# The Amazon "Sponsored Products" Thread



## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

I thought I'd start this thread for those of us using this for advertising. This is the "Sponsored Products" below the "Customers Also Bought",* NOT* the bigger Amazon Ad on the right side of the book's page. I'm distinguishing these two because Amazon's requirements and probably therefore results are different for the 2 types of ads, and it's often confusing which one people are talking about.

So I tried out my first one a few weeks ago. I set the daily budget at $1 and ran it for 6 days for the 1st book in my series. I feel like it was a really good investment. I spent less than 30 cents and sold a few books, and got thousands of impressions. I don't know if it's a fluke though. I ran a second campaign with my 2nd in the series (yes I know, I know, you're not supposed to promote the later books in your series, but this is not like other promos, but more like Also-boughts, and I wanted to test the reactions to another book cover). That one yielded no sales, but the click costs was so low, it was still worth the impressions I thought. I'm running another 6 days on the 1st in my series again, adding more keywords, to see what happens. The ad campaign started yesterday.

What I like about these are:

1. They are very easy to set up, and given that I'm very busy right now, it's a quick way to do a promo. 
2. The ad runs through many days, so even though you don't get a 1 day spike with tail, it keeps your book out there. I know of so few ways to do that besides FB, but FB can easily run your wallet to the ground. This one costs very little so far. 
3. It's cheap. If you even sell one book, your ROI comes back like a hundred fold.
4. The minimum $1 per day limit. It helps you not to spend more than you can afford. And anyway, I'm pretty happy with the actual cost per click they charged. We're talking about a few cents, like 3 cents per click.

What I am confused about -- I don't understand how the CPC works. Amazon recommends 50cents. I set it to 10 cents - 30cents depending on whether I want to bid for a particular keyword. But does anyone know how they ultimately decide to charge per click? The cost of the clicks I have to pay came nowhere near my chosen bid (a good thing, but I would like to know how it all works.)

Anyway, i've been wanting to do these ads for a long time and I wasn't offered this choice by Amazon 2 months ago. I'm very glad they let me do this now. i don't want to do the other ad (the one on the right side of a book's page) for a number of reasons.

If anyone else is playing ball, share your thoughts, info, or whatever here. 

ETA: Just so we are not confused what ads we are discussing here, I'm adding this screenshot of the current #1 best seller in the Kindle store. The row of books called "Sponsored Products" under the Also-Boughts. Those are what we're talking about. All advise and info here will not help you with and will not be relevant to whatever other Amazon ads you're running.


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## SomeoneElse (Jan 5, 2016)

AlexaKang said:


> What I am confused about -- I don't understand how the CPC works. Amazon recommends 50cents. I set it to 10 cents - 30cents depending on whether I want to bid for a particular keyword. But does anyone know how they ultimately decide to charge per click? The cost of the clicks I have to pay came nowhere near my chosen bid (a good thing, but I would like to know how it all works.)


This is what Amazon says about the CPC


> Sponsored Products uses a cost-per-click, auction-based pricing model. You set the maximum cost that you are willing to pay when a customer clicks an ad. If your ad is eligible to appear in a customer's search, your ad will compete in a real-time auction. The more competitive your bid is, the more likely you are to win the auction. If your ad wins the auction and the customer clicks on your ad, then you will be charged $0.01 more than the second highest bidder.


Obviously they display more than one in the sponsored products row, so I assume that the leftmost ad has a higher bid that the rightmost. For popular keywords (e.g. 'romance') I assume there's some other filtering involved, just because of the sheer number of people who have the same bid and the impracticality of having every one of the people with that keyword factored into the bidding every time it comes up.


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## Anna Drake (Sep 22, 2014)

That seems quite reasonable. May I ask what genre your write in?


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## karenchester (Jan 5, 2016)

I'm also experimenting with these ads and I like the ease and low cost. However, I do wonder about the impressions. From what I've seen, my ad can appear way down the list, meaning a user would have to scroll about 3 or 4 times before they'd even see my ad, and I'm guessing that still counts as an impression. I've started with low bids but to get any decent visibility I usually need to bid more. I've had more sales on my 99c book than my full-priced books. Doesn't seem to have much effect on my KU reads.


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## KDKinney (Aug 16, 2015)

I've been tinkering with these Ads this week as well. I've tried Facebook ads before and I've struggled with setting them up. These ads are so much easier to set up.

I changed the spend per click to .25 and had the spend at $2.00 a day. I wasn't coming close to maxing out the spend. The Dystopian/ Post-Apocalyptic books have been pretty stagnant once I reduced the spend from .50 to .25. Overall that ad was disappointing even after more and more keywords I added to the list.

However, the Western is doing really well. I've had actually several sales on a 2.99 book and the CPC is really low. That one is ending today so I copied it do it again and upped the spend to $3.00 a day to see how it goes.

My thoughts- Westerns have an audience but not a lot of new material compared to Dystopian and PA fiction. By looking at the more expensive sponsored ads at the bottom of the page of my Dystopian/ PA books, there are lots. And the Western doesn't have nearly as many. 

So I'll just leave these thoughts here in case it helps someone navigate this. I'm going to try one for a YA book next. We'll see how that one goes.


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

Anna Drake said:


> That seems quite reasonable. May I ask what genre your write in?


My current debut series is a WWII historical fiction.


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

My sales and KENP reads have gone up since I started this campaign. I think the KENP reads increase was for the first day was from the campaign. But I can't  tell right now the sales these last 2 days are from the ads because it is possible that people are discovering  the book from the histfic cross promo (I am not participating in that this weekend, but my book is up on that site at normal price).

The ad campaign itself reported no sales, but it is possible that people bought the book without clicking on the sponsored ad, and just searched the book itself. All I know is I have a sales increase than usual. I'm keeping my daily limit at $1. My total spending so far for the last 3 days is $1.11 @ $.18 CPC.

What I'm gathering so far is, this is a long game, not like a ENT, RR promo where you can get a lot of immediate downloads. But I actually still really like this Sponsored Products option because it is a very sure way to keep the book in the eyes of browsing readers. When you think about what marketing experts say, that it takes several views before people remember the product, I'm happy to get the impressions. Plus, the ROI is really good when I think about the low CPC per sale on average (assuming the sales came from this and not the histfic promo.)

Not sure if this is "the" formula, but:

1. I think the way to get your book on Page 1 of another book with low CPC is to find the top TP HNR in your genre. Usually these books are ranked very high and may even be in Pre-order. They do not have a string of Sponsored Products on their page yet. If you go with something that's big and out there for a while, it'll be more competitive.

2. The blurbs -- We're only allowed 30 characters right? Or was it 30 words? Either way, you got to get the message across and invoke readers emotions with one single sentence. I've tested 2 versions. The first one tells readers immediately what the book is about. The second one, I thought it might draw readers in by identifying the MCs and their travails. I thought the second one would improve since so many other Sponsored Products blurbs were doing it. Wrong! The first one got much better mileage.

Maybe we can do Sponsored Products blurb critiques here from time to time for those who want some help.

I think I'll need to wait till this weekend is over and the histfic cross promo to end before I know whether my sales are from this or from that.


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## MajesticMonkey (Sep 3, 2013)

Hold your horses...

I know of the advertising option when you're book is in KDP Select. You're book will get displayed on Kindles and a few other places.

How / where do I get access to the "sponsored products" you are talking about?


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## Guest (Aug 14, 2016)

https://services.amazon.com/services/sponsored-products-overview.htm


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## MajesticMonkey (Sep 3, 2013)

@ Anma Natsu

Nice! So you can be wide and still advertise on AZ? No need to be exclusive?


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

MajesticMonkey said:


> @ Anma Natsu
> 
> Nice! So you can be wide and still advertise on AZ? No need to be exclusive?


Yes you can be wide and still advertise. But this option is not available to every author. I don't know what voodoo Amazon uses to decide who gets to run these ads and who doesn't. The best way to find out if you're offered this option is to go on your KDP Publishing page, click on the Advertising and Promo button of your book. If you have this option, it'll show up. If not, it'll give you the other option (the ad on the right side of other books' page.)

A few months ago I didn't have the Sponsored Products option. I tried to set it up via the normal Sponsored Products page, but the wouldn't allow "books". I wrote to the Amazon Gods, but they said this option wasn't offered to everyone and there was nothing to be done about it. Then one day, I suddenly realized I was now one of the blessed ones. Have no idea why but am glad to be blessed.


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## karenchester (Jan 5, 2016)

AlexaKang said:


> 1. I think the way to get your book on Page 1 of another book with low CPC is to find the top TP HNR in your genre. Usually these books are ranked very high and may even be in Pre-order. They do not have a string of Sponsored Products on their page yet. If you go with something that's big and out there for a while, it'll be more competitive.
> 
> 2. The blurbs -- We're only allowed 30 characters right? Or was it 30 words? Either way, you got to get the message across and invoke readers emotions with one single sentence. I've tested 2 versions. The first one tells readers immediately what the book is about. The second one, I thought it might draw readers in by identifying the MCs and their travails. I thought the second one would improve since so many other Sponsored Products blurbs were doing it. Wrong! The first one got much better mileage.
> 
> Maybe we can do Sponsored Products blurb critiques here from time to time for those who want some help.


Thanks for the HNR tip! I never thought of that. I'll try that with my next ad.

Yes, I find it quite hard to come up with a compelling blurb for such a short space. Will have to work on that.

I'm also thinking that as more authors use these ads I'll need to increase my bids to maintain visibility so costs could rise.


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## SomeoneElse (Jan 5, 2016)

Does anyone know if you can delete a keyword? I can pause them, sure, but I have one I put on the wrong book by mistake, and another couple that just aren't doing anything (fewer than 10 impressions in over a week.) It would be nice to just get rid of them.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

LSMay said:


> Does anyone know if you can delete a keyword?


