Joshua Dreller
Sr. Director, Content Marketing @ Skai
When it comes to advertising, sometimes timing is everything.
For example, offering an ad for a delicious-looking burger around lunchtime is likely much more effective than serving that same image right after dinner time when viewers are more likely to be full.
Even on Amazon, piquing shoppers’ interest when they’re more likely to be searching for your product is generally a much more effective strategy than the old “spray and pray” method so typical of internet advertising back before more sophisticated targeting methods arrived. But even as Amazon refines its targeting capabilities and ad features for advertisers, timing is still of the essence when it comes to Amazon advertising strategy.
Dayparting is an important but often overlooked way to ensure your Amazon ads are reaching the right audience at exactly the right time.
What is dayparting in advertising?
In terms of advertising strategy, dayparting is a tactic that has its roots in radio and broadcast television. Simply put, dayparting means understanding when your audience is most likely to see your ads and then serving ads at that time. So, for example, all those ads for sugary cereal that aired during Saturday morning cartoons were a form of dayparting.
It doesn’t mean that those sugary cereal ads wouldn’t have had any impact outside of Saturday morning cartoons—but they certainly were more powerful given the captive audience of that era’s Saturday morning dominance of kids shows.
As companies like Amazon have allowed businesses to target and retarget consumers based on their specific likes and interests, dayparting has become an important tactic for brands looking to break through the clutter with their pay-per-click (PPC) strategies. For PPC advertising, dayparting means scheduling ads for either specific times of the day or specific days in the week or both in order to reach audiences when they’re most likely to be searching for your product or brand.
Very few Amazon advertisers have pockets deep enough to blast the entire day to every single shopper. Even if you are bidding throughout the day, picking and choosing the right times to pulse/spike your budget is extremely important.
Should you use Amazon dayparting strategies?
Okay, so Amazon ppc dayparting means to focus your budget on the days and times that are most meaningful to your business—when your customers are most likely to convert. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, not so fast.
Since dayparting involves dividing the day into blocks of time so that advertisers may schedule out chunks of time to turn their campaigns off and on, while also increasing or decreasing keyword bids during peak hours, dayparting adds one more complication to a brand’s Amazon bidding strategy. Further complicating the process is the fact that Amazon doesn’t allow advertisers to optimize for dayparting within its Advertising Console, so those who are hoping to adopt dayparting into their Amazon advertising strategy must either make these adjustments manually or adopt a third-party tool that focuses solely on dayparting.
In Skai’s retail media solutions, dayparting Amazon ads is a breeze
There are also sellers that might not benefit from dayparting. If there are no peak search times for a product—either because its something that people use so regularly that its impossible to predict when they might search for it or because bids for the keywords remain relatively stable no matter what—then the extra time spent focusing on dayparting might not make much sense.
But for businesses that depend on seasonal or relatively predictable traffic, dayparting can help Amazon ads stand out at just the right moment. Dayparting, for instance, could mean the difference between offering a potential customer an umbrella just as the first peals of thunder begin or offering it after the skies have cleared.
Amazon Dayparting Best Practices
If you’re considering experimenting with dayparting as part of your Amazon advertising strategy, here are a few tips to get started:
Don’t rush in: Dayparting newcomers would do well not to dive right into the CPC bidding rush their first time experimenting. Instead, start small. For instance, see how much money it potentially saves to suspend campaigns overnight.
Keep initial tests specific: Launching a successful dayparting strategy means understanding exactly when customers are, and aren’t, searching for products. Begin by looking at days of the week. Which days do searches spike? After looking into days, then break down days of the week for “rush hours” during which to amp up your bids.
Consider a lightning round: Amazon currently offers advertisers the option of promoting “lightning deals,” offers and promotions that run for a finite period of time. Once your business has discovered which days of the week and times of day are most popular with Amazon audiences, pairing this information with a lightning deal is an excellent way to boost visibility without blowing a lot of the budget.
Test, test, test: As with any updates to your Amazon advertising strategy, successful Amazon dayparting is, first and foremost, a question of testing and learning. Understanding exactly how your ads are performing at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. is critical to understanding how they’re performing overall, not to mention the ad spend you could be optimized by focusing on the times audiences are most receptive. A premium subscription to Amazon Retail Analytics Reporting provides advertisers with a weekly and hourly summary of ad performance. For brands relying on data in order to improve dayparting strategy, these reports are generally worth the extra cost.
Amazon Ads require a more sophisticated approach than in years past
Amazon is now the third-largest digital advertising publisher in the US. With so much new competition and large budgets, what worked for you last year, may not work this year. You need a powerful tech foundation at your fingertips to save time, reduce errors, and optimize 24/7. Unlike any other retail media platform, Skai is backed by robust, world-renowned retail media engineering and experts who know exactly how to advise and lead your ecommerce evolution in the digital era.
For more information on how you can boost your Amazon advertising strategy, schedule a quick demo to see firsthand how Skai’s retail media solutions can help you manage your Amazon ads as well as your entire retail media program.
