Amazon Ads Partner Awards — Challenger Award Winner
February 11,2025 | Industry
Lab 916 helps KOBO Candles optimize their Q4 ad campaign to unlock growth
Amazon recognized Lab 916 with the Challenger Award (Americas) for delivering profitable growth for KOBO Candles under tight budget constraints. This award is part of the Amazon Ads Partner Awards program honoring standout partner results.
“The 2023 awards submissions showed the innovation our partners bring to advertisers. It’s clear these submissions worked backwards from the advertisers’ goals to create and execute industry-leading campaigns.”
– Michael Swilley, Sr. manager, partner development, Amazon Ads category judge
Amazon Ads Partner Awards
The premier Amazon Ads recognition program that celebrates agencies and technology partners who demonstrate excellence in driving advertiser success with Amazon Ads.
About Kobo Candles
After being acquired by a new company and going through rebranding, KOBO Candles needed to promote their continued focus on sustainable products, but within a limited advertising budget. Specifically, they set two profitability goals for Q4 2022: keeping advertising cost of sales (ACOS) under 20% and total advertising cost of sales (TACOS) under 10%. In July 2022, Amazon Ads partner Lab 916 took on the challenge to help KOBO Candles create an ad campaign.
Key Plays:
- Retail-readiness first
- Keyword portfolio design
- Query & placement control
- Insight loop with AMC
- Remarketing & category capture
Challenger Brand Award
This award celebrates partners who help ambitious brands increase their presence and challenge category leaders using Amazon Ads.
Building an attention-grabbing advertising strategy within budget with KOBO Candles
Lab 916 helped KOBO Candles create a strategy built around audience engagement and ongoing optimization. First, the team performed extensive research to identify the best-performing keywords that engaged the broadest audience. They used these keywords to maximize KOBO Candles’ pay-per-click ad performance, including through Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands. By monitoring performance, adjusting bids, and testing different placements, they were able to improve return on ad spend while also aligning the campaign to inventory availability and seasonal promotions. This approach helped KOBO Candles manage their ad spend and keep costs low.
Lab 916 also used insights from Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) reports and third-party sources to monitor performance and refine their approach over time. In addition to ongoing keyword research and performance monitoring, they analyzed shopping signals, complementary brands, and the market to position KOBO Candles optimally and help drive improved performance.
“Working with Lab 916 is like working with the owners and the people have a stake in the company problems - partners that care and feel like they're apart of our team.”
– Anthony Qaiyum, CEO of Kobo Candles
Profitable Growth, Lower Cost
Q4 campaign met targets with ACOS 11.9% and TACoS 4.5%, while sales increased year over year.
Exceeding the KOBO Candles campaign goals
The advertising campaign exceeded their metrics for success. KOBO Candles not only maintained an ACOS of 11.9% over the course of the campaign but also achieved a TACOS of 4.5%.1 These numbers, well below the campaign targets, demonstrate both profitability and efficient budget allocation. Total sales also showed a significant increase during the campaign period compared to the previous year.
In addition, the campaign generated a noticeable spike in traffic, exceeding their conversion rate benchmark. This metric helped show that the campaign’s ongoing optimization and remarketing helped play a key role in driving sales.2
Because of the success of this campaign, KOBO Candles and Lab 916 will continue to focus on incorporating keyword research and Amazon Ads analytics to optimize their campaigns, better understand their customers, and generate more opportunities to help increase conversions. Moving forward, Lab 916 plans to use new tools and industry best practices to continue delivering exceptional results to their clients.
Newsletter signup
Be the first to get our latest posts & finance insights. Subscribe now!
