What are Amazon ads?

Amazon Ads are found in different places on the Amazon landing page and within other SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

There are a few different types of amazon ads you can utilize for your campaign, these are known as Sponsored Product Ads, Sponsored Brand Ads,  Sponsored Display Ads and Amazon Demand-Side Platform (DSP).  

Benefits of Amazon Ads

The awesome thing is that brands can use these Amazon ads differently to suit the brand and budget and also to fit in with the specific marketing objective. 

For example, brands that are more focused on brand awareness might invest in Sponsored Brand and Sponsored Display ads. SB gives great early-funnel visibility on Amazon and Sponsored Display is displayed both on and off of Amazon, giving you a great opportunity to show your brand to third-party websites. 

On the other hand, brands launching a new product and looking to sell to increase organic positioning should invest more in Sponsored Product ads.

By seeing the results of how the ads are performing, using crucial data provided by Amazon,  we learn more about our target and prospective customers, what search terms they are using and what our competitors are doing. This helps turbo-charge e-commerce strategies and ultimately can lead to more success! 

Deep dive into the different types of Ads available to us

Sponsored Product (SP)

There are two types of SP campaigns; manual and automatic, and both have the options to target keywords, products and categories. Some more interesting points about SP:

• Most popular ad type on Amazon, making up 65%-75% of ad spend. 
• Higher conversion rate among all the different types of ads.
• Seller Central Sponsored Products appear on the search engine results page (SERP), on the right sidebar and product detail page of product listings similar to the product.
• The ad only shows one single product.
• Best ad type to build momentum and grow revenue through ads.
• Defend and win top positions in the search results for specific branded and non-branded keywords.
• Target top competitors with similar product characteristics.

Sponsored Brands (SB)

Sponsored Brands are creative cost-per-click (CPC) ads that feature your brand logo, a custom headline and multiple products that appear in relevant Amazon shopping results. You can also enhance your ad by creating a Sponsored Brand Video, that stands out on the desktop and mobile shopping results.

• Typically makes up 25%-35% of ad spend. 
• Ability to create/provide Amazon with a custom headline, custom image and the brand’s logo for the ad.
• The ad can show a maximum of 3 products.
• Sponsored Brand campaigns are linked to a landing page, which can be a Storefront or a product list.
• As well as Sponsored Product ads, SB campaigns can target keywords and competitors.
• Perform at a high conversion rate by advertising your products with Sponsored Brand Video.
• Top of the funnel, allows brands to educate consumers & introduce them to their brand through further content and links to their website.

A special mention about Sponsored Brand Video:

• Viewers are 95% more likely to retain a message when it’s in a video compared to 10% when reading text. 
• You have around 15-30 seconds to create an impact, once the video finishes it will loop back to the start. 
• Once 50% of the media is on the screen, the video will automatically play. Videos start without audio but there is an option to unmute. 
• Focusing the video on your product and its unique selling points should happen within the first few seconds of the video. 

Sponsored Display (SD)

Sponsored Displays are self-service display ads that are available to Amazon sellers. The ads appear to audiences on the Amazon homepage, PDPs, shopping result pages and in select marketplaces.

• Help promote your products on and off Amazon. 
• They usually perform at a lower conversion rate than SP & SB campaigns.
• As SP & SB campaigns, Sponsored Display ads can target top competitors with similar product characteristics.
• Apply retargeting strategies by targeting audiences based on product detail page views or purchases, as well as the audience’s lifestyle segments.
• Ability to create/provide Amazon with a custom headline, custom image and the brand’s logo for the ad.

Amazon Demand-Side Platform (DSP)

In addition to the above ad types, there is also the Amazon Demand-Side Platform (DSP), which is a platform that programmatically – which is the automated buying and selling of digital ads – allows you to buy ads and can be used by brands that do not sell exclusively on Amazon.

DSP ads do a couple of things; they can either send traffic to a product listing on Amazon or send them to an external website. However, DSP is an advanced strategy, so we recommend that brand advertisers start with SP, SB & SD before moving on to DSP. 

DSP can either be operated as a managed service by Amazon, or self-service. By going self-service with a partner such as This is Unicorn, you can access and test DSP with a smaller budget and better management and reporting. Contact us to find out more.

Although brands might invest more in one than the other, it’s important to note that you don’t have to choose one OR the other ad type, but rather we recommend that all ads are used in conjunction to expand reach and visibility and influence customers at multiple stages of the customer decision journey. 

Do you want to create an Amazon PPC advertising strategy and increase your sales? Let our team of experts help you!