It would be nice, but no, it's not possible to delete them, and Amazon won't/can't delete them either.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

AlexaKang said:


> Yes you can be wide and still advertise. But this option is not available to every author. I don't know what voodoo Amazon uses to decide who gets to run these ads and who doesn't. The best way to find out if you're offered this option is to go on your KDP Publishing page, click on the Advertising and Promo button of your book. If you have this option, it'll show up. If not, it'll give you the other option (the ad on the right side of other books' page.)
> 
> A few months ago I didn't have the Sponsored Products option. I tried to set it up via the normal Sponsored Products page, but the wouldn't allow "books". I wrote to the Amazon Gods, but they said this option wasn't offered to everyone and there was nothing to be done about it. Then one day, I suddenly realized I was now one of the blessed ones. Have no idea why but am glad to be blessed.


You don't get the promote and advertise option if the book is not in select.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

Ok, I had never noticed these sponsored ads so I had a look at one of my popular product pages which is set in 16th century England. The sponsored book below is about the underground railway for runaway slaves! Very topical I must say. I hope you are all getting more relevant pages than that.


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## Lucas030 (Oct 14, 2014)

Is there also a way to advertise our CreateSpace books? I've seen some sponsored ads of CS books on Amazon but I don't know how we can do this!? Any idea?


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## locker17 (Apr 20, 2012)

This is confusing. It says I need to create an account but then it says I need to log into my amazon account of which I'm already logged into. Ugh. Then I find the promotion page and its all stuff for select. My book is not in it. At the time I published my one book I put it everywhere. I don't want to take it down from other places I just want to give it mojo while I work to get a couple of others out. 

Also I dabbled in pay per click back (for non book products) in the days when websites didn't punish you for being a little guy. It was so confusing. All thise double talk about impressions, and click throughs...ugh get to the point.


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## Jerri Kay Lincoln (Jun 18, 2011)

I am extremely happy with the results I've had with these ads.  I only show one purchase, but I know I've had many plus a number of page reads.  And I have all my click prices high while I still have the hundred dollar starter money they gave me.

And remember . . . in this advertising, you can use author names and book titles.  I have gotten a lot of clicks from those.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

I 'paused' my ad-block to see what kinds of sponsored product ads are being discussed here.  Interesting.  (And thank heavens for ad-block.   )


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

Lucas030 said:


> Is there also a way to advertise our CreateSpace books? I've seen some sponsored ads of CS books on Amazon but I don't know how we can do this!? Any idea?


I should think if the ad takes people to the Amazon product page, it will find your CS book alongside it.


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## FMH (May 18, 2013)

1. I think the way to get your book on Page 1 of another book with low CPC is to find the top TP HNR in your genre. Usually these books are ranked very high and may even be in Pre-order. They do not have a string of Sponsored Products on their page yet. If you go with something that's big and out there for a while, it'll be more competitive.

[/quote]

I'm lost...what does "top TP HNR" mean?


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## SomeoneElse (Jan 5, 2016)

FMH said:


> 1. I think the way to get your book on Page 1 of another book with low CPC is to find the top TP HNR in your genre. Usually these books are ranked very high and may even be in Pre-order. They do not have a string of Sponsored Products on their page yet. If you go with something that's big and out there for a while, it'll be more competitive.
> 
> I'm lost...what does "top TP HNR" mean?


HNR is definitely hot new release. From context, I'd say TP means traditionally published.


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

Will try to answer a bunch of questions in one post:

LS MAY:



> Does anyone know if you can delete a keyword? I can pause them, sure, but I have one I put on the wrong book by mistake, and another couple that just aren't doing anything (fewer than 10 impressions in over a week.) It would be nice to just get rid of them.


Pauline's right, you can't. I tried too. You can start a new campaign with a set of new Keywords. What I do is type them up in Word, then copy and paste them over to a new campaign. But right now I'm pausing because I'm nowhere near their 1000 max keywords.

Doglover:



> Ok, I had never noticed these sponsored ads so I had a look at one of my popular product pages which is set in 16th century England. The sponsored book below is about the underground railway for runaway slaves! Very topical I must say. I hope you are all getting more relevant pages than that.


It doesn't matter what Sponsored Products are on my page. The important thing is my book is the Sponsored Product on the page of a currently hot selling book. There are many authors who seem to be using mishmash of keywords and so, while getting themselves in a great spot (i.e. Sponsored Product) on page 1 of a hot selling book, the hot selling book is not in their genre and the audience are all wrong for the ad. It's annoying for us because we have to compete with these irrelevant books. (eg. You write regency romance, you try to get on a page of another similar book, but you're competing with a sci-fi space opera, and God only knows why the author of the sci-fi space opera wanted to get on this page.)

Locker 17:



> This is confusing. It says I need to create an account but then it says I need to log into my amazon account of which I'm already logged into. Ugh. Then I find the promotion page and its all stuff for select. My book is not in it. At the time I published my one book I put it everywhere. I don't want to take it down from other places I just want to give it mojo while I work to get a couple of others out.
> 
> Also I dabbled in pay per click back (for non book products) in the days when websites didn't punish you for being a little guy. It was so confusing. All thise double talk about impressions, and click throughs...ugh get to the point.


I think you're doing something wrong. This is very easy to set up. When i log on to KDP, I'm automatically logged into AMS and CS too. You can also set up the ad from KDP. just go to your bookshelf, click on the "Promote and Advertise" tab. If you have this ad option, it'll be there. It's got nothing to do with Select. It's a different kind of ad. If it's not there, then Amazon hasn't offered this ad option to you. You can do the other one probably (the bigger ad on the right side of book pages).

Lucas:



> Is there also a way to advertise our CreateSpace books? I've seen some sponsored ads of CS books on Amazon but I don't know how we can do this!? Any idea?


I don't think you set it up from the CS site. But like Doglover said, if you have the ebook as a Sponsored Product, it'll take people to your book's page and they can buy whatever format they want.

FMH:



> I'm lost...what does "top TP HNR" mean?


Trad Pub Hot New Release


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## Lysandra_Lorde (Mar 6, 2016)

My ad was rejected, is it because my cover has a male chest on it?...I thought someone said something about that not being allowed now.

Edit: yep, just read the e-mail. That really sucks.


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

Jerri Kay Lincoln said:


> I am extremely happy with the results I've had with these ads. I only show one purchase, but I know I've had many plus a number of page reads. And I have all my click prices high while I still have the hundred dollar starter money they gave me.
> 
> And remember . . . in this advertising, you can use author names and book titles. I have gotten a lot of clicks from those.


ok I am too. I had one confirmed purchase yesterday but the sales report said 8 total yesterday including sell-throughs (highest yet during this campaign period). Not getting much mileage for KU reads though. The results may still be visibility of my book in the Histfic promo page but I'm starting to doubt it because like I said, I'm not participating in that promo this month. I think the results are from visibility with the sponsored ads.

I'm so jealous you got the $100 starter money they gave you! That said, my spending in the last few days is only around $2.60, and my total sales during this period more than made up for it.

I already did my big promo push earlier this month, and I don't have time to get into FB yet, so this is still a good way to keep my book and induce sell through and maintain rankings, without me having to do much.

OTOH, this is really prawns comparing to what the FB folks are doing. The ones who do FB well spend over $100 a day. It's a big investment (with a much bigger return). Also, their ads can be seen all the time, not just when people happen to be browsing and looking for books on Amazon, so there's that.


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## josielitton (Jul 21, 2014)

I've just set up my first Amazon Sponsored Products ad; it's currently in review, going on 24 hours now. I'm nervous about it making it through because the cover shows a couple in a clinch and the text is a review quote that mentions 'erotic'. I've got alternative copy ready to go but there's nothing I can do about the cover, which of course was approved by Amazon. 

What I really like about this so far is both the ease of set-up and the much better targeting than what's available on Facebook. I've really struggled with ads there and although I've gotten to the point where it's  much easier now, I'd like a better alternative. The relative lack of targeting options on FB is a big drawback. Plus I have to figure that while people are on FB for all sorts of reasons, if someone is on an Amazon book page, they're looking to read. 

Big thanks to everyone here who's been providing both info and inspiration. It's greatly appreciated!


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

AlexaKang said:


> Not sure if this is "the" formula, but:
> 
> 1. I think the way to get your book on Page 1 of another book with low CPC is to find the top TP HNR in your genre. Usually these books are ranked very high and may even be in Pre-order. They do not have a string of Sponsored Products on their page yet. If you go with something that's big and out there for a while, it'll be more competitive.


Alexa,
I'm playing around with these ads and am wondering, how do you target specific books on the HNR list? With the sponsored products you can only use keywords I think? Is there a way to specifically choose a book or author?


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

PamelaKelley said:


> Alexa,
> I'm playing around with these ads and am wondering, how do you target specific books on the HNR list? With the sponsored products you can only use keywords I think? Is there a way to specifically choose a book or author?


No there is no way. That only applies to the other sort of ads and I cannot find a way to use the ads at all unless the book is in select.


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

PamelaKelley said:


> Alexa,
> I'm playing around with these ads and am wondering, how do you target specific books on the HNR list? With the sponsored products you can only use keywords I think? Is there a way to specifically choose a book or author?


Pamela, the KDP keyword rules from TOS do not apply to Sponsored Products. Just type in the author's name and book title as your keywords for the page of the HNR book where you want your ad to be shown.

For example, you can use as a keyword:

Jojo Moyes Me Before You


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

josielitton said:


> I've just set up my first Amazon Sponsored Products ad; it's currently in review, going on 24 hours now. I'm nervous about it making it through because the cover shows a couple in a clinch and the text is a review quote that mentions 'erotic'. I've got alternative copy ready to go but there's nothing I can do about the cover, which of course was approved by Amazon.
> 
> What I really like about this so far is both the ease of set-up and the much better targeting than what's available on Facebook. I've really struggled with ads there and although I've gotten to the point where it's much easier now, I'd like a better alternative. The relative lack of targeting options on FB is a big drawback. Plus I have to figure that while people are on FB for all sorts of reasons, if someone is on an Amazon book page, they're looking to read.
> 
> Big thanks to everyone here who's been providing both info and inspiration. It's greatly appreciated!


