Amazon ads: why do we need 1000 keywords?

[Vidya]

I’ve just begun reading up about Amazon ads, so please bear with me.

It sounds to me like if we use as keywords the names of the top sellers in our genre, and we bid very high for these keywords, then our ads should appear on the first page of their also boughts.

So then why not just do that? If we use more keywords, doesn't that dilute where the ads will be shown? What if I only want my ads shown on the first page of the also boughts of the top sellers in my genre, and I’m willing to bid very high for these keywords, but I’m not willing to bid high for other keywords?

Thanks for any insight into this.

[TimothyEllis]

My take on 1000 keywords is this:

The more you have, the wider your book is shown.

There are 2 interests here. 1 is click through, which everyone focuses on, but the other is how wide your book is shown.

My theory is, it takes 10+ views of your book in multiple places, before a lot of people become aware of it enough to even think about looking at it. (Depends a bit on the cover and the ad.)

Even then, they are more likely to click on the also-bought than the ad image (some people are author aware and dont want to cost us money), and some people click through to the author page first, and click a book from there.

The old system allowed you to add groups of keywords with different bids, but i dont think you can do this anymore. I think now to have to rates of bids, you need to be running 2 ads. Just dont duplicate your keywords.

[Vidya]

Thanks, Timothy. So I can run one ad with only 6 keywords that are all the top sellers in my genre and I can bid very high for that?

And then at the same time I can run another ad and bid low for keywords like Young Adult paranormal romance and a bunch of other stuff?

And that would be a good idea?

if you run different ads, can you use different ad copy for them? i have several variations i can use for the same novel.

Does anyone know any place I can get a set of 1000 keywords for Young Adult paranormal romance and also inspirational romance? Just the idea of thinking up of 1000 such words is exhausting. I’ve read there are sites that list a whole bunch for you.

[TimothyEllis]

You can run as many ads as you want. How they will work is a matter of trying.

AMS Rocket is the only way I've seen of making a big list. But you need to type in an author name or book name, let it generate a list, export it, copy into a spreadsheet, and keep going until you have over a 1000. Then you have to sort the keywords to find all the duplicates, which you delete, then sort again to move all the blanks to the bottom.

Then you cut and paste into AMS.

It takes a while, but seems to be worth the effort.

[Simon Haynes]

I'm curious about this too, because I like to run ads with a more targeted focus. E.g. one ad for Author A and his books c, d and e, with ad copy that targets that author's fans.

[TimothyEllis]

I dont think there is a correct way. I've just found the ads with near 1000 keywords always seem to be more effective. But not exactly a guru, so throw salt around.

[HSh]

Maybe I'm behind the times, but I haven't experimented at all with Amazon ads.  Everything I read abut it just feels scammy to me.  Sometimes trusting your gut works, sometimes not.  (TBH I'm not a six figure author either!)

[Bill Hiatt]

You can run as many ads as you want. How they will work is a matter of trying.

AMS Rocket is the only way I've seen of making a big list. But you need to type in an author name or book name, let it generate a list, export it, copy into a spreadsheet, and keep going until you have over a 1000. Then you have to sort the keywords to find all the duplicates, which you delete, then sort again to move all the blanks to the bottom.

Then you cut and paste into AMS.

It takes a while, but seems to be worth the effort.

Well, AMS Rocket is my takeaway for the day. I'll have to take a look at it.

(I'm not sure we have enough emoticons, though.)

[WasAnn]

I'll have to check out AMS Rocket. I do know that whenever I think I'm getting a clue with AMS, something happens to throw my certainty out the window. I have some ads that perform inexplicably well...no clue why. I just keep 'em running and don't touch 'em. Some just fizzle even with much higher bids. I'm sure there's some genius out there that's got it down to a science, but I don't know them yet.

[PaulineMRoss]

I ran an experiment recently with two ads, one using a huge list of keywords, the other a smaller, curated list (ie only the keywords that had done well in previous ads). The one with the list of keywords performed way better.

PS Hey I can one-click the dancing banana! Cool! 

