So, what’s in the report? Where can you get it? And how useful is it or how can you use it? Read on for the answers to these and several other relevant, frequently asked questions.
What Does The Report Contain?
Besides Conversion Rate (CVR), Cost Per Click (CTR), and Click-Through-Rate (CTR) metrics that have been in previous reports, the new report contains two additional metrics:
- Search Term Impression Rank
- Search Term Impression Share
These new metrics help you have a more in-depth understanding of your marketing campaigns and how they compare to similar advertisers within your category. They enable you to identify more competitive search words where you have the opportunity to increase share of voice (SoV).
Amazon also included the standard metrics to make it easier to monitor the performances of your ads while seeing where you can gain exposure. The easier you can identify the key performance indicators of campaigns, the better you can adjust them to increase conversion rates.
Search TermImpression Share
As the name suggests, Search Term Impression Share is a percentage of your account has relative to all impressions available to advertisers in the Amazon Advertising platform.
For instance, let’s say the platform tells you that your Search Term Impression Rank is 60% for the term “pink umbrellas.” That means that throughout the day, your ads received 60% of all the available impressions for “pink umbrellas” searches and other advertisers’ ads shared the remaining 40%.
Search Term Impression Rank
Search Term Impression Rank shows you how your SoV ranks compared to other advertisers for selected search terms. Similar to keyword ranking, the lower the ranking, the better your ads have performed.
If your campaign ranks 2 for the term “adult diapers,” for instance, it means your SoV is the second-highest for the phrase “adult diapers” among all advertisers spending on that term. If it ranks 1, it means that your campaign had the highest paid share of voice for the search term.
Where Can You Get The Report?
If you’ve used the Amazon Advertising platform before, this should be pretty straight forward. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to access your Amazon Search Term Impression Rank reports:
- Go to the Amazon Advertising console. You will see a horizontal list on the first interphase
- Click on Reports. A drop-down menu will appear
- Select Advertising Reports on the drop-down menu
- Navigate to the upper left-hand corner on the Advertising Reports page and click on Create report
- The site will redirect you to a new page. Here, you’ll choose either Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands.
- Under report type, slightly below search items, you’ll see search term impression rank
What’s The Importance Of Search Term Impression Share?
The new reports have additional metrics that give you a more detailed perspective into how your marketing campaigns are performing. They generate detailed results to help you understand how the following three components affect your ads:
- Share of voice estimate – How well do your campaigns generate impressions for specific search terms? The share of voice estimate enables you to gauge how your ads are performing within your niche.
- Competitiveness – How many people want to generate impressions for a specific search term? The more competitive a keyword is, the lower your campaign’s chance of getting impressions from it. Unless you have a solid command of your niche, you might want to consider moderately competitive search terms.
- Search volume estimate – How many impressions can a specific search term generate?
The first two questions help you understand the chances of achieving your marketing objectives depending on your strategies and competition. The third question shows marketers the potential of a search term. All of them enable you to not only create successful campaigns but also measure their performances more accurately.
How to Get the Search Volume Estimate
To get the search volume estimate, you need first to generate a report of the search term impression share. The first step is tabulating the overall ad impressions for all advertisers.
While impressions and search terms appear separately for different ads or groups, the platform calculates the impression share account-wide. Therefore, if the search term generates impressions across several ad groups, you should combine the impressions for all the campaigns/ad groups.
Also, note that the absolute search volume (number of people who made searches related to the target keyword) is different from the total number of ad impressions. Some people use the two terms interchangeably, but that’s not accurate. Here’s why:
- The total number of impressions is an aggregate of impressions generated for all the advertisers
- Ads often appear multiple times, hence can be seen several times by a customer visiting different product pages
- The total number of impressions is subject to how active the campaigns are. For instance, the more the advertisers targeting a specific search word, the more impressions it will generate.
The difference notwithstanding, the two are somehow correlated—you can derive the relative search volume using the total number of impressions from all the campaigns. Simply put, the total impressions help you understand search terms with higher search volumes; hence are likely to convert. For instance, if the phrase “pink casino” has 450 impressions and “blue casino” has 150 impressions, the former will likely have a higher search volume.
The relative search volume helps you prioritize the best keywords in your marketing content. It enables you to identify the search words with the highest number of clicks and best impressions; hence are more likely to convert. So, you’ll only commit funds to keywords that guarantee promising returns on investment.
How to Get a Share of Voice Estimate
Also casually known as audience penetration of your ads, the share of voice estimate shows how well your ads perform for specific search terms. It indicates your brand’s online presence and how much your ads are visible compared to other campaigns within your industry.
These metrics apply for any marketing, including Sponsored Products ads but are more crucial for mid-to-upper funnel Sponsored Brands ads that are focused on promoting brand awareness.
The impression share enables you to gauge how effective changes to increase the share of voice, like adding further ads and increasing bids are. However, due to the vast number of placements on Amazon, it may sometimes become challenging to achieve desired impression shares.
There you have it—a detailed guide on using the new Amazon Search Term Impression Rank Report. Let us know how else you find the report helpful in the comment section below. Otherwise, if you’d like to read more about advertising on Amazon we have more on our blog.