Advertising on Amazon can help generate awareness, clicks, sales, and business growth in the most competitive categories. Now, with Amazon’s latest update to advertising features, Sponsored Brands Video (SBV), any brand registered seller can create engaging video advertisements.
What is Sponsored Brands Video on Amazon? Sponsored Brands Video is Amazon Advertising’s newest in-app and browser video ad feature, which they announced earlier this year. Any brand owner that is registered with Amazon’s brand registry can create a Sponsored Brands Video ad.
The purpose of a sponsored brands video is to drive purchase and brand loyalty. It also works to increase awareness of your brand and disseminates your brand story in an environment ridden with purchase intent.
If you’ve JUST heard about Sponsored Brands Video, you’ll want to know the difference between SBV and AVA. To learn about the basics and technical nuances of SBV, read our blog about it here.
Otherwise, if you’re looking for tips on how to create the best, highest-quality Sponsored Brands Video ad, you’re exactly where you need to be.
Video content is made to seem difficult. Yes, quality is important. But strategy is what drives content. With the 5 simple steps we outline below, you and your team can make a successful sponsored brands video ad campaign off-the-cuff.
Read on to find out which ASINs to create them for, tips on how to make an impression-busting video, and how to best optimize your campaigns.
Step 1: Organize Your Thoughts
Hold on the lights, camera, and action. Although your team is probably eager to begin making video assets that detail every benefit about your product, you’ll want to understand which ASINs will actually give you the best return on your investment.
Consider which of your products are high priority. Typically, you’ll be running Sponsored Brands Video to further promote:
- Historically best-selling items
- Old inventory, so you can launch new products
- New ASINs, so you can test their performance
SBV will lead to more conversions when paired with an ASIN that has strong product images and SEO copy. Because of that, you really should have a full listing optimization completed before you consider running any type of ad to any ASIN.
After narrowing your list of viable ASINs, consider if they have:
- Strong star ratings
- Competitive review count
- Profitability
- Inventory to satisfy demand from ad exposure
- Strong buy-box history, or else you’ll be helping someone else make sales
In addition to running SBV ads, consider activating a full-on Amazon advertising strategy by running a mix of standard sponsored product ads and sponsored brands headline ads.
Doing so will help your items appear in multiple places in search, diversifying promotion, allowing customers to recognize your brand and product.
Step 2: Satisfy Sponsored Brands Video Asset Requirements
Follow the best practices that Amazon suggests for a rejection-free upload.
Basic Anatomy of Sponsored Brands Video
Familiarize yourself with how Sponsored Brands Video will appear in search and on product pages.
A Sponsored Brands Video ad is made up of three components:
- Product details
- Video
- Mute toggle button
Dimensions of Sponsored Brands Video
The great thing about Amazon is that they’re very clear about what they want. To avoid rejections, ensure that your video assets meet these basic requirements.
| Video duration | Between 6 and 45 seconds (30 secs or less highly recommended) |
| Video dimensions | 1920 x 1080px, 1280 x 720px or 3840 x 2160px |
| File size | Less than 500MB |
| File format | .MP4 or .MOV |
| Aspect ratio | 16:9 |
| Video codec | H.264 or H.265 |
| Video profile | Main or Baseline |
| Frame rate | 23.976fps, 24fps, 25fps, 29.97fps, 29.98fps, or 30fps |
| Video bitrate | Minimum 1 Mbps |
| Video scan type | Progressive |
| Audio codec | PCM, AAC, or MP3 |
| Audio format | Stereo or mono |
| Audio bit rate | Minimum 96 kbps |
| Audio sample rate | Minimum 44.1khz |
| Letterboxing or pillarboxing | Videos must not have black bars on any side of the video content |
Best Practices for Sponsored Brands Video
In addition to meeting the above technical specifications, video ads must meet the following criteria. Videos that do not meet these guidelines will not be accepted for publishing.
Content
Every video must adhere to Amazon’s sponsored ads creative acceptance policies.
Videos must be:
- Suitable for a general audience
- In the primary language of the Amazon site on which the ad is displayed
- Be clear and accurate so that customers receive correct information before engaging with an ad or deciding to purchase a product
- Only promote products that you either own or are authorized to resell or distribute.
Videos cannot depict/have:
- Subjective, unverified claims or substantiation that cannot be proven
- Promotional messaging
- Blurry, unclear, or unrecognizable visuals.
- Customer reviews (including star ratings) even if these reviews are on Amazon.
- Distracting images (for example, flashing, spinning, blinking, pulsating objects or text, or high-contrast transitions).
- Distracting, shrill, unexpected or violent, and jarring sounds
- Illegible text
- Poor audio quality such as static, crackling, faint messages or low tone voices, fast-paced, inaudible, unclear, or unrecognizable sounds.