[TimothyEllis]

I ran an experiment recently with two ads, one using a huge list of keywords, the other a smaller, curated list (ie only the keywords that had done well in previous ads). The one with the list of keywords performed way better.

PS Hey I can one-click the dancing banana! Cool! 

I assume you meant the huge list did better?

No forum is complete without a dancing banana! 

[idontknowyet]

Never having placed an ad.
Here is my question and thought process. People build huge lists of keywords that go absolutely no where and don't even cost them money. What if you create just a few lists of words. A few to be your successful keywords and a few to act as trial and error ads.

Create lists with as many words as you can into it. Funnel different bugdet amounts into it to test how each word react to different click costs. Once you identify words that work group them into your sucessful keywords ad and crank up the budget.
Keep adding new words to the test ad ones.

[PaulineMRoss]

PS Hey I can one-click the dancing banana! Cool! 

The banana is broken. This makes me very sad.

[Joe Vasicek]

Maybe I'm behind the times, but I haven't experimented at all with Amazon ads.  Everything I read abut it just feels scammy to me.  Sometimes trusting your gut works, sometimes not.  (TBH I'm not a six figure author either!)

You're not alone. I've dabbled with AMS, but decided not to do anything with them until the tracking and accountability is actually useful.

[tdecastro31]

[/quote]
Well, AMS Rocket is my takeaway for the day. I'll have to take a look at it.
[/quote]

This may be product that I'm not aware of... but I think it is KDP Rocket that you're looking for.

[guest215]

It really depends on your strategy. What is your purpose for the ad?

Is it straight up number of sales?

Do you want to get the right alsoboughts to show potential readers what your book is really about?

Are you testing to see who your audience is?

The answers to those questions will guide your choice of keywords and your bids. It's important to know what results you're looking for and how important that result is to you.


Wildman banana on a four-legged slug. 

[Vidya]

Tokki, it’s both. I want sales and also want to get the right also boughts.

So youre saying if I confine my  keywords to the names of the top sellers in my genre, I WON’T get that many sales? I assumed if I bid very high for these keywords, then my ad would appear on the first page of their also boughts and that would mean so much visibility that sales would take off.

[DrewMcGunn]

I dont think there is a correct way. I've just found the ads with near 1000 keywords always seem to be more effective. But not exactly a guru, so throw salt around.

I want to second Tim. The more words that I use that are optimized for my book, the better my results... typically.

I've run ads with 100-200 words that have done ok. I've also done ads with 900+ that have generated lots of impressions (and a few that have done poorly).

The challenge with ads is that each one is unique and may or may not trigger the Zon's algorithms.

[EmmaS]

You can list every best-seller on Amazon in your AMS keywords, but if Amazon's algorithms don't think that your book will sell when placed on those pages, you won't get shown on those pages. Throwing a thousand keywords at the wall can be an interesting experiment in finding out where those algorithms think your book really belongs once the metrics start rolling in.

That's interesting! I'd always assumed having more keywords diluted the effectiveness of the ads but I hadn't thought of using that as a way to see how Amazon's algorithms view my book. Thanks for that perspective.

[guest215]

Tokki, it’s both. I want sales and also want to get the right also boughts.

So youre saying if I confine my  keywords to the names of the top sellers in my genre, I WON’T get that many sales? I assumed if I bid very high for these keywords, then my ad would appear on the first page of their also boughts and that would mean so much visibility that sales would take off.

If you're looking just for visibility, you want to aim for low cost per click, because your budget will go further.

if you bid high and aim for the bestsellers in your category, you'll burn your budget out really fast, and get very little visibility.

I'd advise aiming for just one tier higher to wherever you are, and not the bestsellers. For example, if you're a small fish, go for the smallest of the medium fish in your genre. You'll get more views because Zon will consider you more relevant, and you'll get lower-cost clicks, which means more clicks before your budget burns out. For reference, I usually only have a couple hundred search terms on this kind of ad, and I prefer new releases, as they are hotter movers and get more traffic.

If you're not the smallest of fish, you can also aim for lower tiers because you're likely to dominate their alsoboughts, while getting low-cost clicks.

