Help & Resource Center

Amazon Product Ads

Overview

amazon-product-ads-logo.png

Amazon Product Ads displays ads on the Amazon.com website and are often mistaken for products sold on Amazon by consumers.  This works in your favor as consumers will click on these ads and be taken to your website where they complete the purchase. This, of course, is different from Selling on Amazon where consumers stay on Amazon's website and the purchase is completed on Amazon.  Amazon Product Ads is based on a cost-per-click model.

alert_icon.gif

Amazon requires approval for certain product categorizes before your ads will be display.  The most common categories are Shoes and Apparel.  Many of Modern Retail's customers have not been successful in getting approval for these categories.  However, you may be able to sell these products directly on Amazon using their "Selling on Amazon" program.  See Amazon Marketplace Introduction.

You can register for Amazon Product Ads directly within Amazon Seller Central.  Once registered you will send your Amazon Seller Central account information to Modern Retail where we'll complete the setup of your feed.

amazon-product-ads.png

alert_icon.gif

Here's some useful information about Amazon Product Ads:

Create Amazon Account

To get started with Amazon Product Ads, we need you to first create an account with Amazon.  You can create an account by going to the following website and clicking on Get Started:

 

get-started.jpg

Amazon Product Ads Registration

Once you have created an account with Amazon you need to "register" for their Product Ads program.  To register login to your Amazon Seller Central account and click on Settings > Account Info.

amazon1.png

If you are using the newer version of Amazon Seller Central, then you will find this menu under the Settings option in the upper-right corner of the page.

amazon1.png

On the Account Info page you will see an option that says Amazon Product Ads.  Click on Not yet registered to begin the registration process.

amazon2.png

Fill out the information on the registration page, agree to the terms and conditions, and hit Continue.

amazon3.png

You may see the following message from Amazon:

amazon-processing-request.png

 

With a little luck, you should receive an email in a few hours from Amazon similar to the following:

amazon-email.png

This is you cue that your account is ready at Amazon.

Finish Amazon Registration

Once approved by Amazon you will need to login to your Amazon Seller Central Account to finish the setup.  Once logged in, you will see 3 Start buttons.

amazon-configuration1.png

Each Start page is self-explanatory.  First you need to enter some information about your business:

amazon-configuration2.png

Next Amazon wants your credit card information:

amazon-configuration3.png

And finally they want to confirm everything by a phone verification:

amazon-configuration4.png

Modern Retail Support Request

Once you have confirmed your registration and are approved for Amazon Product Ads, simply create a Support Request and send us the email address and password you used with your Amazon Seller Central account.

alert_icon.gif

Create a Support Request and send us your E-Mail address and Password to Amazon Seller Central so we can finish the setup of you account.

amazon-seller-central.png

Feed Configuration

The following configuration is done by the Modern Retail Support Staff once you have sent us your Amazon Seller Central account information.  You do not need to perform these steps, Modern Retail will do them for you.

Upload the first feed for the store by going to Upload Your Products in Amazon Seller Central.

amazon-get-started.jpg

 

Under Upload Options select "Upload Amazon.com Product Ads tab-delimited file (.txt)" and type in the location of the http://marketplaces.modernretail.com/... file under Locate Your File and click upload.

 amazon-ads-configuration.png

 Once you have uploaded the first feed for the client, go back to Upload Products and request an FTP Username and Password.

ftp-settings.jpg

 

This will return a screen similar to the following with the store's FTP credentials. 

amazon-credentials.jpg

 

Take the above credentials and copy them into Store Manager under Marketplace Setup.

marketplace-setup.jpg

 Again, all it takes is your Amazon account, registering your business for Product Ads, and we'll take care of the rest. If you have any questions, please submit a support request. 

 

Fixing Feed Errors (Advanced Users)

Once your Amazon Product Ads feed is running you may encounter errors with the feed. You can see if your feed has problems by logging into Amazon Seller Central and going to Upload Your Products.

amazon-feed-errors1.png

Once there click on View Processing Report.

amazon-feed-errors2.png

Clicking on this report will display a text file similar to the following.  This file includes the line numbers of all the products that had errors in your feed.

amazon-feed-errors3.png

You can then look up these line numbers if the source feed you sent to Amazon to find the specific products with errors.  Sometimes your products can have an unrecognizable character or other problems with your data.

amazon-feed-errors4.png

Hint, make sure you have Word Wrap feature turned off in your editor when looking at the Amazon source feed file.

amazon-feed-errors8.png

 

In this example you can see the singe and double quotes are the "curly type" which means this short description was copied and pasted from some editor like Microsoft Word. 

amazon-feed-errors5.png

Simply fixing these quotes to the "straight type", which are created when typing into the editor directly, these errors will be resolved.

amazon-feed-errors6.png

Another common error is the following:

Seller is not authorized to list products in this category.

For more details, see http://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/errorcode/8026

amazon-feed-errors7.png

This error code means you need Amazon's approval before selling clothing and other apparel items.