Types of Amazon Ads

Types of Amazon Ads

With over 150 million Amazon Prime users actively shopping, Amazon advertising has become essential for e-commerce success. Amazon’s advertising ecosystem offers multiple ways to reach high-intent shoppers at every stage of the buying journey, from initial product discovery to final purchase decisions.

Understanding the different types of Amazon ads available can make the difference between wasting ad spend and driving profitable sales. Each ad format serves specific marketing objectives, whether you’re looking to boost immediate product sales, build brand awareness, or retarget interested shoppers.

In this comprehensive guide, you’ll discover the main Amazon ad types, learn how to choose the right format for your goals, and get actionable steps to launch your first advertising campaigns. We’ll cover everything from basic sponsored ads to advanced programmatic solutions, helping you build an effective advertising strategy.

Key Takeaways

• Amazon’s ad system is performance-driven, mainly using PPC for sponsored products, brands, while DSP and Sponsored TV run on CPM to balance cost control and broad reach.
• Amazon targets shoppers using deep commerce signals, search terms, product views, and purchase history to follow them from discovery to conversion and beyond.
• Sellers use a multi-ad-type portfolio, where sponsored products drive sales, sponsored brands boost visibility, and sponsored display handles retargeting for higher overall performance.

Overview of Amazon Ad Types

Amazon offers multiple advertising formats designed to reach shoppers at different stages of the purchase funnel. Each ad type supports a specific objective, ranging from direct sales to long-term brand awareness. When combined strategically, these formats help build effective Amazon advertising campaigns.

• Sponsored Products are focused on driving direct sales by promoting individual product listings in search results and on product detail pages. These ads operate on a CPC (cost-per-click) model, meaning advertisers pay only when a shopper clicks the ad.
• Sponsored Brands help increase brand visibility by featuring multiple products and a branded headline within search results. Like Sponsored Products, these campaigns also use a CPC pricing model.
• Sponsored Display ads are used for retargeting and audience expansion. Depending on campaign settings, these ads can run on CPC or vCPM (viewable cost-per-mille), allowing advertisers to choose between paying for clicks or for viewable impressions.
• Amazon DSP enables programmatic advertising across Amazon-owned properties and third-party sites. These campaigns typically use CPM or vCPM, making them suitable for impression-based reach and cross-channel brand exposure.
• Sponsored TV focuses on video-based brand awareness and operates on a CPM pricing model, helping brands reach streaming audiences at the top of the funnel.

Overall, Amazon’s advertising ecosystem relies on performance-driven targeting. CPC-based campaigns are commonly used to drive conversions, while vCPM and CPM models support broader reach and awareness. Successful advertisers often combine pricing models to balance efficiency, visibility, and scale.

Sponsored Products Ads

Sponsored product ads are Amazon’s most popular advertising format, appearing directly in search results and on product detail pages. These Amazon ads promote individual product listings and blend seamlessly with organic search results, displaying only a small “Sponsored” label to distinguish them from unpaid listings.

When shoppers click sponsored product ads, they go directly to your product detail page, making this ad format highly effective for driving immediate conversions. The format’s popularity stems from its alignment with transactional intent; you’re reaching shoppers who are actively searching for products like yours.

Targeting Options

Amazon sponsored product ads offer two primary targeting approaches: automatic targeting and manual targeting. Each method serves distinct strategic purposes in your overall advertising strategy.

Automatic targeting ads use Amazon’s algorithm to analyze your product’s title, bullets, description, and backend keywords to determine relevant shopper queries. This targeting method works exceptionally well for keyword discovery and new advertisers who lack historical performance data. Amazon often segments automatic campaigns into close match, loose match, substitutes, and complements categories.

Manual targeting campaigns provide granular control over keywords and product targets. You can bid on specific keywords using exact match, phrase match, and broad match types, allowing you to concentrate ad spend on proven query patterns. Manual targeting also enables product targeting, letting you appear on competitor product pages and complementary product listings.

Performance and Pricing

Amazon-sponsored products operate on a second-price cost per click auction model. Advertisers set maximum bids, but the winning bidder pays just one cent more than the second-highest qualifying bid rather than their full maximum. This system encourages aggressive bidding while keeping actual costs below stated bid ceilings.

The minimum daily campaign budget can be as low as $1, making sponsored ads accessible to small Amazon sellers. However, ad eligibility and ranking depend on relevance factors combined with bid size; simply bidding high won’t guarantee impressions if your listing isn’t optimized for relevant keywords.

