E-commerce marketing technology firm Sidecar has launched^[1] a new solution for managing Amazon Advertising campaigns. Through a mix of managed service and technology, Sidecar for Amazon aims to streamline management of sponsored products, sponsored brands and product display ads and provide optimization and reporting features currently lacking in the Amazon Advertising platform.

Why we should care

Amazon’s advertising products have advanced, but the platform is still relatively nascent. Technology solutions are popping up to help advertisers manage their campaigns with more sophisticated features. Sidecar for Amazon is one of the few to support all three of Amazon Advertising’s e-commerce ad formats.

The solution supports product eligibility rules with attributes such as margin and brand policy, and the team incorporates query performance data from other search channels into the Amazon campaigns. Mike Farrell, senior director of customer & market intelligence, said Sidecar for Amazon uses natural language processing to evaluate relevant search queries used on Google.

VOLT Lighting, an outdoor lighting e–commerce retailer and beta tester, reported^[2] a 22% drop in average cost of sale (ACoS) in the first 30 days of using Sidecar for Amazon.

More on the news

• Campaign structures are based on grouping products with similar performance for bidding optimization.
• Reporting in the Amazon Advertising UI is limited due to its short lookback window. Sidecar retains daily data to provide week-over-week and month-over-month reporting in its Connect dashboard.
• Farrell said Sidecar will execute different strategies based on retailer needs such as whether Amazon is their primary channel or if they are using it to sell off excess inventory, for example.
• Sidecar offers shopping and search campaign solutions for retailers on Google and Bing as well as e-commerce campaigns on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.

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