Advertisers have taken advantage of CPCs that have been rising between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. According to recent research, advertisers increased their spending on Google Shopping ads by a whopping 32% and 50% on the Amazon Sponsored Products ads compared to the last year’s season between Thanksgiving and Cyber Mondays.
Spending on Text Ads is Up too
Even though the spend on Google Shopping has been higher than text ads, advertisers have spent 25% more on text ads than they did during the same period last year.
The increase in spending has yielded some additional clicks but the CPCs did not change. Even as spending on text ads rose by 25% and Shopping clicks by 31%, the CPCs for the text ads were flat compared to the same period a year ago. They only increased by 1% on Shopping ads. However, desktop CPCs had a whopping increase of 18% for Shopping clicks and an 11% increase for text-based ads. On the other hand, the phone text ads had a CPC fall of 6%.
Amazon Threat to Google Shopping
Amazon is the greatest threat to Google Shopping, which significantly increased its presence on Google Shopping. According to We, the impression share of Amazon on Google Shopping was 87% higher during this Black Friday than it was a year ago.
Amazon Sponsored Brands and Products
Despite the 50% increase in spending on Amazon Sponsored Product ads, the clicks just rose by 29%. However, the CPCs jumped by a whopping 16% compared to the same period last year
On the other hand, Sponsored Brands (they were formerly called Headline ads) posted a different story. The spend on these ad format rose by 26% while clicks went up by 52%, but the CPCs were 17% compared to last year.
According to the report, Sponsored Brands took up as much as 15% spend as Sponsored Products for a media advertiser who was targeting both Amazon ad formats.
The Impact of the above Spend on Sales
Considering the 24-hour conversion window, sales directly from Sponsored Products rose by 31% and year-over-year during the five-day sales period.
On average, the Sponsored Brands have a conversion window of 14 days. The sales attributed to the format had increased by 54% compared to a similar 14-day period last year. It is expected that this percentage may increase as more data streams in. However, according to the past data that was collected, most sales attributable to the ads occur during the 24-hour window after an ad has been clicked.
Whilst it wasn’t possible find the conversion data for the Google Search Campaigns, retail advertisers saw a rise in click volume over the holiday period. This is happening despite Google ads being relatively mature. Even if Amazon is growing its presence in product searches, the increase in click volume along with Amazon’s rise in Google Shopping underscores the relevance of search as a key channel for retail sales.
Amazon has created ad formats to increase attributable sales on their platform. They released new-to brand metrics to help advertisers see the conversion rates for customers who have not bought from the brand in the last year. It is reported that 70% of total conversion, as well as 71% of sales volumes attributed to these ads in the 5-days, were from new clients. This showed the importance of the ads in increasing sales volumes.