Amazon Advertising in Singapore: Campaign Types, Costs and Getting Started

Amazon Advertising in Singapore: Campaign Types, Costs and Getting Started

Amazon Advertising Landscape in Singapore

Amazon advertising Singapore is an increasingly important channel for sellers looking to grow their visibility and sales on Amazon.sg. Since Amazon launched in Singapore in 2017, the marketplace has grown steadily, competing with Shopee and Lazada for e-commerce market share. While Amazon’s share of Singapore’s e-commerce market is smaller than in the US, its user base is growing, particularly among consumers who value Amazon’s international product selection, Prime benefits, and customer service reputation.

Advertising on Amazon is fundamentally different from advertising on Google or social media. Amazon is a product search engine where the majority of users arrive with purchase intent. When someone searches on Amazon, they are typically ready to buy — they are comparing products, checking prices, and reading reviews. This makes amazon advertising singapore one of the highest-intent advertising channels available. The challenge is visibility: with thousands of products competing for attention, organic ranking alone is rarely sufficient for new or growing sellers.

Amazon’s advertising platform operates on a pay-per-click model similar to Google Ads. You bid on keywords and product targets, and you pay only when a shopper clicks your ad. The platform offers several campaign types, each suited to different objectives along the buyer journey. Understanding which campaign types to use and how to optimise them is essential for achieving profitable growth on the platform.

Campaign Types Explained

Sponsored Products are the workhorse of Amazon advertising. These ads appear within search results and on product detail pages, looking nearly identical to organic listings with a small “Sponsored” label. They promote individual product listings and drive directly to your product page. Sponsored Products typically generate the highest return on ad spend because they reach shoppers at the moment of purchase decision. Start here if you are new to Amazon advertising.

Sponsored Brands (formerly Headline Search Ads) appear at the top of search results with your brand logo, a custom headline, and up to three product images. They drive traffic to your Amazon Store or a custom landing page featuring your product range. Sponsored Brands are ideal for building brand awareness and showcasing your product portfolio. They work best for sellers with multiple products and an established Amazon Store.

Sponsored Display ads extend your reach beyond Amazon search results to Amazon-owned properties, third-party websites, and apps. They use audience targeting (retargeting shoppers who viewed your products or similar products) and contextual targeting. Sponsored Display is best suited for retargeting and competitive conquesting — showing your ads to shoppers who viewed competitor products. Amazon also offers DSP (Demand-Side Platform) advertising for larger brands seeking programmatic display, video, and audio advertising across Amazon’s ecosystem, though this requires higher minimum budgets.

Setting Up Your First Campaign

Before launching ads, ensure your product listings are optimised. Your product title should include relevant keywords, images should be high quality and compliant with Amazon’s guidelines, bullet points should highlight key features and benefits, and the product description should be comprehensive. Advertising drives traffic to your listings, but poorly optimised listings waste that traffic — fix your listings before you spend on ads.

Start with an automatic Sponsored Products campaign. Amazon’s algorithm will match your ads to relevant search terms based on your product listing content. Set a daily budget of S$15-30 and let it run for two weeks to gather data on which search terms generate impressions, clicks, and sales. This data is invaluable for informing your manual campaigns.

After two weeks, review the search term report from your automatic campaign. Identify search terms that generated sales at an acceptable cost and create manual Sponsored Products campaigns targeting those terms with exact and phrase match. Also identify irrelevant search terms and add them as negative keywords. This approach — using automatic campaigns for discovery and manual campaigns for optimisation — is the standard method for building an effective Amazon advertising strategy. It mirrors the approach used in Google Ads management, where broad targeting feeds data into precise campaigns.

Keyword and Targeting Strategy

Amazon keyword research differs from Google keyword research because the intent is purely commercial. Every Amazon search is a product search. Use Amazon’s own search suggestions (type a word into the search bar and note the autocomplete suggestions), competitor listing analysis, and tools like Helium 10 or Jungle Scout for keyword discovery. Focus on terms that describe your product’s features, use cases, and the problems it solves.

Organise keywords into three tiers. Tier one consists of your most relevant, highest-converting terms — typically your exact product category plus key attributes (e.g., “stainless steel water bottle 1 litre”). Bid aggressively on these. Tier two consists of broader category terms and related keywords with moderate relevance. Bid moderately. Tier three consists of long-tail and discovery terms used in automatic campaigns for testing. Bid conservatively.

Product targeting lets you show ads on specific competitor product pages or within specific product categories. This is a powerful conquesting strategy — when a shopper views a competitor’s product, they see your ad offering an alternative. Target competitors with similar products at comparable or higher prices, as shoppers are more likely to consider alternatives when price comparison favours your product. Combine keyword targeting and product targeting across separate campaigns to cover both search-based and browse-based shopping behaviour.

Budgeting and Costs

Amazon advertising costs in Singapore vary by product category and competition level. Average cost per click ranges from S$0.30-1.50 for most categories, with highly competitive categories like electronics and beauty reaching S$2.00 or more. These costs are generally lower than Google Shopping CPCs for equivalent product categories, making Amazon an efficient platform for e-commerce advertising.

Set your initial daily budget at S$15-30 per campaign and increase based on performance. A common approach is to start with three campaigns: one automatic Sponsored Products (S$15/day), one manual Sponsored Products targeting your best keywords (S$20/day), and one Sponsored Brands campaign if eligible (S$15/day). This gives you a monthly budget of approximately S$1,500, which is sufficient to gather meaningful data and drive initial sales growth.

Calculate your target Advertising Cost of Sale (ACoS) — the percentage of ad-attributed revenue spent on advertising — based on your product margins. If your product margin is 40 per cent and you want to maintain 20 per cent net margin after advertising, your target ACoS is 20 per cent. This means for every S$100 in ad-attributed sales, you should spend no more than S$20 on advertising. Use this target to guide bidding decisions and campaign optimisation. Products with higher margins can tolerate higher ACoS, while low-margin products require tight cost control.