Good luck Josie!

Yes, from what I'm seeing in Mark Dawson's group, FB is great once you have your answers figured out. But until then, it can sink your wallet. I did a $1 a day boost post for 2 seven-day campaign just to give it a try. Of course FB maxed out the maximum and I was out $17. No big whoop as learning experience. But other than getting tons of random "likes", I don't think i sold anything. Granted, I wasn't doing what Mark said and was just trying it out, it was so easy to burn money on FB even when I only limited my budget to $1 per day. In contrast to the Sponsored Products, Amazon only charges a tiny fraction of my daily budget in exchange for thousands of impressions, plus some sales.

I do have plans to give FB a try in a few months after I finish my series, but until then, I'm happy with this.

A separate note to Doglover -- I don't know if this option is a limited offering only to books that are in Select. My books had been in Select since the beginning but for months, I wasn't given this ad option. So being in Select didn't guarantee you can advertise this way either. I don't know what voodoo Amazon uses to decide who to offer the option to, or who to give that $100 free clicks to (they didn't give it to me, dang it.)


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

AlexaKang said:


> Pamela, the KDP keyword rules from TOS do not apply to Sponsored Products. Just type in the author's name and book title as your keywords for the page of the HNR book where you want your ad to be shown.
> 
> For example, you can use as a keyword:
> 
> Jojo Moyes Me Before You


Awesome. Thank you! I thought I had to choose from the suggested keywords.


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## MMacLeod (Sep 21, 2015)

I've been running Sponsored Product ads for two of my books for the last 3 weeks and am very pleased. Both ads are earning more than they cost me (advertising cost of sales below 100%). One of the ads took longer to reach that milestone than the other because in the beginning I had a number of keywords that it became clear after about a week just weren't paying off. I paused those and the remaining keywords chugged along until they finally pushed the ad into positive territory. 

I had tried FB ads and the older version of Amazon ads before, but found them useless. Sponsored Products, on the other hand, is awesome. I was able to get an older book that had long since fallen out of the top 100 in its genre back onto that list for several days, and without having to reduce the price! Plus, I love the assurance of seeing that yes, the ad is leading to real sales. As long as the ads stay in positive territory, I will keep running them.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

I hadn't paid much attention to the concept of the sponsored products ad, since I lumped it in with the same style of ad as FB ads or 'regular' Amazon ads.  But...  am I correct in inferring that with sponsored ads, I can link my book's ad to show up on the page of certain other amazon products--even if not books?  For example, if I have a character who drinks lots of, say, Minute Maid juice, I can target people who buy Minute Maid juice on Amazon?  For me, that could be very, very handy.  (No, not the juice thing, but I have other tie-ins that could be pivotal.   )  Cool.  Now I need to add this to my To-Do list.


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

MMacLeod said:


> I've been running Sponsored Product ads for two of my books for the last 3 weeks and am very pleased. Both ads are earning more than they cost me (advertising cost of sales below 100%). One of the ads took longer to reach that milestone than the other because in the beginning I had a number of keywords that it became clear after about a week just weren't paying off. I paused those and the remaining keywords chugged along until they finally pushed the ad into positive territory.
> 
> I had tried FB ads and the older version of Amazon ads before, but found them useless. Sponsored Products, on the other hand, is awesome. I was able to get an older book that had long since fallen out of the top 100 in its genre back onto that list for several days, and without having to reduce the price! Plus, I love the assurance of seeing that yes, the ad is leading to real sales. As long as the ads stay in positive territory, I will keep running them.


It looks to me that, aside from our own keyword choices, Amazon runs some kind of Algo to push your advertised book toward specific pages, and not on some other pages that you want to get on. It really seems to me that, even though these are ads, Amazon is setting them up as another way to recommend books that the Algo has determined to be the right kind of audience. So it's a 2-way win for Amazon. Besides the Also-Boughts, they can now also let authors and publishers run campaigns where they could recommend more books to the right audience, and thereby sell more books.

I'm having a hard time figuring out what makes the Algo tick right now, and TBH i'm not the techy type of person who could figure this out. I hope someone who is will join this thread and offer some insights. Meanwhile, I'm going to trust the Amazon Algo and push and pause keywords based on how Amazon is showing the book. This part is quite confusing to me.


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## MMacLeod (Sep 21, 2015)

In my case, I only used the suggested keywords that Amazon gave me as opposed to trying to use my own, but within that I still found some were paying off and some were not. For example, one of my books is a lesbian romance that is very story driven, and not at all steamy erotica. The keyword "lesbian" yielded lots of clicks, but no sales- so I'm guessing that most people searching for that were expecting something else.


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## MajesticMonkey (Sep 3, 2013)

AlexaKang said:


> Locker 17:
> 
> I think you're doing something wrong. This is very easy to set up. When i log on to KDP, I'm automatically logged into AMS and CS too. You can also set up the ad from KDP. just go to your bookshelf, click on the "Promote and Advertise" tab. If you have this ad option, it'll be there. It's got nothing to do with Select. It's a different kind of ad. If it's not there, then Amazon hasn't offered this ad option to you. You can do the other one probably (the bigger ad on the right side of book pages).


Thanks for confirming this has nothing to do with KU / Select.

Could you please take a quick screen shot of the "Promote and Advertise" tab? I'm not seeing it but perhaps I'm looking over it.

If I wouldn't have the option in KDP yet, would singing up here work? https://services.amazon.com/services/sponsored-products-overview.htm

Thanks so much!


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

MajesticMonkey said:


> Thanks for confirming this has nothing to do with KU / Select.
> 
> Could you please take a quick screen shot of the "Promote and Advertise" tab? I'm not seeing it but perhaps I'm looking over it.
> 
> ...


Far as I can tell, the only time I see Promote and Advertise button is on the right-hand side of the Bookshelf, under Book Actions... for the books I have in Select. It's the same button that says "Enroll in KDP Select" for non-Select books. So that may be an answer to your question.


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## dragontucker (Jul 18, 2014)

AlexaKang said:


> I thought I'd start this thread for those of us using this for advertising. This is the "Sponsored Products" below the "Customers Also Bought",* NOT* the bigger Amazon Ad on the right side of the book's page. I'm distinguishing these two because Amazon's requirements and probably therefore results are different for the 2 types of ads, and it's often confusing which one people are talking about.
> 
> So I tried out my first one a few weeks ago. I set the daily budget at $1 and ran it for 6 days for the 1st book in my series. I feel like it was a really good investment. I spent less than 30 cents and sold a few books, and got thousands of impressions. I don't know if it's a fluke though. I ran a second campaign with my 2nd in the series (yes I know, I know, you're not supposed to promote the later books in your series, but this is not like other promos, but more like Also-boughts, and I wanted to test the reactions to another book cover). That one yielded no sales, but the click costs was so low, it was still worth the impressions I thought. I'm running another 6 days on the 1st in my series again, adding more keywords, to see what happens. The ad campaign started yesterday.
> 
> ...


My "sponsored ads" option says the ad will appear below search results. Does this mean my ads won't appear below the "also bought" section? I also have an option for "product display ads." Looks like it's the bigger box on the right side of the screen. That seems cool. I am really eager to try out amazon advertising so I am glad this thread popped up


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

AlexaKang said:


> A separate note to Doglover -- I don't know if this option is a limited offering only to books that are in Select. My books had been in Select since the beginning but for months, I wasn't given this ad option. So being in Select didn't guarantee you can advertise this way either. I don't know what voodoo Amazon uses to decide who to offer the option to, or who to give that $100 free clicks to (they didn't give it to me, dang it.)


To clarify - you can ONLY get the sponsored ads on books that are in KDP Select. For a while, Amazon was testing it out and only some people had access to it, but now it's universal IF you're in Select. I find it needs a lot of tinkering with to hit the sweet spot, and (like all these pay-per-click types of ads) if you get things wrong it's a very quick way to burn through the budget.

The free $100 seemed to be offered for a while to anyone who dabbled with setting up an ad but then backed out. If you went ahead and set the ad up, there was no freebie.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

PaulineMRoss said:


> To clarify - you can ONLY get the sponsored ads on books that are in KDP Select. For a while, Amazon was testing it out and only some people had access to it, but now it's universal IF you're in Select. I find it needs a lot of tinkering with to hit the sweet spot, and (like all these pay-per-click types of ads) if you get things wrong it's a very quick way to burn through the budget.
> 
> The free $100 seemed to be offered for a while to anyone who dabbled with setting up an ad but then backed out. If you went ahead and set the ad up, there was no freebie.


Note: Clicking the Promote button for a book in Select, the two usual options are offered: run a price promotion, or run an ad campaign. It doesn't specify the Sponsored Ads option on that main promotion page.... you have to choose to run an ad campaign to bring up the option of a Sponsored Ad vs regular ad. (Just so people won't be confused why they're not 'seeing' an option to run a sponsored ad.)


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## S.L. (Jun 6, 2016)

Applied for mine today. I will update as results come in.


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## MajesticMonkey (Sep 3, 2013)

Jena H said:


> Note: Clicking the Promote button for a book in Select, the two usual options are offered: run a price promotion, or run an ad campaign. It doesn't specify the Sponsored Ads option on that main promotion page.... you have to choose to run an ad campaign to bring up the option of a Sponsored Ad vs regular ad. (Just so people won't be confused why they're not 'seeing' an option to run a sponsored ad.)


Thank You! Finally figured it out thanks to you. (So its only for Select books after all. Bummer.)


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

MajesticMonkey said:


> Thank You! Finally figured it out thanks to you. (So its only for Select books after all. Bummer.)


That settles it then.

Amazon really is continuing to find ways to nuetralize the advantages of going wide, and looks like this is yet another strike. So basically, it's you're with us or against us. If you're in not Select, you can't advertise on Amazon.

