Scale Insights Team
Struggling with low or no impressions in your Amazon PPC can halt your sales growth. Investing in PPC should shine a light on your products and attract buyers, but when impressions don't pick up, neither do clicks and sales. Learning how Amazon's ad system works will help you figure out why this is happening.
To get more people to see your ads, you need to use the right keywords, set the right bids, and make sure your ads match what people are looking for. Looking closely at these things will help you find out why your ads aren't showing up.
Ready to boost your ad visibility and performance? Click through for practical tips to improve your Amazon PPC campaign.
Analyzing Your Current PPC Campaigns
Before discussing solutions, you need to conduct a thorough analysis of your Amazon PPC campaigns. This involves looking at concrete performance metrics, identifying specific issues related to low or no impressions, and leveraging reports to understand underlying problems.
Evaluating Campaign Performance Metrics
Your campaign's success hinges on a variety of performance indicators. For instance, click-through rate (CTR) provides insight into how effective your ads are at garnering attention.
To evaluate your campaign's performance metrics, download reports from Amazon's advertising console. Systematically review data points such as clicks, spend, conversions, average cost of sale (ACoS), and return on ad spend (ROAS). By comparing these across your campaigns, you can pinpoint areas needing improvement.
Click-through rate: Review CTR to determine if your ads engage potential customers.
Conversions & ACoS: Track conversions and analyze ACoS to gauge profitability.
Clicks & Spend: Compare clicks to spend to assess whether you're maximizing your budget.
You might also want to read our guide: What Is A Good Conversion Rate For Amazon PPC? and Amazon Advertising Reports: Using Metrics for Business Growth.
Identifying Low or No Impression Issues
Low impressions indicate your ads aren't appearing as frequently as they should, which could be due to a host of issues.
Begin by examining your campaigns for any active ad campaign components running but failing to attract views.
Check your keyword matches and ad placements to ensure they align with your target audience's search patterns. Keywords with low traffic volume or irrelevant keywords might be hindering your campaign's visibility.
Keyword Relevance: Assess if your chosen keywords match your product offering and customer searches.
Ad Placements: Ensure your ads are positioned where your target audience is most likely to see them.
Using Reports to Diagnose Problems
Amazon provides a variety of reports that allow for an in-depth analysis of campaign performance.
The Search Term Report displays the search terms that triggered your ads and can reveal discrepancies between your chosen keywords and the actual search terms used by potential buyers.
A Campaign Performance Report can alert you to changes in performance over time, helping identify trends such as seasonal fluctuations or shifts in buyer behavior.
How To Fix Low or No Impressions in Amazon PPC
#1 Check Your Product Data
When managing your Amazon PPC campaigns, your product data is a crucial element. Always ensure it's fully optimized and relevant to your target audience.
Start by inspecting your product titles and descriptions for relevant keywords that potential customers might use in their searches.
Titles: Keep them concise yet informative. Utilize the most important keywords at the beginning of your title.
Descriptions: They should be detailed, feature-rich, and contain secondary keywords for enhanced discoverability.
Next, verify your product images. High-quality images can influence click-through rates. All images must be clear, high resolution, and showcase your product at different angles.
Here's what else to check and enhance in your product data:
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Bullet Points: Use bullet points to highlight key features. Prioritize benefits that resonate with your audience.
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Backend Keywords: Optimize these in your Seller Central to increase the chances of your ad being seen.
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Pricing: Competitive pricing can impact your ad's performance. Monitor and adjust accordingly.
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Inventory Levels: Ensure sufficient stock. Ads for out-of-stock items won't run, leading to no impressions.
Categories and subcategories also matter. Place your product correctly to help target the right customers.
Your visibility on Amazon relies heavily on the accuracy and appeal of your product data. Routinely update and refine these elements to improve your ad campaign's performance.
#2 Check Your Product Bids
When managing your Amazon PPC campaigns, the bids you set for your products dictate their visibility. In a competitive marketplace, a bid too low might render your ads invisible, whereas a bid too high can exhaust your budget prematurely.
Here's what you should do to optimize your bids:
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Review Current Bids: Examine each product bid against the average cost-per-click (CPC) in your category. If your bids are significantly lower, consider incrementally raising them to become more competitive.
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Budget Allocation: Ensure that your budget is not stretched too thin across too many keywords. A concentrated approach with competitive bids on selected keywords often yields better results.
Useful Bid Checks:
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Double Check Bids: Compare your product bids with competitive benchmarks to verify they're competitive.
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Assess Budget: Make sure your budget supports your bids. An insufficient budget can prevent your ads from being shown.
Best Practices:
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Bid Incrementally: Adjust your bids in small steps to find the optimal amount without overspending.
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Focus on Relevance: Bid more on keywords that are closely related to your product, as this increases the chances of your ad being shown.
#3 Check If Your Product Is Indexed for a Keyword
When running Amazon PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaigns, ensuring your product is indexed for relevant keywords is crucial. If your ad campaign isn't getting the desired impressions, it may be due to indexing issues. Here's a streamlined method to verify if your product is properly indexed:
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Find the Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN) for your product.
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Go to the Amazon search bar.
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Enter the ASIN followed by the keyword you're targeting. For example: B00MKB5TXA barbeque.
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Press Enter.
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If your product appears in the search results, congratulations, it's indexed for that keyword.
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If it does not appear, your product is not indexed for the selected keyword, which can severely impact your ad campaign's visibility.
