The 14-Day Author Ad Profit Challenge

Day 4 : How to Create a Category Ad and Run Ads to Your Entire Genre

Brought to you by Bryan Cohen’s Author Ad School

Here’s What You’ll Learn Today

How to set up a Sponsored Product Category Ad campaign
The best way to focus on only the most relevant categories for your ads

Expand Targeting, Refine Our Book

We’ve created one of the easiest ads, the Auto Ad, but it may not be enough to reach the number of readers we’re hoping to send to our book. That’s why we’re going to cast a wider net today by creating a Sponsored Product Category Ad, which can target all of the books in a certain subgenre.

While we try to find additional book browsers, we will need to keep in mind the concept of relevancy by focusing on the subgenres that are closely related to our book.

You’re doing a fantastic job and I want you to remember to celebrate just creating these ads and doing the homework because even if you get zero impressions or clicks this week, your Challenge efforts should still count as a major win (you rock!).

How Does a Category Ad Work?

When you select a Category target for your Sponsored Product Category Ad, Amazon draws from any and all of the books that are in that category/subgenre. When a reader searches for a book in that category or when they browse the sales page of a book in that category, your book’s ad campaign has a chance of displaying there.

There are three factors in those ads getting placed: your bid, your book’s relevancy to that target, and your book’s metadata. There’s not much we can do with bids since we need to bid low to stay profitable, but with relevancy, you want to make sure the books in the category you have selected will fit with your own book (don’t worry too much about other authors’ misplaced books).

What’s a Category Ad?

A Sponsored Product Category Ad is a campaign that can target all of the books in a certain subgenre of books. This ad is the second easiest to set up because there are likely only 3-5 category options (maximum) that match your book (Ask yourself, would the books in these categories fit on the same shelf with my book?).

That does mean that you’ll have to put in a little bit of time and effort to research the categories that you can use as targets for your ads.

Today, we’ll just create one, but eventually you’ll create a maximum of 3-5 Category Ads per edition of your book (with just ONE and only ONE category chosen per ad campaign or ad group). We’ve found if you select only ONE you are more likely to be optimized for that category.

Category Ads use your Custom Bid to determine how much you get charged each time a reader clicks on your ad, so you’ll need to make sure that you change both your Default and Custom bid to 34 or 39 cents to avoid any higher cost surprises. Auto Ads just have the default bid, but Category Ads have default and custom bids. Make certain you change them both.

Creating a Category Ad

From your Ad Dashboard, click on the “Create Campaign” button, followed by the “Continue” button under “Sponsored Products”
For “Ad Format,” choose “Standard Ad,” which will display the “Ad Groups” header; for now, name your group “SPC 1”
Under “Products,” select your book from the list, or search for your book title in title case, then click “Add”; for “Targeting,” you’ll select “Manual Targeting” and “Product Targeting”
In the “Product Targeting” section, next to “Bid,” select “Custom Bid” from the drop-down menu and set it to 34 cents for a standalone and 39 cents for a series starter (repeat this step for the “Default Bid” as well)
Click on the “Search” tab, search one word at a time for keywords related to your book, like “fantasy” or “business,” and scroll to find categories related to your book
Once you find the ONE and only ONE relevant category you want to add as a target in this campaign, click “Add,” and make sure your bid remains at either 34 or 39 cents
Leave “Negative Product Targeting” blank
For “Campaign bidding strategy,” select “Dynamic Bids – Down Only” from the list and ignore the “Adjust bids by placement” link
For “Campaign name,” use the shorthand formula: your book + the ad type + the target + the bid you selected (an example for my book would be, SPWAA SPC Authorship 39 – where ‘authorship’ is the category)
For “End,” choose either the last date of this month or no end date and for “Daily budget,” set the amount to $5 (note: most ads with 34 and 39 cent bids are unlikely to spend close to this amount)
Double-check each section, particularly the “Custom” and “Default” bid types, and then click the “Launch Campaign” button

Note: Some advertisers, such as those residing in the EU, may be subject to VAT (Value Added Tax). We recommend being aware of your local tax requirements to ensure you budget appropriately.

Using Ad Groups to Tidy Your Ads

When you use Standard Ads (with no copy), you are asked to create an Ad Group for your campaign, which has always seemed like an extra step. But you can use these Ad Groups to keep your Ad Dashboard a bit neater, because you can have multiple Ad Groups within a single campaign.

After you create your first Category or Keyword campaign for the book you’re running ads to this Challenge, instead of making a 2nd new campaign, you can make a new ad group within the main campaign.

We’ll demo this during today’s screenshare, but the potential result of this is having your three or more Category Ad groups all under one campaign. This can reduce clutter on your dashboard as well as allow you to do some higher-level things with your campaigns if they end up being a big success.

Two Places to Set Your Bids

While Sponsored Product Auto Ads only have one place to set your bid, Category and Keyword ads actually have two places.

After selecting “Product Targeting” and “Category Ads,” you’ll want to look for the drop-down menu with the options “Custom,” “Default,” and “Suggested” bids. We will always ignore “Suggested” bids, as these tend to be significantly higher than the bid you need to get impressions and clicks (avoiding these bids helps us save money).

First, you’ll want to change the “Default Bid” to either 34 or 39 cents, depending on if you have a standalone or a series entry point, like a first in series or box set.

Next, you’ll want to make the same changes to the “Custom Bid” (34 or 39 cents) because, believe it or not, the ads default to your custom bid, so you must change both to see the bid take effect.

Shouting Louder and Smarter

Spreading the word for your books with a few Category Ads can help you to get more clicks as you gather the necessary data for your book’s profit and conversion rate. These ads can perform even better over time when you make sure your book has been put into the most relevant categories as well.

Once you’ve set up Category and Auto Ads for each edition of your book (ebook, paperback, etc.), there’s simply not much need to create more of those two ad types. But since Amazon tends to reward authors who regularly create relevant ads, we need to find additional targets so that we can create several additional ad campaigns per week.

Fortunately, there are hundreds of relevant terms readers search for and thousands of book titles and author names that we can use in Sponsored Product Keyword Ads (coming in the next videos).

Want to Watch Me Create a Category Ad?

Be sure to watch the screen share at 11:37 to follow along with the visual portion of this lesson!

Day #4 Homework

Create 1-3 Category Ads for your book’s primary genres (each ad should have only ONE category included)
Use names you’ll remember, select either the last day of this month or no date for the end dates, and use a $5 daily budget
Use a 34 or a 39 cent bid, change both your Custom and your Default bids to the right numbers, and choose Standard ad for no copy
Create your campaigns, take a screenshot of your newly set-up ads, and post the picture in a brand new post in the Facebook or Slack group with the hashtag #AdDay4 (and your own hashtag)
Spread some happiness to 3 or more authors in the group by commenting on their posts

On the Next Day of the Challenge

We’ll learn why paying attention to Sales vs. Tracked Sales is extremely important.

We’ll also discuss what makes a strong keyword that readers may search for when looking for a book like yours.

It’s time to go off and do the homework we know and love.

Thank you for watching, and I look forward to seeing you in the next video!

Sincerely,
Bryan & the Team