I had consider taking my series wide next year, and until this, had seen no good reasons why I should not. This is finally something that gives me pause and I'll have to reconsider.

I have to give it to them, this is pretty smart. It continues their policy of not trying to make money on vendors advertisement. The money they're charging on ad campaigns aren't even chump change to them. But they now found another reason for authors to go Select, and to let authors/publishers do part of the work to put the right books in front of the right target audience beyond the Also-Boughts. Good move.


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

dragontucker said:


> My "sponsored ads" option says the ad will appear below search results. Does this mean my ads won't appear below the "also bought" section? I also have an option for "product display ads." Looks like it's the bigger box on the right side of the screen. That seems cool. I am really eager to try out amazon advertising so I am glad this thread popped up


I don't think you're looking at the Sponsored Ads we're talking about here. I think you're looking at that other ad, which as you said is the bigger box on the right. That's something entirely different and this thread won't help you with that.

We are talking about the list of books in smaller thumbnails that appear below the Also-Boughts.


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## P.A. Woodburn (May 22, 2010)

Oh dear. I've been ignoring my novel completely trying to follow the advice that says don't bother advertising until you have two or three books out. Well I'm getting close to the end of book 2. I had never heard of this "Sponsored Products" thread. I have been so diligently not advertising book one.

Now I saw something today that says never advertise anything other than book one in a series. I went to Kindle Direct I'm still a member even though I haven't done anything with it for two years. I saw something on the right that said Sponsored products but this is the wrong one you say. I even bought a book called PPC Strategies for Amazon Sellers and now I think it has nothing to do with these Sponsored products in Kindle Select.

I don't know where this list is in smaller thumbnails that appears below the also -Boughts. I think I've let my novel sink so far that there aren't any longer any also- Boughts.
How do we find this sponsored products list?


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## SomeoneElse (Jan 5, 2016)

P.A. Woodburn said:


> Oh dear. I've been ignoring my novel completely trying to follow the advice that says don't bother advertising until you have two or three books out. Well I'm getting close to the end of book 2. I had never heard of this "Sponsored Products" thread. I have been so diligently not advertising book one.
> 
> Now I saw something today that says never advertise anything other than book one in a series. I went to Kindle Direct I'm still a member even though I haven't done anything with it for two years. I saw something on the right that said Sponsored products but this is the wrong one you say. I even bought a book called PPC Strategies for Amazon Sellers and now I think it has nothing to do with these Sponsored products in Kindle Select.
> 
> ...


It's hit or miss for me whether it's on a page or not. Even the same book can sometimes have them and sometimes not for me, but if you browse books on Amazon you should see it soon enough. It seems to be on most pages most of the time.

If you don't ever see it on your book's page it might be that there aren't enough people using related keywords.


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## ......~...... (Jul 4, 2015)

dragontucker said:


> My "sponsored ads" option says the ad will appear below search results. Does this mean my ads won't appear below the "also bought" section? I also have an option for "product display ads." Looks like it's the bigger box on the right side of the screen. That seems cool. I am really eager to try out amazon advertising so I am glad this thread popped up


"Sponsored Products" is the ad this thread is about. It does appear in search results but it's also below the also-boughts. It's a bit confusing because it only says "Target by keyword, appear below search results" under it. I haven't heard of anyone having good results with the "Product Display Ads" option. I know I tend to block those out while I deifnitely pay attention to the ones below the also-boughts.


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## FMH (May 18, 2013)

P.A. Woodburn said:


> Oh dear. I've been ignoring my novel completely trying to follow the advice that says don't bother advertising until you have two or three books out. Well I'm getting close to the end of book 2. I had never heard of this "Sponsored Products" thread. I have been so diligently not advertising book one.
> 
> Now I saw something today that says never advertise anything other than book one in a series. I went to Kindle Direct I'm still a member even though I haven't done anything with it for two years. I saw something on the right that said Sponsored products but this is the wrong one you say. I even bought a book called PPC Strategies for Amazon Sellers and now I think it has nothing to do with these Sponsored products in Kindle Select.
> 
> ...


Okay, I have to help.

First - you can promote book 2. I've done it. It works. People will get book 1.

However - if you're going to do this Sponsored Ad promo - promote the book you have, put a link to your mailing list in the back so readers can sign up to know when book 2 launches. MAILING LISTS WILL MAKE YOU. Le Seriously. (french for seriously.)

Re: Sponsored ads.

eg: Click on the page of your book where you see your reviews and glorious description etc. THAT is where the 'also-boughts' and below them the 'sponsored books.'

These are NOT the Sponsored ads we are talking about. We are discussing the ones when you're searching books in general (and by in general I mean in genres) and at the bottom of THAT (THOSE) page (s) you see a book listed after the Amazon suggestions, where in it states: "Sponsored Ad" ...in nice pale grey lettering.

Promote your book, lovely. Especially with book 2 coming out soon. ORRRRR wait for book 2 THEN promote.

But I'd promote now and start that mailing list.


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## P.A. Woodburn (May 22, 2010)

Thanks to Need Want and LS May I was able to find the sponsored links under the also boughts.


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## P.A. Woodburn (May 22, 2010)

FMH said:


> Okay, I have to help.
> 
> First - you can promote book 2. I've done it. It works. People will get book 1.
> 
> ...


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## FMH (May 18, 2013)




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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

For the sake of clarifying what we are discussing, here's a screenshot of the page of the #1 best seller in the Kindle Store right now:










The Sponsored Products under the Also-Boughts. We are talking about those Sponsored Product Ads.


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

Anyone see the thread that just got started that said the Zon may be showing sales on the advertising dashboard that aren't even of the book being advertised? http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,240368.0.html


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## S.L. (Jun 6, 2016)

I got rejected because one of my characters is holding a gun...


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## karenchester (Jan 5, 2016)

Cassie Leigh said:


> Anyone see the thread that just got started that said the Zon may be showing sales on the advertising dashboard that aren't even of the book being advertised? http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,240368.0.html


Yes, I've read it. Seems like we can't trust the sales figures from the AMS dashboard and should rather use the KDP sales figures to gauge the effectiveness of our ads.


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

karenchester said:


> Yes, I've read it. Seems like we can't trust the sales figures from the AMS dashboard and should rather use the KDP sales figures to gauge the effectiveness of our ads.


I saw the other thread too but I agree with Karen. I don't know what mess is happening with Amazon as describe in that thread, but looking at my own results, I actually agree with the poster who said Amazon actually deflated the sales results, not falsely inflating it. I guess for me, going into it, the ACoS and Total Sales as shown on the Campaign report never meant that much to me, because I was promoting the first book in a series and looking at sell-thous as well. I've had a very good sell-thru rate with this series in the last few months, so what I needed was people buying Book 1.

Anyhow, all I can say is, I had one of my best sales days ever without a stack promo during the week run of Sponsored Products campaign last week. Excluding the times when I did paid promos like GenrePusle, etc, all week long last week my ranking stayed higher than it ordinarily would be when I didn't promote. And the results also spoke for itself. The week before my Sponsored Products campaign, I did a 99cents promo with FussyLibrarian (paid), Bookoftheday.org (paid), and The New Book Pebble. Total cost about $40. Compare that to the week I ran the Sponsored Products, I paid $2.86 and sold my book at full price ($2.99). The Ad Campaign report said I sold 1 book -- sounds pretty shabby, except my sales report showed I sold as high as 50% of the total sales as my 99cents promo (both including sell-thrus.) So for me at least, the AMS report may not be correct, but that's actually because it's way under-reporting the real effect of the campaign.

My campaign ended 2 days ago, and I saw an immediate dip in rankings. I submitted another one again that started yesterday, and a few sales started to come in plus new KENP reads.

So what I'm seeing is, if you have only one book to sell, you might lose a few dollars. If you have a series and expect sell-throughs, this is still a good option.

It's also interesting to see the keyword click report, to find out where Amazon's Algo steer your book. That to me is pretty useful data.


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## dragontucker (Jul 18, 2014)

I don't understand. How do keywords allow your book to appear below the "also bought" section? I am entering a bunch of keywords, but how does that determine placement on another book's page?


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## ......~...... (Jul 4, 2015)

dragontucker said:


> I don't understand. How do keywords allow your book to appear below the "also bought" section? I am entering a bunch of keywords, but how does that determine placement on another book's page?


If they're in the same category as your book. You can also use author names and book titles as keywords if you want to target popular authors in your genre. If you want your book to appear under the also-boughts and be visible, you'll have to have a higher cost per click. You'll most likely pay less but if you bid higher you get better visibility.


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## dragontucker (Jul 18, 2014)

NeedWant said:


> If they're in the same category as your book. You can also use author names and book titles as keywords if you want to target popular authors in your genre. If you want your book to appear under the also-boughts and be visible, you'll have to have a higher cost per click. You'll most likely pay less but if you bid higher you get better visibility.


Thanks. I am talking about the "Sponsored Products" ad. So, I can target authors and books with the keywords? I should just type in a book name if I wanted my ad listed on that book's page? I already submitted my ad, but I will for sure target certain books if this is the case. Is it pretty accurate if so? Thanks


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## ......~...... (Jul 4, 2015)

dragontucker said:


> Thanks. I am talking about the "Sponsored Products" ad. So, I can target authors and books with the keywords? I should just type in a book name if I wanted my ad listed on that book's page? I already submitted my ad, but I will for sure target certain books if this is the case. Is it pretty accurate if so? Thanks


Yeah, you can target specific authors/titles. You can just add them to your current ad.


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## dragontucker (Jul 18, 2014)

NeedWant said:


> Yeah, you can target specific authors/titles. You can just add them to your current ad.


so basically, I just type in the exact book name I want to target as a keyword? That will work? Is there a limit? That's so great to know


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## ......~...... (Jul 4, 2015)

dragontucker said:


> so basically, I just type in the exact book name I want to target as a keyword? That will work? Is there a limit? That's so great to know


Yeah just the title usually works. You can have up to a thousand keywords per ad.


