What is Sponsored Discovery, and how do I join?

12K1 Published on May 24, 2023

Lazada’s Sponsored Discovery Program is the most powerful tool you can use to help shoppers find your products. By running Sponsored Discovery campaigns, you can boost the placement of individual products in the Search, For You, and Recommendations pages.

On this page:

Understanding Sponsored Discovery

Setting Up your Campaign

A. Campaign Objectives

B. Placements

C. Budget

D. Campaign Schedule

E. Product Selection

F. Keywords

G. Bids

H. Automated Creatives/ Automatic Creatives Improvements

I. Audience Bidding

Post Campaign Setup

A. Review

B. Budget

C. Keywords

D. Bids

Managing your promoted products

Knowing the payment methods

Loading your Sponsored Discovery

Understanding your Sponsored Discovery Growth and Engagement

Glossary


What is Sponsored Discovery?

Sponsored Discovery is an efficient and easy way to help you gain platform-wide visibility among Lazada’s e-commerce shoppers. This solution allows users to discover your products on Lazada search results or when they are browsing other similar products.

Why should I use Sponsored Discovery?

Within Sponsored Discovery, Lazada leverages our algorithm to match your promoted products to the most relevant audiences based on their historical search & browsing behavior, to ensure that they are more likely to click & convert on your products. Sponsored Discovery can help you achieve a variety of goals, such as generating awareness of your brand or your new product; promoting seasonal items; and creating more demand for an item.

How much does Sponsored Discovery cost?

Sponsored Discovery uses a cost-per-click, auction-based pricing model. You may set the maximum amount that you are willing to pay when a customer clicks on your product or keywords. The more competitive your bid is, the more likely it is that your product will be displayed. You’re often charged less than your bid price.

You can learn more about bid prices at Lazada University.

I have a limited budget. Is Sponsored Discovery suitable for me?

Sponsored Discovery is suitable for different budgets because you can control the maximum amount you pay per click.

Where will Sponsored Discovery promotions appear?

Sponsored Discovery promotions can appear in the following locations/placements within the Lazada app/website:

What happens when shoppers click on my Sponsored Discovery product?

When shoppers click on your product, they will be redirected to your product detail page.

What products are ineligible for Sponsored Discovery?

At this time, Lazada does not support promoting adult products, used products, refurbished products, and products in prohibited categories. You can learn more about prohibited and controlled products here.

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Which campaign objectives should I choose?

Depending on your business goals, you may wish to align your campaign objectives accordingly:

  • If you are a new seller selling new products in the market, you can start with traffic campaigns to show up in front of interested shoppers. However, if you wish to get a faster return on your investment, you can opt for the sales objective.

  • If you are an existing Seller who hopes to increase the number of orders or sales, you may select sales objectives.

Ultimately, we suggest running campaigns with both campaign objectives to maximize your Sponsored Discovery investments.

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What are placements?

Placements are locations where your promoted products can appear on the Lazada platform.

There are 3 placements available on Sponsored Discovery:

  1. At the top or within search results;

  2. In the Recommendations section found on product details pages; and

  3. In the For You section on the app's homepage.

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What's the minimum daily budget for Sponsored Discovery campaign?

The minimum daily budget for Sponsored Discovery starts at 50 per day.

How does the Sponsored Discovery budget work?

You can set a daily budget for your campaign. The daily budget is the daily amount you are willing to spend on a campaign. Your bid amount will be deducted from your Sponsored Discovery budget whenever a shopper clicks on your promoted product.

Your budget will not paced throughout the day, meaning a smaller daily budget could be spent in a few minutes if there are a large number of shoppers interested in your products.

How will my products be promoted each day?

The promotion of your Sponsored Discovery products is dependent upon the budget and the bids you set. A higher bid and budget will likely generate more impressions.

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Can I schedule Sponsored Discovery?

If you are enrolled into the Mega Sales Accelerator, your campaigns will follow the campaign schedules for campaigns like 11.11, 12.12, and more.

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Automated Product Selection

What is Automated Product Selection?

Automated Product Selection aims to optimize your product selection of up to 200 items to attract shoppers to visit your product details page and your store at this moment. Powered by Lazada’s machine learning technology, Automated Product Selection predicts and chooses products that are expected to perform better than other products within your store.

Automated Product Selection is only available when you select the automated campaign type.

How does it work?

  • Our algorithm predicts and chooses products with the highest click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate (CVR) potential.

  • These products will run in your campaign and accumulate data and statistics.

  • Our algorithm will also add new products into your campaign according to its organic performance.

  • As data is accumulated, our algorithm will retain products that are performing well and remove products that are not performing well.

  • Your promoted products may change daily as we add new products and remove underperforming products to optimize your campaign.

How many products will be selected in a campaign?

You can only set up 1 campaign with automated product selection, and you will not be able to change this setting once you have completed your campaign setup. You can also choose to exclude some products from being automatically selected.