Well-optimized Sponsored Products campaigns generally deliver stronger returns and higher efficiency. They tend to generate better return on ad spend, achieve healthier conversion performance, and maintain relatively lower cost per click, although results vary by category and competition.

For mature advertising accounts, Sponsored Products often account for a larger share of overall ad spend, reflecting their reliability in driving consistent sales performance.

Setup and Optimization

Start with automatic targeting for 7-10 days to gather keyword performance data. Use this information to identify high-converting search terms for your manual targeting campaigns. Focus your highest bids on exact match keywords that drive profitable sales, while using broader match types for discovery and expansion.

Negative keywords play a crucial role in campaign optimization. Add irrelevant or unprofitable search terms as negative keywords to prevent wasted ad spend and improve overall campaign efficiency.

Sponsored Brands Ads

Sponsored brand ads emphasize branding and showcase multiple products rather than promoting a single listing. These ads typically appear at the top of search results above sponsored products, featuring your brand logo, custom headline, and up to three products or a video creative.

The primary objective of Amazon sponsored brands is to build brand awareness and drive traffic to your Amazon store or curated landing pages that exclude competitor offers. Unlike sponsored ads that focus on individual products, sponsored brand campaigns showcase your brand story and broader product catalog.

Requirements and Formats

All sponsored brand campaigns require Amazon Brand Registry enrollment and an active Amazon store with at least three subpages. Brand-registered sellers gain access to enhanced brand protection tools and premium advertising features unavailable to regular sellers.

Amazon offers three sponsored brand video formats:

Product Collection displays up to three products with your brand logo and custom headline. Clicks can direct shoppers to individual product detail pages or a dedicated landing page featuring your selected products. This format works well for highlighting hero SKUs alongside newer or lower-ranked items.

Store Spotlight directs clicks to specific subpages within your Amazon store, making it ideal for multi-category brands wanting to segment traffic by product line. You can showcase different product categories or seasonal collections through targeted store pages.

Sponsored brands video features autoplay muted video within search results, typically appearing in mid-page placements. Video creatives usually run 15-30 seconds and click through to the featured product’s detail page. Performance benchmarks show sponsored brands’ videos can achieve significantly higher click-through rates compared to static creative formats.

Targeting and Performance

Sponsored brands targeting mirrors sponsored products capabilities, including manual keyword targeting with match types and product/category targeting. Advertisers often bid on branded keywords (brand name plus modifiers), generic category terms, and complementary product phrases.

Branded keywords in sponsored brands typically deliver highly efficient advertising cost of sales (ACoS) because shoppers already demonstrate intent for your brand. Generic category keywords serve awareness and share-of-voice goals, though they require careful management to maintain profitability.

CPC costs for sponsored brands run 20-30% higher than sponsored products, but they deliver stronger brand engagement and can improve long-term brand recall. The format’s premium placement and visual branding elements justify the higher investment for awareness-focused campaigns.

Sponsored Display Ads

Amazon-sponsored display ads extend your reach beyond Amazon’s marketplace through audience and product targeting on Amazon sites, apps, and third-party websites. Unlike sponsored products and sponsored brands, which focus on search results, sponsored display campaigns appear as display units around content and commerce experiences.

The format serves three core use cases: product retargeting, competitor conquest campaigns, and upper-funnel audience reach based on shopping behavior signals. Sponsored display campaigns help bridge the gap between initial product discovery and final purchase decisions.

Targeting Methods

Amazon-sponsored display ads support two main targeting categories: product targeting and audience targeting.

Product targeting operates contextually; you choose specific ASINs or categories where your ads should appear. This enables cross-selling on your own product detail pages, conquest advertising on competitor listings, and complementary product placements. Product targeting helps capture shoppers while they’re actively evaluating similar or related items.

Audience targeting leverages Amazon’s extensive first-party data to construct retargeting and prospecting segments. You can target shoppers who viewed your products but didn’t purchase, customers interested in related categories, or lookalike audiences based on your existing customer base.

Placement and Creative Options

Sponsored display campaigns appear across Amazon’s ecosystem, including product detail pages, search results, customer review pages, and the Amazon store.

