Amazon Marketing Service (AMS) is available in numerous countries worldwide. Amazon is slowly rolling out its advertising platform to new countries every year and was most recently released in France on November 2016.
Soon brands will be able to use Amazon Marketing Services in Canada. AMS is expected to be released in Canada during Q3 of 2017. Possibly as early as June 2017.
**Leading countries ranked by retail e-commerce sales from 2014 to 2019 (in billion U.S. dollars). (n.d.). Retrieved February 17, 2017, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/377624/leading-countries-retail-e-commerce-sales/
Why should Amazon Marketing Services in Canada be in your 2017 Ecommerce strategy?
The release of Amazon Marketing Services in Canada provides tremendous opportunity for brands to increase market share in the world’s 8th largest E-commerce market. Early adopters of AMS in Canada will be rewarded with low cost-per-click (CPC) due to a lack of competition. However, CPCs in Canada will gradually rise as more brands adopt Amazon Marketing Services in Canada, so it is extremely important for brands to jump into the marketplace early.
Strategies for successful AMS campaigns in Canada
For brands already doing an Amazon Marketing Services campaign in the US, a very reasonable strategy would be to mirror the campaign in Canada. The benefit of this strategy is that the Canadian AMS campaigns will be able to hit the ground running as the campaigns have already gone through some levels of optimizations in the US.
However, when copying over a successful US AMS campaign into Canada you’ll have to consider the two differentiating factors: budget and French speaking Canada.
The budget for an AMS campaign in Canada could be less than its US counterpart. The US population is 9 times greater than Canada’s population. A reasonable assumption to make is that search volume differences between the two countries will be proportional to the population differences. Therefore, ad spend and budget could be proportional to the population difference as well.
Brands should use their US strategy as a loose guide to figuring out a budget for an AMS Canada campaign. A budget should really be determined by a brand’s ecommerce goals in each individual market.
Also, Canada is a dual language country with 20% of the population speaking French. Brands should make sure that an AMS campaign in Canada reflects that characteristic as well. A Canadian AMS campaign should target both English and French keyword to maximize reach.
