PDA

 Before being replaced by Sponsored Display Ads, PDAs were an early form of Amazon’s display advertising. They helped vendors reach customers who were browsing similar or complementary products and drive traffic to their own listings or brand stores.

How It Worked:

• PDAs could be targeted by:
  • Product (e.g., showing an ad on a competitor’s ASIN page).
  • Interest or category (e.g., targeting customers browsing “hair dryers” or “fitness gear”).
• Ads were cost-per-click (CPC) based, meaning vendors paid only when users clicked.
• Clicking the ad led to the vendor’s product detail page, brand store, or custom landing page.
• Vendors managed PDAs through Amazon Advertising Console or Vendor Central Campaign Manager.

Benefits for Vendors:

• Cross-sell and upsell opportunities: Drive traffic from related or competing ASINs.
• Defensive marketing: Protect own ASIN pages from competitor ads.
• Brand awareness: Increased exposure via placement on high-traffic product pages.

Benefits for Amazon:

• Increased ad revenue: Expanded ad inventory across retail pages.
• Better shopper engagement: More relevant ads based on browsing behaviour.

Challenges:

• Limited creative control - mostly static ad templates.
• Manual targeting setup made scaling difficult.
• Transition to Sponsored Display Ads required reconfiguration of campaigns.

Evolution:

• PDAs were phased out and replaced by Sponsored Display Ads (SD) in 2020–2021.
• Sponsored Display offers similar targeting but with enhanced automation, reporting, and audience reach (on and off Amazon).

Why It Matters:
Although now deprecated, understanding PDA is important historically - it was the foundation for Amazon’s modern display advertising system, influencing how Sponsored Display and DSP evolved.

Example:
A skincare brand once used PDAs to place ads for its moisturiser on competitor ASINs within the “face creams” category. Today, this same strategy would be executed via Sponsored Display Product Targeting.

In short:
PDA (Product Display Ads) were Amazon’s early product and interest-based display ad format, now replaced by Sponsored Display Ads, which offer improved automation, targeting, and reporting.