Master how to Optimise Flipkart PLA ads in 3 steps

Struggling to optimise Flipkart PLA ads? Look no further.

Flipkart is now a household name with crores of buyers and thousands of sellers. With the increasing buyer base, competition on Flipkart is getting fierce every day. To stand out from the crowd, Flipkart offers a dynamic performance marketing solution, where sellers can attract potential shoppers and get their sales. It offers 3 different type of ads to run, PLA, PCA and Display ads.

Flipkart Product listing Ads aka PLA is the most popular and easiest ad type to start your marketing campaign. And this makes it even more essential, that we master the art to Optimise Flipkart PLA ads.

Table of Contents

Benefits of Using PLA Ads

More Visibility for Products
Higher Conversion Rates
Better ROAS through Focused Targeting

How do Flipkart PLA ads work?

When you run a PLA ad, Flipkart shows your products on the home page, the product page, the top and rest of the search page, and the browse listing pages. With so many placements available, PLA helps get conversions. It follows a CPC model, where you pay only when someone clicks on the ads.

PLA ads are marked as “Sponsored”.

Before we dive into the Optimisation part, we must get familiar with the tools and terms important to optimise.

Metrices

Views – Number of times your ad was served
Clicks – Number of times the ad was clicked
Total Spend – Total money the ad spent
Total Revenue – Total sale value of products that was sold
Orders – Number of orders that were placed
Product Page View (PPV) – Number of times the product page was viewed. It is different from clicks. If the customer refreshes the page or jumps to other pages and return, it is considered as additional PPV, although, click will remain same.
Add to Cart (ATC) – Number of times user clicked on ad and added at least one item to cart.
CTR – Click through rate, is the percentage of user clicked out of the total views.
CPC – Cost per click is the money that you spend to get a single click.

Reports

Flipkart provides a variety of reports to analyse the performance of ads, but to Optimise Flipkart PLA ads, we only require the following-

FSN Report – The performance of every FSN that we run our ads on. Gives insights on the performing and non-performing products.
Placement Performance Report – How each placement is performing. Helps in getting insights on which placement works better.
Search Term Report – All the search terms for which your ad was triggered. Helps in knowing what the customers are actually looking for.

Attribution

Attribution refers to how the user interacts with the ads and are two in type.

Direct Attributions: When a user clicks on the ad of your product and buys a same or different variation of your product.
Indirect Attribution: When the customer clicks on your ad but finally buys a different model of your brand.

Finally, the part you have been waiting for.

How to Optimise Flipkart PLA ads.

You can optimise Flipkart PLA ads by adjusting the Bids for different placements, discontinuing Non-Performing and underperforming FSNs, making sure that the inventory is sufficient and optimizing the product page with relevant keywords.

But, hey, this is something generic. Here, we will optimise flipkart PLA ads for 3 different cases.

Improving Return on Investment (ROI)

Pause non-performing FSNs: Check the FSN level report, and identify FSNs with low sales, high CPC (Cost Per Click), or those not aligning with your campaign goals and shift your budget towards top-performing products to maximize ROI.

Reduce CPC Bids: Reducing your bids can help improve ROI. Monitor the effect of bid adjustments on ad performance and adjust.

Check Placement Level Report: Download the placement level report, know where your ads are placed and how they are performing across different placements (e.g., search results, product pages, and more).

See the CVR and ROAS for each placement to find what you can improve. Based on your placement level report analysis, move the budget towards placements that are performing well and reduce where the performance is low.

Increasing Visibility

If you see that your Flipkart PLA Ads are not getting enough visibility, and you aim to get more reach.

Firstly, increase your CPC bids to compete aggressively in ad auctions and potentially secure higher ad placements. Increase your budget so that the ads remain active throughout the day. You also need to make sure that you are getting the visibility, make a routine to monitor placement level performance.

Budget Management

One may often find themselves in a situation where the ads are either pacing slow or fast. In both cases, it is essential that the pacing is monitored regularly to ensure optimal utilization of budgets.

Slow Spenders

Increase CPC Bid: Increase your CPC bid so that the ads have a better chance of competing and can bring in more clicks and sales.
Check Inventory: It is essential that there is sufficient inventory for the products in your ads.
Add More FSNs and Change Pacing: Add more FSNs and disable the pacing setting (Uncheck the option “Divide budget equally”) to get the ads to spend more.

Fast Spenders

Reduce CPC Bid: Reduce your CPC bid so that you have control over the budget but maintain the visibility of the ad.
Change the Pacing: Enable the pacing (Check the option “Divide budget equally”) will ensure that the budget will be divided equally between the number of days your ad is to be run. For example, Total budget of Rs. 31000 will be equally divided for 31 days, each day will have Rs.1000 as the daily budget.
Discontinue FSNs with Low ROI: It is wise if you do not spend anything of FSNs that do not spend efficiently. Find those FSNs that are eating a sizable position of budget but not performing. Pause these FSNs so that the performing FSNs get sufficient budget.

Now, there is something else that we can do to get most out of our PLA ads. Yes, you heard right. And it is going to help the overall performance in the long run.

Optimize the Product Listings

We often tend to focus so much on Optimizing Flipkart PLA ads, that we ignore an important part, the listing.

Optimizing the product listing is crucial as, here all the buying decisions occur. And if your products is not optimised properly, you may lose on a potential sale. And all your ad’s efforts will go waste.

Here is what you can do:

Upload High-Quality Images: Use clear, high quality images that follow Flipkart’s guidelines. Showcase your product from multiple angles along with lifestyle images to attract customers.

Relevant Keywords: Add relevant keywords that customers may use to find your products into you listings. Add keywords into product features, description, bullet point but make sure there is keyword stuffing.

Now you know everything that is required to Optimise Flipkart PLA ads. Follow the guide and see your sales skyrocket.