Prepping for Prime Day

Prime Day is not primo for books, but don’t ignore it. This Amazon shopping event (July 16-17) typically increases impressions but it rarely leads to increased sales. There is more customer traffic on site, but folks are primarily browsing for deals on other product types. I don’t suggest turning off your ads entirely, but do look out for these 3 things:

An increase in impressions but lower CTR. Sure, your campaign health may not look great, but everyone’s experiencing this and this little ding on your CTR won’t hurt you in the long run. Let your campaigns go.

An increase in impression and click volume but lower conversion. This is good! More people are getting exposed to your book. That's what you want, right? This may be the time when they discover you and add your book to a wishlist. Let them shop and come back to you later. Try not to get panicked about the decrease in conversion. It should be temporary.

A dramatic increase in CPC. You probably received the email from Amazon Ads about bid adjustments for Prime Day. If you missed it, they shared that they may temporarily increase your bid up to 100% for this period if you’re using dynamic bids up and down.

What can you do to contain costs? You can lower your budget or reduce your bids. To cap the spend, I recommend adding a budget at the portfolio level. Once the ceiling is hit, all the ads in that portfolio are paused til the following day. Take a look at any campaigns with dynamic bidding. Reduce the bids if you’re not ready to take a potential 100% spike. Otherwise, change dynamic bidding to fixed bidding temporarily.

Why not turn off your ads temporarily? It’s always an option, but I never recommend it because sometimes it’s hard to restart and gain traction at the previous level. When making these decisions, understand your risk tolerance.

(from the 7/1 newsletter)