Amazon is opening up its ebook advertising schemes to all authors who publish on Kindle rather than just KDP Select authors who publish exclusively on Kindle.
When Amazon launched its pay-per-click ad service in January 2015, it stipulated that ebooks had to be enrolled in KDP Select and not published on any other platform.
But this week, the company said, “We are excited to announce all KDP publishers are now eligible to use Amazon Marketing Services to advertise their English-language Kindle eBooks to customers on Amazon.com and Kindle e-readers.”
You can find the ad scheme in your KDP Bookshelf under Kindle Ebook Actions/Promote and Advertise. You can control the budget, timing and targeting of your ads, although the campaign budget must be at least $100 on Product Display ads.
There’s a choice between running ads as Sponsored Products or Product Display Ads.
[clear-line]
Sponsored Product ads
- Sponsored Product ads are delivered in search results based on keyword searches.
- Someone clicking on your Sponsored Product ad will be sent directly to your book’s detail page on Amazon.com.
- Targeting options include using your keywords, using recommended custom keywords or auto-targeting.
- You can customize the text of your Sponsored Product ad and preview the ad.
- The campaign can be run continuously or during a specified date range.
- You pick an average daily budget and make a cost-per-click bid.
- Sales reporting is available at campaign level and keyword level.
[clear-line]
Product Display ads
- Product Display ads deliver interest or product-targeted ads on detail pages and Kindle e-readers.
- Someone clicking on your Product Display ad will be taken to your detail page.
- Targeting options include by interest (book genre) or by related or relevant products, even outside of books.
- You can customize your Product Display ad with a headline and text and preview the ad.
- The campaign is run during a custom date range.
- You make a cost-per-click bid and set a campaign budget as the total you want to spend over the duration of the campaign (minimum is $100).
- Sales reporting is available only at campaign level.
[clear-line]
It’s certainly interesting that Amazon is extending these ad schemes to authors who are ‘going wide’ rather than just publishing exclusively on Kindle. Some authors say they have run very successful Amazon ad campaigns by using carefully selected keywords.
You can find out more about advertising your KDP ebooks at Amazon Marketing Services.