I own KDP Rocket, and it has its utility, but it aims for the top (most expensive) terms. Also, lots of other people are using that product the same way, driving the cost-per-click on those top terms even higher. Rocket will also return non-relevant terms, so you'll have to weed those out. The good news is that you can get better results for this particular purpose by doing your own legwork without buying any programs. Look at the alsoboughts of your books, and the alsoboughts of your alsoboughts. Look for the titles and authors that are just one tier up from you. That's where you'll find your most advantageous search terms for visibility/cost per click.

If, however, you're looking to influence alsoboughts, this is a different AMS strategy. You'll want a very small list of terms with very high bids, and you'll pay a lot of money for not many sales. KDP Rocket is great for this, but you can also dig up the data yourself via the bestseller charts. This strategy  is most effective when your book is new, before you've had many sales. The end game here is not the direct sales you make, but the tangential sales due to your alsoboughts. This is generally a high-roller strategy, for people who have marketing budget to burn.

[Alice Sabo]

I have dabbled endlessly and fruitlessly in this. I put together a couple of ads with small lists and they never got served...no impressions at all. Tried new keywords at a higher bid and still nothing. So I'm not sure what the tipping point is. Maybe I need a bigger list? Or maybe Amazon doesn't think those keywords are appropriate to my book? But they are... :sad:

[Vidya]

I wish Zon had some simple system. Like, if you want to be featured on the first page of this top seller’s also boughts for one month, you pay ten thousand dollars.

Pricey but simple. No wasting of time and energy. And smaller authors’ also boughts would be priced far lower. Something to suit every budget range, and with a waiting list. Maybe these spots are all booked up now, so you have to wait 6 months to get yours featured.

I even considered writing to them and suggesting it but we know Zon ignores most of our suggestions. Do you think it might work if a bunch of us wrote and asked?

[JRTomlin]

My take on 1000 keywords is this:

The more you have, the wider your book is shown.

There are 2 interests here. 1 is click through, which everyone focuses on, but the other is how wide your book is shown.

My theory is, it takes 10+ views of your book in multiple places, before a lot of people become aware of it enough to even think about looking at it. (Depends a bit on the cover and the ad.)

Even then, they are more likely to click on the also-bought than the ad image (some people are author aware and dont want to cost us money), and some people click through to the author page first, and click a book from there.

The old system allowed you to add groups of keywords with different bids, but i dont think you can do this anymore. I think now to have to rates of bids, you need to be running 2 ads. Just dont duplicate your keywords.

I see no point in showing my ad 'wide' to people who are not interested in and do not read my genre though. I have no way of knowing whether the people who click on my ads have already seen it 10 places, but if they are historical fiction fans where they are most likely to see it multiple times is when they are looking at other historical fiction, not romance or science fiction which they may well never look at. Of course they might, but I KNOW they look at HF so that's where my ads are.

Just my take on it. If I don't see good stats on the return on my ads or if the stats fall, I stop them. The only one I am currently running has 300 keywords, has shown 133,649 times with 187 clicks. That is well more than 1 click for 1000 exposures which is within my parameters. It is getting 1 sale for every 5 clicks on average which is again well within my parameters. The CPC is high enough that I only break even but I have a very high sell-through on that trilogy so I can afford to break even. I see no advantage in throwing in hundreds more keywords is what I am saying at some lenght.   

I must admit I struggle with having campaigns do well enough to keep them running which is why I only have one at the moment.

[LilyBLily]

This is a subject for endless debate.

The consistently highest-performing keyword for my only nonfiction title is one I threw in initially and thought was too out there. Turns out it was dead on target for the kinds of people interested in my book. But I didn't know that until the ad started being shown and people bought the book through that keyword. So to me that's the best reason to start with as many keywords as you can come up with. Some of which will appear flaky to you. Hundreds.

That done, give it a reasonable amount of time--like a week or two--and then cull everything that isn't performing. This goes contrary to Brian Meeks' explanation of standard deviation, but here's the problem with trying to apply SD to my new ad: I don't have the budget to keep paying for keywords that produce clicks but no sales. (Also, some keywords produce nothing at all, but that's another discussion.) Per keyword, it might not be a lot; let's say it might be 50 cents per dud keyword that actually got served and was clicked on. Now multiply that by 700 nonperforming keywords. That's $350 down the drain in the name of statistical math functions. I think overbidding on high-producing keywords is a better way to spend $350.