Standard Product Selection

What is Standard Product Selection?

Select the products that you would like to promote manually with Standard Product Selection.

How many products can I select?

You may select up to 50 products per standard campaign. The maximum number of products that can be promoted is 100 across all campaigns. Hence, you are recommended to promote products with high quality scores – You will be able to see a quality score index for your products which is calculated based on product quality, historical sales, expected CVR, and CTR. The higher the score is, the better it is expected to perform.

You may be unable to select certain products due to their ineligibility for promotion. At present, Lazada cannot promote adult products, used products, refurbished products, and products in prohibited categories. You can learn more about prohibited and controlled products here.

If I select the same products in 2 campaigns, will I be charged twice?

No, the promoted product can only be shown once for any given auction. We operate on a second-price auction and will only charge based on clicks, where you pay PHP 0.01 above the second-highest seller’s bid in the auction.

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What are keywords?

Keywords are single words or phrases that describe your product. Keywords are matched to search terms that customers use to search for products on Lazada and determine when your products may appear.

To start, we recommend using the suggested keywords when creating your campaigns.

How are the keywords generated?

Lazada helps you by recommending relevant keywords and bid prices for your product selection. Lazada’s Sponsored Services engine will generate recommended keywords based on the Lazada organic search historical data, which will help promote your product selection.

How do I select the right keywords?

You may want to select keywords that are relevant to the products you have selected from the list of suggestions we have.

What are the different keyword match types available?

At this time, Sponsored Discovery only supports broad match modifier match type. Broad match modifier match type allows more shoppers to see your ad, but only if these shoppers search for products that are relevant to your keyword.

Can I apply negative match-type keywords?

At this time, we do not have the option to apply negative match-type keywords.

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What is bid price?

Bid Price indicates the highest amount that you're willing to pay for a click on your promoted product.

How much do I pay?

If you win the auction, you will pay the second-highest auction price and the minimum amount of ₱ 0.01.

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What are automated creatives improvements or automated creatives?

Powered by Lazada’s machine learning technology, automated creatives optimize your product images to attract shoppers to visit your product details page and your store.

How does it work?

Our algorithm looks at your SKU image’s historical performance and predicts its CTR and CVR potential. We will then identify the SKU image with the highest CTR and CVR potential.

  • Through Lazada’s personalization algorithm, we will match shoppers’ preference and historical behavior to identify the most relevant SKU images to show them.

  • The chosen SKU image will show up as your promoted products to shoppers.

  • As the campaigns go live and data is accumulated, the SKU images that perform better will be shown to shoppers more often.

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What does audiences or audience bid modifier (targeting) setting mean?

Audience bid modifier allows you to bid higher to retarget or increase the chances of appearing to the shoppers who visited your store in the past 15 days or those who are in-market for similar products.

Audiences or audience targeting is only available when you select the standard campaign type with Sponsored Products as one of the placements.

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Can I review the promoted products before they go live?

All successfully-created promoted products are eligible to appear to interested and high intent shoppers immediately. You may review your products on the overview page.

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Can I change my budget?

Yes, you may increase or decrease your daily budget once your campaigns go live on both the Lazada Seller Center website or mobile app.

What happens if the campaign runs out of budget?

You will see an out-of-budget message on the campaign page. You may adjust your campaign budget or top up your account balance to continue showing up in front of your interested shoppers.

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Can I delete keywords?

Yes, you may delete keywords at any time.

Can I see the deleted keywords and their performance?

Yes, you may see the deleted keywords and how they perform across the various metrics.

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Can I change the bid price for each product/keyword?

Yes, you may change the bid price for each product/keyword whenever you would like to for your campaigns with standard campaign types.

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We recommend running through the following checklist:

Levers

How do I check?

Daily budget

Is it sufficient to start your campaigns?

You can refer to the performance predictor or suggestions based on past campaigns to get an idea of how much to add.

Find out more about the performance predictor here.

Campaign schedule

- Is the start date today or earlier?

- Is the end date sometime in the future?

Quantity of selected products

- Do you have enough inventory?

- Have you selected at least 20 products for each campaign?

Quality score of selected products

- Do your products have a good product content score that is shown in the product management page within the Lazada Seller Center?

- Do you have at least 3 product images, at least 50 words in your product description, and key product attributes?

Bids/bid prices

- If you set a maximum bid price for automated campaigns or bid prices for your products and keywords in the campaigns with standard campaign types, are these bids competitive?

- You can refer to the performance predictor, past campaigns, or the suggestions for each product and keyword to get inspiration on how much to add for a start. You can then decrease or increase your bids based on the campaigns’ performance.

Keywords count, search volume, and relevance

- Keyword count – Do you have 30 to 50 keywords selected for each product?

- Keyword search volume – Do all of your keywords have significant search volume? Depending on your products, this scale could differ. For example, if your product categories are niche, you might complement the low search volume with more keyword that is relevant.

