@Vigilante
Well, the cat's out of the bag on this. I heard that Scott Voelker had a guest on recently that mentioned using the Vendor Express backdoor to get to AMS, and now it's being posted about here. There will probably be untapped profits here for a bit, but it'll be swamped with people in the near future, just like Sponsored Products is now.
I had an awesome headline banner ad above the search results in my highly competitive niche for months, but recently new people have come in with higher bids and i'm getting fewer and fewer displays. Here's a screencap of a campaign I ran:
The average CPC was SIGNIFICANTLY lower than Sponsored product ads. An example: To get on the first page for sponsored products with my main keyword, you needed to bid $1.50. My average CPC for displaying at the top of the page for the same keyword was $0.20.
I will say that click traffic to the headline ads is much less than a regular in-line sponsored product ad. It will net you extra sales, but it probably won't be life-changing.
Also, you can't run reports on your campaigns, and you get less insight into campaign performance than you do with Sponsored Products. There is no "automatic" campaign option.
Could be the start of something great. When someone takes the time to dissect the PPC options and understands if it gives you different positioning than through Seller Central, please update. Right now, it looks like the "headline search results advertising" might give you the ability to position the entire brand, instead of just an item, at the top of the search results.
There are three options for placement.
Headline above the search results: This links to your brand page that you can set up with custom media, feature different product collections, highlight popular products, etc.
On the side of a detail page all the way on the right hand side, underneath the "Other Sellers on Amazon" box: For these you can target the pages of specific ASINs you want to display on, or you can display by "interest based". I tried these and found them to be incredibly ineffective and unprofitable. The CPCs were higher than my headline ads, and the conversions were way lower. I may try playing with these again, but I haven't had any luck so far.
And then the other option is running regular sponsored product ads, like you all already do.
The only downside is that you get a Vendor Express rep that will breathe down your neck by phone and email wanting to know when you're going to ship in product. Just email them back a reason why you are delaying your decision to do so for a few months, and that keeps them at bay while you run AMS ads. Maybe there will come a point where they shut down my Vendor Express account because of inactivity.
If I remember, the Vendor Express account was a little weird to get set up, and I did it last year so I'm not sure I would be much help to you all trying to figure it out. Just know that it exists, it works, and you don't have to be a vendor to use it.
tell ya what folks...why don't you go ahead and try to get an account with them...Ill make the Crow for me to eat if you can without being a Vendor.
When you're done with that crow
@Troy Mangone I'd be interested to hear about how you are able to help your clients negotiate favorable terms with being a vendor to Amazon.com.
