Sponsored Product Ads and organic ranking on otto.de: reading ad slots and positions together

Two positions on the same page

A results page on otto.de contains organic products and sponsored tiles marked as ads. Your product can appear twice on the same page: once as an ad high up, once organically further down. For the shopper both are tiles; for your analysis they are two different numbers.

The ad position says how good your bid and relevance are compared with other advertisers. The organic position says how good your listing and demand are compared with all products. Only the second remains when the budget runs out.

Why the ad position alone misleads

A seller sees in the campaign report: positions 1 to 3 for all important terms. What he does not see: organically the product sits at position 90. As soon as the campaign pauses, it vanishes from page 1. The ad rented the visibility, it did not buy it.

Conversely, a product can sit organically at position 8 and additionally as an ad at position 2. Then the seller pays for clicks he would partly have received without the ad. Both can only be recognised when both numbers sit side by side.

Reading it per search term

Do ads pull the organic position up?

Otto publishes nothing on this. Plausibly, ads bring clicks and purchases, and purchases are a signal the organic sorting considers. Whether and how strongly that works for your product can only be measured: record the organic position of the advertised terms before the campaign starts and watch it over four to six weeks.

If it rises, lower the budget step by step and check whether the position holds. If it stays the same, the ad is a running cost, not an investment, and the budget belongs to the terms where the listing has an organic chance.

Distributing budget by term

1. Terms with organic page 2 to 3: the jump to page 1 is near. Ads deliver the clicks that can speed it up.
2. Terms with organic page 1: only in peak times or when a competitor with ads sits above you.
3. Terms with "not found": fix the listing first, then advertise. An ad does not replace missing relevance.

How to measure both

A rank tracker that recognises ad tiles delivers, per search term, the organic position, the ad position and the overall position on the page. MarktRank distinguishes sponsored tiles on every check and shows both values per keyword, so in the weekly comparison you see whether the organic position follows the ad or stands still. Set the advertised terms to daily checks for the duration of the campaign.

Frequently asked questions