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## m.a. petterson (Sep 11, 2013)

dragontucker said:


> so basically, I just type in the exact book name I want to target as a keyword? That will work? Is there a limit? That's so great to know


With my nonfic book Zon limited me to somewhere around 750 titles.

After typing in a title another window opens with a list of similar genre-specific books I can add.

I had no luck with my fiction which is why I'm going wide in a few days.


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## dragontucker (Jul 18, 2014)

Thanks guys. My ad is pending approval right now. After it gets approved, I am going to target a lot of books like mine


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## locker17 (Apr 20, 2012)

I guess I'm going to put my next book(s) into select. I'm tempted to yank the one book I have out and try with it but it was a pain to get it on smashwords and deal with the meatgrinder thing. Plus I like having it at BN.com. I still go into Barnes and Noble a lot and I like that in theory all the mobs of people clamoring for my book can easily order from there. The only thing that is disappointing is that the mobs of people are not yet aware they should be clamoring. That's where I was hoping the ads would help...

Sigh


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

Ok I don't know if this is a good or annoying thing. Book 1 of my series now appears as a Sponsored Product of my Book 3. 

This is so funny. On the one hand, I guess that keeps my book's page "mine". But OTOH, Why am I running a campaign to show my book on my own series' page? Assuming if people on on my 3rd book, they won't need to be told to buy my Book 1.


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## JalexM (May 14, 2015)

Posted this in wrong thread, so i'll post here.
So I decided to give this a try, I have a daily limit of 5$, so far I have 2 sales from a total of 4 clicks at a cost of 1.18(Which would have been 50 cents less if I understood that urban fiction isn't anywhere close to urban fantasy...)
I have the price at 3.99. So far, that's amazing ROI.
I haven't hit my 5 dollar limit yet, will I get more impressions if I increase the ad spend?
I have around 20 keywords when I started and stopped 3 of them because they weren't getting impressions.
It seems like people who click on these ads are more likely to buy your book because when their searching, you're in their results and they are searching to buy. So a good cover and blurb would do wonders.
This is only the weekend though, so I wonder if I'll do as well on the weekdays.


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## dragontucker (Jul 18, 2014)

One thing I don't understand. If you target a book title, does amazon only track the actual keyword a user types in to find the book? So if I find a book called "The Dragon's Flame and Sword" and use that exact same keyword, how does it work? Does amazon actually track clicks from the book page, or just the keyword the user searched for? 

If someone comes to that book from an "also bought" on another page and doesn't find it with the keyword, is amazon still reporting that to me? Or is it just only when a user actually types in that keyword to find the book with my ad on it? Hope this question makes sense lol. I was just curious about this since we are using keywords to target our ads. Do users actually have to enter those keywords to find the book our ad is listed on?


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

JalexM said:


> Posted this in wrong thread, so i'll post here.
> So I decided to give this a try, I have a daily limit of 5$, so far I have 2 sales from a total of 4 clicks at a cost of 1.18(Which would have been 50 cents less if I understood that urban fiction isn't anywhere close to urban fantasy...)
> I have the price at 3.99. So far, that's amazing ROI.


Are the reported sales from your AMS or your Dashboard sales report? Check the Dashboard. I'm finding higher sales and increase in KU reads, but some of that are sell-throughs. You'll have to check the KDP report on units sold to know for sure how many sales you made. So far, my KDP reports exceed the AMS report. SO yes, the ROI is insane!

[q]I haven't hit my 5 dollar limit yet, will I get more impressions if I increase the ad spend?
I have around 20 keywords when I started and stopped 3 of them because they weren't getting impressions.
It seems like people who click on these ads are more likely to buy your book because when their searching, you're in their results and they are searching to buy. So a good cover and blurb would do wonders.
This is only the weekend though, so I wonder if I'll do as well on the weekdays.
[/quote]

I set my daily limit at $1 and I don't hit it each day. I can't tell right now if I set it higher would help put the books in more places. I figured I don't need to since I don't even hit the limit yet.


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

dragontucker said:


> One thing I don't understand. If you target a book title, does amazon only track the actual keyword a user types in to find the book? So if I find a book called "The Dragon's Flame and Sword" and use that exact same keyword, how does it work? Does amazon actually track clicks from the book page, or just the keyword the user searched for?
> 
> 
> > If you sign up, you can a very detailed report for each keyword as to the number of impressions, number of clicks, amount you paid for the click (based on the bid compared to other bids), total spent on clicks, and total sales. The report for the total sales has been under dispute. There's another thread right now saying Amazon is not being truthful. My own experience in the mean time is, the falsity errs in under-reporting. But all are annecdotal so take it whichever way you want.
> ...


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## Graham C. (Oct 19, 2014)

Giving this sponsored ad a go as well. I had a heck of a time saving the draft, as I kept getting "your session has timed out" messages and then losing all my keywords. Finally got the keywords and ad submitted. Now I'm wondering, how long does it take before the ads start appearing?  Does Amazon email you first, like when you submit your book, or do they just start the campaign when they've signed off on it?


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## JalexM (May 14, 2015)

AlexaKang said:


> Are the reported sales from your AMS or your Dashboard sales report? Check the Dashboard. I'm finding higher sales and increase in KU reads, but some of that are sell-throughs. You'll have to check the KDP report on units sold to know for sure how many sales you made. So far, my KDP reports exceed the AMS report. SO yes, the ROI is insane!
> 
> [q]I haven't hit my 5 dollar limit yet, will I get more impressions if I increase the ad spend?
> I have around 20 keywords when I started and stopped 3 of them because they weren't getting impressions.
> ...


It showed on the dashboard, but it took a day or two for the AMS board updated to show the sales.


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

7seasonsgirl said:


> FWIW it's been a week since I started advertising and for four days I put a 5 dollars limit which has been reached each day. A lot of impressions, at least I think, I don't know what number we should expect, very few clicks, and no sales. I changed to 2 dollars for the last three days, the number of impressions has been very low, and the clicks almost non existent, as for the limit this time isn't reached.
> So my experience is that with the 5 dollars limit I reached it every time, but not with the 2. Which means, if I understand the system correctly, that I'm not comptettive enough so they can show my ad, or am I mistaken?


We can't really help since we don't know your book. Generally, You blurbs and your cover still count. It helps to have a great cover (obvious). The blurb is even more important since you only have 30 words (or was it 30 characters) to get someone to click on your book. IF you want us to help see if the blurb is good, you can post it and we can give you some feedback. I think it's important to get straight to the point why people should buy it.

Also, try new and different keyword. I'm not discovering that this is a long game. To keep up the sales, you got to keep adding keywords and steer your book to where new audience might discover it. That means getting your book on the page of books that sell. HNR of your genre is good. TOp 20 in your genre is good. Top 20 free in your genre is good. Get your book on those pages.

I haven't set my daily limit beyond $1 or $2 and it's been going ok. I don't reach my daily limit at all.


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

How's everyone doing on this so far? Any news to share or updates?


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## TheLemontree (Sep 12, 2015)

I posted this on the other "sponsored products" thread, but I think it belongs here instead.

This is where I'm at at the moment. The advantage of being so very prawny is that it's easy to see a minor increase in sales 



TheLemontree said:


> Hi all,
> I've been running these ads for a couple of months now, so I have some data
> 
> I set my limit to $1 per day.
> ...


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## Linn (Feb 2, 2016)

AlexaKang said:


> 2. The blurbs -- We're only allowed 30 characters right? Or was it 30 words? Either way, you got to get the message across and invoke readers emotions with one single sentence. I've tested 2 versions. The first one tells readers immediately what the book is about. The second one, I thought it might draw readers in by identifying the MCs and their travails. I thought the second one would improve since so many other Sponsored Products blurbs were doing it. Wrong! The first one got much better mileage.


Does anyone know if Amazon will allow us to run more than one campaign on the same book simultaneously? I just pulled the plug on my first attempt at this so I can try out a different sales pitch, and I'm thinking it might be helpful if I can tailor different blurbs to different keywords, and have them both running at the same time.



AlexaKang said:


> (eg. You write regency romance, you try to get on a page of another similar book, but you're competing with a sci-fi space opera, and God only knows why the author of the sci-fi space opera wanted to get on this page.)


Lol, I'm trying to sell my space opera to readers looking for _Little Women_. So far the attempt has proven futile. I might try running a separate campaign for this keyword, and start the blurb out with "Little Women in space."


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## SomeoneElse (Jan 5, 2016)

Linn said:


> Does anyone know if Amazon will allow us to run more than one campaign on the same book simultaneously? I just pulled the plug on my first attempt at this so I can try out a different sales pitch, and I'm thinking it might be helpful if I can tailor different blurbs to different keywords, and have them both running at the same time.
> 
> Lol, I'm trying to sell my space opera to readers looking for _Little Women_. So far the attempt has proven futile. I might try running a separate campaign for this keyword, and start the blurb out with "Little Women in space."


I have found that the keywords that perform the best are the ones where you've mentioned the connection in the ad text (or it's clear from the cover.) For example, one of my books has a nice sisterly relationship, and I get a lot of impressions on the sisters keyword, but no clicks because there's no mention of that in the text or indication on the cover. I get a lot of clicks on the 'magic' keyword, because that's exactly what my cover and ad text communicate.


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## JalexM (May 14, 2015)

AlexaKang said:


> How's everyone doing on this so far? Any news to share or updates?


Averaging like .75 sales a day, still in the positive. Want to sell more though with the ads. Here's my ad copy


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## Ros_Jackson (Jan 11, 2014)

I've just started a campaign, but I'm finding it hard to get impressions. Basically I had 60 similar books targeted and a bid of .10, with 81 impressions over three days. I'll try adding a few more target books and increasing the bid to see what happens. Am I bidding too low for a popular genre like epic fantasy?


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

Ros_Jackson said:


> I've just started a campaign, but I'm finding it hard to get impressions. Basically I had 60 similar books targeted and a bid of .10, with 81 impressions over three days. I'll try adding a few more target books and increasing the bid to see what happens. Am I bidding too low for a popular genre like epic fantasy?


