Amazon PCC Success – Amazon Ads vs. Google Ads: What’s the Difference and Why You Need to Know It

If you’re already thinking or planning about reaching more audiences and introducing more products in your listings, it means you’re already ready for the next level of your business. It means you need not just depend on the marketing benefits and tools that your e-commerce website builder or marketplace provides.

You need to come down with your very own distinct marketing strategies to incorporate for your business.An essential part of developing your marketing strategies is identifying the platforms that would reach most of your audiences and generate more leads for your business.

Google Ads and Amazon Ads are two of the most competitive, cost-efficient, and reliable advertising platforms where you can launch your marketing campaigns. Both provide large customer bases and store useful consumer data to help you create targeted campaigns.

As of current, Amazon has 150 million paid Prime Members. On the other hand, Google processes 5.6 billion searches per day. Their wide reach and consumer insight are two major reasons why most businesses choose PPC advertising with them.

Yet, it’s important to note that both advertising services offer different consumer data and involve different advertising processes. Knowing how both platforms work and how they use PPC to promote your business will help you determine which ad service would help your business the most.

What are Amazon Ads?

From increasing your brand visibility to boosting your sales, all your marketing endeavors need a platform where you can promote your business and achieve your goals.

Amazon ads, most known as sponsored ads, are ways to help you effectively market your business to your target audience.

Amazon advertising, formerly known as Amazon Marketing Service (AMS), is an advertising service that provides options on how you want to promote your business.

Amazon offers several options depending on your marketing needs. To gauge what particular advertising solution you need for a specific marketing objective, you can go to the Amazon advertising page and input your marketing goal and market location.

You can find both filters just below the Amazon advertising header and how-to video. Once placed, it will show you suggested advertising solutions that you can use to achieve your goals. 

Some of the ads you can choose from, to run on Amazon and its affiliate web pages are Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display.

How it works:

Amazon ads, similar to Google ads, also adopt the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising model. Just like Google PPC, Amazon PPC requires advertisers to pay a fee only when customers clicked on their ads. However, Amazon ads offer four different targeting strategies which you can customize and which depend on the campaign type you choose to use.

You can filter viewers of your ads and reach new customers with keyword targeting, ASIN targeting, and category targeting. Sponsored display, however, focuses on views remarketing. Remarketing means it targets audiences who already visited your store or product pages but were not engaged and convinced enough to be converted to customers.

On the other hand, ASIN stands for Amazon Standard Identification Number. It is a ten-digit alphanumeric code which is an identifier of Amazon products.

Advertisers set their bids on the keywords that will most likely appear on the Amazon search queries. Amazon’s system evaluates the ads and analyzes the bid offers. It chooses the winner of the ad placement based on the relevance of the ad content to the search query and the bid amount.

The higher the bid and the more relevant the ad content is, the greater is your chance to win the ad placement.

In creating your Amazon ads, you can customize your budget and bid offer. You can also choose how long your ad campaigns will run. Lastly, you can let Amazon handle the keyword research and targeting for you or you can do it manually. These campaign options are called automatic PPC campaigns and manual PPC campaigns.

Here are some PPC automation softwares you can use for your Amazon Ads. You can check them out on this blog: Best PPC Automation Software for Amazon Ads.

What are Google Ads?

Google provides businesses with the option to promote their brands and products in its search engine and extended services’ platform, affiliate websites, and its network of web pages (Google Display Network).

Using the Google Ads program, businesses can create and run their paid advertising and marketing campaigns.

They can reach their target audience from the 4.3 billion Google users worldwide. Google ads are commonly referred to as paid ads.

How it works:

Google Ads, known in the past as Google Adwords, is Google’s advertising service and platform where advertisers and marketers register their business and create their ads. It uses the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising model. It means that advertisers pay Google only when customers click their ad.

To be able to run an advertisement, businesses or advertisers need to enter a bid or offer to the keywords that they feel as most relevant to their customers’ search queries. Their bid is the maximum amount they are willing to spend for a click on their ad. Google Ads’ algorithms then analyze the bid offers for every keyword.

The highest paying bid with the most authoritative links and relevant ad content for a specific search query or keyword wins the bid.

Therefore, winning the bid so that Google will give you the ad space depends on three main factors: the amount of your bid, the authority of the links in your content, and the relevance of your ad content to the keyword or search query.

Your Google ad options include paid search or search campaign, display campaign, video campaign, shopping campaign, and app campaign.

Amazon Ads vs. Google Ads: Difference between the two

Google ads and Amazon ads function similarly per se. Yet, taking a closer look reveals that there are differences here and there with how their functions operate.

Below are several aspects that make one distinct from the other.

