Marketplace Advertising on Trendyol and Amazon: How Ads Work

Marketplace advertising puts your product at the top of the marketplace's own search and category results with a "sponsored" label. On Trendyol, a leading Turkish online marketplace, product ads are charged per click and store ads per thousand impressions; on Amazon, Sponsored Products also run on cost per click. Managing these ads means choosing the right products, setting bids and regularly checking whether each ad-driven sale actually leaves a profit. This guide covers Trendyol and Amazon's Turkish store, Amazon.com.tr.

What ad types does Trendyol offer?

Trendyol's Seller Information Center lists product ads, store ads, influencer ads and Meta ads under its advertising section. The two types sellers use most are:

• Product ads: the products you choose appear in ad placements with a "Sponsored Product" label. Trendyol's algorithm decides which users see them, based on the audience searching in that product group. You pay per click (CPC).
• Store ads: your store and four products you choose appear at the top of the search page, with a "Sponsored" label, to users searching for keywords you set. You pay per thousand impressions (CPM).

The two work differently. Product ads are for direct sales; store ads suit brand visibility and gaining store followers better.

How do you set up a product ad on Trendyol?

Ads are created on the Ad Management screen in the Seller Panel. The flow Trendyol describes is:

1. Top up your ad balance. The balance can be transferred from your earnings or bought by credit card.
2. Create a new ad and choose Product Ad. Enter the ad name, date range, budget type (daily or total) and budget amount. An ad can run for as little as one day; Trendyol recommends seven days or more for better performance. To start the same day, you need to create it by 21:00.
3. Select products. Up to 50 products can be added to one ad. In the product list, the Buybox column shows whether a product holds the Buybox, and the Eligibility column shows whether it can be advertised. Trendyol notes that advertising products that win the Buybox is more advantageous.
4. Set the bidding strategy. With manual bidding, you enter the amount you want to pay per click; the panel shows a suggestion and lower and upper limits for your selected products. With automatic bidding, Trendyol analyzes performance data and sets the best CPC level itself within seven days. The actual CPC can be lower than your bid.
5. Confirm.

There are limits to know. Once an ad is created, products cannot be added or removed, but you can increase the budget, raise or lower the CPC, extend the duration and rename the ad. Daily budgets have a lower and upper limit per product, and total budgets have a ceiling; check the current amounts in the panel. If your operational capacity status drops to orange, your Buybox products lose the Buybox; if it drops to red, visibility of all products is switched off. No ad spend occurs on products in this state.

Whether to group products in one ad or split them is a strategic choice. Trendyol says selecting more products within an ad gives more room for optimization. On the other hand, keeping products with very different margins in the same ad can send the budget to low-margin items. Opening separate ads by margin group gives you more control.

When does a Trendyol store ad make sense?

A store ad takes up to 10 keywords and 4 products from the same category and product group. Each keyword has its own CPM, and you cannot bid below the recommended minimum CPM. Trendyol states that only one store ad is shown to a user per keyword search, so competition for this slot comes down to the bid.

Two features set store ads apart from product ads. Even if you advertise a product that has lost the Buybox, the user who clicks sees your product, but they may also see other sellers on the same page, so your price needs to be competitive. And if more than two of your four selected products run out of stock, the ad stops running. So build store ads around deep-stock bestsellers. They make sense if you have a known brand and loyal customers, or want to position your store on a specific category keyword; if you are after individual product sales, start with product ads.

How does advertising work on Amazon?

The sponsored ad solutions available to sellers on Amazon.com.tr are Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display. You need an active Professional seller account to advertise; Sponsored Brands and a Stores page also require enrollment in Amazon Brand Registry. Products advertised with Sponsored Products must be eligible for the Featured Offer placement, which you can think of as Amazon's equivalent of the Buybox requirement on Trendyol.

Sponsored Products run on cost per click and appear in search results and on product pages. There are two targeting options:

• Automatic targeting: Amazon matches your ad to shopping queries based on your product information. Amazon recommends starting first campaigns this way.
• Manual targeting: you choose the keywords or products. Amazon's getting-started guide recommends starting with at least 30 keywords and using broad, phrase and exact match types together.

Running both together is a common setup: you find converting queries in the automatic campaign's search term report and move them to a manual campaign. If you plan to sell abroad through Amazon, we cover the preparation steps in our article on selling on Amazon and Etsy across borders.

How do you know whether an ad is profitable?

Marketplace advertising uses two core metrics. By Amazon's definition, ACoS (advertising cost of sales) is ad spend divided by ad-attributed sales, expressed as a percentage. ROAS is the inverse: ad revenue divided by ad spend. An ad that spends 50 units and brings 100 units in sales has an ACoS of 50 percent and a ROAS of 2.

The real question is whether that ratio is profitable for you. For that, work out your break-even point: after product cost, marketplace commission, shipping and a provision for returns, the share of the sale price you keep is your margin before advertising. Once ACoS exceeds that margin, every ad-driven sale loses money. On a product sold at a 25 percent margin, a 30 percent ACoS reduces profit even if revenue goes up.

Two cautions. Because ads can also affect organic sales, track the product's total sales rather than only the ad panel. During a new product launch you may knowingly accept an ACoS above break-even, but make that a decision with a set duration and ceiling.

Is your product ready before you advertise?

Ads increase traffic, but the product page decides conversion. An ad for a product with weak images, an incomplete description, few reviews or a price clearly above competitors cannot turn clicks into sales. Before advertising, review your title, images and attribute fields using the checks in our article on marketplace product listings. Do not neglect stock either: a product that sells out during a campaign wastes spend and can stop a store ad.

Mistakes we see often

• Running product ads on items that have lost the Buybox or Featured Offer
• Keeping low-margin products in the same ad as bestsellers
• Running ads for only one or two days, leaving the algorithm no room to learn
• Comparing ACoS with a "sector average" you heard somewhere instead of your own margin
• Starting a new campaign with the same settings without noting the previous results

Pre-launch checklist

• The product page, price and stock are ready for ad traffic
• Products hold the Buybox or Featured Offer and are eligible for ads
• Break-even ACoS has been calculated for each product group
• Ads are split by margin group and run for at least a week
• The bidding strategy (manual or automatic) was chosen deliberately
• A weekly reporting routine is set: spend, sales, ACoS and total product sales

If you want ads and listings on your marketplace store managed together, see our marketplace management service, or contact us to discuss your situation.