As of sometime yesterday or this morning Amazon announced that authors can now access Sponsored Product ads in the UK and Germany. I’ve been running ads in the UK using an Amazon Advantage account which has a few more options than this, but it’s still a nice development for those authors who hadn’t managed to set up an Advantage account.
Keep in mind that each market is different and they’re going to respond to different bids and different keywords than the U.S. market. Think spelling differences, for example.
Also, in both accounts I had to fix my payment information. They had my credit card on file but I had to provide my address and legal name before I could run an ad. For those not in the EU, I just skipped the VAT field and checkbox at the bottom.
And in the German version it originally came up in German. Click on the top right corner dropdown just like you would for .com to change the language to English.
I’m not sure of the reporting delays in those markets. I had a German sale today that is probably from my AMS ad that I started there this morning but when I checked the dashboard it wasn’t even showing impressions yet let alone a sale.
As with everything this is good and bad. For those of us already advertising in the UK it’s going to hurt some. But it also levels the playing field a bit more which I think Amazon needs to do more of.
Also, those who are willing to poke around and figure things out on their own will do better initially as they get up and running first, but that’ll level out as information percolates down.
Expect click costs to go up over the next couple months. If you don’t stay on top of that expect impressions to drop significantly as more people enter the market.
Enjoy.
M.L. Humphrey 
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