What Is Dayparting On Amazon? A Complete Guide For Amazon Sellers
If you’re an Amazon seller, one of the easier ways to get your products noticed is by using PPC ads. However, with more sellers also spending money bidding on different keywords, ads won’t guarantee clicks and sales anymore. If you want to get optimal results from your advertising efforts on Amazon, you’ll need perfect timing. This is where dayparting enters the picture.
In this article, we’ll discuss what you need to know about dayparting on Amazon and how this method can elevate your ecommerce business to synchronize with your intended audience.
What Is Dayparting?
Dayparting, or also known as parting the day, is a strategy Amazon sellers use to adjust their ad budget and schedule. This is usually done to maximize their exposure to people who are more likely to convert while avoiding buyers who are less likely to.
If you run an ecommerce business, you know that there are certain hours and days when conversion is higher than normal. With dayparting, sellers can maximize their ad budget since ads will only be displayed at certain times of the day instead of letting it run the full 24 hours.
It’s similar to Facebook and Google’s ad platform for scheduling ads and is a great tactic to master, especially in a competitive marketplace like Amazon.
How Do You Daypart on Amazon?
The process of scheduling advertising campaigns on Amazon is easy to perform. Once you’ve logged in to your account on Seller Central, head on to the top left portion of your screen. You should see a dropdown menu, and from there click on Advertising > Campaign Manager.
Do note that if your brand is not enrolled in Amazon’s brand registry program, you will be limited to only one ad campaign: sponsored products. However, if your brand has been registered, you should have access to three: sponsored products, sponsored brands, and sponsored display.
To keep this article consistent with sellers who aren’t enrolled in Amazon’s brand registry program or currently don’t have an ad campaign on Amazon, we’ll use sponsored products in this step-by-step tutorial. If you do need to daypart on Amazon using sponsored brands or sponsored display ads, the process is similar. They only differ in the way you create your ad campaign on Amazon.
If you do have a sponsored ad on Amazon and want to shift to a dayparting strategy, you can edit the budget and schedule of your ads by going to campaign settings > ad schedule.
Once you’re on the campaign builder, you should see your list of products, campaign name, portfolio, start and end date, daily budget, and targeting. From there, you'll need to launch your campaign. Once the ad can be viewed on your main dashboard, click on the three dots beside the name of your campaign to edit settings.
This is where you can specify specific days of the week and set time ranges for each day your ads will run by adding a schedule rule on the ad.
Benefits of Dayparting on Amazon
While it can be tempting to let Amazon do all the work on your ad once your listing has been posted on Amazon, it’s usually not a good idea. Dayparting offers a myriad of benefits that can help you reach your business goals. Here are some of them:
Dayparting allows you to acquire more qualified leads
For your advertising efforts to reap benefits on Amazon, everything needs to be perfect. Once you’ve researched the right keywords and optimized your listing, you need to know the best time that your shoppers are scrolling through you or your competitor’s products.
For example, if you're selling breakfast food, you can focus your ads on being shown during hours leading up to breakfast when people are more likely to be hungry and searching for different dishes instead of having them shown during random hours of the day.
Dayparting allows you to avoid showing paid ads to window shoppers
Consumer behavior varies throughout the day. Dayparting allows you to align your advertising efforts with these fluctuations to maximize ad spend.
The logical thing to do is to reduce your bids during hours of the day when not a lot of people are online. This ensures that you’re not wasting your ad spend on shoppers who have no intention of making a purchase.
Dayparting makes it easier to manage your limited daily ad budget
Amazon sellers can bid conservatively during the off-peak sales window while bidding more aggressively during peak hours. This way, less ads are wasted on people who are just looking around without the intention of purchasing.
Your ads will be shown more during peak times
The biggest benefit of dayparting on Amazon is its ability to show ads at the best possible time.
While it’s best that you should review the analytics of your own brand, a study from Oberlo found that the biggest shopping days of the week are from Friday to Sunday and that most purchases are made during lunchtime (1 PM to 2 PM).
Best Practices for Dayparting on Amazon
For Amazon sellers who are testing the waters of Amazon dayparting, make sure you heed the following practices in your dayparting strategy.
Start small
One of the most common mistakes newcomers make is rushing into dayparting on Amazon. What you should do instead is experiment by spending only a portion of your ad budget to see how an ad performs during different hours of the day. This will give you the initial data you need to plan your campaigns.
This may require multiple tests to determine the best time to display your ads, but once you’ve overcome that hurdle, you will be able to save a lot of money from your ad budget.
Recommended listening: E348: 4 Amazon Advertising Methods and How Much You Should Spend on Them
Sync your ads with Amazon’s lightning deals
After finding your business’s peak sales window, take advantage of Amazon’s lightning deals— These are Amazon’s offer to advertisers to run their ads for a limited period.
By combining this promotional offer with your business’s peak sales window, you will see an increase in your return on ad spend (ROAS).
Final Considerations Before Dayparting on Amazon
Define your goal
Dayparting can help you decrease your ad spend while increasing conversions. However, you may decide that increasing exposure and brand awareness is worth spending more for a certain period. Regardless of the goal you have in mind, your approach to Amazon dayparting will also differ.
For example, if you want to cut some ad costs, lower your budget during low-converting hours. On the other hand, if your goal is to reach maximum customer reach, the opposite approach might be better for you.
Your buyers’ active hours
As one of the leading ecommerce platforms in the world, Amazon’s reach covers multiple countries around the globe. This means that there is a possibility that a number of users scrolling your products will be from other countries and time zones.
To take full advantage of Amazon dayparting, analyze prior sales data to determine which day of the week shows the highest conversion rates.
To do this, go to your account on Seller Central. Click on Reports > Business Reports > Sales and Traffic.
This is where you will be able to find a report of your business’ performance for a certain period.
After sorting the data, you will be able to determine which days of the week generate the most sales. By examining the daily sales patterns on the sales dashboard (Business Reports), you are also able to determine when you sell the most.
Final Thoughts
While dayparting on Amazon sounds straightforward, it’s a strategy that not many sellers use but can do wonders for your ROAS. Just like any other business, if you want to grow on Amazon you have to be smart about every decision that involves spending your money.
Many strategies are available at your disposal, but it ultimately comes down to execution. By learning how to daypart on Amazon and its best practices, you boost your visibility when customers are most likely to make a purchase.
Have you tried dayparting on Amazon? Share your tips in the comments below.