Mine is a head scratcher. I get thousands of impressions a day, and 5-6 clicks per day but never had a sale attributed to the ad. I get organic sales just about everyday so it's not my cover, blurb, etc. I've paid for more than 60 "clicks" only a couple dollars total in my second week of these ads now and still not a sale?


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## SomeoneElse (Jan 5, 2016)

Herefortheride said:


> Mine is a head scratcher. I get thousands of impressions a day, and 5-6 clicks per day but never had a sale attributed to the ad. I get organic sales just about everyday so it's not my cover, blurb, etc. I've paid for more than 60 "clicks" only a couple dollars total in my second week of these ads now and still not a sale?


If you're in KU, the clickers might be borrowing not buying.



Ros_Jackson said:


> I've just started a campaign, but I'm finding it hard to get impressions. Basically I had 60 similar books targeted and a bid of .10, with 81 impressions over three days. I'll try adding a few more target books and increasing the bid to see what happens. Am I bidding too low for a popular genre like epic fantasy?


That does seem quite low - I started an ad 3 days ago and kept all bids to 2c and it has had 144 impressions. You could try bidding higher, although it might just be that your keywords have low search volume.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

LSMay said:


> If you're in KU, the clickers might be borrowing not buying.
> 
> That does seem quite low - I started an ad 3 days ago and kept all bids to 2c and it has had 144 impressions. You could try bidding higher, although it might just be that your keywords have low search volume.


Good point but I would think one would buy, no? After all people are buying each day without the ad. And page reads have been messed up on Amazon for a while now so I don't know if they are reading or not.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

Ros_Jackson said:


> I've just started a campaign, but I'm finding it hard to get impressions. Basically I had 60 similar books targeted and a bid of .10, with 81 impressions over three days. I'll try adding a few more target books and increasing the bid to see what happens. Am I bidding too low for a popular genre like epic fantasy?


I'm a small fish and getting several hundred per hour. Don't use the suggested keywords. From my experience they are worthless. Put in books and authors famous for your genre and some keywords.


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## BlouBryant (Jun 18, 2016)

A couple of answers....



LilyBLily said:


> We can modify the keywords to add more, right?


Yes, you can add more keywords. Open the campaign and you'll see a button for 'add keywords'.



Linn said:


> Does anyone know if Amazon will allow us to run more than one campaign on the same book simultaneously? I just pulled the plug on my first attempt at this so I can try out a different sales pitch, and I'm thinking it might be helpful if I can tailor different blurbs to different keywords, and have them both running at the same time.


Yes, I've had more than one running at the same time. I'm not sure if it was a good thing though... can you be placed twice on the same page? Is that a bad thing?



AlexaKang said:


> How's everyone doing on this so far? Any news to share or updates?


Welp, I'm not a big fish - my second book was released yesterday, and I'm mostly tinkering and finding out what works, learning the system with a goal of pushing my marketing when the final book in the series goes live in a couple months.

*First round of sponsored advertisements:* Bid .45, had 75,000 impressions, 230 clicks, 3 confirmed purchases and 3 or 4 KU downloads. *Lessons learned?* (1) Edit my dang book properly (KU downloads appeared to be abandoning it after 40-60 pages. (2) Target the right genre audience - I focused on YA, but the book is more Techno-Thriller. (3) Good god man, don't accept Amazon's 'suggested bid'... go lower, a lot lower. Final results: 65$ spent. 7.40$ earned. OUCH!
*Second round of sponsored advertisements:* Bid .10 (starting...) .15 (after a week).... resulted in 28,000 impressions, 158 clicks, 1 (ugh!) confirmed purchase, 2 full KU downloads (yay to my editor... both full reads over two days, and resulted in my first review, a good one!)* Lessons learned? * (1) By looking at the click through rate I learned that my cover appeared to be pulling in Science Fiction readers, but not Thriller or Techno-Thriller readers. (2) You can get the same number of clicks - or close to it - for a lot less money, if you add enough keywords, and (3) I needed to increase the price of my book to be able to make a profit off these adds. Final results: 13.45$ spent, 7.00$ earned.
*Third round of sponsored advertisements:* Bid .15, 200 keywords (targeted to Science Fiction, Techothrillers)... so far, 13,900 impressions, 19 clicks, 2 purchases and 2 full downloads. Lessons learned... pending... but I left in the Amazon suggested keywords, because I'm an idiot. Genetic Engineering as a keyword? Blah, it's not a textbook. Results so far... 1.44$ spent, ~8.00$ earned. Here's hoping that keeps up. The purchases are coming slow though, no chance of fame or fortune at this pace.

General note... I agree with others and have noticed that my add will get a bunch of impressions for a week and then just... stop! If I add a few keywords, it starts back over.
Next step... I'll try 3 adds for the same book, each targeting different genres - let them go a few weeks, and compare results.

BB


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## Donna White Glaser (Jan 12, 2011)

What I've seen is that Amz will slow down on displaying your ad in the "hot" keywords after a while. From my own experience, about a week as someone mentioned above. Maybe the keywords get stale or maybe it's Amz suppressing an ad that's been "hogging" certain keywords/pages.  I dunno. 

Also, remember it takes a few days before the reporting catches up. So you may see sales or rank jump but your ad dashboard doesn't indicate that it's due to the ad. Wait a few days.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

How are people seeing that someone did a full KU read through an ad click?


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## Ros_Jackson (Jan 11, 2014)

LSMay said:


> That does seem quite low - I started an ad 3 days ago and kept all bids to 2c and it has had 144 impressions. You could try bidding higher, although it might just be that your keywords have low search volume.


I'm using individual books rather than keywords, so that might be why. Adding more popular books and bidding .12 has just about doubled my impressions, so there's always scope to do more of that.


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## BlouBryant (Jun 18, 2016)

Herefortheride said:


> How are people seeing that someone did a full KU read through an ad click?


Well, I have a very sophisticated approach to this. 

First... flat-line your sales for a month by doing absolutely nothing to market your product. 
Second... put up an advertisement. If your book is 425 KNP and you have 425 KNP read in a day or two day period.... 
You can extrapolate that your add got someone to read and that it was one person reading the whole book, not 3 people randomly reading a # of pages that adds up to 425.

Note, this strategy is not recommended if you are seeking fame or fortune. It is simply a by-product of testing small amounts of advertising for short periods.

BB


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

BlouBryant said:


> Well, I have a very sophisticated approach to this.
> 
> First... flat-line your sales for a month by doing absolutely nothing to market your product.
> Second... put up an advertisement. If your book is 425 KNP and you have 425 KNP read in a day or two day period....
> ...


This would assume that your book was getting zero reads before hand I'm assuming? For others that have bursts of several hundred pages every couple days and some page reads every day it's impossible.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Ros_Jackson said:


> I've just started a campaign, but I'm finding it hard to get impressions. Basically I had 60 similar books targeted and a bid of .10, with 81 impressions over three days. I'll try adding a few more target books and increasing the bid to see what happens. Am I bidding too low for a popular genre like epic fantasy?


I find that I do much better getting impressions using the author name rather than the book title. You might give that I try. About 90% of my impressions come from Bernard Cornwell and Ken Follett and most of the sales. I get a few impressions on book titles but relatively few in comparison.

I have one that has received no sales through the ad but the day the ad started the reads started going up sharply (with no other promotions) so I will assume it is getting clicks from KU readers. It was already getting some page reads so I can't be certain but the low cost of the ad makes that assumption at least not too costly.

The other is still getting sales and impressions. Unlike a lot of people's ads, so far after two weeks it hasn't flatlined, but I am watching it for that to happen.


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

I had an ad that had been running since around May that never flat-lined, but all of my ads did about three days ago.  No movement on any of them.  I tried updating keywords today on a couple to see if that changes things, but it's frustrating.  Most of mine were past the two-week mark, though, so if that's a thing it finally caught up to mine it seems.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

I guess I'm going to hope my ads are fueling KU. I'm getting ok page reads but in my two campaigns I've had tons of clicks but never one sale attributed to the ad. Which I find a little hard to believe. But possibly...


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

My benchmark is 1 click per 1000 impressions. As for sales, I find the Ad report hopeless because of the delayed results. Also, when I ran the ad using Book 2 in the series, presumably people had seen the ad the bought Book 1, so I can't tell the actual sales results of the ad. What I look at for results is my sales dashboard and KU reads. Still, My ad reports consistently show a profit/sales higher than the spending.

The problem about these ads is it can become a time suck. My experience is that they stall after a while. Zon stops showing them even on pages where you sell well. It takes weekly (or more often) tweaking. I keep having to check the bids on all keywords to see whether my ad is still in visible range as to placements. By the time you have over 300 KWs, it starts to take hours.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

LilyBLily said:


> Interesting. Over 1,000 impressions and not one click. It's just an experiment, but I've already gone from excitement to, "Oh, just get back to work and finish the next novel."


No worries. Mine was like that too. But then I stated getting one click ever 800 or so impressions. But I don't know about sales. I think it's helping my KU for sure.


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## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

AlexaKang said:


> My benchmark is 1 click per 1000 impressions. As for sales, I find the Ad report hopeless because of the delayed results. Also, when I ran the ad using Book 2 in the series, presumably people had seen the ad the bought Book 1, so I can't tell the actual sales results of the ad. What I look at for results is my sales dashboard and KU reads. Still, My ad reports consistently show a profit/sales higher than the spending.
> 
> The problem about these ads is it can become a time suck. My experience is that they stall after a while. Zon stops showing them even on pages where you sell well. It takes weekly (or more often) tweaking. I keep having to check the bids on all keywords to see whether my ad is still in visible range as to placements. By the time you have over 300 KWs, it starts to take hours.


What is KW?


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## Darius Brasher (Feb 6, 2015)

Marian said:


> What is KW?


I know the question was directed at Alexa, but I'll jump in in case she doesn't see it: KW=keyword.