The advertising solution auto-generates creative assets using your product images, pricing, brand name, and ratings. You can also upload custom images and videos for a more controlled brand presentation. Dynamic elements like Prime badges and current pricing ensure your ads display accurate, up-to-date information.

Pricing operates on both CPC and viewable cost-per-mille (vCPM) models depending on campaign configuration. Many implementations remain performance-focused, closely tied to standard Amazon ads reporting metrics like ROAS, ACOS, and attributed orders.

Strategic Applications

Brands use sponsored display campaigns to follow high-value shoppers across their browsing journeys after initial product detail page views or add-to-cart events. This retargeting approach significantly improves conversion likelihood compared to targeting cold audiences.

Cross-selling represents another effective use case. After a customer purchases a printer, sponsored display ads can promote compatible ink cartridges on related product pages or across Amazon’s network.

Amazon DSP (Demand-Side Platform)

Amazon DSP is a programmatic advertising platform that allows advertisers to buy display, video, and audio ads at scale across Amazon-owned properties as well as a broad network of third-party sites and apps. Unlike self-service Amazon PPC ads, DSP is typically accessed through managed services or authorized agencies and operates on a CPM (cost-per-mille) pricing model.

The demand-side platform is built for brands that require advanced audience segmentation, cross-device reach, and upper-funnel brand exposure. It also supports re-engagement strategies beyond the Amazon marketplace by using Amazon’s first-party data for precise targeting, reach measurement, and performance insights.

Advanced Targeting Capabilities

A key differentiator of Amazon DSP ads is deep access to Amazon’s audience data, including in-market segments, lifestyle categories, and contextual targeting built from aggregated shopping, browsing, and media consumption behaviors. Advertisers can target segments like “home décor enthusiasts,” “repeat pet supply purchasers,” or “in-market for laptops” with refined frequency caps and bid strategies.

DSP supports sophisticated retargeting pools such as past purchasers, product page viewers, and cart abandoners, enabling persistent nurturing over longer consideration cycles. This approach proves particularly valuable for high-ticket items requiring extended evaluation periods.

The platform also enables lookalike audience creation based on your best customers, expanding reach to shoppers with similar characteristics and behaviors. Combined with Amazon’s purchase data, lookalike targeting delivers higher-quality prospects than traditional demographic targeting.

Creative Formats and Inventory

Amazon DSP supports multiple ad formats across Amazon’s diverse media properties. Standard display ads appear on Amazon.com and partner sites, while rich media units offer interactive elements for enhanced engagement.

Video advertising spans in-stream and out-stream placements, including connected TV, over-the-top streaming, and Amazon’s owned video properties like Prime Video. Video formats enable compelling brand storytelling while maintaining direct links to product or store pages.

Audio ads reach listeners on Amazon Music’s free tiers and partner streaming platforms with non-skippable spots between songs. These formats leverage behavioral targeting similar to display campaigns while reaching audiences during screen-free moments.

Performance Measurement

Amazon DSP reporting extends beyond standard Amazon Ads metrics, offering reach and frequency analytics, view-through attribution, and granular audience performance breakdowns. These insights help brands focused on incremental reach and brand lift compare performance against linear TV and other digital video channels.

The platform integrates with Amazon Marketing Cloud for advanced measurement and cross-channel attribution analysis. This connection enables sophisticated campaign optimization based on customer journey insights and multi-touch attribution models.

Sponsored TV Ads

Sponsored TV is Amazon’s newest self-serve video advertising option, delivering ads across premium streaming environments without minimum spend requirements. This format is designed to support brand awareness and upper-funnel objectives by leveraging immersive, large-screen video placements that help brands reach audiences in a more engaging viewing context.

The advertising console provides access to Amazon’s premium video inventory through a simplified interface similar to other sponsored ads. Sponsored TV campaigns target Amazon’s audience data with the scale and impact of traditional television advertising.

Video Specifications and Placement

Sponsored TV supports standard video creative specifications designed for streaming environments. Ads are shown during natural content breaks within premium video experiences, helping capture viewer attention in a seamless and non-intrusive way.

The format delivers large-screen reach with Amazon’s audience targeting precision, combining the visual impact of traditional TV advertising with digital targeting capabilities. Video specifications include multiple aspect ratios and durations to optimize for different viewing contexts.

Integration Opportunities

Sponsored TV pairs effectively with sponsored brands video and Amazon DSP for comprehensive video strategies across the customer journey. Upper-funnel awareness campaigns on Sponsored TV can drive search volume that sponsored products and sponsored brands capture on Amazon’s marketplace.

