Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display: what each Amazon ad does and when it pays

Amazon sells three self-service ad formats to brands on Amazon.co.uk: Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and what used to be called Sponsored Display. They are often bought as a bundle, with one ACoS target across all three. That is a mistake, because they do different jobs, reach shoppers at different moments and are credited with sales by different rules.

This guide explains what each format does, who can use it, how it is targeted, bid and built, and when it adds profit. It sits under our hub guide to Amazon advertising in the UK, which covers every ad type and what it costs. For campaign structure, budgets and which bidding strategy to choose, see our Amazon PPC strategy.

The three formats at a glance

Attribution is covered at the end of this guide, because it changes how you should read every number in the table above.

Sponsored Products

Sponsored Products are cost-per-click ads that promote individual listings. You choose the products, Amazon shows them when they match a shopper’s search or the product page they are viewing, and a click goes straight to the product page¹.

Eligibility. You need a Professional selling plan (or a vendor or author account), and the product must be eligible to be the Featured Offer in an eligible category¹. Adult, used and refurbished products, and products in closed categories, cannot be advertised¹. Ads only show when the product is in stock¹. In our experience, an ad stops serving when another seller holds the Featured Offer; our Buy Box guide explains how that is decided.

Placements. You can raise bids for four placements: top of search (up to the first five positions in the top row of the first results page on desktop, and up to four on mobile), rest of search, product pages, and Amazon Business⁶. Amazon also shows Sponsored Products beyond its own store, on other Amazon-owned sites and third-party destinations, across desktop, mobile and app¹.

Targeting options

Every Sponsored Products campaign is either automatic or manual.

• Automatic targeting lets Amazon match your ad using four targeting groups: close match and loose match (searches closely or loosely related to your product), substitutes (product pages of similar items) and complements (product pages of items bought alongside yours). You can bid on each group separately or switch it off⁴.
• Keyword targeting uses three match types: broad (any order, synonyms and related terms; your keyword need not appear), phrase (the phrase or close variations, within a longer search) and exact (the keyword or close variations, such as plurals and misspellings)⁴.
• Product targeting places your ad against chosen ASINs, or whole categories that you can narrow by brand, price, star rating and similar features.

You can’t change a campaign’s original match type after launch, though you can add keywords with other match types⁴. Searches you don’t want go in as negatives; our guide to negative keywords covers how.

Bidding strategies

Amazon updated its bidding help on 28 September 2026. The current Sponsored Products options are⁵:

• Dynamic bids - down only. Amazon lowers your bid, by up to 100%, for clicks it judges less likely to convert.
• Dynamic bids - up and down. Amazon raises or lowers your bid by up to 100% in all placements, so a £1.00 bid can become £2.00.
• Fixed bids. Amazon uses your exact bid every time.
• Rule-based bidding. For eligible campaigns, you set a return-on-ad-spend guardrail and Amazon adjusts base bids to win more conversions within it.

On top of the strategy you can add placement adjustments and audience adjustments. Outside the US you can boost bids for one audience per campaign, drawn from Amazon audiences or audiences built in Amazon Marketing Cloud⁶. Adjustments stack, so check the highest bid any combination can produce against what the product can afford. Our PPC strategy guide shows that check and which strategy we use when.

Creative requirements

There are none to upload. The ad is built from your listing: main image, title, price, star rating and Prime badge. That makes the product page the creative, and the cheapest way to improve a Sponsored Products campaign is often a better listing rather than a higher bid. Sponsored Products video exists, but Amazon says it is only available in the US for now⁶.

Sponsored Brands

Sponsored Brands ads put your brand in front of shoppers, rather than a single product. They appear on top of, alongside or within search results, and can send shoppers to your Brand Store or to a product page⁷.

Eligibility. You need an active Professional seller account and must be the registered brand owner in Brand Registry, or be an approved vendor. The products must be in an eligible category; adult, used and refurbished products are not supported⁸. Our Brand Registry guide covers enrolment.

Goals, formats and pricing

You choose one goal per campaign, and it can’t be changed afterwards⁹:

• Drive page visits is bought per click and can use every format, on search pages, product pages and the Amazon home page.
• Grow brand impression share is bought per 1,000 viewable impressions and aims at top of search, using formats that link to a Brand Store.
• Reserve share of voice is a fixed, upfront price for top-of-search visibility on 5 to 1,000 of your branded keywords, for a campaign of 30 to 92 days. Amazon says it aims to deliver 95% share of voice. It is not available in Spain⁹.

The formats are¹⁰:

• Collections: your logo, a headline and three or more products. Automatic collections let Amazon pick products from your catalogue to match each search; manual collections use 3 to 10 products you choose.
• Store spotlight: drives traffic to a Brand Store with at least four pages, each with at least one unique product.
• Video: one product, or traffic to your Store.
• Brand Gallery: a lifestyle image with 3 to 5 subcategory images linking into your Store, available only with the reserve share of voice goal.

