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In This Issue
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Latest Product Enhancements
New Policing Rules for Ads
Amazon's Content Guidelines are designed to protect customers by ensuring that Product Ads are appropriate, genuine and accurate. Ads and sellers that do not meet these guidelines are removed from Amazon.com in order to maintain customer trust. We've recently added additional guidelines that we'd like to bring to your attention. Here are the recent additions we have made:
Relevance requirements
The text of the Product Ad submission must be clear, truthful and must directly reflect the content of the Destination URL. We require that:
Product relevance - The Product Ad must accurately reflect the product on the landing page of the Destination URL.
Accurate price listing - Product Ads must have accurate pricing. Price (inclusive of quantity restrictions), including shipping charges, must be accurate and match the offer on the Destination URL. Customers should not have to click further to view price information.
Listing accuracy - Product Ads must be
accurate. Prices, shipping charges, and all descriptive
content must be accurate and match the advertiser's website
offer.
Website and URL requirements
Product Ads are not permitted for websites that do not provide a positive and high quality user experience. We require that websites meet the following Website and URL requirements:
Ability to order product online - Websites must allow customers to purchase the product on the landing page of the destination URL. At a minimum, a customer should be able to purchase using a major credit card - Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover Network, Diner's Club and/or use an established online payment processor (Amazon Payments, Google Checkout, PayPal).
Product detail page - Website must ensure the landing page of the destination URL is a product detail page.
Geographic shipping - Websites must offer shipping for products to mailing addresses in the contiguous United States.
Back button functionality - Websites must allow customers to browse their entire website after arriving on the landing page of the destination URL. Browsing includes being able to use the back on the seller website to go back to the landing page once they have left it.
Legitimate online business - Websites must be genuine online retailers with legitimate purchasable products. Websites cannot mislead customers about the products being sold.
Editorial guidelines
Product Ads must be clear. To keep the Product Ad experience positive for searchers and shoppers who encounter the Product Ads on the web publisher sites, we require that all listings in your Product Ads file meet our Editorial guidelines:
Price in USD - Product Ads must display
product prices in United States dollars. Additionally,
product price must be displayed in United States dollars
on the landing page of the destination URL.
Product availability - Websites must display product availability (including accurate time-to-ship time) on the landing page of the destination URL
Prohibited Content
We do not accept or permit Product Ads and links to websites that promote:
Services - Services. Such as installation services, travel reservations or financial advice.
Test Products - Products that are not intended for sale. Such products include products used for testing of uploads.
Used Items - Products must be in new condition for the following categories Baby, Beauty, Apparel & Accessories, Shoes, Health & Personal Care, Jewelry and Watches.
Downloads - Products or services that are delivered via a download to the user's computer.
Cash or cash equivalent instruments - Including but not limited to money orders, traveler's checks, stored value products, discount coupons (unless explicitly authorized in advance by Amazon) like retail or open loop gift cards or electronic stored value redemption codes.
Content Guidelines are updated periodically. Avoid suspension or termination of your Product Ads account by ensuring you are familiar with and your ads comply with these guidelines.
Keep Track of Your Clicks
Understanding your return on ad spend is fundamental
to making CPC advertising work for you. There are a good
selection of products available to track your Product
Ads clicks. Learn more about making sure your reports
are capturing all your clicks.
At the end of 2009 we did a study comparing Amazon and
seller tracking logs. Our objective was to understand
accuracy. We found that certain customer browsers were
dropping the referral URL and this traffic appeared as
"type_in" traffic in seller report and was not tracked
as coming from Amazon.com.
To improve accuracy we have just deployed new code to
minimize the risk that a customer's browser will drop
the referral URL. This should help accuracy if you rely
on this tracking method. For 100% accuracy, we recommend
you add referral tags in your product URLs.
Don't Miss a Thing with Ref Tags
A ref tag, or referral tag, is a code which can be
added to the URL for each of your advertised products.
When a customer clicks on your ads, your analytics
program logs the URL including the tracking code. In
this way you can track the source of a click regardless
of the internet browser the customer uses.
Simply add a tracking code to the URL for all of the
products you advertise on Amazon.com. For example, "src=amazon." Adding
a tracking code in your URLs ensures you will be able
to track all clicks from Amazon by looking for URLs
viewed on your website which includes this referral
tag. The implementation of a tracking code in your
URLs is an effective way to track traffic from all
advertising sources.
The steps to implement tracking codes in your URLs
will depend on your analytics program. If you use Google
Analytics, this Google
help page includes a tool to
build your URL with a tracking code.
Traffic Validation
When comparing your logs to click reports in Seller Central
you may notice a difference between the count of total
clicks . Some of this difference may be due to Amazon Traffic
Validation. This happens when we have identified
invalid clicks on your ads and subsequently deduct
these clicks from your account reports and invoices.
