In 2015, Amazon introduced its marketing services platform called Amazon Marketing Services (AMS). AMS allows marketers to create sponsored products that will be displayed in search results with an advertisement alongside normal, organic products. With AMS, all you need is a product feed and a small fee to get started and market your brand to millions of customers. Now that’s some powerful advertising!

Why Amazon Marketing Services or working with a amazon marketing agency? One of your goals as a business owner is to increase your visibility and reach potential customers. You want to build credibility by showing up in online searches, connecting with social media followers, and offering special deals to people who visit your website. With Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), you can optimize your Amazon product pages with cost-effective advertising that reaches interested buyers when they’re most likely to buy.

The first step to understanding Amazon ads is knowing what PPC and sponsored products are. PPC is short for pay-per-click, which means that every time someone clicks on your ad, you have to pay a small fee. Sponsored Products is an umbrella term that covers three types of ads—textual links, image links, and sponsored product ads. Both PPC and Sponsored Products are available through Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), although PPC advertising can also be purchased directly from a search engine like Google AdWords or Bing Ads. You can even use AMS to advertise on other websites in addition to Amazon's own site using either PPC or Sponsored Products ads.

Setting up a product in Amazon PPC (product search advertising) is actually fairly simple. It’s essentially just telling Amazon what your product looks like, and how much you want to pay per click. However, there are some interesting intricacies with setting up your account that can help maximize your profits through lower costs and more sales from higher click-through rates. So let’s dive in! Before we get started, it’s important to note that most of these settings will be more relevant if you’re doing business on Amazon as an individual or a small team—especially if you’re selling used products. If you’re creating and manufacturing new products, then many things will look pretty familiar.