The format offers an alternative to Amazon DSP for brands wanting video advertising without a full programmatic platform commitment. Sponsored TV’s self-serve interface makes premium video inventory accessible to smaller advertisers previously unable to access Amazon’s streaming properties.

Campaign performance measurement includes standard video metrics like completion rates, view-through attribution, and brand lift studies for awareness-focused campaigns. These insights help optimize creative performance and audience targeting for maximum impact.

Additional Amazon Advertising Options

Beyond the core ad types, Amazon offers specialized advertising formats and tools that serve specific strategic purposes. These additional options provide targeting opportunities in unique contexts and help round out comprehensive advertising strategies.

Amazon Posts and Live Content

Amazon Posts provide free brand storytelling opportunities for brand-registered sellers, appearing in customer feeds, search results, and product discovery experiences. Posts feature high-quality images with captions, creating organic-style brand content that doesn’t require an advertising budget.

Amazon Posts appear on iOS, Android, and mobile web platforms, reaching customers during browsing and discovery activities. The format works particularly well during major shopping events like Prime Day and Black Friday when customer engagement peaks.

Amazon Live enables livestreaming product demonstrations and brand storytelling through the Creator app or Amazon collaboration programs. Live content delivers real-time customer interaction and product education, particularly effective during promotional events and product launches.

Both options boost brand visibility and engagement without direct advertising costs, making them valuable complements to paid advertising campaigns. Success depends on consistent content creation and alignment with customer interests and shopping behaviors.

Specialized Ad Formats

Lockscreen Ads target readers by genre on Fire tablets and Kindle devices, appearing when devices wake from sleep mode. These targeting options enable reaching customers during quiet, focused moments with relevant product suggestions based on reading preferences.

Amazon Audio Ads represent Amazon’s first paid placements within the Alexa ecosystem, delivering voice advertising during screen-free moments. The format targets customers using Alexa-enabled devices for music, news, and smart home interactions.

Both specialized formats offer unique reach opportunities but currently provide limited targeting options compared to mainstream Amazon advertising formats. They work best as supplementary channels for brands already successful with core ad types.

How to Choose the Right Amazon Ad Type

Selecting the appropriate advertising solution depends on your specific campaign goals, available creative assets, and advertising budget.

Goal-Based Recommendations

For immediate sales and organic ranking improvement, start with sponsored product ads. These campaigns directly target high-intent shoppers searching for products like yours, delivering quick returns on investment while improving organic search visibility through increased sales velocity.

For brand awareness and multi-product showcasing, implement sponsored brand ads after establishing your Amazon store and brand registry. These campaigns capture valuable top-of-search real estate while introducing shoppers to your broader catalog.

For retargeting and audience expansion, deploy sponsored display campaigns to follow interested shoppers across their browsing journey. This ad format excels at converting warm audiences who showed initial interest but didn’t immediately purchase.

For advanced brand building and cross-channel reach, consider Amazon DSP once your core campaigns demonstrate consistent profitability. The demand side platform enables sophisticated audience targeting and measurement across Amazon’s full ecosystem.

Budget and Resource Considerations

Sponsored product ads require minimal creative assets, just optimized product listings, making them accessible for any budget size. The $1 minimum daily campaign budget allows testing without significant financial commitment.

Sponsored brands require a brand logo, a custom headline, and potentially a video, increasing both time and resource requirements. However, the format’s brand impact justifies the additional investment for established sellers.

Amazon DSP typically requires higher minimum investments and specialized expertise, making it suitable for brands with substantial advertising budgets and dedicated marketing teams. Consider starting with self-serve formats before expanding to programmatic advertising.

Getting Started with Amazon Advertising

Setting up your first Amazon advertising campaigns involves accessing the advertising console through your Seller Central account and following systematic campaign creation steps. Proper initial setup determines long-term campaign success and optimization potential.

Account Setup and Navigation

Access the advertising console through your Seller Central account by navigating to the Advertising tab dropdown menu and selecting Campaign Manager. This interface provides unified access to all Amazon ad types and performance reporting.

New advertisers should complete the Amazon Brand Registry if eligible, unlocking access to sponsored brands and enhanced brand protection features. Brand registration requires trademark ownership and verification through Amazon’s application process.

