Whether you’re on Kindle Unlimited or your books are “wide”, Amazon ads are a key tool in your marketing toolbox. But figuring out how to set up an Amazon UK ads account, especially if your “home” account is in the US or another country, can be tricky. One great way to enhance your marketing results is to let Socialgreg take care of it. You can choose from it’s wide range of services and get great results instantly.

In this post, ALLi member Rachel McCollin teaches us how to do just that.

*NOTE: This approach currently works only in the UK. 

How to Set Up an Amazon UK Ads Account

Rachel McCollin

Amazon Advertising has plenty of faults.

The dashboard has only recently begun to catch up with the dashboards of other book advertising platforms. The data it provides is unreliable to say the least and it can be devilishly frustrating trying to get your ads to deliver.

But there’s no denying it’s a valuable tool in the arsenal of any indie author. Once you’ve got to grips with it, it’s one of the few platforms that can sell books at full price. Plus, its targeting options make it useful for manipulating your also-bought items.

Accessing Amazon ads for the US store is easy. But what if you want to advertise in the UK?

If you’ve got a US KDP account, you can access the platform from your KDP dashboard without needing a separate advertising account. But there are plenty of authors (I’m one of them) who have one or more books that sell better in the UK than in the US. And it helps if they can advertise to that audience.

The good news is that it’s possible to run adverts for your books in the UK. The bad news is that it’s a little thicker than doing it in the US. It also means setting up a special UK Amazon ads account and waiting to be approved. But once you’ve done that, you have all the benefits of the Amazon Advertising platform in the UK. It’s less competitive than the US (partly because it’s harder to access) and it’s invaluable to authors who sell in the UK.

In this post I’m going to show you exactly how to set up an Amazon UK ads account. You can follow these steps regardless of whether you’re based in the UK, the US, or anywhere else.

Step 1: Set Up an Advantage Account with Amazon UK

To set up an Amazon UK ads account, you’ll need an Amazon Advantage account for Amazon UK. Theoretically this lets you sell products you provide through the Amazon UK store and ship yourself  (which are different from books published via KDP, which are sold by Amazon, not by you). But you won’t be using it for that, unless you develop a nice sideline selling merchandise for your books (lucky you).

Click on the link that says click here to apply for an Advantage account (or similar: Amazon will change the wording every now and again).

Type in your name (this should be your name, not your business name) and email address. If you have an existing Amazon UK account, it makes sense to use the same email address. If you have an existing US account, you can choose whether to use the same email address or a different one. It will still work either way.

Now you’ll be taken to the account creation screen. If you’re creating a new account for the UK, fill this out and click the create your Amazon account button. If you already have a UK account and you’re happy using that, click the sign in link at the bottom of the screen.

If you’re creating a new account, you’ll need to enter the verification code that’s been sent to your email address. It might ask you for this if you’re signing in with an existing account depending on your settings.

Next, provide your business name and click the create account button. You’ll be taken through the process to setup two-step verification, after which you’ll be taken to the vendor setup process.

You don’t need to fill out as much information as a business that’s using Advantage to sell other products (you’re using KDP to do that). But you will need to accept the agreement.

Don’t add your payment information as you’ll add this in the next step, when you use your Advantage account to access Amazon Advertising (they don’t make this easy, do they?). You also don’t need to fill out the tax form (hurray).

So now you have an Advantage account. You’ll never need to use it again, apart from as a means of accessing Amazon Advertising. This may sound very illogical, but in my experience it’s the most reliable way of accessing your UK Amazon ads account.

Step 2: Create an Amazon Advertising Account

To create your ads, you don’t use Amazon Advantage; instead you use Amazon Advertising. But you’ll need your Advantage account to access that.

Go to https://advertising.amazon.co.uk and click on the register button. You’ll be asked if you have an existing account. Click on I have an advantage central account.

Now log in using the account you created or used for your Advantage account.

You’ll be prompted to register an advertising account. Type in your advertiser name (normally your imprint name) and check the box to say you accept the agreement. Then click the create account button.

You’ll be sent an email with confirmation details. Click the link in that email to go back to the setup process. Amazon will then review your application for an advertising account and email you when that process is complete.

Once that’s done, you’ll have access to adverts in the UK, via the Amazon Advertising dashboard.

You’ll be able to create three kinds of ad: Sponsored Product ads, Sponsored Brands and Product Display Ads.

Sponsored product ads work in exactly the same way as the sponsored product ads you can create via the KDP dashboard.

Sponsored Brand ads (previously called headline ads) might not be familiar to you if you’ve only advertised via the KDP dashboard before. These ads allow you to advertise up to three products in one ad at the top of the screen, and can be useful for books in a series.

And Product Display Ads will be familiar to you if you advertised with KDP before the advent of lockscreen ads. They work in a similar way for targeting but will be displayed in more places than just the Kindle lockscreen.

Now that you have set up an Amazon UK ads account, you can experiment with the three kinds of ads and see which ones work best for you and your books.

Good luck!