Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) is Amazon's self-serve paid search platform, which offers tools to help vendors run search campaigns on the brand's website. Currently, AMS provides three different ad types to help advertise products and push sales on the Amazon platform. These are:

Sponsored products: Auction-based ads that are displayed in search listings

Headline search ads: Shown at the top of the page above the search listings

Product display ads: Displayed on product pages

The best way to first approach AMS is by starting with sponsored products, as these ads have the greatest reach and display multiple products, which will allow advertisers to gain more coverage on the results page.

Despite the fact that, for most, AMS will be a new platform to advertise on, insights from other paid search activity can be used to identify the best performing keywords, which can then be used for AMS. Another important factor to consider is which products in particular should be advertised, in which case it's worth checking the star ratings and reviews from organic Amazon listings.

Something to bear in mind when starting with AMS is that the platform is relatively new, so it's not as advanced as the AdWords interface. For example, once a campaign has been named, it can't be changed, so there's added pressure to get that right first time and make sure it's not wrong. Plus, columns can't be changed and campaigns can't be grouped together, with date range being the only adjustable element. There's no impression share data either, meaning that advertisers would need to test keywords and bids, and monitor changes to gain performance insights.

Reporting on AMS is also quite limited. However, Amazon has just released four new exciting reports:

Keyword report: to monitor which keywords are performing best.

Advertised product report: if there are multiple products in one campaign, this report allows advertisers to see how each product has performed.

Search term report: shows how ads performed when triggered by search queries within Amazon.

Placement report: this is Amazon's report on the three ad placement options; "Top of Search on Amazon", "Other on Amazon", and "Unclassified", and highlights where ads are showing.

To conclude, although AMS isn't yet as advanced as other paid media platforms, it offers the opportunity to advertise on one of the main eCommerce platforms, allowing advertisers to benefit from extra traffic and extra revenue.