To improve your Amazon advertising performance:
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Regularly check the indexing status of your targeted keywords.
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Make adjustments to your ad campaigns accordingly.
How to Optimize Your Ad Campaign Structure
To effectively address low or no impressions in your Amazon PPC campaigns, a solid foundation starts with fine-tuning the structure of your campaign.
Concentrating on a well-planned hierarchy and ad group organization can significantly influence your ad visibility and performance.
Create a Well-Structured Campaign Hierarchy
Your campaign hierarchy is the backbone of your Amazon PPC campaigns. When setting this up:
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Define clear objectives for each campaign, considering various factors like product categories, seasonal promotions, and brand lines.
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Assign a specific budget to each campaign, ensuring a fair budget distribution based on the expected return and importance of each product listing.
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Use judicious bidding strategies, where you allocate higher bids to top-performing keywords and products and adjust lower for those not performing as well.
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Focus on targeting methods that suit the objective of the campaign, whether it's broader reach through automatic targeting or precise customer targeting with manual campaigns.
Having a campaign hierarchy that is reflective of your advertising goals will simplify management and monitoring, allowing for better optimization actions.
Also, read our guide: How To Optimize Amazon PPC Campaigns.
Make an Effective Ad Group Organization
Within each advertising campaign, your ad group structure should:
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Distinctly segregate products that are similar in nature or targeted at the same set of keywords to ensure ad relevancy.
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Regularly revise your ad groups to include or exclude products based on performance data.
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Use negative keywords effectively to prevent your ads from appearing in unrelated searches, thereby improving relevancy and potential impressions.
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Experiment with different match types for your keywords within ad groups to see which yields better impressions for your PPC campaigns.
Learn more about negative keywords by reading our article: What Are Amazon Negative Keywords And 7 Tips To Master Them.
Proper ad group organization supports the optimization process by aligning your product offerings with customer search queries, enhancing the odds of your ads gaining visibility and clicks.
How To Improve Click-Through and Conversion Rates
To enhance your Amazon PPC performance, it's vital to increase your ad's click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates, as these metrics directly impact your sales and ad ranking.
Enhance Ad Visibility
Your ad's visibility is crucial in achieving high click-through rates. To improve visibility, consider the following elements:
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Sponsored Products: Bid strategically on relevant keywords to ensure your products appear prominently in search results.
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Sponsored Brands: Create compelling headlines and use your brand logo to strengthen recognition.
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Sponsored Display: Retarget customers who viewed your product but did not purchase to increase chances of conversion.
Utilize A/B testing to determine which ad placements and keywords yield the highest visibility and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Optimize Product Listings
The quality of your product listings significantly affects both click-through and conversion rates. Focus on the following components:
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Main Image: Use high-quality images that clearly showcase your product.
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Product Page: Ensure your product page is informative and easy to navigate, with key benefits listed succinctly.
Related read: Amazon Product Listing/Title Optimization: 8 Secret Strategies.
Implement the use of bullet points to highlight crucial information and consider using HTML formatting to enhance readability. Regularly monitor and update your product listings, ensuring all information is up-to-date and accurate to foster trust and encourage conversions.
Consider Amazon PPC Automation
A good way to avoid low or no impressions in Amazon PPC is to use PPC automation tools. If you're having trouble getting your Amazon ads seen, using PPC automation like Scale Insights can help. They use advanced AI to improve your ads and spend your money wisely.
This approach enhances your ad visibility and ensures you're getting the most out of every dollar spent. If you want to get ahead on Amazon, check out Scale Insights' plans and see how they can boost your PPC strategy.
Final Thoughts on Enhancing Amazon PPC Performance
By auditing your campaigns, refining your product listings, and ensuring your bids are competitive, you lay the groundwork for increased visibility and better conversion rates. Remember, a proactive approach to campaign management, coupled with regular performance reviews, is essential to achieving your advertising objectives.
If you're still facing hurdles with Amazon PPC, consider the role of automation to streamline your campaigns for higher efficiency and effectiveness.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Amazon calculate impressions?
Amazon calculates impressions by counting the number of times your ad is displayed to users as they browse the platform. Each time your ad appears on a search result page, a product details page, or any other page on Amazon, it's counted as one impression. This metric helps you understand how often your ad is being seen.
How long does it take for Amazon ads to kick in?
Amazon ads can start generating activity almost immediately after they're launched. However, gathering enough data to see meaningful performance trends typically takes at least a few days. For a new campaign, it's common practice to allow 2-4 weeks to evaluate its effectiveness and make necessary adjustments fully.
Why do I have more clicks than impressions?
Having more clicks than impressions is technically impossible since an impression is counted when your ad is shown, and a click happens after an impression when a user engages with the ad. If you see more clicks than impressions in your reports, it may be due to a reporting delay or glitch. It's important to double-check your data and, if needed, contact Amazon's support for clarification.
How many impressions do you have before a sale on Amazon?
The number of impressions needed before making a sale on Amazon varies widely. It depends on factors such as your product's appeal, the competitiveness of your keywords, and the relevance of your ads to the customer's search. Industry benchmarks known as conversion rates can offer guidance, but each product and campaign can behave differently.
What is a good impression rank on Amazon?
A good impression rank on Amazon isn't static; it's about having better visibility than your competitors. Being at the top of search results typically indicates a good impression rank. A higher rank means your ads are more likely to be seen by potential customers. Strive for the highest rank your advertising budget can sustain profitably.
