Is Shopee Ads worth it?

 

I know I shouldn't be pouring more money into this "business" of mine, but well ... *sigh* I thought to give it a try. You know at the end of it, at least I tried.

I bought $20 worth of Ad Credits as Shopee suggest running Ads for 2 weeks to see any meaningful results.

So, how does Shopee Ads works? Is it worth it?

I'm going to share my experience and views about it.

 

Types of Shopee Ads

There are 3 types of Shopee Ads available - Shop Ads, Targeting Ads and Keyword Ads. I wouldn't touch on Shop Ads as it's irrelevant for my listing.

 

Keyword Ads

As the name suggest, Keyword Ads will boost your ranking in the search result listing with certain keywords.

Shopee give you 2 options when using this Advertising function:

1) You let Shopee auto-pick the keywords and set the bidding amount for you for you.

2) You choose the keywords you want to bid for from a list of given keywords.

You can toggle between these options anytime. And you can adjust your bid anytime, according to how you rank for each keyword and how relevant they are.

 

So, yes, you've to BID for the keywords. The more money you bid per click, the higher you'll rank. It's all about money.

So if I bid $0.20 for a keyword (say "microSD card") and someone else bid $0.22, he'll rank higher in the search result than me. So if enough people bid higher than you, you still might end up in the 2nd or 3rd page of the search results.

 

Targeting Ads

The same bidding system also applies for the Targeting Ads. But of course Targeting Ads works differently from Keyword Ads.

Targeting Ads will display at places visible to users, like 

1. Daily Discover on the homepage

2. Similar Products and You May Also Like on the product detail page

I've only gone into using this form of advertising on the 2nd half of the 2nd day and plan to stop it later when the Ad credits are running low to focus on the Keyword Ads.

 

Limiting Spendings and Time frame

The good thing about these Ads are that, you can choose how much you want to spend on a daily basis and how long your want the campaign to run. For me, I set the daily limit to only $2. So my listing will be put through the bidding system till my $2 runs out.

How fast it runs out depends on how much I bid for the keyword and how many people clicked on the listing. You'll only be charged when someone clicks on your listing.

So if someone search with a keyword that is worth $0.30 per click, and click on my listing in the search results then I'll be charge $0.30. This would then leave me with $2.00 - $0.30 = $1.70 on my daily limit.

I didn't set a time frame for my Ads as I only topup $20 Ad credits and so I just let the campaign run till the $20 get used up (Which I assume will be 10 days later). But if say you topped up $100 and only wish to run the Ads during a sales (say the 9.9 sales) you can set the time frame from 9 Sept to 10 Sept or even 9 Sept to 9 Sept and keep the rest of the credits for the next sales. Alternately, you can just pause the campaign.

Results of Using the Shopee Ads

I'll be sharing statistics of random days of running the Ads, and then at the end of the whole campaign, sum up and give my views about using Shopee Ads.

During the first few hours of the first day of starting the campaign, I've already seen some results. My listing took a great jump from page 14 to the 3rd page for a a particular keyword and 1st page for some others! Hence the high impressions rate (289)! 

 

Number of clicks have also gone from 0 to 4!

Statistics by end of Day 1.

Sadly, none of the clicks/visitors converted to sales. But this is only the first day, still too early to tell.

Targeting Ads

There are not much results from Targeting Ads for me. There are some impressions but 0 clicks for like a week.

Keyword Ads 

As for Keyword Ads, they do generate a lot of impression, averaging about 200 per day. As for clicks, it varies daily, but at least 1-2 clicks a day.

None of them converted though.

By the time of writing this (23rd September), I'm already more than halfway through my Ad Credits (~$9.30 left). I've generated quite a lot of impressions but clicks were little. Click through rate (CTR) is just about 1-2% daily. There is 0 conversion, followers or likes to date.

Also, statistics will likely get inaccurate from here as the kick-off for 10.10 sales has started and sellers are pumping in money for Ads now. I've fallen to 2nd or 3rd page for some keywords already.

Conclusion

I think Shopee Ads are good for generating traffic but not really sales. But it could be that this market that I'm selling in is way too competitive. Perhaps people still prefers the big brands that comes with years or even lifetime warranty. I don't know, but there are just so many factors that could contribute to  conversions. 

But anyway, if you ask me if I would continue my Shopee Ads? Nope.