Our advanced click-validation software reviews all clicks
received on your ads. Clicks may be invalidated for the
following reasons:
- Clicks from an Amazon.com IP address including our crawler ProductAdsBot/1.0. We invalidate all clicks from Amazon systems and processes including Content Policing.
- Unusual click patterns
- Clicks identified as being machine generated
Invalid clicks are generally removed from your reporting the same day the traffic has occurred. However we analyze click behavior over a 3 day period. This means that you will see adjustments to your total click count for up to 3-days. As we review and identify invalid traffic, your reports in Seller Central are adjusted and will ultimately only reflect the total number of valid clicks you have received on your Product Ads. You are only be charged for valid clicks sent to your website. Where you have been charged and within the next 3-days we identify invalid traffic, a credit will be applied to your open invoice.
Now Accepting Product Titles Created Using Microsoft Software
If you use Microsoft software to create your product upload that included quotes, you will have previously been receiving a feed error rejecting these ads. This is because we were unable to read the diagonal quotes in the titles created by Microsoft software. We have recently implemented a change to feed processing and are now able to read and normalize these quotation marks. This means that product titles with diagonal quotes will process smoothly and these ads will go live on Amazon.com.
Optimize Your Ads
Maximizing Product Descriptions
Providing detailed product descriptions helps customers learn about your product on Amazon.com before they click through to your website. Product descriptions supplement information already provided in the title, image and key product features. We've come up with 4 short tips to keep in mind when writing your product descriptions:
- Include important features about the product
- Explain the use of the product
- Provide specific information that the customer may not already know
- Be concise using 2000 characters or less
Review our list of product description do's and don'ts along with examples of good and bad product descriptions found in the Help section of Seller Central.
Sell in Bulk? Include Item Package Quantity in Your Product Feed
If you sell items that come in packages of more than 1, include the Item Package Quantity in your product feed. This is the best way to avoid having your ad matched to a detail page for a single item.
For example, a six-pack of tree-shaped air fresheners would have an item-package-quantity of 6. In the "Item Package Quantity" column in the feed you can provide a number of up to 12 characters allowing for 2 digits to the right of the decimal point. For example, "6122.00." This is not a required field and should only be used where you are selling multiple individual products as 1 unit.
If you use Yahoo Store or Google Base product feeds you can find the relevant attributes names in Seller Central here:
Yahoo Store
Google Base
The full set of Product Ads feed attributes can be reviewed here:
Product Ads
Maximize Traffic from Amazon, Avoid Being Out of Budget
When your daily budget is spent, your Product Ads are removed from Amazon.com. This means customers cannot find your ads and you will not receive traffic for the remainder of the day. Your budget is reset at midnight each day and your ads go live at this time.
Maximize your traffic by monitoring your Daily Budget. We will automatically notify you of an Out of Budget event if you opt in to receive the "Daily budget exceeded" notification. Opt-in to receive this email in the Settings tab of Seller Central. You can specify as many recipients as you like to ensure the right people at your company are kept informed. As you may know, Amazon continues to grow quickly with North American revenue up 37% YoY in Q4. Monitoring out of budget events will help you take advantage of this continued growth.
Email notification will come from productads-noreply@amazon.com. Add this email to your Safe Senders List to avoid notifications going to your junk email folder.
News and Announcements
Inactive Account? Get
Restarted Today
In January we sent out an email to sellers whose Product Ads accounts had been inactive for 90 days. If you received this email, but did not take action to reactivate your account your listings will have been removed from your Seller Central account.
To reactivate your account simply log in to Seller Central and upload a new Product Ads file.
If you need a refresher course on creating Product Ads, attend our free webinar on Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 10:00 AM PST. We will demonstrate step-by-step how to build a Product Ads feed. Register today to reserve your seat.
Or, you can get immediate help by phone or email by contacting Seller Support. Click on the link located at the bottom of every page in Seller Central to reach our Seller Support team.
Follow Amazon Seller Support on Twitter
You can now follow Amazon Seller Support on Twitter! We will be tweeting our latest blog posts, news, and best practices for successful selling on Amazon.com. Follow us at http://www.twitter.com/sellersupport.
Q&A
Every day our Technical Support team answers questions submitted by you. Here's the answer to one of the most commonly asked questions.
Q. How is the placement of ads determined?
A. The rank of your ad is determined by considering a number of factors, including your cost per click (CPC) bid and your click through rate (CTR). These factors are used to display your ads with the most relevant products for customers.
Since sort order is based in part on bid amount, if you have a low click-through rate, you might have to increase your bid to get higher placement.
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