My example is of a very niche book that's a one-off and not in KU, but I think the behavior of the ad and its keywords is simple enough to follow.

This strategy works whether the book is in KU or not, because, as I can tell from the evidence on my sales dashboard, my one series that remains in KU also produces a steady stream of sales. So, look at it backwards: If there are no sales attributable to a particular keyword, likely there are no KU borrows/page reads, either. Do I know this for sure? No. Is it a good bet? Yes.

[NeverGiveUp]

You can run as many ads as you want. How they will work is a matter of trying.

AMS Rocket is the only way I've seen of making a big list. But you need to type in an author name or book name, let it generate a list, export it, copy into a spreadsheet, and keep going until you have over a 1000. Then you have to sort the keywords to find all the duplicates, which you delete, then sort again to move all the blanks to the bottom.

Then you cut and paste into AMS.

It takes a while, but seems to be worth the effort.

I was under the impression that it was against AMS TOS to use other authors and their books as keywords for AMS ads. Am I wrong? Last time I looked at any documentation, it sure sounded that way...

[LilyBLily]

You can't use author names and titles (supposedly, unless you're a trad pub) in your blurb copy and sales category keywords, that is, the metadata. You can use them in AMS keywords.

[guest153]

It seems to vary a lot. I've had ads with 1000 keywords do very well and other ads with that many keywords do terribly. I've also had smaller, more curated keyword ads do both very well and very poorly.


Experiment with both. Try running some tests. Do some with large lists, do others with smaller lists.


Also, in addition to KDP Rocket, if you have KindleSpy you can also generate large keyword lists with that. KS lets you view and export the top 100 charts in different categories. So if you figure author, title, and series, you're looking at potentially as many as 300 keywords per best-seller chart. Downside is it takes a lot more cleaning up to do in a spreadsheet program in order to make the keywords usable by Amazon. Also there's the miscategorization issue. But it's another way to relatively quickly generate a large list of keywords.

[Vidya]

But how spot on is Zon’s targeting? I read gay romance and I frequently see Sponsored ads for straight romance. Now, readers and writers both know that many women who read gay romance will NOT read straight romance.

Check this out:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AOHDMFE/ref=sspa_dk_detail_1?psc=1

this is the page for Bella Forrest’s A Shade of Vampire. I checked it out since she’s a big indie seller in my genre, ie YA PNR. So I thought i’d see what was advertised on her page.

And yes, sure, most of the ads are also for paranormal romance but I also see an ad for contemporary romance:

Craving (Steel Brothers Saga Book 1) by Helen Hardt

and also one ad for a BDSM erotica:

Brie's Submission (1-3) (The Brie Collection: Box Set)
Red Phoenix

now how are either of those good targeting?

Could this be the reason so many authors say ads didn't work for them? Maybe their books are being shown on the pages of books of a different genre?

In which case I wonder if its the many keywords that puts them there.

On the other hand I guess if I put in only authors in my genre, there’s no chance mine will be shown on the wrong pages. Why would I want my book shown on the pages of genres it isnt related to?

[guest153]

But how spot on is Zon’s targeting? I read gay romance and I frequently see Sponsored ads for straight romance. Now, readers and writers both know that many women who read gay romance will NOT read straight romance.

Amazon's not doing the targeting, the authors who create the ads are. Some authors go for the shotgun or spray-and-pray approach, where they load up their ads with as many keywords as possible. Other authors go for a more surgical approach and will only target authors or books in their specific sub-genre. And yes, sometimes you might get overlap with keywords, but that's just the nature of the beast.

now how are either of those good targeting?

I don't know. You should check with the authors of those books. Maybe it is working for them. Maybe their CPC is low enough that it's worth casting a wider net. While not all readers of gay romance will read straight romance, maybe there are enough of them who will read it and they'd be willing to give it a try if the right book were presented to them. Maybe they're just experimenting with a new approach. Or maybe they don't know what they're doing. It's impossible to say for sure without speaking with those authors.

