zDirect Marketing module: Ad Manager

Look no further than the Ad Manager in the zDirect Marketing module. This powerful marketing tool from Zalando Marketing Services (ZMS) enables you to quickly launch campaigns that drive visibility for your products and accelerate your sales growth.

The self-service advertising tool allows you to create your marketing campaign on Zalando in less than five minutes, to drive your sales performance and acquire new customers.

Set up Sponsored Product campaigns easily and track how many orders are being generated as a direct result of your campaign, on top of your organic orders.

Sponsored products override the organic SKU ranking of a catalog page and push the assortment to the top, driving maximum visibility and sales.

They also appear in the recommendations carousel at the bottom of Product Detail Pages (PDPs), offering inspiration and extending the user journey.

Once you are at the campaign creation stage, you can choose between two different ad types: 1. Dynamic Sponsored Products allows you to promote your entire brand assortment of the selected brand(s). This means our advertising algorithm automatically promotes the articles which drive an optimum performance for you.

2. Selected Sponsored Products allows you to choose specific articles, for example your key styles and bestsellers, or articles with a high stock levels. You can also mix your selection across different brands which you supply.

Please note: Access to the zDirect portal is required to access the ZMS Ad Manager.

Before running campaigns with the ZMS Ad Manager, you need to log in to zDirect, go to the Marketing module and click Activate. You'll receive a confirmation email and can then set up your first ZMS Ad Manager campaign. 

When starting to work with the ZMS Ad Manager you’re ideally already active in multiple international markets and have the following profile on Zalando:

• At least 20 SKUs live on Zalando that are available for promotion

• At least 30% of the sizes available for each SKU – and at least three items per size

• A very good CXM performance regarding all CXM KPIs  for partners using their own logistics solution, or the relevant selection if you use ZFS (Zalando Fulfillment Services). 

Based on the new release, you have now access to the new Global budget campaign setting. With Global budget, you can automate budget distribution across markets for ongoing performance optimization. 

To access Global Budget from your ZMS Ad Manager dashboard, click New campaign in the top right corner, and select Global budget from the dropdown menu.

Generally, we recommend using the Global budget campaign setting as it simplifies the setup and management of your campaigns across multiple markets. With this setting, you set a total budget for all the markets where your campaign will run. 

The algorithm automatically distributes the budget throughout the campaign duration, taking into account the performance of each market, to achieve optimal results. You have the flexibility to choose the specific markets where your campaign will be active, and the selected markets will have the same campaign start and end dates.

However, if you have specific requirements, the Country budgets campaign option is available. This allows you to set budget limits on a country level and have different campaign start and end dates for various markets. This option can be particularly relevant if you have a maximum budget defined for each country, or during sales events with different start and end dates.

Watch the demo on campaign creation:

In general, every day is a good day to create a campaign as long as you are able to monitor it. Seasonal and sales events days are a must period to have campaigns running to secure visibility during highly competitive times.

We strongly recommend that when running more than one Sponsored Products campaigns, they don’t have the same runtime, same markets or same SKUs as any other campaigns you have running simultaneously. It can cause overlapping issues and it impacts performa

nce and pacing negatively.

There is no fixed maximum budget. As a minimum, we would recommend investing 7% of your sales target (NMV) or 12% for high growth targets/stock pressure/during sales events*. In addition, we recommend that the daily budget is more than 20 EUR per market.

*7% in NMV is equal to a minimum of ~3% GMV before returns. 12% in NMV is equal to minimum of ~5% GMV before returns

24/7 access to your reports! 

The ZMS Ad Manager campaign monitoring dashboard makes it easy to monitor the overall performance and trends of all your campaigns, all in one centralized location. This better enables you to make data-driven decisions to optimize your marketing campaigns for maximum impact.

• Dashboard tab

Here you can transparently monitor the progress of your campaigns. The data is updated on a daily basis.

• Growth in Attributed Sales Chart

The Growth Chart on your ZMS Ad Manager dashboard shows the orders generated by your campaign in dark blue, in comparison to your organic orders in light blue. Both are visible in the markets in which a campaign is being run. This way, you can see the share of additional orders generated by the campaign on a daily basis. 

• Campaigns details' column

In this tab, you can see an overview of all your current and past campaigns, making it easy to compare different key metrics, and select a campaign for further analysis.

• 'Managed by' column

It gives you an overview of all the campaigns, whether they’re managed by you or by ZMS. You can use the filter to only see one group of campaigns.

Watch the demo of the Ad Manager performance dashboard:

During the initial stage of your campaign, the ZMS Ad Manager algorithm utilizes this period to learn. As a result, it is crucial to refrain from making any changes/optimization decisions based on sales performance during this time. Also keep in mind that around 25% of users don't buy the article when they first click on it, but rather at a later stage.

It's essential to monitor the performance of your campaign regularly in the ZMS Ad Manager. Please ensure that it's running smoothly and check its performance daily. It's recommended to conduct routine checks at least twice a week to assess essential KPIs such as: campaign ad spend, article/SKU availability, and sales/GMV growth.

If your Selected Sponsored products campaign is not delivering as expected, we recommend that you pause it and set up a Dynamic Sponsored products campaign to improve performance through automated optimisation.

If your campaign is not meeting expectations, consider the following:

1. Verify your article status: ensure that you have enough articles and stock available for each market.

2. If the stock is adequate, you may need to increase your budget pressure. This can be accomplished by either decreasing the campaign runtime or increasing the budget for the set runtime.

For Selected Sponsored product campaigns, you can choose among a number of article filters to achieve your campaign goals: all eligible, bestsellers, newly added and longest online.

If your campaign is doing well, consider increasing your budget in high-performing markets to maximize opportunities and take advantage of high performance moments.

Begin by applying high budget pressure through shorter runtime or additional budget. If the defined runtime does not allow you to spend the budget, extend the campaign before the end date.

We suggest running the campaign for two to three weeks and investing 7% of your sales target (NMV) or 12% for high growth targets/stock pressure/during sales events in advertising.

Learn more about how to edit a running campaign here.

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  ZMS Ad Manager Partner Guide

Download the full ZMS Ad Manager Partner Guide to learn more.

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  ZMS Ad Manager Partner Guide

If you want to get started or have outstanding questions, please reach out to Partner Care here. Please choose Category: zDirect, and Request type: Marketing.