Sponsored Brands Amazon Ads: The Complete 2026 Guide

What Are Amazon Sponsored Brands?

Amazon Sponsored Brands is a type of advertising that prominently showcases your brand and a collection of your products in shopping results. These ads are highly visible, often appearing at the very top of the search results page. A typical ad includes your brand logo, a custom headline, and multiple products or a video.

Think of it as a way to tell a bigger story. Instead of promoting a single item, you can introduce your entire brand or a curated collection to shoppers actively searching for products like yours. This approach is incredibly effective for brand discovery. In fact, Amazon reports that sellers who use Sponsored Brands in combination with Sponsored Products see a 30% increase in their category impression share compared to using Sponsored Products alone.

These ads can direct shoppers to a product detail page, a custom landing page, or your branded Amazon Store. By driving traffic to your Store, you create an immersive experience that encourages customers to explore your full catalog and become repeat buyers. Keep in mind, to use sponsored brands amazon ads, you must be enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry.

How Sponsored Brands Benefit Sellers

Increased Visibility: Secure top of search placements to get in front of high intent shoppers.
Brand Differentiation: Use custom headlines, logos, and videos to convey your unique value proposition.
Drive Traffic: Funnel customers to your broader catalog or your Amazon Store, not just a single product page.
Build Loyalty: A great ad that leads to a well designed Brand Store can turn a one time buyer into a long term fan.

Sponsored Brands are ideal for upper funnel goals like building awareness and acquiring new customers, which is why Amazon provides special “new to brand” metrics to measure this impact.

While most sponsored brands amazon ads default to the CPC model, the vCPM option is available for certain formats like Sponsored Brands Video to help advertisers focus purely on brand awareness goals.

How to Set Up a Sponsored Brands Campaign

Getting started with sponsored brands amazon ads is a straightforward process within the Amazon Advertising console.

Create Campaign: Log in to your account and select “Create Campaign,” then choose Sponsored Brands.
Settings: Name your campaign, set a daily budget (Amazon recommends at least $10), and choose a duration. Running campaigns continuously with no end date is often recommended.
Ad Format: Select the format you want to use: Product Collection, Store Spotlight, or Video.
Landing Page: Decide where clicks will lead. This could be your Brand Store, a specific sub page, or a product detail page.
Targeting: Choose either keyword targeting or product targeting. You’ll then add the specific keywords or products you want your ad to appear for.
Creative: Upload your brand logo, write a compelling headline (up to 50 characters), and select your products or Store pages.
Submit for Review: Once you’re happy with the preview, submit your campaign. Amazon reviews all creatives, typically within 72 hours, to ensure they meet policy guidelines.

Eligibility and Brand Registry

Not just anyone can run sponsored brands amazon ads. This powerful tool is reserved for brand owners. To be eligible, you must be enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry.

Amazon Brand Registry is a program that verifies you as the owner of your brand, which typically requires a registered trademark. Enrollment unlocks a suite of powerful tools beyond advertising, including A+ Content, Brand Stores, and Brand Analytics. It’s Amazon’s way of empowering brands and ensuring only legitimate representatives can create brand level advertising.

While getting a trademark and enrolling can seem like a hurdle, it’s considered a necessity for any serious seller on the platform. As of 2021, over 440,000 brands were enrolled in the program, and that number continues to grow.

Targeting Options in Sponsored Brands Advertising

Effective targeting ensures your ads reach the right shoppers. Unlike Sponsored Products, sponsored brands amazon ads are always manually targeted, giving you complete control.

Keyword Targeting

With keyword targeting, your ad appears when a shopper’s search query matches the keywords you bid on. You can use three match types:

Broad Match: Reaches the widest audience, matching your ad to searches that include your keywords in any order, plus other terms.
Phrase Match: More restrictive, requiring the search to include your exact keyword phrase in the correct order.
Exact Match: The most specific, matching only to searches that are an exact match to your keyword.

Amazon recommends using at least 25 keywords with a mix of match types to maximize your ad’s reach.

Product Targeting

Product targeting allows you to display your ads on specific product detail pages or within categories.

Category Targeting: Show your ads on product pages within a broad category, like “Headphones” or “Yoga Mats.” You can refine this by brand, price, or star rating to reach a more specific audience.
Individual Product (ASIN) Targeting: Target specific competitor products, complementary items, or even your own products for cross selling opportunities. This is a highly precise way to get your brand in front of shoppers at the moment of consideration.

