Sponsored Brand Videos are one of the newer ad types that Amazon has released in previous years and are still under utilized by more than 80% of sellers.
Today, we’re going to talk about how to utilize Sponsored Brand videos to increase traffic to your listing and improve your overall sales.
I’ll also include one quick tip at the end that I haven’t seen anybody talk about yet.
In this Tips edition, I’ll cover
- Sponsored Brand Video Specifications
- Best practices for Sponsored Brand Videos
- How to incorporate Sponsored Brand Videos in your ad strategy
What are Sponsored Brand Videos?
Sponsored Brand Videos were released in 2020 as an update to the popular Sponsored Brand ads. Currently they appear mid-way down the page and begin auto-playing.
There are 3 important things to know about Sponsored Brand Videos.
- They will start auto-playing as the customer scrolls down the search results
- The sound is OFF by default – customers can unclick the mute button to hear the sound (but <5% of customers do this).
- They are a horizontal video format – videos should be 1920 x 1080 (landscape format).
Sponsored Brand Videos are a huge upgrade from traditional Sponsored Products/Sponsored Brands and as such, every seller needs to be using them.
Sponsored Brand Video Specs
Sponsored Brand videos appear mid-way down the page and show the autoplaying video with a product right next to the video.
- Video starts autoplaying
- Product listing displayed at right
- Mute button appears here (covers up this part of the video)
You can see the full Sponsored Brand video specifications from Amazon but generally, you want
- 1920 x 1080
- 30 FPS
- 15 – 30 seconds length
- Able to be understood without sound
Sponsored Brand Video Results
Typically Sponsored Products have a clickthrough rate of 0.25% – 0.5%. Regular Sponsored Brands have a clickthrough rate of 0.8 – 1%.
Sponsored Brand Videos routinely see click through rates of 1 – 2% which is a significant improvement over other ad types.
Sponsored Brand Video Best Practices
Many sellers create a basic video for their listing and then use that same video for their Sponsored Brand videos. And then they wonder why they’re seeing a poor ROAS (return on ad spend) and high costs.
To optimize for Sponsored Brand Videos, treat it as similar to a Facebook or Instagram Ad. The customer is browsing for a product and looking through different search results.
Your ad needs to immediately grab their attention and convince them to click. How do you do that?
- Use quick action shots in the first 3 seconds – draw the readers attention with quick cuts (similar to Facebook ads)
- Introduce the product within the first 5 seconds.
- Use big bold text overlays – sound is off by default and very few (<5%) unmute the video
- Optimize for a 15 – 30 second length. Aim to have action every 2-3 seconds to keep viewers engaged.
The most important thing (by far) is the hook and the first 10 seconds of the video. Data shows that less than 10-15% of people actually watch the entire video.
The only purpose of Sponsored Brand Videos is to get people to click on the ad!
If you search “orange whip golf swing trainer” on Amazon, you can see a good example of a Sponsored Brand Video.
- Starts off with action – golf swing. Although this could be improved. If he was swinging directly at the camera, CTR would double.
- Big bold text that matches the customer search term
- Quick action shots in first 3-5 seconds
How to use Sponsored Brand Videos in your Amazon Ad Strategy
CPCs for Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Brand videos tend to be more expensive than Sponsored Products. What I like to do is test out new keywords in Sponsored Products and then – once I’ve seen sustained performance from these keywords – introduce them to Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Brand Videos.
Typically, my process looks like this:
- Download the Sponsored Products search term report for the last 65 days
- Sort by orders and ROAS. If I have a ROAS target of 5x, I’ll look at all of the search terms that are performing above that target.
- Take the top 5 – 10 best performing keywords and introduce them as exact match in a Sponsored Brand video campaign
- If the keywords work as exact match, introduce them as broad match in a separate Sponsored Brand video campaign.
The above process will give you a simple way to start with Sponsored Brand videos and slowly expand spend there if its working.
Sponsored Brand Video Tips
After you get some initial data using this ad unit (30 days worth would be good), run the Sponsored Brands Category Benchmark report to see where you could improve.
This report will tell you where you compare to the different brands in your category. Based on that you can make changes to your video and A/B test different videos to see what produces the best results.
When looking at the report, generally you want to focus on click through rate and conversion rate. Both are impacted by the video quality.
2 Actionable Takeaways
Here are actionable takeaways that you can apply to your business today:
- Incorporating Sponsored Brand Videos is a must for any Amazon FBA seller in 2023.
- Evaluate performance by using the Sponsored Brand Category Benchmark report. Make changes as appropriate
