Product Targeting has become a mainstay with Amazon sellers because it gives them granular control over PPC targeting. Product Targeting ads allow sellers to target specific brands, products, categories, or product features that are similar to the products in their ads, and filter them using price, rating, or brand. Recently, Product Targeting has become even more impactful.

Expanded Product Targeting for Amazon Sponsored Products Campaigns

Now when sellers type in a competitor product and click on Expanded Product Targeting, they will…

  1. have the ability to target products that are closely related to the products they are already targeting (this can aid sellers in finding and scaling other high performing product targets),
  2. see substitutes for the targeted products (ex: if they are targeting a BBQ grill, other BBQ will be shown),
  3. find products that might be complementary to the targeted product (grill accessories like a grill brush),  
  4. and see other items that shoppers may browse along with the targeted product (BBQ grill).

This feature is now the default setting for campaigns. To use Expanded Product Targeting, sellers only have to make sure that the "Expanded" box next to the targeted product is selected during campaign set-up.

The ‘browse along with’ feature of Expanded Product Targeting might be considered a sibling to a report found in Brand Analytics > Market basket analysis (which allows sellers to identify products that are brought by shoppers along with their products), called Item Comparison.

Item Comparison helps sellers to identify the top five products viewed by their customers alongside of theirs, by providing metrics on the ASIN with which the seller's product is compared (Compared ASIN), and the frequency of the product viewed by customers alongside the seller's product within the same day (Comparison percentage).

By combining the Item Comparison report and the performance reports of expanded product targets, sellers have at their fingertips powerful insights that can help them to improve the performance of all of their Sponsored Products campaigns.

Performance Reports of Expanded Product Targets on Amazon

Expanded product targets appear in available reports with a 'Product-expanded' prefix in the targeting column. These performance reports for expanded product targets include clicks, Impressions and sales generated by the expanded product targets.

This enables sellers to pinpoint the expanded product targets that meet their performance criteria to focus on those products as individual product targets. Sellers can also use negative targeting to exclude individual products or brands from the expanded list.

Other Benefits of Using Expanded Product Targeting on Amazon

  • There is a limit placed on expanded targets. Each product target is only expanded to a limited number of additional products with the highest performance potential.
  • Amazon automatically updates the underlying products targeted daily. This ensures that high-performant product targets are included in the expanded list without having to continuingly select and organize new product targets. This feature makes it easier for sellers to manage and optimize their expanded product targeting.

Amazon continues to enhance its advertising solutions and sellers should seize this opportunity.

Using Expanded Product Targeting affords sellers the opportunity to incorporate an additional strategy into their overall targeting toolbox that can help increase Reach, while aiding in the reduction of wasted Ad Spend.

Entourage: Software to Scale Amazon Ads and Results Driven Management.

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