SBV: Sponsored Brand Video, the new ad strategy to stand out on Amazon Market

Amazon is the first thing that strikes any shopper’s mind as soon as they want a product to be delivered at their doorstep. Amazon is a huge shopping and entertainment platform all over the world. It has enormous clientele as Amazon has products that cater to a wide variety of audience. It is considered as ‘The Everything Store’. The fact that it has wide reach, brands are fighting to get the top space in the product list on Amazon. However, standing out at a place where hundreds of other similar products are listed along with your product is a difficult task.

A new form of advertising has appeared that enables the brands to attract the user’s attention instantly even when displayed alongside competitor brands. This new ad strategy is the sponsored brand video. Let’s understand how SBV helps brands to shine out:

What is SBV or Sponsored brand video?

SBV is a form of advertising where the brands can showcase their products in the form of short video that plays automatically when the user is scrolling the screen to view the list of products. This helps the customers to get a quick glimpse of the product through this short descriptive and instructional video.

Only the sellers enrolled under the Amazon’s brand registry program. The ad occupies huge amount of space on the page and hard to ignore.

The SBV ads come in two parts where, one part consist of the product thumbnail, pricing, shipping details and reviews while the other part is the video that plays by itself. The sponsored video ad can only feature one product. When the user clicks on the ad, he is directed to the product detail page immediately. 

What makes SBV crucial advertising tactics for Amazon?

• As Amazon lists numerous products under one category it is difficult for a brand to make itself visible when other brands are listed on the same page but with SBV the brands can pull user’s attention quickly to a product that is most relevant to their search.
• Videos engage the users more than just an image, so when a customer is looking for a product, a product’s video with details and brand story is more likely to get the user’s attention than its competitors.
• Keyword targeting plays a crucial role in putting your SBV on the top search results. Through keyword targeting the brands can reach the target audience who is looking for particular products and actively making purchase on Amazon.
• SBV helps in prompting the users to take action when they are already in receptive mood and are scrolling the mobile or desktop site with an intention to make the purchase. Through SBV the brands can flash their product’s USP in small video and surpass the competitors.

How does SBV works?

Sponsored Brand Video ads falls under the category of sponsored brands on Amazon. This is PPC (Pay per Click) type of advertising where the brands need to bid on specific keywords, categories or product to get their ads on the top of Amazon’s search results and product detail page. This leads to more clicks and impressions from the potential buyers. More the number of clicks and impressions higher is the rate of conversions.

Tips for creating an effective SBV

• The video should be focused on the product’s USPs. It must contain both information and instructions for a product. In first few seconds the video must focus on the product details, what make it different from others, how it works, what is the pricing and the benefits of the product.
• The video must be short, crisp and engaging. A short video of 30 seconds is enough to make the user aware about your product. As the attention span of the audience is very short, a lengthy video might make the user scroll to other product listings.
• The sponsored brand video must not contain any sound as the intention is to get undeviating attention to the product showcased in the video. Therefore, it is advisable to optimise the SBV for no sound for minimal distraction.
• Load the video with lot of information about the product like the size specification, delivery options, benefits, uses, easy-to-read captions and engaging info graphics.
• Avoid animation, fancy effects or intro at the beginning, this can distract the user and it might scroll to the next content in line. Try to get to the point from the beginning itself and engage the user till the end.
• Create seamless loop for the brand video. Once the ad is complete it will restart automatically. Therefore, it is important to create a seamless loop for the video so that the user does not feel a break and keep watching the video for better understanding of the product.

SBV is the need of hour today as competition between the brands is fierce on top e-commerce website like Amazon. Short attention span and thousands of product at user’s disposal make it difficult to for brands to make themselves visible with just product image. Here is when Sponsored Brand video ad (SBV) comes into play and grab the much needed attention of the user by occupying the space on the product list page and providing the required information on the product through short and engaging video.