- Keyword relevance – Are the selected keywords relevant to your products? You may check the yellow bars in the column ‘relevance’ within the keyword selection section. If there are 5 yellow bars, it means that your keywords are very relevant to your products. If there is 1 yellow bar, you may want to update your keywords to improve the chances of appearing to interested shoppers.

- Skip this step if you use the automated keyword selection or the full automated campaign suite (automated campaign type with automated product selection). Find out more about automated keyword selection here.

This could mean that your competitor is bidding for the same keywords at a higher bid. It may also be due to your competitor’s campaign status, budget, and/or relevance. It is recommended to run through the checklist in question 36 to help your products appear.

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We will first deduct your campaign spend from the voucher, followed by your top-up within the account balance.

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Currently, Lazada Sponsored Solutions supports top-up via transfer from your store’s earnings, debit/credit cards, or GCash via the Lazada Seller Center website and mobile app. Learn more about topping up your Sponsored Discovery campaigns here.

You should see your new balance in real-time or within 30 minutes. Please reach out to your Lazada PIC if you are unable to see the updated balance.

You will be able to view your available Sponsored Discovery top-up or credit balance from Seller Center by navigating to Marketing Center > Sponsored Solutions > Sponsored Discovery and checking your account balance on the right-hand side of the screen.

Click on the details and account balance tab after you land on the tools and settings page. Then, scroll down to transaction history to view the records in detail and download receipts for your top-ups for your finance and accounting purposes.

No, your top-up balance does not expire.

At this time, the credit balance cannot be refunded unless you are closing your stores on Lazada.

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An impression is counted each time your product appears to a shopper. Impressions help you understand how often your product is seen.

A click is counted whenever a shopper clicks on your product.

Clickthrough Rate (CTR) measures how often people click on your product after it appears to them. It can help you understand the effectiveness and attractiveness of your product listings/images. It’s calculated using the total clicks divided by the total impressions.

Conversion Rate (CVR) measures the number of times a promoted product click leads to products sold from your store listings. It’s calculated using orders divided by clicks.

Estimated Return on Investment (Est. ROI) is the revenue from your Sponsored Discovery campaigns compared to the amount you've spent on Sponsored Discovery. It’s calculated using Revenue divided by Spend.

Lazada provides a range of reports that make it easy to analyze campaign performance and measure success. Once you have launched your campaign, you can view the account, campaign, product, and keyword reports on the reporting page within 24 hours. Click here to learn more about how you can use metrics comparison and customized reporting views to understand how your campaigns are doing.

Yes, you may export the promoted products reports in excel format for analysis.

Yes, you may view the change history of the past 30 days.

The promoted products data is available for 90 days.

Lazada Sponsored Solutions uses an automated system to detect invalid clicks. Invalid clicks are clicks on promoted products that Lazada considers to be illegitimate, such as unintentional clicks or fraud, or errors by the system. These clicks will be removed on an hourly basis throughout the day, and the affected amount will be credited back to your account balance.

Sponsored Discovery reports units sold and revenue within 30 days of lookback window from the promoted products click.

Stay tuned for our livestreams on Lazada University if you would like to ask questions about our Lazada Sponsored Solutions experts.

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To better understand your promoted product performance, you may view the definitions of some commonly-used terms:

Terms

Definitions

Spend

Total actual spend amount within the selected date range

Impressions

The number of times your promoted product is shown.

Click

The number of times shoppers click on your promoted product via Sponsored Discovery or Sponsored Solutions.

Clickthrough rate (CTR)

The ratio shows how often people who see your promoted product end up clicking on it. It’s calculated using Clicks divided by Impressions.

CPC (cost-per-click)

The average amount you pay for each click. It’s calculated using Spend divided by Clicks.

Direct Add-to-Cart

The total number of promoted product units added to the cart after shoppers click on it.

Store Add-to-Cart

The total number of units from your store is added to the cart after shoppers click on your promoted product.

Direct Conversion Rate (Direct CVR)

Direct Conversion rate (Direct CVR) measures how often a promoted product click leads to the same product being sold. It’s calculated using Direct Orders divided by Clicks.

Store Conversion Rate (CVR)

Store Conversion rate (CVR) measures how often a promoted product click leads to units sold from your store listings. It’s calculated using orders divided by clicks.

Direct Orders

The total number of direct orders for your promoted product during the selected date range after someone clicks on it.

Store Orders

The total number of orders from your store during the selected date range after someone clicks on your promoted product.

Direct Units Sold

The number of promoted product units sold after shoppers click on it and purchase it.

Store Units Sold

The number of units sold from your store after shoppers click on your promoted product.

Revenue

The revenue is generated from units sold after shoppers click your promoted products. It is the total buyer paid amount inclusive of all discounts applied, store credit, shipping fees, and surcharges.

Return on Investment (ROI)

The revenue that resulted from Sponsored Discovery compared to the amount you've spent on Sponsored Discovery. It’s calculated using Revenue divided by Spend.

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