Elements of a Good Ad
- The goal of the video ad is to get people to your product’s landing page
- Videos can be up to 45 seconds long, aim for 15-30seconds.
- 5 second intro catches shopper’s attention
- Benefit driven content showing the product in use - demonstrate the value
- Inclusion of customer testimonial tidbits
- In Air Up’s case you could do a video showing people’s reactions after trying it
- Ensure the text is easy to read on mobile view
- No need to provide captions “word for word” just showcase the highlights, for example instead of “I really like this microphone and it has become my go to mic for all recording purposes” you would overlay the caption of “MY GO TO MIC” which makes it easier for people to understand the main takeaway.
- Call to Action
- End with Branding - a short logo at the end with maybe a tag line underneath
Technical Specifications
Amazon Sponsored Brand videos can be up to 45 seconds long. However, Amazon recommends keeping the video between 15 to 30 seconds for optimal performance, as shorter videos tend to be more effective at capturing attention. The minimum length is 6 seconds.
The video must also meet certain technical requirements:
- Resolution: 1280x720 or higher
- Aspect ratio: 16:9 (widescreen)
- File size: Up to 500 MB
- Format: MP4 or MOV
- Frame rate: 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 29.98, 30, 50, or 60 FPS
Make sure to adhere to Amazon's content guidelines as well, such as avoiding excessive text or misleading claims.
More details are available here: 
If a video isn’t compliant the worst thing that will happen is a rejection with feedback so better to just upload what you have and then make adjustments if necessary.
Video Example
Research
An important step in the process is doing research into what close competitors or substitute products are doing for their video ads. Here is an example of Hint Water’s SBV ads.
List Your Product’s Benefits
This is an important step to then create a video for each element that you can then mix together
- Zero Calories - big bold text
- Travel Friendly - Show stack of bottle water vs a few pods and show person button bottle into a backpack
- Variety of flavors - Cirkul converts the fruit into a capsule so perhaps showing all the flavors as their fruits transforming into the pods works well
- Great Taste - show reaction videos
- Testimonial (social proof) - people mentioning what they like about Air Up
Other considerations
- If you are targeting a specific competitors ASIN you may want to adjust the intro to work best for that type of audience - for example if you are targeting Hint Water’s ASIN and want to try to convert this traffic over to your offering of scent pods you want want to show a stack of hint water bottles vs a few Airpods. Could test “Travel Friendly Travel Water” which may hit on a pain point that hint water shoppers have.
- If you are adding in text understand where the not safe area is (shown below) this is where Amazon will overlay an icon that will cover anything in that area of the screen
A Good Video Ads Impact
I storyboarded and directed the creation of a video ad which had a dramatic improvement in the performance of an ASIN. In the cart below you can see the impact on the BSR after the video ad was launched. Sales increased by ~$100,000/month afterwards that was with an increase in price of $20.
To achieve this result we tested different intros and learned which did a better job at attracting clicks. I worked with a videographer and video editor to convert the vision into a tangible video ad the campaign was created targeting the specific terms in the niche to measure performance and confirm things were working out well before expanding the campaign out to broader terms.
This focused approach allows us to do testing with a small budget, confirm a hypothesis and then scale from there.