Negative Targeting

Negative targeting is your shield against wasted ad spend. It allows you to specify keywords or products where you do not want your ad to appear. For example, if you sell premium headphones, you might add “cheap” as a negative keyword to avoid showing your ad to bargain hunters. Regularly reviewing your search term reports to find and exclude irrelevant queries can dramatically improve your return on ad spend.

Creative Best Practices for Sponsored Brands Ads

The creative elements of your ad can make or break its performance. Following best practices will help you create compelling ads that drive engagement.

Logo Guidelines

Your logo is a key part of your brand identity. It must be clear, high quality, and fill the allotted space. A simple, clean logo that is easy to recognize at a small size works best. In fact, Amazon found that campaigns with logos meeting all their creative guidelines saw 20% higher engagement on desktop and 13% higher engagement on mobile.

Headlines and Calls to Action (CTA)

Your headline is your opportunity to grab a shopper’s attention in just a few words. Keep it concise, benefit oriented, and include a clear call to action like “Shop Now” or “Explore the Collection.” Focus on what makes your product special rather than using generic language. For example, instead of “High Quality Knives,” try “Slice Better with Professional Grade Knives.”

Creative A/B Testing

The best way to know what works is to test it. You can run A/B tests on your sponsored brands amazon ads by duplicating a campaign and changing a single element, like the headline or the custom image. Run both versions simultaneously and compare the metrics (like CTR and conversion rate) to see which one performs better. Amazon encourages advertisers to experiment with creative elements to continuously improve performance.

Key Metrics: Impressions, CTR, and ROAS

To measure the performance of your campaigns, you’ll need to understand a few key metrics.

Impressions: This is the number of times your ad was displayed. Impressions are a key measure of reach and visibility, especially for brand awareness campaigns.
CTR (Click Through Rate): CTR is the percentage of impressions that result in a click. It’s a great indicator of how compelling your ad is. A low CTR might signal that your creative or targeting needs adjustment.
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): ROAS measures the revenue generated for every dollar you spend on advertising. It’s calculated as (Sales / Spend). A higher ROAS indicates a more efficient and profitable campaign. While important, ROAS shouldn’t be the only metric you look at, especially for campaigns focused on acquiring new customers.

What is the New to Brand Metric?

New to Brand (NTB) metrics are available for Sponsored Brands and measure how many of your sales come from first time customers. These metrics identify shoppers who haven’t purchased from your brand on Amazon in the last 12 months.

This is crucial for understanding the true impact of your advertising. A campaign might have a slightly lower ROAS but be incredibly valuable if it’s bringing in a high percentage of new customers. NTB metrics help you quantify the growth of your customer base and justify investment in upper funnel advertising.

Reporting and Dashboard: Measuring Campaign Performance

Amazon provides a robust advertising dashboard and downloadable reports to help you track performance. In the console, you can customize columns to see the metrics that matter most to you, from ACOS to New to Brand orders.

For a deeper dive, you can download reports like the Search Term Report. This report shows the exact search queries shoppers used that triggered your ads, along with their performance. This data is invaluable for finding new keywords to target and identifying irrelevant terms to add as negatives. Setting up a regular cadence to review your dashboard and reports is key to continuous optimization. For inspiration on what a disciplined program delivers, browse our client case studies.

Segmenting Branded vs. Non Branded Searches

A fundamental best practice for sponsored brands amazon ads is to separate campaigns based on branded and non branded searches.

Branded Searches: Queries that include your brand name (e.g., “Acme protein powder”). These searches come from shoppers who already know you and typically have very high conversion rates and a strong ROAS.
Non Branded Searches: Generic queries (e.g., “vanilla protein powder”). These are crucial for customer acquisition and brand discovery, but they usually have a higher ACOS because you’re competing for shoppers who haven’t decided on a brand yet.

By creating separate campaigns for each, you can set different budgets, bids, and ACOS targets that align with their distinct goals. For instance, a skilled agency like EZCommerce often builds an intent based campaign structure that separates brand defense from category discovery, ensuring that budget is strategically allocated to acquire new customers at a controlled cost.

Keyword Harvesting and Search Term Reports

Keyword harvesting is the process of analyzing your Search Term Report to find new opportunities. By regularly reviewing this report, you can:

Discover Winning Keywords: Find high converting search terms that were triggered by your broad match keywords. You can then add these as exact match keywords to bid on them more directly and aggressively.
Identify Negative Keywords: Uncover irrelevant search terms that are wasting your ad spend. Adding these as negative keywords prevents your ad from showing on those queries in the future.