- Poor video quality and low resolution
- Pressuring, combative, or urgent language intended to elicit a click or a sale from the customer
Creative Tips for Sponsored Brands Videos that Convert
After you’ve got the video basics down, here’s where you can really set yourself apart from the competition.
Adding in professional touches can help boost your conversion rate and double down on your brand authority.
Add Subtitles
Subtitles, or “on-screen text,” are a great way to optimize your video.
Because Sponsored Brands Videos start playing without audio, and continue to unless the mute toggle button interacted with, many customers won’t know what your video is about unless you add subs.
Keeping language simple and sentences short are a better way to garner attention, as long-winded text can intimidate the casual customer scrolling by.
Amazon recommends using a white sans-serif font like Helvetica at a minimum size of 80 px for readability overlayed on a black bound box at 80% opacity.
You’ll want to keep all video and text within the “safe area” indicated below.
Highlight Lifestyle Use
The best type of content to include is usability and explanatory video in everyday life. You want the customer to practically see your product solving a problem they have in front of them.
Because of this, your video should portray the product in use and be VERY HIGH QUALITY. Avoid taking the lazy route, as customers aren’t likely to connect to your product via a rotating angle video, especially if it lacks definition.
Here are a few professional ways you can edit your videos to further intrigue customers and increase conversions:
- Show the product within 1 second of playback
- Video between 15-30 seconds long
- Quick cuts to retain attention
- Add an end card
- Make the video loop seamless
Incorporate a CTA
You can’t forget the ABC’s of selling! Always Be Closing.
Although Amazon will reject a video for incorporating pushy selling language (e.g. Last Chance), you can definitely incorporate a call to action (CTA) to improve ad performance.
Use it in your headline copy or your subtitles. But, remember to be precise! Limit your video so it highlights the key selling points to draw the customer to your listing.
Common Rejection Reasons for Sponsored Brand VideoÂ
If after you’ve submitted your video ad for approval you receive the dreaded REJECTED notice, don’t give up.
Chances are that your video can be edited quickly to abide by Amazon’s requirements. Double-check that you avoid these mistakes to get it back into review:
- Black or empty frames at the start or end of videos. Don’t waste your chance to engage shoppers by using black or empty frames.
- Video is abruptly cropped at the maximum video duration. Abrupt edits can result in an incomplete video and a poor customer experience.
- Video includes Amazon branding elements. Amazon trademarks, products or references to Amazon products or services are prohibited.
- Video includes customer reviews. Customer reviews (including star ratings), even if these reviews are on Amazon, are not permitted.
Step 3: Set Up Campaign Structure Strategy
When you’re ready to start setting up, make sure you segment your strategy into different campaigns to optimize for performance.
That’s because campaigns that are structured to target brand competitive defense branded keywords have a different conversion rate than slightly-out-of-category or brand conquesting keywords.
Organizing and efficiently structuring your ad campaigns can not only give you clearer insight and better data, but also will help you better reach your target KPI’s.
Step 4: Sponsored Brand Video Targeting
As you’ve probably guessed from above, to create a great video, you’ll need to perform keyword research. In fact, the only available targeting for video campaigns is keyword targeting.
You can add keywords in all 4 match types, including broad, exact, phrase, and negative.
Typically, you should stick to the strategy of choosing keywords that fit into your product category bucket, without getting too specific or too broad.
In general, a great way to target the right keywords is to capitalize on what your competitors are getting clicks on while strategically defending your brand keywords. Remember to segment your campaigns when using different strategies (STEP 3).
In terms of budget, start with a test with a short list of brand-specific and generic keywords at a $1 bid for two weeks.
From there, you can evaluate your goal KPIs, such as impression volume, to increase bids on high-performing keyword phrases. You can broaden the match type and add keywords to further increase reach.
Step 5: Optimize Sponsored Brand Video
After setting up your campaigns and editing your videos, all that’s left to do is to let it run. Like we mentioned earlier, letting the SBV run for a minimum of 2 weeks is important in terms of gathering baseline data.
You’ll want to start slow and review your performance. Once that’s completed, check search terms report to make sure irrelevant traffic is blocked and relevant keywords are added.
A key detail to remember is that you can never really stop optimizing. Even after following every step from above, you can still keep:
- Test different videos
- Try different targeting combinations
- Adjust your campaigns, bids, and budgets based on the insights you receive after posting.
The Takeaway
Understanding how to tie in Sponsored Brand Video with your brand’s overall marketing and sales goals is integral to your success on Amazon.Â
By following the 5 steps we’ve outlined above, you’re well on your way to creating brand-relevant video content that sells! When you pair these techniques and tips with what video ads work best for your brand, you’ll find yourself way ahead of the competition.
Happy optimizing!
