Amazon, Google. Both companies are huge in their respective fields (ecommerce, search), however, they are closer to becoming rivals in recent years, especially in the digital advertising market. Businesses like yours have tremendous opportunities because of this competition.

Advertise on Amazon or Google to reach large audiences of business buyers and consumers.

Digital advertising is Amazon and Google’s biggest battleground

Google was the first search engine for Amazon. Amazon was the shopping platform. But, consumers have changed how they shop. Amazon is a popular place to shop for, compare, and research products.

Amazon attracts users to search for products

More studies have shown that almost 55 percent of all product searches are done on Amazon, with 66% stating Amazon is their first choice for searching for a product. 

Amazon is just one of many companies that have seen this shift in advertising spending, and have adjusted their budgets accordingly.

Companies use Amazon ads to invest in them

Amazon made substantial investments in its advertising platform in 2018, merging their Amazon Marketing Services (AAP), Amazon Media Groups(AMG), Amazon Media Group (AMG), Amazon Media Group (AMG), Amazon Media Group (AMG), and Amazon Media Group (AMG) into a single brand and application: Amazon Advertising.

Google Ads is similar in function to Amazon Advertising. Google Ads is similar to Amazon Advertising.

Google’s growth in 2018 was 17%. However, Amazon is unlikely to see the same growth in 2018. Amazon’s rise in popularity is worthy of attention. Over 65 percent use online advertising. The U.S. allows digital advertising spending.

In 2018, more than $100 trillion. Internet advertising is a major source of revenue for companies like Amazon and Google.

Amazon advertisers are increasing

Google has already earned $17 billion in annual advertising revenues. Amazon’s rapid growth threatens Google’s ad revenue, as well as other platforms like Facebook.

Companies have already begun to shift advertising spending from Google to Amazon. Google now has between 50% and 60% of consumer-packaged goods ad spend. This includes brands like Unilever and Procter & Gamble. 

Digital advertising is a key battleground for Amazon and Google.

Ten key differences between Google and Amazon’s advertising programs

You don’t have to choose between Amazon and Google for advertising.

This will enable you to develop a smart advertising strategy that uses each platform to your advantage. The table of contents below will help you get started.

Amazon vs. Google: 10 big differences

• Advertiser needs
• Ad network
• Ad Auction 
• Ad rank
• Ad Types 
• Various targeting options
• Keyword Match Types
• Bid strategies
• Ad Costs
• Performance indicators

1. Advertiser requirements

To advertise on Amazon and Google, you must meet their advertiser requirements.

Amazon requires advertisers to meet more stringent requirements than Google.

• Account for active professional buyers

• All U.S. postal addresses can be shipped

• New products

• Product Listings For one or more categories

• Eligibility to BuyBox (which is located on the right side of product detail pages*)

• Register in Amazon Brand Registry*

These restrictions only apply to sponsored brand advertisements. If your products don’t sell on Amazon, but you still want to advertise on Amazon.com these requirements won’t apply.

Google requires that advertisers have an active Google Ads account.

Google has a set of advertising policies.

2. Ad network

Amazon advertising and Google advertising give your business instant access and control over large ad networks that deliver your ads to millions of Internet users each year. 

Amazon Advertising lets you advertise on these sites and networks.

• Amazon.com – Your company can reach customers through Amazon.com while they shop, compare, and research products. 

• Amazon-owned sites: This allows you to reach customers through Amazon-owned apps, websites, and services such as IMDb, a movie database, and a TV data bank. 

• Amazon offers a network that allows you to advertise across multiple sites and apps. Display ads can be accessed through Amazon Advertising.

Google Ads allows you to advertise on two advertising networks using Google Ads

• Search network. The Google Search Network contains search-related websites and apps like Google.com, Google Maps, and Google Play. 

• Display Network The Google Display Network lets you advertise on more than two million websites. This Google Display Network can reach over 90% of Internet users making it useful for brand awareness and branding campaigns.

Google like Amazon ensures that any partner sites that may show your ads comply with its advertising policies

3. Ad auction

Digital advertising can be fiercely competitive. The auctions determine if an ad is displayed on a page. 

What’s the difference between Amazon & Google in the ad-auction process?

Amazon offers two auctions of ad space. This is because it allows both sellers and buyers to advertise on the site. 

• Verify the price of the seller and its relevance to the query

• Any ads that lose the Buy Box should not be allowed

• To rank the remaining eligible ads, the following criteria will be applied:
  • Offer from a Seller
  • Relevance for Ad to User Search

• Send your winning advertisement

Your business may not sell on Amazon, but you are advertising on one of its networks. The process and goal of the ad-auction will differ. Amazon does not use the Buy Box as a point of reference, since it isn’t applicable. 

