How Do Sponsored Products Work on a Retailer's Website? | Particular Audience
Sponsored products are brand-funded listings in search and category results. How bidding, relevance ranking and measurement work.
How do sponsored products work on a retailer's site?
Sponsored products are product listings a brand pays to promote inside a retailer's search results, category pages and recommendations. The brand sets a budget and bid; the retailer's ad engine decides which eligible products to show by combining the bid with relevance to the shopper's query. The brand usually pays per click, and results are measured against sales.
Eligibility
Only products that are in stock and relevant to the query or page qualify. Retailers can exclude categories or set rules for how many sponsored slots appear.
Ranking
Better systems rank sponsored and organic products together, so a high bid cannot push an irrelevant product to the top.
Measurement
Clicks, attributed sales and return on ad spend, ideally with holdout tests to show what was truly incremental.
How Particular Audience does it
In production
- The Warehouse Group (TWG): 5 weeks from signature to live across The Warehouse and Noel Leeming (+126.1% Sponsored Product CTR (NL + TW))
Frequently asked questions
Do shoppers know a product is sponsored?
They should. Sponsored listings are labelled, and the retailer controls how that label appears.
Is it always cost per click?
Cost per click is most common, but retailers can also sell on impressions or fixed placements.
Related guides
- What is a retail media network?: A retail media network lets brands advertise on a retailer's own site and channels using the retailer's shopper data. How it works and what it needs.
- How to monetise your ecommerce site search: Turn search results into retail media inventory with sponsored search ranked on relevance, plus search retargeting across the site.
- ROAS (return on ad spend): ROAS is attributed revenue divided by ad spend. What it shows, what it misses and how it relates to incrementality.