This continuous loop of running ads, analyzing data, and refining your targeting is one of the most effective ways to improve campaign efficiency. If the process of digging through reports sounds overwhelming, getting a Free eCommerce Brand Audit can help identify missed keyword opportunities and create a plan to capitalize on them.

Bid Optimization by ACOS and Campaign Objectives

Bid optimization is the art of adjusting your bids to meet your performance goals. Your target ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sales) is your primary guide.

If a keyword has an ACOS that is higher than your target, you should lower the bid to improve its efficiency. If a keyword has a very low ACOS, you may be leaving sales on the table; consider raising the bid to capture more volume. This process should be guided by your campaign’s objective. A new product launch might tolerate a very high ACOS to gain traction, while a mature product campaign might focus strictly on profitability.

This is where a profit first approach, like the one used by EZCommerce, is so valuable. By tying bids to your product’s actual contribution margin, you can ensure that you’re scaling spend profitably and not just chasing revenue at a loss. Our operational rigor also safeguards profit—here’s how we reversed a $1,200 Buy Shipping adjustment by following the correct Amazon dispute path.

Above the Fold Placement Strategy

“Above the fold” refers to the top of the search results page, the area visible without scrolling. The Sponsored Brands banner is the ultimate above the fold placement. Data consistently shows that ads in this prime real estate receive significantly higher CTR and conversion rates.

Securing this placement often requires aggressive bidding and a highly relevant ad. You’ll need to back these campaigns with a sufficient budget, as the increased visibility and clicks can cause you to run out of funds quickly. It’s a strategic trade off; you pay more per click, but those clicks are often more valuable. The goal is to own the most important searches for your brand and category, making your brand the first thing a potential customer sees.

Brand Store Landing Page Strategy

When using your Amazon Brand Store as a landing page, the user experience is paramount. A well designed Store can increase average order value by encouraging shoppers to browse your full catalog. However, a confusing or overwhelming Store can cause shoppers to drop off.

Here are some strategies for success:

Deep Link to Relevant Pages: Don’t just send all traffic to your homepage. If your ad is for “Winter Jackets,” link directly to the “Winter Jackets” sub page in your Store.
Keep it Simple: Avoid overloading the landing page with too many choices. Highlight best sellers or featured deals to guide the shopper’s journey.
Test Your Landing Pages: For some campaigns, sending traffic directly to a product detail page might result in a higher conversion rate. One analysis found that switching from a Store landing page to a product detail page improved conversions by 20 to 40%. Test both to see what works best for your specific goals.

Crafting the perfect landing page experience can supercharge your ad performance. If you need help optimizing your Brand Store and overall ad strategy, talk to the experts at EZCommerce to get a holistic plan to boost your results.

Frequently Asked Questions About Sponsored Brands Amazon Ads

1. Who is eligible to use sponsored brands amazon ads?
To use Sponsored Brands, you must be a professional seller, vendor, or agency enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry. This requires having a registered and active trademark for your brand.

2. How long does it take for a Sponsored Brands ad to be approved?
After you submit your campaign, Amazon’s moderation team reviews your creative elements (logo, headline, image/video). This review process typically takes up to 72 hours, but is often much faster.

3. What is a good ACOS for a Sponsored Brands campaign?
A “good” ACOS depends entirely on your product’s profit margins and your campaign goals. A common target is to have an ACOS at or below your break even point. However, for brand building or new product launches, you might accept a higher ACOS as an investment in growth.

4. Can I use a video in my sponsored brands amazon ads?
Yes. The Sponsored Brands Video format allows you to feature a 6 to 45 second auto playing video in search results. This is a highly engaging format that often leads to higher click through rates than static image ads.

5. Should I link my ad to my Brand Store or a product page?
It depends on your goal. Linking to your Brand Store is great for brand discovery and encouraging shoppers to browse your full catalog. Linking directly to a product page often leads to a higher immediate conversion rate because it reduces the number of clicks to purchase. It’s best to test both destinations to see what works for your campaigns.

6. How many keywords should I use in a campaign?
Amazon suggests starting with at least 25 relevant keywords using a mix of broad, phrase, and exact match types to ensure you have enough reach. You can then use keyword harvesting techniques to refine and expand this list over time.

7. Can I target my competitors’ products?
Yes, with product targeting, you can choose to display your Sponsored Brands ad on your competitors’ product detail pages. This can be an effective strategy to sway customers who are actively considering a rival brand.

8. What’s the difference between keyword targeting and product targeting?
Keyword targeting shows your ad when a shopper types in a specific search query. Product targeting shows your ad on the detail pages of specific products or within entire categories, regardless of what the shopper searched for.