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## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

Darius Brasher said:


> I know the question was directed at Alexa, but I'll jump in in case she doesn't see it: KW=keyword.


Thank you!


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## Decon (Feb 16, 2011)

On five books I've had 364,099 impressions. Total clicks as a result 286 =  average 1,273 impressions per click. Total cost of those clicks $9.09 on gross sales ( not royalties) of $114.05.

I could and I am improving the impression to click ratio by removing most of the generic amazon keywords which are unproductive, together with some author names and specific titles that are not performing.

3 of my books the average cost is $.02 per click. On the other 2 it's $0.04. One of my books at $0.02 is producing the best click to buy ratio since I changed the cover. Before that it was the worst performing.

No significant increase in borrows from what I experienced before the campaign started, though I have no doubt some will be attributed to the campaign.

I'm not going for high bids to get on the front page. My belief is that if someone is prepared to scroll through the pages, they are genuine in looking for a book to read and more likely to buy from a click rather than a first click on a first page with a higher bid. I could be wrong. We will all make our own way and tweak things as we go along.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> I find that I do much better getting impressions *using the author name rather than the book title*. You might give that I try. About 90% of my impressions come from Bernard Cornwell and Ken Follett and most of the sales. I get a few impressions on book titles but relatively few in comparison.


I wonder about series titles, rather than book titles. For example, if author John Boogermeister has a cozy mystery series called Murder Most Fowl (set on a chicken farm, naturally - haha), I wonder if the _series title_ would work as well as author title. On the theory that sometimes readers remember the name of the series better than the name of the author who writes it.


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

Jena H said:


> I wonder about series titles, rather than book titles. For example, if author John Boogermeister has a cozy mystery series called Murder Most Fowl (set on a chicken farm, naturally - haha), I wonder if the _series title_ would work as well as author title. On the theory that sometimes readers remember the name of the series better than the name of the author who writes it.


Not quite the same, but I did it with fantasy worlds. So, for example "pern" as well as Anne McCaffrey and found that the author name had far more impressions than the world. In that example, I had ten times as many impressions for the author as I did for the world and click through rate was about the same.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

In every case, I get many, many more impressions with author names than with titles of individual novels or of series. Not sure why, but the difference is huge.

There is also a notice up that data reports may be incorrect, I assume because of the DDoS.


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## Decon (Feb 16, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> In every case, I get many, many more impressions with author names than with titles of individual novels or of series. Not sure why, but the difference is huge.
> 
> There is also a notice up that data reports may be incorrect, I assume because of the DDoS.


I'd say that was usually the case, but I have one book with 50,000 impressions on one title keyword out of 75,000 on one book. I think Amazon must have put it on auto pilot by mistake


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## Marseille France or Bust (Sep 25, 2012)

I'm about to try the sponsored ads at $2 a day. Does Amazon charge your card $100 minimum? When do they charge?


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

Marseille said:


> I'm about to try the sponsored ads at $2 a day. Does Amazon charge your card $100 minimum? When do they charge?


Are you sure you're choosing the sponsored ads option?


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## BlouBryant (Jun 18, 2016)

Marseille said:


> I'm about to try the sponsored ads at $2 a day. Does Amazon charge your card $100 minimum? When do they charge?


As Cassie asked, you're likely talking about product display, which has the 100$ requirement. For those adds, no, they only charge you as you go... for instance, my last 4 campaigns cost a total of a few bucks, and that's all that was charged. For sponsored product, I don't believe there is a 100 buck minimum. And if there is, they don't bill you... they bill for what is actually spent. You can cancel either at any time, without any further cost (so it's not really a minimum, is it?)

BB


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## Marseille France or Bust (Sep 25, 2012)

I am referring to sponsored products. Thank you both for your reply!



BlouBryant said:


> As Cassie asked, you're likely talking about product display, which has the 100$ requirement. For those adds, no, they only charge you as you go... for instance, my last 4 campaigns cost a total of a few bucks, and that's all that was charged. For sponsored product, I don't believe there is a 100 buck minimum. And if there is, they don't bill you... they bill for what is actually spent. You can cancel either at any time, without any further cost (so it's not really a minimum, is it?)
> 
> BB


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## Nancy_G (Jun 22, 2015)

I'm excited to try this! I just got an e-mail from Amazon offering a $50 credit, so I'm taking it. I've learned everything I need to know to start this up. Thanks, Alexa!


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## Lady Vine (Nov 11, 2012)

Nancy Glynn said:


> I'm excited to try this! I just got an e-mail from Amazon offering a $50 credit, so I'm taking it. I've learned everything I need to know to start this up. Thanks, Alexa!


I, too, received one of these emails. It looks a little dodgy though. Does anyone know if it's genuine? The address is @a10.amazon.com.
If it's legit, I'll use it then stop the ad before it goes over.


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## Decon (Feb 16, 2011)

Just a guess, but I reckon sponsored ads will die a death in the next few months as more pile in, if it hasn't already. They wouldn't be offering free $50 unless they were seeing a large churn of authors coming and going, because many are trying it since it included books outside KU. A month ago 15 pages was the norm for popular books, now it's 40 pages on some popular books.  At 8 books per page, that's some impressions to work through. I can see that Amazon will be pleased with this, as it means you would have to bid high to get on the early pages of popular books and authors. Great for Amazon, but I doubt that will be cost effective to make a return. If it takes 25 cents to get to where you are likely to get clicks and your book is say $2,99, then you would have to get a ratio of 8 clicks to one sale to break even.  Luckily there are still some books like my own that only have 2 to 8 pages, so there is still some slack, but I have seen that rise over the last few weeks and it is only going to get more competitive. Two to three weeks ago, I had no sponsored books on my sales pages.

I'm also seeing on book pages that many sponsored books are not related in any way to the genre on my own and other books, which baffles me. You really need to avoid the scatter gun approach to keywords.

As an example, if I take Deadly Journey in my signature, I have 2 pages of sponsored ads the majority of which are completely unrelated to my story, style and genre. Click the link in my signature if you are in an area that has sponsored ads on the sales pages. I can't  see how any of those unrelated books will entice readers to buy if they are looking for books similar to mine, assuming they are the same ones that I see. 

I can't complain with my own results to date, but clicks and sales have now slowed down to a trickle since it was thrown wide and more are trying it out and people increasing bids. I've had just over 1.1 million impressions between 5 books, from that I've had 739 readers click on a book cover. With low bids, those clicks have cost me $23.98, with retail sales of $221.75. (That's a touch over 3 cents per click) That's  around 11% cost of the retail sales figure and with royalties at 70% it means I have made 59% on those retail sales, but that's over many months. That works out at around  74 sales to 739 clicks, or 1 sale to 10 clicks. But like I say, clicks and sales have taken a nosedive this past few weeks, and others might have a better click to buy ratio.

I also don't see much of a connection between sponsored ads and KU page reads. I only get an increase in page reads via other promos, so I discount page reads in working out the viability. Readers only know you are in KU if they click on the cover, whereas also boughts show above the cover that it is in KU.

I know everyone will have different experiences, but all that tells me that if I'd bid 50c and paid an average of 25c per click, I'd have made a loss to date

Good luck giving it a try. You have to be in it to win it, but like a lottery, the odds are now high and they are getting higher. 

.


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## Nancy_G (Jun 22, 2015)

Lady Vine said:


> I, too, received one of these emails. It looks a little dodgy though. Does anyone know if it's genuine? The address is @a10.amazon.com.
> If it's legit, I'll use it then stop the ad before it goes over.


It took me right to my Amazon account in the AMS dashboard and is pending approval now after submitting my ad. It's legit.


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## Nancy_G (Jun 22, 2015)

Decon said:


> Just a guess, but I reckon sponsored ads will die a death in the next few months as more pile in, if it hasn't already. They wouldn't be offering free $50 unless they were seeing a large churn, because many are trying it since it included books outside KU. A month ago 15 pages was the norm for popular books, now it's 40 pages on some popular books. At 8 books per page, that's some impressions to work through. I can see that Amazon will be pleased with this, as it means you would have to bid high to get on the early pages of popular books and authors. Great for Amazon, but I doubt that will be cost effective to make a return. If it take 25 cents to get to where you are likely to get clicks and your book is say $2,99, then you would have to get a ratio of 8 clicks to one sale to break even. Luckily there are still some books like my own that only have 2 to 8 pages, so there is still some slack, but I have seen that rise over the last few weeks and it is only going to get more competitive. Two to three weeks ago, I had no sponsored books on my sales pages.
> 
> I'm also seeing on book pages that many sponsored books are not related in any way to the genre on my own and other books, which baffles me. You really need to avoid the scatter gun approach to keywords.
> 
> ...


They've offered $100 before to others. When they first started this, I could have used it but didn't because I had no idea what this was. Now I wish I had used it but will take the $50.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

Decon said:


> Just a guess, but I reckon sponsored ads will die a death in the next few months as more pile in, if it hasn't already. They wouldn't be offering free $50 unless they were seeing a large churn of authors coming and going, because many are trying it since it included books outside KU.


I suspect Amazon is building AMS to critical mass. They're looking at authors' Facebook ad spends and want that money. They're looking at Bookbub's ad platform and want to prevent it from becoming the #1 ad platform for authors.

Google did the same thing with its Adwords platform.

I'm betting AMS will introduce a quality score algo in 2017. It'll work in the same manner that it works for Adwords. Clickthroughs (and possibly sales conversions) will dictate how much authors must spend per click.


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## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

As others have reported earlier on this thread, sales dropped after two weeks. I've added keywords almost every day, but it seems fair to conclude that books are rotated in their system after approximately two weeks. How long do you pause a campaign before re-starting it? I'm hesitant to pause any campaigns because of my on-going struggle to get one. I have been trying to get a campaign for a book since November 20. Amazon keeps telling me that they're looking into the problem. Meanwhile, nothing happens.


