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What is ClickRiver?

I saw this ad for ClickRiver appear on my site, and it gave me the idea to discuss who they are. ClickRiver is the advertising network that Amazon uses to display its PPC text link ads. Amazon owns the company that created the ClickRiver network, so they don’t use AdWords, or YSM, or AdCenter.

When you sign up to ClickRiver as an advertiser, keyword-based campaigns are set up in a similar manner to how they’d be set up in any other pay-per-click ad network. They include keywords, ad copy, destination URL, display URL, daily budget and max CPC.

I’ve included this screen shot from the campaign admin panel. You’ll see the simple setup — it’s very easy to navigate if you’ve used other PPC networks. Keywords have been blocked from view.

The text ads are displayed below the search results when a product search is done on Amazon, but some of the text ads aren’t completely relevant. I’m thinking once there are more advertisers vying for each niche there will be more relevant ads displayed. For example, I’ve done a random search for “harry potter” which returned the following result:

The first result of “Off to College, Apply now for a Chase Student Loan and get $50 to spend on Amazon.com” is highly irrelevant to the search, but is an enticing offer for individuals who might happen to be leaving for college and wanting an Amazon.com store credit. Looking into this further, I see that the advertiser is JPMorgan Chase & Co, a credit card company that can afford to pay a high CPC for the top slot. The advertisers in slots 2 and 3 are more relevant, as you’ll see the keyword “harry potter” bolded in both ads. (Ignore the red links, indicating nofollows)

Like Google, ClickRiver uses their own algorithm to determine ad relevancy, so I’m unsure as to how the top spot is calculated and displayed. Needless to say, the same ad does not appear in the top spot (or anywhere, for that matter) when performing the same search in Google.

So Who Should Use ClickRiver?

If you own an e-commerce business, or offer a service related to product searches performed on Amazon, you have a great source for potential customers through ClickRiver. Amazon users are already in the mindset to spend money and are actively looking to perform a purchase, so placing relevant product-related text ads after their search results can result in a high CTR and conversion rate, if properly targeted.

My biggest gripe with the ClickRiver system is its lack of a built-in conversion tracker. At this point in time in online advertising, conversion tracking should be a standard feature in every ad network. In the meantime, ClickRiver advertisers must track sales through a third-party tracking system or through their own server log data. Also, I was unable to find specific information on geo-targeting or creating ads in other languages. During set up I wasn’t asked for my target country of preference, or language requirements.

This is not an endorsement of ClickRiver, it’s just another option for advertisers to make money online from a place where people are already looking to spend. If you have a product or service to sell, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to test an ad on one of the biggest e-commerce sites and see if you get some bites. Remember, this is a zero-sum game, and if you’re not making money off of Amazon users, then someone else is.

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