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It’s safe to say the e-commerce industry in Thailand and South East Asia has developed considerably over the last few years. For those of us living in city apartments, we can’t help but notice the delivery vans and couriers working on behalf of market place type platforms such as Lazada and Shopee.
For many local sellers (and now large brands), having a shop page on either or both of these platforms is essential and somewhat risk-free, as they have moved away from the initial commission-based model to running ads within the platform itself.
In most cases, this has replaced the need to set up a website or even Facebook page, as the number of users on these platforms continues to grow in line with some extravagant marketing campaigns.
The issue sellers now face is the competition from within the Market Place platform itself, for more generic items they can find themselves competing with hundreds of other sellers, where the choice will be largely based on price and star rating.
We recently became an advertising partner with Shopee and their advertising offering ‘MyAds’. Here’s a quick guide on how it works;
Firstly, MyAds allows you to place ads within Shopee’s search results, it has no bearing on the Ads you see on Google or Facebook.
Like with Google and Facebook Advertising, MyAds works on a CPC model, which means you are only charged when a user clicks on your Advert, i.e. you’re only paying when your ad is working.
There are three types/formats of MyAds
Keyword Ads
*The Ad label is easy to miss
As over 70% of Shopee purchases are through keyword searches, Keyword Ads allow you to target the keywords that are relevant to your product to gain a better position in search results and more market share.
Targeting Ads
These Ads appear on similar products, in the ‘similar products’ section at the bottom of the page, as a paid ad. A bit like remarketing you are targeting users who have shown an interest in a product by viewing, adding to cart, liked or rated a similar product. Shopee will place the ad based on your bid price and product relevance.
Shop Ads
Shop Ads are the most clearly visible Ad banner that is used to promote your shop alongside broader & brand-related keywords. As there is only one ad position available, it most likely shows more for the official stores or what Shopee calls ‘Shopee Mall’.
Targeting
Similar to Google Search Ads, with MyAds you can choose to target by Exact Match or Broad Match (there is no Phrase Match or Broad Modified). As the exact match will usually bring fewer search results, you can expect to pay slightly less than broad match targeting.
Read more about Google match types here.
Shopee breaks down the types of Keyword buying as –
Branded Keywords
Product Keywords
Category Keywords
Case Keywords (Very Broad)
To conclude
The Ad platform is still in the developing stages so benchmark CPC’s and CTR’s are yet to be released, however, we can say from experience we’ve seen CPC’s average 1THB per click, which puts it as a cheaper alternative to Google Search, but slightly more expensive than Google Shopping Ads.
If you have an eCommerce shop and you’re looking for some help with the marketing, whether its Google Shopping Ads, Facebook or help with your sales on platforms like Shopee or Lazada, speak to one of the team at Phoenix Media today!
