Unveiling the power of incremental search terms and ASINs for top of search

Understanding incremental search terms and ASINs is integral to running effective top-of-search ad campaigns. Occupying pole position at the top of the Amazon search results page (SERP) can boost your sales and lead to positive by-products such as improved organic rank.

The secret sauce for identifying the most suitable terms for top-of-search campaigns involves a comprehensive analysis of scrolliness score, Search Frequency Rank (SFR), estimated click-through rate (CTR), and estimated clicks. Let's dive in to explore how these factors can significantly boost your product's visibility and sales potential on Amazon.

Unearthing your opportunity search terms

The first step to dominating the top of the Amazon search results is identifying suitable search terms for you to target. To do this, we start with the top search terms by Search Frequency Rank from Amazon's weekly Brand Analytics report. For each search term, we can analyze several metrics, and use these to create an opportunity score for any keyword.

Search term-level metrics

The first three metrics give us insight into the nature of the search term.

1. Search Frequency Rank (SFR)

Extracted from Amazon's Brand Analytics report, SFR is based on the volume of search queries for a specific keyword. Here, SFR=1 is the holy grail, with the highest search volume on Amazon. We analyze the top one million terms, using the SFR to estimate the search volume for each keyword. 

2. Search Query Volume (SQV) estimates

Amazon assigns a Search Frequency Rank based on a search term's normalized search query volume. Amazon surfaces the denormalized search query volume for several advertisers for their top terms. We then use our data to estimate the search query volume for the top 2.5 million search terms.

This normalized search query volume estimate can be considered equivalent to the number of searches for the search term or number of impressions that exist for the search term. We also draw on Amazon Stream data to incorporate the number of top-of-search impressions ASINs receive for a given keyword, and we use this to determine the impression share left on the table. The higher the impression share left on the table, the more incremental value.

3. Scrolliness score

The concept of the scrolliness score is based on the fact that some keywords see most of their clicks going to the top few organic results, whilst others see clicks much more broadly distributed. The chart demonstrates this, with 69% of clicks for the search term airpods going to the top three positions, whereas for womens tops even the top-ranking result receives less than 2% of clicks.

The scrolliness score converts this click-share data into a value between 0 and 1. The higher the scrolliness score, the more customers are sifting through several products before finding their match, while a lower score indicates that they typically click on one of the first products they see.

The table shows how this works for a few example search terms. The first three have a very low proportion of clicks on their top three results, and therefore a high scrolliness score, whereas the next three are more like airpods, with most clicks going to the top-ranking ASINs, resulting in a very low scrolliness score.

Search terms with a low scrolliness score are best suited for top-of-search ads, since customers tend to click on (and purchase) the top products they see, assuming the product is relevant to their search intent and competitive in terms of price and reviews.

Account-level metrics

While SFR, SQV estimates and the scrolliness score are all at the search term level, and will therefore be the same for all accounts, the rest of the metrics are specific to each individual account. These are used to determine the keyword incrementality score.

1. Estimated click-through rate (eCTR)

A primary determinant of user engagement, eCTR tells us the frequency of shoppers clicking on a product after it appears in their search results. A high eCTR reflects that your product aligns well with the customer's search intent.

2. Estimated clicks

Based on historical data, we estimate the number of clicks a search term is expected to receive. Higher clicks indicate greater customer interest, making the term a potential opportunity for boosting product visibility.

3. Top-of-search share of voice

We add a penalty to the opportunity score if the search term already has a high top-of-search share of voice. The higher the share of voice, the more severe the penalty.

4. Organic share of voice

We add a penalty to the opportunity score if the search term already has a visible presence in the top six organic ranks for the search term. As with top-of-search share of voice, a higher organic share of voice leads to a larger penalty.

Without going into too much detail, the following table shows how different accounts can receive different opportunity scores for the same keyword, in this case protein powder.

Decoding ASINs with the incrementality score

Once you have identified opportunity search terms, you can score the ASINs that rank for that search term for incrementality. As with the opportunity score, incrementality is calculated using a combination of different metrics. Note that the incrementality score is specific to an ASIN-keyword pair—the same product may have a very different incrementality score for two different search terms.

1. Competitiveness score

This score consists of subscores based on an ASIN's price competitiveness, review count competitiveness, and product rating competitiveness. To generate each subscore, the ASIN is compared with the top organic ranked products on the Amazon SERP (for the given search term). These three values combine to give a competitiveness score between 0 (least competitive) and 1 (most competitive).

The table shows how this works for the search term cute pimple patches for face:

2. Similarity score

Using Natural Language Processing (NLP), this score analyzes the ASIN title and compares it with the top 20 organically ranking products for the given search term using a similarity model that is effective at understanding the context and synonyms. The overlap of word tokens (effectively words in the titles) is also considered. The more similar the titles are, the higher the similarity score will be. 

The table shows how even small differences in the titles can lead to different similarity scores.

3. Organic rank score

This is simply based on the organic ranking position of the ASIN for the given keyword in the Amazon search results. An ASIN that ranks #1 in the search results will have the highest possible organic rank score. A low organic rank score contributes to a high incrementality score.

Combining these scores then gives us the incrementality score for each ASIN. In this case, the three example ASINs all score 0 for organic score as they do not rank amongst the top search results for the given search term.

The algorithm within Perpetua's ad engine identifies products with high competitiveness and similarity scores, yet a low organic rank score. These products are your best candidates for appearing in the most visible spots at the very top of Amazon's search results, making them high-potential opportunities worthy of your attention and your budget.

Boosting your presence on Amazon

With the analysis complete, we then feed the opportunity search terms and high-potential ASINs into our custom 'Top of Search Engine'. This harnesses data from Amazon Stream to establish the level of bids required to propel these ASINs to the top of search results—and keep them there while maintaining efficiency by ensuring the lowest possible CPC for the best output.

Wrapping up, the secret to securing top-of-search ad placements that will maximize your Amazon returns lies in discerning the opportunity search terms and incremental ASINs, and knowing the art of pushing them to the top of the search results for the lowest CPC. Our cutting-edge Top of Search Engine is built to do precisely this, giving you an advantage in enhancing your visibility and boosting your success on Amazon.