It isn’t without reason that a retailer has become the king of the publishing industry today. Amazon has always been several steps ahead of others in doing whatever it can to lure readers and writers alike. Recently, Amazon introduced an interesting marketing tool that will be of interest to writers and publishers– KDP Select’s Campaign Ad Tool.
KDP Select’s Campaign Ad tool provided by Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) lets you promote your KDP Select books on Amazon.com and Kindle Devices through paid ads. Let’s have a detailed step-by-step look at this tool.
Once you log into your KDP account, click on Bookshelf tab.
Under KDP Select column, you’ll see an option to “Promote and Advertise”. Again, note that only the titles that are enrolled to KDP Select have the option to use the Campaign Ad Tool.
Amazon shows two promotion tools. There’s also a brief explanation about the tools. To run an Ad Campaign, click on Create an ad campaign.
Now you can select the title(s) you want to advertise. Titles that are not enrolled on KDP Select are Ineligible for the Ad Campaign.
You can either choose to target the ads by Product or by Interest of the customers.
If you choose to target the customer by Product, AMS will let you select the products you want to target. The ad will be targeted to customers interested in these specific products on Amazon.
If you choose to target the customer by their Interest, AMS will let you select shopper interests from the list provided. You can choose as many interests as you want. The ad will be delivered to customers who previously browsed the Kindle Store for those particular genres. However, once the ad is live, you won’t be allowed to change the target settings.
Once you have chosen the target audience, you can set the campaign name, Cost-per-Click bid, and the budget. But here is the interesting part. Your ads will automatically compete in an online auction. Amazon recommends a maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid but you have the liberty to choose the amount. However, you must place a minimum CPC bid of $0.02.
Your actual cost-per-click, however, is determined in an auction that takes place with other eligible ads. You will be charged $0.01 more than the second-highest bid in the auction for a click, up to your maximum CPC bid. Your CPC bid is the maximum amount you will be charged when a customer clicks your ad.
You can also set the Budget of the campaign. The minimum amount you can set as the budget is $100. This might seem like a lot but keep in mind that you are charged only if the ads are clicked on.
You will now be able to see the Campaign Settings, which will display the duration of the campaign.
You can also see the preview of your ad for different sizes of desktops. On your right you can also see the campaign summary. The last step involves making the payment and we aren’t going to cover it for obvious reasons (duh). You’ll be charged periodically in small increments as your campaign goes on.
We, for one, are pretty impressed by this tool. The amount of flexibility it provides the user to create and target an ad is amazing.