Could this be the reason so many authors say ads didn't work for them? Maybe their books are being shown on the pages of books of a different genre?

In which case I wonder if its the many keywords that puts them there.

Could be that. Could be other reasons. If you're talking about romance, I have friends who write in that genre who tell me that Amazon ads have gotten very competitive. Some people are pumping hundreds of dollars per day into Amazon ads. When people say "Amazon ads aren't working for me," there are a lot of factors to consider.

Are they not getting any impressions? What's their budget? Who are they advertising to? What's their CPC set to? Have they tried raising their limits?

Are they getting impressions but no clicks? If they're not getting clicks, what's the cover look like? What's the ad copy look like?

Are they getting clicks but no sales? Do they have reviews on their book? What do their reviews say? What is their book priced at? Is the description well-crafted? What about the look inside? Is it a problem with the writing?

It's not as simple as just showing the book to fans of Bella Forrest. Those fans still have to be interested enough in your book to click on it.

[LilyBLily]

Remember to browse incognito or Amazon will skew what you see.

[Vidya]

“Remember to browse incognito or Amazon will skew what you see.”

now this could explain some stuff. I don't read contemporary romance or erotica, but i’ve often clicked on the books that people on Kboards and on romance forums have had in their signatures, so I could check out what they were writing and read a sample. I’ve often downloaded a free first in series that people offered.

So Zon has taken that to mean I read these genres when I don't normally. I’ve been wondering for weeks why on earth Zon would keep advertising straight romance on the pages of gay romance.

[Alice Sabo]

I'm amazed that people can come up with 1000 keywords. I start looking at authors and books and most of them don't really fit with my book. And that kind of research takes forever. I've been through the also boughts and clicked through to pages and pages. Sometimes I'll find a book I think might be similar but it only has 5 reviews...so if it's an undiscovered book, is it a bad keyword? I tried going through Goodreads to find books with high numbers of reviews and authors with lots of followers on Bookbub and I still can't find that many that are a good match. I guess I write in too small of a sub-genre.

[guest153]

I'm amazed that people can come up with 1000 keywords. I start looking at authors and books and most of them don't really fit with my book. And that kind of research takes forever. I've been through the also boughts and clicked through to pages and pages. Sometimes I'll find a book I think might be similar but it only has 5 reviews...so if it's an undiscovered book, is it a bad keyword? I tried going through Goodreads to find books with high numbers of reviews and authors with lots of followers on Bookbub and I still can't find that many that are a good match. I guess I write in too small of a sub-genre.

Your signature says you write fantasy, post-apocalyptic, mystery, and space opera. None of those are what I would call small sub-genres. Go through the best-seller lists for each of the sub-genres you write in and make note of the titles, authors, and series titles of the top 100. Check a few of them and look at their also-boughts, too, note those down for keywords as well. Don't worry about if it's a very different kind of post-apocalyptic book from yours, try it anyway. You might find you have some luck with it.

[Alice Sabo]

Your signature says you write fantasy, post-apocalyptic, mystery, and space opera. None of those are what I would call small sub-genres. Go through the best-seller lists for each of the sub-genres you write in and make note of the titles, authors, and series titles of the top 100. Check a few of them and look at their also-boughts, too, note those down for keywords as well. Don't worry about if it's a very different kind of post-apocalyptic book from yours, try it anyway. You might find you have some luck with it.

Thanks Perry. I've tried that. It's just so time consuming to find stuff that works. For example, my post-apocalyptic is all about rebuilding, so that's what I meant about a sub-genre. No zombies, no massive battles, etc. It's hard to find matches.

[Tom Wood]

... I'm sure there's some genius out there that's got it down to a science, but I don't know them yet.

I don't know if he claims to be a genius, but Brian Meeks takes a very analytical approach. Lots of spreadsheets. I'm not at this stage yet, but I've been lurking in his Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/407283052948198/ It's a closed Group, so you have to ask to join. They let me in, so they're obviously not very picky. 


If you want to witness A LOT of discussion about Amazon ads strategy, that's the place! He asks that you buy his book to participate, but that's up to you.