Surviveware Thrives Using Amazon DSP Advertising’s Powerful Retargeting Capabilities

Missed opportunities turned into stunning return on ad spend with programmatic advertising

If a shopper leaves your product page and doesn’t come back, what are the chances of getting them back? With DSP, those chances are very good indeed. See how Survivewear turned their Prime Day campaign into a 10.4X ROAS!

If you have a love for the outdoors (or if you’re particularly accident-prone), you’ve probably heard of Surviveware. They make first-aid kits that stand up to the toughest conditions known to man.

Surviveware founders Janco and Amanda are passionate about helping people prepare for their next adventure, and they wanted to focus on what they loved about running their business—which, for these two outdoor enthusiasts, was NOT sitting in front of a computer and spending hours managing their Amazon advertising.

That’s why they partnered with CANOPY!

Surviveware had been working with CANOPY on their PPC advertising since 2019 and had seen particular success with Sponsored Display Ads. That led them to wonder, “Are there even more ways to target off-Amazon audiences and bring them back to Amazon?”

Like most Amazon stores, Surviveware was missing out on opportunities to bring back shoppers who previously viewed their pages but left Amazon before they purchased their product.

After all, most people will browse first before they buy, but that means Amazon business owners like Janco and Amanda need a way to keep their products top-of-mind—even after shoppers leave the site.

After working with Surviveware on their Sponsored Display Ads and helping them find success with off-Amazon ad placements, we knew the next step had to be Amazon DSP.
Amazon DSP (demand-side platform) is a powerful programmatic ad platform that allows us to precisely target audiences wherever they are across the internet and bring them back to Amazon.

Typically Amazon offers managed DSP services for a minimum monthly ad spend of $35k. For family-owned and operated businesses like Surviveware, that price tag meant that Amazon DSP was never a serious consideration for them in the past.

But that’s not the case with CANOPY.

As one of few agencies approved by Amazon to use their demand-side platform, CANOPY lets clients dip their toes into DSP for as low as $5k/month in ad spend, which, as you’ll see, worked out perfectly for Surviveware.

There was just one problem…

In 2020, Amazon Prime Day fell in mid-October. (Prime Day typically happens during the summer…but not in 2020!) While we had plenty of time to prepare and optimize our DSP campaigns for the winter holiday rush, we only had a couple weeks to lay the groundwork for our DSP launch strategy before Prime Day.

We immediately suggested taking advantage of Amazon’s dynamic ecommerce ad templates.

With this exclusive DSP feature, we could pull information straight from Surviveware’s product pages to quickly create new Amazon-branded display ads. That way, everything from star rating and product variation to pricing and coupons, along with Amazon’s recognizable “Add to Cart” button would appear directly on the ad.

Not only are these templates extremely effective (because people instantly recognize and trust Amazon’s distinctive branding), they’re also quick to set up because they don’t require you to design brand-new ad creative.

With that, we launched just in time for Prime Day, and with winter holidays just a couple months away, we were able to optimize our campaigns to make sure Surviveware wouldn’t get lost in the holiday sales rush.

Over that 1-month period, we drove more than $64k in sales. With only a $6k ad spend (much lower than the $35k/month commitment that Amazon’s own DSP management service requires), that’s a 10.4X return on ad spend!

And the best part?

Just over 70% of total sales were new-to-brand!

That’s thousands of new customers who, with the help of DSP’s unmatched retargeting capabilities, know just where to go the next time they need to restock their first-aid kit or prep for a new adventure.

Now, Janco and Amanda don’t need to worry about losing potential customers who leave their product page because they know that their Amazon DSP retargeting campaigns will bring those shoppers back soon!