Automatic targeting is an Amazon marketing tool for sellers to advertise and promote sponsored product pages to customers in the marketplace. This easy-to-use Amazon ad feature uses a built-in algorithm to match Amazon search queries from customers shopping online with relevant product pages from sellers.
Amazon matches your ads with product queries and provides recommended product suggestions for the customers who start these queries.
The automatic campaign has a search term report feature that provides sellers with data about product performance in the marketplace and customer buying habits in specific categories.
For example, if your Amazon store has a product with a high sales rank in health and beauty, Amazon will deliver shoppers searching for your highest-rated health and beauty products to your product description page to learn more. They match customer keyword search queries with keywords listed on top-selling products in the marketplace.
Amazon's internal marketing team recommends that new sellers in the marketplace begin their advertising journey for sponsored or branded products by using automatic ad campaigns. The next step for sellers is to use manual campaigns when they are more familiar with how to enter keywords for marketing their products on Amazon and showing up in Google search results.
How to Use Automatic Targeting on Amazon
There are two types of campaigns available for advertisers in the Amazon marketplace — automatic targeting campaigns and manual campaigns. Amazon says getting started with automatic targeting is the fastest way to have your products discovered and sold in their marketplace.
Amazon sellers can log in to Campaign Central and launch their first automatic campaign on Amazon in less than 10 minutes.
Sponsored products with automatic targeting match products with queries. Automatic marketing is beneficial for users and sellers, makes the buying process easy, and shortens the buyer's journey.
Amazon recommends running marketing campaigns for sponsored products for at least two weeks before making any changes or creating new campaigns.
Once sales campaigns are up and running, they can learn about key product metrics, identify top-selling products, eliminate underperforming products and identify the best keywords to match customer queries and buying behavior.
Sellers can switch to manual targeting after finding the best keywords identified by automatically targeted campaigns or use a combination of manual and automatic marketing tools to boost product rankings.
Benefits of Using Automatic Targeting for Amazon Sellers
Amazon's intelligent platform does most of the heavy lifting for Amazon sellers using automatic campaigns. As sellers enter the product information, the platform automatically takes care of algorithmic processes in the background that match product queries and recommended product suggestions, with users completing keyword searches to find and buy specific products online.
Using automatic targeting for advertising on Amazon is the easiest and fastest way for new sellers to market their products on Amazon. This is because the Amazon system does most of the work.
Manual targeting gives Amazon sellers more control over how, when, and where their ads appear. Sellers choose well-researched keywords for product descriptions and targeted ad campaigns created by manually adding relevant keywords in manual Amazon marketing campaigns.
Amazon makes it easy for new sellers to use its built-in marketing features. They help people using manual targeting to choose the best bid range for their products by offering a suggested bid range for each manually created ad.
Another benefit of using manual campaigns is that sellers can set different bids for products in each category.
Expert Amazon marketers recommend using both automatic and manual targeting campaigns simultaneously. They say using both marketing tools with sponsored ads can help sellers make the most of Amazon's automated advertising features.
Amazon sellers can visit Campaign Central to manage automatic and manual campaigns. They can gain sales and product inventory insights by reviewing the Amazon marketing data in the following areas.
The following built-in data reporting features tell Amazon sellers how their Amazon marketing campaigns are performing in the marketplace.
Sellers can use the Campaign manager to create combined Amazon marketing campaigns, identify product trends, and make better decisions when bidding competitively on relevant keywords.
Individual marketers using Amazon's marketing and publishing platform can run more than one marketing campaign at a time. Amazon recommends allowing campaigns to run for two to four weeks before making campaign updates or optimizing existing campaigns.
Running an Amazon marketing campaign for two to four weeks gives marketers enough time to collect data about how well their products are performing against their competitors and to analyze customer buying patterns in the online marketplace.