The advertising console organizes campaigns by type, making it easy to compare performance across sponsored products, sponsored brand ads, and sponsored display campaigns. Unified reporting helps identify which ad types deliver the best results for your specific products and goals.

Initial Campaign Strategy

Start with automatic targeting campaigns for 7-10 days to gather keyword performance data and understand how Amazon’s algorithm interprets your products. Use insights from automatic campaigns to build targeted manual targeting campaigns around high-performing keywords.

Set target advertising cost of sales (ACoS) for each campaign type based on your profit margins and growth objectives. Sponsored product ads might target approximately 30% ACoS for profitability, while brand awareness campaigns may accept higher costs for visibility goals.

Monitor key metrics, including click-through rate, conversion rates, ACoS, and New-To-Brand customer acquisition. These metrics indicate campaign health and optimization opportunities across different ad types.

Campaign Optimization Best Practices

Use negative keywords aggressively to prevent irrelevant clicks and improve campaign efficiency. Add non-converting search terms as negative keywords weekly to refine targeting and reduce wasted ad spend.

Implement bid adjustments for different placements, increasing bids for top-of-search positions that typically convert better while reducing bids for lower-value placements. Placement reports reveal which positions deliver the best return on investment.

Scale successful campaigns gradually by increasing budgets for profitable keywords and expanding to similar products. Avoid dramatic budget increases that can disrupt Amazon’s algorithm and hurt performance stability.

Amazon Ad Performance Measurement

Advanced measurement tools and attribution methods have become crucial for optimizing Amazon advertising performance and understanding cross-channel impact.

Key Performance Metrics

New-To-Brand metrics measure how effectively advertising campaigns acquire customers who haven’t purchased your products in the past year. This metric proves particularly valuable for understanding the incremental impact of upper-funnel advertising campaigns beyond immediate sales attribution.

Amazon Marketing Cloud provides advanced analytics and cross-channel attribution insights, enabling analysis of customer journeys across multiple touchpoints. The platform supports sophisticated cohort analysis and time-based performance measurement for optimization.

Brand Lift surveys measure awareness and consideration improvements from sponsored TV and Amazon DSP campaigns, providing crucial insights for upper-funnel advertising effectiveness. These studies complement direct response metrics with brand impact measurement.

Real-Time Optimization Tools

Amazon Attribution tracks external traffic sources and their impact on Amazon sales, measuring how search engines, social platforms, and email campaigns drive downstream conversions. This cross-channel attribution helps optimize total marketing spend across platforms.

Marketing Stream provides real-time campaign data for immediate optimization and automated bidding adjustments. The platform enables responsive campaign management based on performance fluctuations and competitive changes.

Advanced reporting features include time-based analysis for ad scheduling optimization, competitor intelligence, and predictive performance modeling. These tools help anticipate campaign performance and adjust strategies proactively.

Privacy and Measurement Trends

With increasing privacy regulations, advertisers must balance customer privacy with actionable insights. Amazon’s first-party data becomes more valuable as traditional tracking faces restrictions. Multi-touch attribution continues evolving to capture complex customer journeys, making it essential to understand how different Amazon advertising types work together for accurate measurement.

Automation and machine learning handle routine optimization, allowing marketers to focus on strategy and creative development, though human oversight remains crucial for brand alignment and profitability. Start with Amazon ad units like sponsored product ads to establish baseline performance, expand to sponsored brands for awareness, and incorporate specialized Amazon advertising formats as budgets and experience grow.

Success on Amazon comes from testing, measuring, and iterating based on real data while delivering value to shoppers. The most successful brands combine data-driven optimization with customer-focused creative and positioning strategies.

Summary

Amazon offers multiple ad formats to reach shoppers at different stages of the purchase funnel, helping sellers drive sales, retarget audiences, and build brand awareness. Sponsored Products use CPC for direct sales, while Sponsored Brands showcase multiple products for increased visibility. Sponsored Display extends reach across Amazon and third-party sites with CPC or vCPM pricing, and Amazon DSP enables programmatic, cross-channel campaigns using CPM and first-party data.

Additional options like Amazon Posts, Live content, Lockscreen Ads, and Audio Ads provide niche or supplementary reach. Successful advertisers typically combine multiple ad types, optimize campaigns using analytics and bid adjustments, and measure performance with tools like Amazon Marketing Cloud to maximize efficiency and drive sustainable e-commerce growth.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)