Alberto CarnielWayfair sponsored products from A to Z: run your ads like a pro
Want to successfully promote your products on Wayfair, but can’t get a solid grasp on how Wayfair advertising works?
Mi amigo, you are in the right place.
In this article, I’m gonna show you how to use Wayfair Sponsored Products to advertise your listings and generate a positive ROAS (Return On Ad Spend).
You will learn how to navigate the different reports and use them to your advantage.
Like a pro.
When switching from the advanced Amazon marketing ecosystem, you realize how difficult and complex things are.
Wayfair is no exception.
For this reason, I want to share with you a few tricks to make it a little bit easier. Happy reading!
Table of contents:
WAYFAIR ADVERTISING OPTIONS: PRODUCTS VS SHOPS
In Wayfair partners’ console, you have two tools to advertise your products: Wayfair Sponsored Products and Wayfair Sponsored Shops.
While the first option is designed to promote single items, the latter allows you to advertise an entire product category or portion of your catalog.
If you have a background in Amazon Advertising, you may compare Wayfair Sponsored Products with Amazon Sponsored Products campaigns and Wayfair Sponsored Shops with Amazon Sponsored Brands.
The image below represents an example of sponsored products:
You may see this ad type on a product detail page too, but the concept is still the same: one-item promotion.
The image below shows sponsored products and shops together:
Wayfair Sponsored Shops can also appear in different locations (like at the end of a search feed page) or have various creative formats (for example, instead of depicting just a brand image, they can showcase a series of products).
KPIs and sales attribution
You may want to use these two advertising options for different marketing objectives.
Sponsored products campaigns work better for the final part of a buyer journey, therefore your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) should focus on conversion-related metrics.
The first part of the marketing funnel is covered by sponsored shops which aim at brand awareness objectives.
While tackling all stages of a buyer journey including different ad types is usually recommended, you must test the campaigns yourself and adjust the advertising strategy according to your performance.
In general, Wayfair advertising is pretty expensive, so don’t spread your budget over too many campaigns.
You rather want to start with sponsored products and then eventually expand with sponsored shops.
The concerning news about Wayfair ads is that it applies a staggering 14-day sales attribution model on both campaign types.
Daang… 14 days.
An attribution model of 14 days is a lot, and you should consider it while analyzing your ad reports. Such a broad conversion window tends to inflate Wayfair ads performance.
Usually, a 7-day lookback window is more accurate for sales attribution.
WAYFAIR SPONSORED PRODUCTS: PRODUCT BASED SPONSORSHIP
The easiest targeting option for Wayfair Sponsored Products is Product Based Sponsorship.
It basically is a hands-off solution where all the time-consuming optimizations are left to the AI.
For this reason, Product Based Sponsorship is recommended for inexperienced advertisers.
It allows you to pick a product category and select single items from your inventory. Once your products are in the campaign, you can attribute a specific bid to each and this is actually the main optimization feature available (keep reading to learn more).
How to create a Product Based Sponsorship campaign
To create a campaign, select Wayfair Sponsored Products from the left menu.
Then, click on Add New Campaign in the How Do I Get Started box.
The next step is to name the campaign.
If you follow my blog articles, you should know I’m particularly fixated with proper naming. Especially if you work with a team.
I usually label ads with a Product Based Sponsorship target by using “P -”.
“P” stands for “Product” (= product based targeting).
In this example, the campaign’s name is “P - Patio Tables”, because I’m going to sponsor patio tables.
I usually don’t set an end date unless the campaign is functional to specific limited promotions.
An AI needs time to fine tune a campaign and so do advertisers with their constant optimizations.
In marketplaces such as Wayfair, Target or Amazon, long term campaigns usually perform better than short term ones.
In general, I recommend setting up ongoing campaigns and eventually reducing the budget instead of stopping them.
The second step is to select the marketplace.
In the example below, I selected wayfair.com which represents the US market. If you want to sell in Canada, select wayfair.ca.
For the reasons explained before, you should prefer a daily budget rather than a lifetime cap.
According to Wayfair best practices, the minimum suggested daily budget is $50.
Did I tell you advertising on Wayfair is expensive?
Leave Residential Customers as a customer type, unless you want to show your publicity to wholesalers and other businesses. In this case, select Professional Customers instead.
Bonus: if you sell B2B with discounted prices, there is the risk that those companies resell your products on Wayfair increasing retail competition.
If your marketing strategy is to sell retail, I recommend avoiding B2B.
As a target granularity, select Product Based Sponsorship. Wayfair’s algorithm will show your products while customers are browsing similar items.
How can the algorithm properly recognize similar products?
As with almost all algorithms, Wayfair uses keywords and other listing’s settings/signals to link your product with similar ones.
Be sure to do your on-page SEO optimizations before you advertise.
