How to Use Ads

Last updated: 9 January 2024

This feature is still in beta mode, and is only available to selected sellers. 

Shopee Ads helps to push visibility of your shop and products in front of relevant shoppers as they search and browse across high traffic areas across various Shopee pages.

To effectively reach your desired audience, you have the flexibility of choosing between two options on how you would like to target your audience effectively - Auto Targeting or Custom Targeting. You can opt to let Shopee automatically target relevant audiences or select your own custom audience to prioritise by selecting the different age, gender and buyer type characteristics.

What is Auto Targeting?

With Auto Targeting, Shopee’s algorithm will automatically display your ads to relevant shoppers interested in your shop and/or products, allowing you to drive higher engagement.

What is Custom Targeting?

1. With Custom Targeting, you would be able to customise your desired audience to prioritise and target. Shopee’s algorithm will proactively identify potential shoppers based on your selected target audience criteria to deliver and show your ads. 
2. The algorithm dynamically increases your bid prices based on your chosen premium rate between 10% up to a maximum rate of 400% (up to 5x your original bid price), to boost the visibility of your ads to your selected target audience.
3. To broaden the reach of your ads, other shoppers who do not fulfill your custom audience criteria will also have the chance to see your ads if they are highly relevant and/or likely to purchase based on past shopping behaviour. 

Note: Audience targeting for Product Ads is only available when the bidding method is Manual Bidding. You will not be able to configure audience targeting settings if your Product Ad is Auto Bidding.

What criteria can I use to set the custom audience for my Ads?

With Custom Targeting, you can adjust the target audience to prioritise for your Ads based on the criteria below:

1. Age
2. Target shoppers within a particular age group demographic. 
3. Gender
4. Direct your marketing efforts towards a specific gender demographic.
5. Buyer Type

1. All Buyers
2. Target your ads at both existing customers and potential new buyers. This broader audience includes anyone who visits your store or views your products.

1. Potential New Buyers
2. Focus your ads exclusively on shoppers who have not made a purchase from your store before, and are likely to based on their historical user activity. 

What is the premium rate and how should I set it?

With Custom Targeting, you can set your preferred premium rate. Premium rate allows you to increase the bid price for your custom audience. For example, if your bid price is $0.50 and your premium rate is 50%, the final bid price would be $0.75 based on the calculation $0.50 x (100% + 50%). 

Set a competitive premium rate if the advertised product has high selling potential and high profit margin to better reach out to your target audience. Review your ad performance after 2 weeks and increase your premium rate accordingly if the performance is good. 

Why am I unable to choose my Target Audience Setting?

If you selected Auto Bidding as your Bidding Method, audience targeting will not be available.