Google doesn’t care what you advertise on Google.

This is a simple way for your company to set up an advertising campaign and bidding strategies. The ad auction on Google.

• Create a list of relevant and eligible ads 

• Remove ads that don’t meet minimum quality standards or have a low Ad rank

• Based on:
  • Ad Rank
  • Landing page quality
  • Ad Quality
  • Bid
  • User search
  • Predicted impact of ad extensions and all other formats

• Send ads to the user 

Advertising on Google is a major advantage for many companies. Google is open about its ad auction processes and its ad standards. Amazon is less transparent when it comes to Amazon DSP ads.

4. Ad rank

Ad rank refers to Google when it is about advertising. Amazon Advertising has also adopted ad rank but tailored it to its audience, platforms, and needs. Online advertising is all about relevancy.

Users won’t see the relevant ads if they don’t click on them. This will make it impossible for your company to reach potential customers. You shouldn’t advertise online without this.

Understanding what Google and Amazon consider in scoring ads for campaigns is crucial. 

Amazon takes into account the following factors in grading ads:

• Bid: Amazon does not offer a pay-to-win platform. If you place a high-bid bid, you won’t win. It can also make your ad look more appealing or compensate for a lower-quality ad. To achieve the best results, your company must make competitive but strategic bids.

• Keyword relevancy: Keywords On your ad and your product page, if you’re promoting a product, help Amazon determine the quality. 

• It is important to have a precise product listing. Advertisements set expectations. Your advertisement will not be appreciated if the product listing links to a shampoo product site.

• Completion and submission of a listing: This is critical for Amazon and its customers. 

• Buy Box eligibility Your ad rank can be affected by your product’s Buy Box eligibility. 

It’s important to make an Amazon ad that is both competitive and targets the right keywords. The ad should provide everything the user needs to learn more about your product and to motivate them to purchase it.

Google takes into account the following factors to determine its Ad Ranking.

• Bid: Google will also consider how much you’re willing to pay for someone to click on your ad. You may not win the auction if you place a high bid. If you have a high-quality ad, but still win the auction, your bid can be lower.

• Expected click-through rates (CTR). This information is used by Google to calculate Ad Rank. This information is used to determine Ad Rank. This could affect the frequency with that your ad is displayed to your audience.

• Ad relevance to search is key to achieving a high Ad rank. To make your ads more relevant to users, refine your keyword or audience targeting. Local businesses may restrict the areas they advertise in, for example.

• Google wants its users to feel positive about landing pages when they click on your ads. Ad Rank considers the landing page experience. The Best landing pages give users the information they require and follow up on your promise in an ad.

• Context: Personalization Only accurate information can make online experience possible. Google Ad Rank takes into account the context of a search. It considers their location, time, device, and past search behavior.

• Expected impact of extensions and other ad formats: You can use ad extensions to enhance your Google Ads. To improve your ad’s relevancy, you can provide your phone number. This can boost your Ad rank.

Google is different from Amazon in that it considers many factors to determine an ad rank.

5. Types and types of ads

Promote your products and services on Amazon and Google without having to be an advertiser. 

Amazon offers HTML4 ad types

• Product Display Ads are used to promote products. These ads can be found on Amazon.com, on pages like the product details pages or customer reviews pages.

• Sponsored Brands: Sponsored brand advertising can help you advertise your brand and up to three products on Amazon.com. These ads will be displayed in Amazon.com’s mobile and desktop search results. Click the ad below to view the landing pages and products advertised. Amazon Store.

• Sponsored products Only promote a single product on Amazon.com Shoppers can see your ads when they shop at Amazon.com. These ads could appear in search results, as well as product detail pages.

• Display Ads: Display Ads are a way to promote your brand and products through Amazon apps, devices, and websites. Display ads can also be placed on partner websites. Display ads can be used for directing users to Amazon product pages or other websites.
  

Google, meanwhile, provides seven different ad types:

• Text: This text advertisement promotes your business in Google search results. Text ads must include a title as well as a description. You can also make it possible to give additional information about your company to users.
  
• Responsive: Responsive ads can feature images or text. Advertisers have the freedom to display them wherever they want.

• Image: These images can be animated, interactive, or static. They will appear on Google Display Network and Google Search Network websites.

• Video: A partner site approved can show a video ad. These ads can be used as a standalone advertisement, or before a video. Video ads must grab attention quickly so advertisers can get their message across.