Ad Placement Options

Though people would think it very obvious that Google ads appear on its search engine software, Google, in truth, utilizes multiple platforms and web pages where it can show its ads. It’s called the Google Display Network or GDN.

It’s a series of websites, web pages, and apps that display ad campaigns created in Google. Gmail, an email service provider, and YouTube, a video-sharing site and a social media platform, both owned by Google, are parts of GDN.

Depending on the advertising campaign chosen by the advertiser, the ads may appear on the search engine, YouTube, Gmail, or any other web pages affiliated to Google.

On the other hand, Amazon also has ads appearing on its search results page (SERP), as well as display ads just like Google. But Amazon ads are mostly concentrated on its website, appearing as search results and banners. To be specific, your sponsored products and sponsored brands ads with Amazon appear on its homepage, search results page, and product detail pages.

However, Amazon also offers other advertising options that appear on and off its website, and you can use whether or not you’re a seller on Amazon. Sponsored display, video ads, and custom ads appear on third-party apps and websites associated with Amazon. Twitch is a live streaming app and an Amazon subsidiary where your display ads can appear.

Ad Ranking

Both Google and Amazon look at Ad Quality or Quality Score to rank ads created with them. It means they both look at the content and the ads’ relevance to customers’ search queries. Yet, they differ in intent and priority.  People go to Google to get their queries answered, whereas they go to Amazon decidedly to buy.

Google’s ads need to be engaging, persuading, and interesting because they will direct customers to the websites where an advertiser expects action, like buying products or subscribing to newsletters. That’s why it prioritizes ads with high click-through rates (CTR).

Conversely, Amazon prioritizes ads that are most likely to lead a sale. It ranks its ads based on which promises the highest convertibility. Ads that easily spur people to check out and pay get the ad space. Of course, both Amazon and Google each have several metrics and criteria in ranking ads.

Conversion Rates 

When it comes to conversion rate, Amazon is an obvious winner compared to Google.

Google ads focus on being “clickable” to the target audience, and these ads still need to bring the customers to the website to make them buy an item.

Amazon ads, on the other hand, are intended to make a sale on the spot because they are already on the marketplace’s website, and most people who see them are already there to buy.

According to a 2019 survey of US consumers, 66% start their product research on Amazon while 20% checks products on search engines, like Google. For the past years, Amazon is becoming a go-to cross-checking tool for being a reputable marketplace and having access to more specific consumer buying behavior data.

Ad spend

Ad spend refers to the money you use to run your ads on Google and Amazon. It depends on the customized budget you set for your campaign and the bid amount you place on specific keywords that may appear on search queries.

How much you pay to both platforms also depends on the campaign type or ad type you use. For example, sponsored brands have a higher cost-per-click (CPC) rate because it’s more prominent than sponsored products.

Both Google and Amazon are cost-effective. But you might want to start with Google Ads first if you have a small advertising budget. Of course, you have to consider your goal and your business need, but you need to keep in mind that aside from the campaign budget, you’ll also be paying a seller fee to Amazon every time you sell a product.

Amazon product fees range from 6%- 20% of the product’s selling price, not to mention the account fees you also need to pay for selling on the platform.

Targeting Options

When it comes to targeting options, both Amazon and Google have keyword targeting and negative keywords. However, Google has a greater advantage when it comes to narrowing the target using demographics.

It uses location settings and audience affinity to pinpoint specific target audiences. Google has a vast library of consumer data that it makes available for advertisers’ use. On the other hand, only Amazon offers product targeting, which promotes individual product lists.

In terms of keyword match types, both Amazon and Google offer broad, exact, and phrase match types. In terms of keyword match types, both Amazon and Google offer broad, exact, and phrase match types. Yet, Google has more specific criteria for an exact match.

Bidding Strategy

Both Amazon and Google offer manual and automatic bidding strategies. The difference is that Google offers a fully automated bidding option, where it completely manages keyword bids and other campaign optimizations for you. Amazon only allows semi-automated bidding, which means you still need to manually set the keywords you’ll be bidding on or use apps that can help manage your bids for you.

What is best for Your Business?

Google and Amazon may not be on par with each other in certain areas as digital marketing strategies. Yet, both are forces to be reckoned with in cost-effective advertising solutions. Both also have large consumer bases and records of consumer data useful in drafting effective advertising campaigns. Your first step, however, is to consider your marketing goals, budget, and target audience for you to determine the advertising platform and campaign type that will best help your business.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Google and Amazon may not be on par with each other in certain areas as digital marketing strategies. Yet, both are forces to be reckoned with in cost-effective advertising solutions. Both also have large consumer bases and records of consumer data useful in drafting effective advertising campaigns.

Your first step, however, is to consider your marketing goals, budget, and target audience for you to determine the advertising platform and campaign type that will best help your business.