Digital Marketing & Ecommerce: Google Ads Vs Amazon Ads - Which One Is Right For Your E-Commerce Business?

The hardest part of growing a new e-commerce business is knowing how to scale it and which channel to focus on. Both Amazon Ads and Google Ads offer their own unique advantages, but branching out to both may put a strain on your marketing budget.

Fortunately for you, our team of digital marketing experts is here to help you. We have identified some of the key differences between each platform to help you identify which channel is right for your business.

Customer Reach

The first major difference is how much reach each platform offers. In terms of quantity, Google has the clear advantage here. Sure, Amazon is used by millions of users each day, but it still pales in comparison to the amount of users that you can target with Google, and if you add in the display network, the Google Ads reach improves even further. When you combine the millions of websites in the display network, YouTube, and Google Shopping, the reach is incredible. YouTube alone is estimated to have over 2.7 billion users. This makes Google the perfect platform when you want to reach a wide audience.

By comparison, Amazon offers a much smaller quantity of users, and is estimated to have 300 million active users. While still a very large number, it is much less than the vast quantity offered by Google. Still, where Amazon lacks in quantity, it makes up for in search intent. When advertising on Amazon, you are only reaching users who are actively shopping, leading to customers with a high purchase intent. While it may be less effective as a tool for brand awareness, Amazon can be an effective tool to get in front of high intent customers. If you are looking for a channel to drive quick conversions, Amazon might make sense for you.

Audience Targeting Options

Both Amazon and Google offer multiple types of targeting, however the core targeting for both platforms is keyword targeting. In this sense, they are nearly identical, with both platforms offering variations of broad and exact match targeting. This allows marketers to target customers searching specific phrases and can help get your ads in front of customers actively searching for relevant products. The big differences are when it comes to targeting beyond keyword searches.

On Google, you are provided access to prebuilt audiences that leverage the data that Google has collected from the billions of active users. You can target via demographics such as age, gender, income, as well as prebuilt affinity and in-market audiences. The list of potential audiences is long, and is a powerful tool to help you identify your ideal customer out of a sea of potential users. Additionally, customer match allows marketers to upload customer lists for further targeting, as well as integrating with third party applications to help improve your remarketing efforts. When it comes to remarketing, as well as identifying your target audience, Google has the upper hand.

On Amazon, there are options to use some prebuilt audiences as well, however, they are not quite as robust as the options for Google. You can target instead via interests, related search categories which can help you identify some search variations you may not have identified yourself, and by product targeting. Product targeting allows you to highlight similar products and show your ads alongside them. You can target a related product in the hopes your product is clicked as an add on, or maybe you want to target a competitor’s product to steal some traffic away from them. The possibilities are vast, and it is a very strong tool to get your products in front of users with high consumer intent. While it lacks the remarketing capabilities of Google, as well as the granularity of the audience targeting, Amazon again makes up for it by targeting higher purchase intent users.

Which one to try?

From here, the choice is up to you. If you are looking to grow your brand reach, Google gives you the opportunity to get in front of a larger audience. With audience targeting, customer match lists, and keyword targeting, you can identify your ideal customer out of the vast sea of users, and help grow your brand awareness with the right audience.

On Amazon, you still have access to a large audience, however, it is small by comparison to the audience on Google. Instead, you can reach users with much higher search intent as they are already using Amazon to make purchases. If you are looking for ads that convert at a higher rate, Amazon might be the right choice.

Of course, identifying which channel is just the first step, running a successful ad campaign on the platform is next. This is where Milked Media comes in. By partnering with us for Amazon or Google Ads, we can take the stress of running ads out of your hands, and help take your business to the next level. Fill out our inquiry form here and let's start growing your business together!