• App: An ad for a mobile app that promotes a downloadable app. These ads are only compatible devices, such as an Android smartphone or an iOS smartphone. These ads are available on Google Play and Google Search results. They can also be found on other websites and apps that have been made by Google partners.

• Call-only: This ad features your number on the landing page, and uses your phone number for your phone number Users who click on your advertisement will be able to call your business if they click it. These ads will not be displayed on any device that can make a phone call.

• Shopping: Ads for your online shop or products can reach customers at every stage of their shopping journey. This will help you to increase your sales quickly.                                      

Even though Google Shopping ads are a particular ad type. Amazon’s Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands perform at three times the rate of Google Shopping ads. 

6. Ad targeting options

Targeting is an important component of digital advertising. You should be familiar with the different ad targeting options available by Amazon and Google. 

Amazon

Amazon offers these options for ad targeting.

• Keywords – This keyword-targeting strategy will enable your business to reach customers who search for similar products on Amazon.com.

• Interests – Your company can target customers who are interested in specific product categories or products using interest targeting.

• Products: Product targeting allows you to target specific products. This allows you to target specific products, such as brands, prices, and ratings.

• Similar Categories: You can target certain categories with ads or search for other categories. Filtering is possible by brand, rating, and price.

You can choose between manual or automatic keyword targeting if you use keyword targeting. Amazon will automatically target keywords to help with your keyword strategy.

Amazon recommends that campaigns be initiated with automatic keyword targeting. Amazon recommends that you use automatic keyword targeting to start campaigns.

Google

Google offers more options than just five.

• Keywords – Use keywords and phrases when you search the Internet to find similar products or services.

• Demographics – You can target your ads by location, gender, parent status, or device.

• Remarketing: Use Remarketing to engage users who have used your app, ads, or website before. It is also possible to determine which pages they have visited on your website.

• Affinity – This is a way for traditional advertising to be supported by targeting a group of people with common interests such as baseball or cheap travel.

• In the market: Target people who are interested in your products and services. Wedding venues can use this technique to reach people who have visited related websites.

• Custom intent. Focus on words or phrases that are relevant to your audience to help you target them. 

• Similar audiences: Your remarketing data can be used for similar audiences. While they may not search for your products or services often, they have similar interests.

• Topics – You can now access more websites through the Google Display Network by targeting certain topics. With topic targeting, you can concentrate your efforts on topics that relate to your products or services.

• Placement targeting. This allows you to target your advertising efforts at a specific site (or multiple sites). 

You can combine targeting options like keywords and demographics. It is possible to combine targeting options such as keywords and demographics. However, this can make it difficult to make informed decisions about your targeting.

7. Types of keyword matches

While Amazon and Google offer many targeting options for their customers, most companies focus on keyword targeting. To use keywords you need to be aware of the different match types.

Amazon

Amazon offers five types of keyword matches:

KEYWORD MATCH TYPE	DEFINITION
Broad match	Targets will search for keywords that contain your keyword phrase in any order.
Match Phrase	Searches that include your keyword phrase exactly in the same order.
Negative exact match	Searches not matching your keyword phrase won’t trigger your ad.
Match Exact	Target searches that contain your keyword phrase exactly in the same order as other keywords and phrases will rank higher.
Match exact and negative phrase	You have the option to stop certain phrases or close variations from being used in your advertisement.

If you have never used Amazon Advertising before, you don’t need to use any special formatting. This eliminates the need to use brackets or quotes.

Amazon recommends targeting at least 30 keywords to achieve the best results. However, you don’t have to use too many keywords. This can make your campaign fail and decrease its ROI.

Instead of focusing on keywords that are most likely to bring your company the best return,

Google

Google offers five keyword match options. These keywords require special formatting.

KEYWORD MATCH TYPE	DEFINITION	FORMAT
Broad match	Target relevant variants of your keyword, such as synonyms and related searches.	Keyword
Match Phrase	Searches that match your keyword phrase or close variants thereof should include phrases with non-targeted keywords.	“keyword”
Match Exact	Target searches that contain the exact keyword or close variants of it that still match the keyword intent.	[keyword]
Negative keywords	You have the option to block certain words or phrases from activating an ad.	-keyword
Broad match modifier	Target keywords can be achieved by mixing and matching keywords. This allows you to include non-targeted words such as words appearing between or before your targeted phrases.	+keyword

When using Google Ads, your advertising team must adhere to the match-type format.

Add negative keywords to your pages. Google suggests that you add between five and twenty keywords to each ad group to maximize performance.