Optimisation and Scaling

Optimise Amazon campaigns weekly using data from the search term report and campaign performance dashboard. The core optimisation cycle includes: adding high-performing search terms as exact match keywords in manual campaigns, adding irrelevant search terms as negative keywords, adjusting bids up on keywords with ACoS below target and down on keywords with ACoS above target, and pausing keywords that have spent significantly without generating sales.

Bid optimisation is a balance between visibility and profitability. Amazon offers three bidding strategies: dynamic bids down only (Amazon reduces your bid when a click is less likely to convert), dynamic bids up and down (Amazon adjusts in both directions), and fixed bids (your bid remains constant). Start with “dynamic bids down only” for the most conservative approach, then test “dynamic bids up and down” once you have baseline performance data.

Scale successful campaigns gradually. Increase budgets by 15-20 per cent weekly on campaigns meeting ACoS targets. Expand keyword coverage by mining automatic campaign data for new terms. Launch Sponsored Brands campaigns once you have three or more products performing well. Test Sponsored Display retargeting to recapture shoppers who viewed your products but did not purchase. As your Amazon business grows, consider integrating Amazon advertising with your broader e-commerce marketing strategy to drive external traffic from Google Ads and social media to your Amazon listings.

Measuring Amazon Ad Performance

Amazon’s advertising console provides comprehensive reporting on campaign performance. Key metrics include impressions, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC), total ad spend, ad-attributed sales, ACoS, and return on ad spend (ROAS). Review these metrics at the campaign, ad group, and keyword level to identify exactly where your budget is producing results and where it is being wasted.

ACoS and ROAS are the primary profitability metrics. ACoS (ad spend divided by ad revenue, expressed as a percentage) tells you what percentage of revenue goes to advertising. ROAS (ad revenue divided by ad spend) tells you how much revenue each dollar of ad spend generates. A 25 per cent ACoS equals a 4x ROAS. Track these metrics at the keyword level to identify your most and least profitable search terms.

Look beyond ad-attributed metrics to understand the full impact of advertising on your Amazon business. Advertising improves organic ranking by driving sales velocity, which Amazon’s algorithm rewards with better organic placement. This “halo effect” means that the true return on advertising is higher than ad-attributed sales alone suggest. Track your organic ranking position for key terms alongside your ad performance to quantify this benefit. Use Amazon Brand Analytics (available to brand-registered sellers) for additional insights into search term frequency, click share, and conversion share across your category.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to be a seller on Amazon.sg to advertise?

Yes. Amazon advertising is only available to active sellers with product listings on the marketplace. You need a Professional Seller account (S$29.95 per month) to access Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands. Once your products are listed and active, you can start creating ad campaigns through the Amazon Advertising console.

What is a good ACoS for Amazon advertising in Singapore?

A good ACoS depends on your product margins and business objectives. For established products, aim for 15-25 per cent ACoS to maintain profitability. For new product launches where the priority is gaining visibility and reviews, ACoS of 30-50 per cent may be acceptable in the short term. Always calculate your break-even ACoS based on your actual product margins.

How long does it take for Amazon ads to start working?

Ads begin serving within hours of campaign creation, but meaningful performance data takes one to two weeks to accumulate. Allow four to six weeks for full optimisation before judging campaign effectiveness. New products typically take two to three months of advertising support to establish sufficient sales velocity and reviews for sustainable organic ranking.

Should I use Amazon advertising or Google Shopping for e-commerce?

Both serve different roles. Amazon advertising reaches shoppers already on the Amazon marketplace with high purchase intent. Google Shopping reaches shoppers across the web and can drive traffic to either your own website or Amazon listings. For Amazon sellers, Amazon advertising should be the priority. Supplement with Google Shopping to capture demand from shoppers who start their search on Google rather than Amazon.

Can I advertise on Amazon.sg if my business is based outside Singapore?

Yes. Amazon.sg accepts international sellers who can fulfil orders to Singapore addresses. You can use Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) to store inventory in Amazon’s Singapore warehouse, which simplifies logistics and qualifies your products for Prime delivery. International sellers have full access to Amazon’s advertising tools.

What is the minimum budget needed for Amazon advertising?

There is no minimum spend requirement, but campaigns with very low budgets gather data too slowly for effective optimisation. A practical minimum is S$15 per day per campaign, which translates to approximately S$450 per month for a single campaign. Most sellers see meaningful results with S$1,000-3,000 per month across multiple campaign types.

How do Amazon ads affect my organic ranking?

Amazon’s search algorithm heavily weights sales velocity and conversion rate. Advertising drives additional sales, which improves your organic ranking. This creates a virtuous cycle: ads drive sales, sales improve organic ranking, better ranking drives more organic sales, which further improves ranking. Many sellers view Amazon advertising as an investment in organic ranking as much as a direct sales channel.

Can I target competitor brand names on Amazon?

Yes, through keyword targeting and product targeting. You can bid on competitor brand names as keywords (though this is more expensive and less efficient than targeting your own relevant terms) and target specific competitor product pages with Sponsored Display and Sponsored Products product targeting. This is a legitimate competitive strategy on Amazon.

What tools do I need for Amazon advertising management?

Amazon’s built-in advertising console handles campaign creation, management, and basic reporting. For more advanced management, tools like Helium 10, Jungle Scout, Sellics, and Pacvue offer bulk optimisation, automated bidding, and detailed analytics. Free tools like Amazon’s own Brand Analytics provide valuable competitive and search data. Most sellers start with the native console and add third-party tools as their advertising spend and complexity grow.