to signals from multiple platforms.”

“Before this integration, efficiently bidding on these ad units required building numerous custom processes, because Amazon itself hasn’t provided bulk editing capabilities until recently,” said Todd Bowman, senior director of Amazon and eRetail at Merkle. “With this new bid technology, as Amazon media becomes more competitive, our teams can focus more on analyzing performance to identify new opportunities and take advantage of them more proactively on behalf of our clients, while also scaling the program effectively.”

More on the news

• Merkle says clients who’ve been transitioned to the new platform have seen sales per click increase by an average of 18 percent, higher click-through rates and a 62 percent decrease in advertising cost of sales (ACoS).
• This fall, Amazon expanded the inventory for sponsored brand ads beyond the “top of search” spot shown above. Placements can appear in the left-hand rail on desktop, below the fold on desktop and mobile and every thirteenth slot on mobile.
• Merkle is not the first to market with an automated bidding platform for Amazon ads and there is likely to be much more ad tech development in this realm. With Amazon’s advertising options becoming more mature and sophisticated, advertisers are planning to increase their spend on the platform. Expect more technology solutions to come on the market to meet that demand.