Targeting and bidding

Sponsored Brands targets keywords or products¹⁰. Keywords use the same broad, phrase and exact match types, and Sponsored Brands adds a broad match modifier: put “+” before a word and the search must contain it⁴. There is an automated bidding switch that lets Amazon optimise bids for placements below top of search, and you can adjust bids by placement and for one audience segment¹⁰.

Creative requirements

Sponsored Brands is where creative quality decides results. The requirements Amazon publishes are:

• Brand name and logo: your registered brand. For a product collection ad, the logo must be at least 400 × 400 px, 1 MB or smaller, PNG or JPG; an optional custom image must be at least 1,200 × 628 px and 5 MB or smaller³.
• Collections: choose distinct but related products, not sizes or colours of one product. At least two must be in stock, and Amazon asks for products with at least a 4-star rating and good or A+ content¹⁰.
• Video: 6 to 45 seconds (20 seconds or less is “highly recommended”), 16:9 only, 1280 × 720, 1920 × 1080 or 3840 × 2160 px, up to 500 MB, MP4 or MOV¹¹.

Every Sponsored Brands ad is reviewed before it runs. Amazon says that usually takes up to 24 hours and can take 3 business days¹⁰. Build that into launch and seasonal plans.

Sponsored Display, now display ads

Amazon has retired the Sponsored Display name. It says Sponsored Display “is now a part of Amazon’s wider display ads offering” within Amazon Ads Agent; existing campaigns continue to run, and new ones are created under Display, Video and Audio, then Display¹². From late October Amazon is combining Sponsored Display, Sponsored TV and programmatic campaigns into a single campaign type, **DVA+**¹⁵. If you search for “Sponsored Display”, this is what you will find in the console.

What it does. Display ads use image or video creative and target audiences rather than search terms. They can run on Amazon product and results pages, Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods Market, IMDb, Twitch and third-party sites and apps¹³.

Targeting. There are three approaches¹³:

• Contextual targeting: individual products that are similar or complementary to yours, or whole categories, refined by brand, price range, rating and Prime eligibility.
• Audience targeting: Amazon’s prebuilt audiences (lifestyle, interests, life events and in-market) and, for sellers, remarketing to shoppers who viewed or bought your product or similar ones.
• Optimised targeting, where Amazon chooses.

You also choose an optimisation strategy, which tells Amazon which outcome to bid for¹³. Amazon advises against creating several campaigns for the same ASIN: one contextual and one audience campaign per format is enough¹³.

Creative. For an image ad you can add any mix of a custom headline, brand logo and custom image; for a video ad, a video is required. Campaigns with custom creative can include up to 100 ASINs and are reviewed first, usually within 24 hours; campaigns without custom creative can go live in 1 to 2 hours¹³.

Price. Display ads bought this way support cost per click or cost per 1,000 viewable impressions, with no minimum spend¹⁴.

When each format pays

Each format earns money in a different situation, and loses it in a different one. This is how we read them, from running all three for UK brands.

The test underneath is the same for all three: does each order the ad brings in earn more margin than it cost to win?

Set incremental share to 100% and you get what Amazon’s reports imply. Use a realistic share and you get what the business keeps.

Three lessons come out of that example.

Sponsored Products earns its place on margin. It is profitable on both views, but only just once you count incremental orders. A few pence more per click, or a point less conversion, and it tips into loss. That is why break-even per product matters more than any account-wide ACoS target. The ROAS calculator and our break-even ACoS guide work out the line for each product.

Sponsored Brands has to be judged on the customer, not the first order. The video loses money on the first sale. Amazon reports new-to-brand orders, which are purchases from customers who had not bought from the brand in the previous 365 days². If most of those customers buy again, the ad can still pay. If your product is a once-in-five-years purchase, it probably cannot.

Display retargeting is the most misleading number in most accounts. On Amazon’s figures it is the best format here. Counting only the sales it added, it is the worst. That does not mean switching it off everywhere: it means testing it with a holdout before believing its ROAS.

Reading the results fairly

The three formats are not credited with sales in the same way, so their ACoS and ROAS are not directly comparable.

• Sellers’ Sponsored Products counts purchases within 7 days of a click, last click only, including other products you sell².
• Sponsored Brands and display ads compete with Amazon’s other brand ads for credit over a window of generally 14 days, with clicks ranked above views. Campaigns bought per 1,000 viewable impressions also count purchases after a shopper only saw the ad².
• Attributed sales exclude VAT in every format². Compare them with margins worked out on the ex-VAT price.

A 14-day window that includes views will always look more generous than a 7-day click-only one. Before moving budget between formats on ROAS, measure what each adds: pause a group of campaigns for two weeks and watch total sales, or use Amazon Marketing Cloud to see which ad exposures lead to purchases.

In our practice the order rarely changes: Sponsored Products first, on products that convert; Sponsored Brands once you are brand-registered and search is profitable; display ads as a measured test. Each format earns the next one’s budget by adding profit, not by reporting sales.