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## Nancy_G (Jun 22, 2015)

Marian said:


> As others have reported earlier on this thread, sales dropped after two weeks. I've added keywords almost every day, but it seems fair to conclude that books are rotated in their system after approximately two weeks. How long do you pause a campaign before re-starting it? I'm hesitant to pause any campaigns because of my on-going struggle to get one. I have been trying to get a campaign for a book since November 20. Amazon keeps telling me that they're looking into the problem. Meanwhile, nothing happens.


Thanks for sharing. I will definitely keep an eye on it if it gets approved. I'm not sure what the reasons would be to not? I was inspired by Alexa's $1.00 a day budget results so am hoping for that. We'll see! I'm only doing it for my first book, hoping for sell-through to others. I worked on my little 30-word ad sort of like a log line for a movie and studied others out there.

Oh, and I've used popular authors' names close to my genre, like Nicholas Sparks and Fern Michaels as keywords. I would never have known to do that if I didn't see this thread, very cool.

ETA: Ad has been approved. Yay! Hopefully, I'll still be saying yay through this, lol


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## mmandolin (Oct 16, 2014)

Anarchist said:


> I suspect Amazon is building AMS to critical mass. They're looking at authors' Facebook ad spends and want that money. They're looking at Bookbub's ad platform and want to prevent it from becoming the #1 ad platform for authors.


^^ Yup.


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

I too have seen a decrease in effectiveness since they allowed everyone to use it and have actually turned off my ads for romance books because I couldn't afford to pay for the visibility.  As it matures it'll be yet another ad platform that works for the big players with deep catalogues and deep pockets and leaves those with just one or two books behind.  But I do think it's a long ways from tapped out since right now the ads only display in the U.S. market.


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## Nancy_G (Jun 22, 2015)

Since my ad started today, I had one click and one sale. Not sure if coincidental or working? I like it if so.


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## Lefevre (Feb 1, 2014)

Decon said:


> Just a guess, but I reckon sponsored ads will die a death in the next few months as more pile in, if it hasn't already. They wouldn't be offering free $50 unless they were seeing a large churn of authors coming and going, because many are trying it since it included books outside KU. A month ago 15 pages was the norm for popular books, now it's 40 pages on some popular books. At 8 books per page, that's some impressions to work through. I can see that Amazon will be pleased with this, as it means you would have to bid high to get on the early pages of popular books and authors. Great for Amazon, but I doubt that will be cost effective to make a return. If it takes 25 cents to get to where you are likely to get clicks and your book is say $2,99, then you would have to get a ratio of 8 clicks to one sale to break even. Luckily there are still some books like my own that only have 2 to 8 pages, so there is still some slack, but I have seen that rise over the last few weeks and it is only going to get more competitive. Two to three weeks ago, I had no sponsored books on my sales pages.
> 
> I'm also seeing on book pages that many sponsored books are not related in any way to the genre on my own and other books, which baffles me. You really need to avoid the scatter gun approach to keywords.
> 
> ...


I agree. Once, everyone piles in, things change. I started using this 6-7 months ago and my data is already showing diminished returns despite optimum iteration and testing. The key to this strategy is selling paperbacks.


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## Nancy_G (Jun 22, 2015)

I get a kick out of seeing my book on the first page of some great authors in my genre. Eyeballs are on it. I've had some sales and borrows/page reads after starting this up today and 10 clicks and over 16,000 impressions. My CPC is .25 on some lower impression keywords and .30 on the higher so I can outbid someone in the auction, but have only spent .4 to .14 a click. I put my keyword into search and can find my book in all those books pages. I've spent a total of 1.22 with a daily budget of 3.00. It's a little addictive and I need to write.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

Lefevre said:


> I agree. Once, everyone piles in, things change. I started using this 6-7 months ago and my data is already showing diminished returns despite optimum iteration and testing. *The key to this strategy is selling paperbacks.*


I hadn't thought about it, but I assume that paperbacks in Amazon's new program are eligible for these ads? My paperbacks are through CreateSpace, but I plan to run an ad using the ebook version, and if readers buy the paperback, all the better.


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

All of my paperbacks are through Createspace but they benefit from the ads I'm running.


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## Cannelle (Dec 12, 2016)

Hello all. I am new to kboards.  Just thought I'd share my experience.  Though I don't know the KENP value of my advertising, the value of sales is far outstripped by the cost of advertising so far.  I keep advertising now in the hope that now my second book in the series is released, the follow on will hopefully improve matters.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

Question for the experts: So I'm running a sponsored ad now, and I've noticed something that I also noticed the first time I did it, but it has me curious. In my keywords I used the author name (and/or series name) of successful authors in the same genre. Author A has books with 3000 or 4000 (or more) reviews. My book DOES appear on his page, but his books only have 3 or 4 sponsored product ads on them. Mine is one of those ads (yay!) but I can't believe there aren't pages of ads on his books. Meanwhile, Author B's books have far fewer reviews (most not even in the hundreds) and many of her books have NO sponsored product ads at all.  Even though I specifically used the author name as a keyword, not only does _my_ book not show up as a SA, but there aren't any ads at all. I confess I don't understand the variables of how these ads work. 

{Welcome, Cannelle!}


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## Decon (Feb 16, 2011)

Jena H said:


> Question for the experts: So I'm running a sponsored ad now, and I've noticed something that I also noticed the first time I did it, but it has me curious. In my keywords I used the author name (and/or series name) of successful authors in the same genre. Author A has books with 3000 or 4000 (or more) reviews. My book DOES appear on his page, but his books only have 3 or 4 sponsored product ads on them. Mine is one of those ads (yay!) but I can't believe there aren't pages of ads on his books. Meanwhile, Author B's books have far fewer reviews (most not even in the hundreds) and many of her books have NO sponsored product ads at all.  Even though I specifically used the author name as a keyword, not only does _my_ book not show up as a SA, but there aren't any ads at all. I confess I don't understand the variables of how these ads work.
> 
> {Welcome, Cannelle!}


All this is guesswork.

There are probably more than a million authors with books published. Even more individual books. Not all authors use sponsored ads to advertise, so some books and authors will not have sponsored pages. Probably, Amazon only open up a page for sponsored ads when a minimum number of advertisers choose that book, or author as a keyword.

Just a guess, but I think those who advertise probably go with book names rather than authors so that their keyword for the book matches with their story to be effective. If you only put the author name then Amazon likely only use that as a keyword for that author if other search criteria for both stories match. That would mean that some of the author's books are left untouched by sponsored ads.

Also, sponsored ads are rotated by Amazon so that they don't put say a thousand sponsored ads to one book when all the bids are the same. I also think that your own impression to click to buy ratio is factored in for placement with a particular author or book, and even that some author's books are rotated out if demand for their pages is not there, because that would mean low bids would get to the front pages. I doubt that's what Amazon wants for them to make money.

Also, if others do the same as me, I avoid authors if their books are in a series on the basis that readers are likely visiting to return to buy books in that series and so a keyword for say the third in a series book of five is likely to be ineffective, especially considering my books are standalones.

If you have found a bestselling author with a book that is not in a series, and with few sponsored ads, and you have bid low to get on the front page, then you should be on a roll. I'd keep it secret if I were you.


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## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

Decon said:


> All this is guesswork.
> 
> There are probably more than a million authors with books published. Even more individual books. Not all authors use sponsored ads to advertise, so some books and authors will not have sponsored pages. Probably, Amazon only open up a page for sponsored ads when a minimum number of advertisers choose that book, or author as a keyword.
> 
> ...


To add to your great post, I've found that authors' names are more effective in some instances than titles.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

Jena H said:


> Question for the experts: So I'm running a sponsored ad now, and I've noticed something that I also noticed the first time I did it, but it has me curious. In my keywords I used the author name (and/or series name) of successful authors in the same genre. Author A has books with 3000 or 4000 (or more) reviews. My book DOES appear on his page, but his books only have 3 or 4 sponsored product ads on them. Mine is one of those ads (yay!) but I can't believe there aren't pages of ads on his books. Meanwhile, Author B's books have far fewer reviews (most not even in the hundreds) and many of her books have NO sponsored product ads at all.  Even though I specifically used the author name as a keyword, not only does _my_ book not show up as a SA, but there aren't any ads at all. I confess I don't understand the variables of how these ads work.


Update: I'm running an ad in which I use an author and series that I particularly wanted to target, as well as two other authors/series in the same/similar genre. I originally intended the ad to run for 3 days but extended it a couple of days, since right now it seems to be quite effective.

Thing is, I ran the ad specifically to sell the _paperback_ version of my book, and in fact, the ad text concludes with "available in paperback." There's a small chance that the number of sales I've seen since the ad began is the same or similar to what it would have been if I hadn't run the ad--and since my books come from CreateSpace I can't track the ad's efficacy on paperbacks--I'm calling it a success, and in fact may either extend the sale to much closer to Christmas, or run another one next week.


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## Philip Gibson (Nov 18, 2013)

This thread prompted me to look at my Amazon ads report where I see that I have run dozens of Product Display ads, producing mixed results but with costs per click ranging from $0.19 to $0.52.

However, I see I ran just one Sponsored Products ad (5 months ago).  That ad had 14,754 impressions, 47 clicks, cost per click of $0.05, total spend of $2.52 and total sales of $5.99 (it sold a box set).  That's a pretty good return on investment, isn't it?  I can't think or remember now why I terminated the ad.

Now I'm running a new ad on a different book with a $1 per day limit.  So far, after 24 hours it has 4,161 impressions, 2 clicks, and cost per click of $0.10.  No sales yet, but the cost per click is much better than I usually get with Facebook ads.  I used automatic placement of (2 key words and am wondering about deleting some and maybe adding others.

Is it worthwhile to do that?

I'm very interested in seeing others' experiences with sponsored products ads.  I hope more will chime in here.


Philip


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## AliceS (Dec 28, 2014)

Okay you guys convinced me to try it. I just set up an ad. I'm really interested to see the statistics. I've bid rather low, but that's where I am comfortable for this experiment.


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