8. Bid strategies

Advertise on Amazon and Google and use a range of bidding strategies that allow Amazon and Google to optimize your bids and reach your campaign goals without exceeding your budget.

Amazon Advertising offers advanced bidding strategies such as

• Amazon Dynamic Bidding: Amazon can raise or lower your bid by up to 100 percent. This increases conversion rates and secures clicks.

• Fixed Bids – Manually manage all of your bids for each ad type.

• Placement bid adjustments. Automatically adjust your bids to Sponsored Products. Amazon uses your bid multiplier. To update your bid, you can set a bid adjustment between zero and 900%.

Cost-per-click (CPC), the most popular Amazon bid strategy, is where your company bids to have an advertisement clicked on by someone. You won’t pay more.

Google offers advanced bidding strategies, just like Amazon.

• Target Cost per Acquisition (CPA: Google will adjust your bid to convert-oriented users who are more likely to click on your ads and convert.

• Target return-on-ad-spend Google will manage your bids and optimize them to achieve the best ROAS. 

• EnhancedCPC Make your CPC bids more effective with the enhanced Bidding Strategy. Google will adjust your bid to increase clicks and conversions.

These are the simplest bidding strategies available for Google Ads:

• CPC – You can bid on the price per click.

• Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM): You can bid for 1000 views or impressions.

• Cost-per-acquisition: You can bid for one conversion.

• Cost per View (CPV): One video view.

Each ad campaign is different and your bidding strategy will be unique. If your goal is to increase sales, CPA or CPC might be more appropriate.

9. Ad costs

Cost is an important consideration, regardless of where you advertise online.

Amazon

Amazon requires that you meet a minimum price for your advertisement. These are:

AD TYPE	MINIMUM CPC	MINIMUM DAILY BUDGET	MINIMUM CAMPAIGN BUDGET
Product Display Ads	$0.02	$1.00	$100
Sponsored Brands	$0.10	$1.00	$100
Sponsored Products	There are no minimum	$1.00	$100
Display ads	N/A	N/A	$35,000

Google

Google does not require your company to set a minimum budget. You can create a bidding strategy that will support your business goals.

It is worth noting, however, that your ad spend will impact your results. If you bid too low, your ad might not reach its audience.

It’s therefore important to establish a realistic advertising budget.

10. Performance metrics

It is important to understand the performance metrics of each platform to evaluate and measure your advertising performance.

Amazon

Amazon offers 10 key performance indicators

PERFORMANCE METRIC	WHAT IT MEASURES
Impressions	Number of people who saw your advertisement
Clicks	The number of clicks your ad has received
Detail Page Views (DPV).	The number of times a user clicked on an ad and then went to one of your brand’s product detail pages.
CTR	The number of times users click on your ads.
Spend	Campaign’s total click-through value
CPC	Average cost per click
Sold units	The number of units sold to customers within 14 days after clicking on your advertisement
Total sales	The value of your ads in terms of sales
Advertising Cost of Sale	The percentage of advertising that you have spent per dollar of revenue.
ROAS	Your ads’ ROI

These performance metrics are the most important to Amazon advertisers:

• ACoS
• ROAS 
• CPC
• Total sales
• Sold units

Companies that sell their products on Amazon want to make a profit. 

Google

Google also provides a variety of performance metrics. These are the most used ones:

PERFORMANCE METRIC	WHAT IT MEASURES
Impressions	The number of views your ad receives
Clicks	Your ad generates clicks
CTR	The number of people who click on your ads.
CPC	Average cost per click on your ad
Cost	The dollar amount that you spent on advertising campaigns
Conversions	Advertising is a great way to convert.

Google Ads allows advertisers to focus on conversions, CTR and CPC.

You can choose to concentrate on different metrics depending on the company’s strategy. If you want to increase brand awareness you might pay more attention to your impressions than your clicks.

Amazon vs. Google: Who’s the winner in the advertising industry?

There is no clear winner in this Amazon vs. Google debate. However, Amazon has shown remarkable growth which could result in a disruption of ad revenue. Marketers plan to increase their Amazon Ad Spend by 25%. Amazon offers a lower CPC and higher conversion rates than Google.

Despite the many benefits Amazon provides, it’s not possible for all companies.

Amazon.com sellers can use the platform easily. It’s easy for Amazon.com sellers to use the platform. This prohibitive upfront expense for advertising is unaffordable.

Google allows all companies to advertise online. A local SMB might see Google as the best option for growing businesses.

Amazon and Google offer the best ROI on your advertising campaigns

Companies can use Google Ads and Amazon Advertising to grow their revenue and brand awareness. 

Kobe Digital is a great way to simplify this process.