Amazon is one of the few places where people show up ready to buy, which makes it one of the most efficient places to advertise. It’s also an easy place to waste money, because the ad types look similar from the outside and do quite different jobs.
Here’s what each one does, where it shows up, and how to decide which to start with.
Why it matters: shoppers on Amazon are already searching for products, so your ads compete at the moment someone is deciding what to buy. Pick the wrong type and you’re paying for the wrong kind of attention.
The four types at a glance
Amazon’s self-serve advertising comes in four types. The first three have been around for years. Sponsored TV is the newest.
| Ad type | Where it shows up | Best for | You pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sponsored Products | Search results and product pages | Selling individual products | Per click |
| Sponsored Brands | Top of search and within results | Brand recognition and your wider range | Mostly per click |
| Sponsored Display | On Amazon and on other sites and apps | Retargeting and reaching new audiences | Per click or per thousand views |
| Sponsored TV | Streaming TV | Awareness and creating demand | Per thousand views |
Sponsored Products: sell the item in front of the shopper
Sponsored Products promote individual listings. They appear in search results and on product detail pages, and they look almost exactly like the organic listings around them, which is a big part of why they work. You pay only when someone clicks.
You can let Amazon decide where they show with automatic targeting, or choose the keywords and products yourself with manual targeting. Most accounts use both. Automatic campaigns find the search terms that convert, and manual campaigns put more budget behind the ones that have proven themselves.
Best for: almost every seller, and especially newer products that need to be seen next to bigger competitors.
Sponsored Brands: put your brand at the top of the search
Sponsored Brands show your logo, a custom headline, and several products together, or a short video, in prominent spots that include the top of search results. A click can take shoppers to a product page or to your Amazon Store.
They need a brand enrolled in Amazon’s Brand Registry, and they do their best work for companies with a range of related products to show.
Best for: building recognition and steering shoppers toward your range rather than a single item.
Sponsored Display: follow shoppers beyond the search
Sponsored Display reaches people based on what they’ve browsed and bought, both on Amazon and on other websites and apps. It’s mostly used to bring back shoppers who looked at a product and didn’t buy, or to reach people who have been viewing similar products.
Best for: retargeting, and reaching new audiences outside Amazon’s search results.
Sponsored TV: your ads on streaming TV
Sponsored TV puts video ads on Amazon’s streaming TV inventory, without the large minimum budgets TV advertising has traditionally needed. It’s an awareness channel rather than a direct-sales one, so judge it on reach and on whether more people start searching for your brand, not on immediate orders.
Best for: brands that already have Sponsored Products working and want to create demand, not just capture it.
How to choose
- You want sales now: start with Sponsored Products.
- You want shoppers to recognize and choose your brand: add Sponsored Brands.
- You’re losing shoppers who looked and left: use Sponsored Display to bring them back.
- You want more people searching for you in the first place: test Sponsored TV once the basics are working.
Most brands end up using more than one, in roughly that order. Sponsored Products is the foundation, because it’s closest to the sale and it produces the search-term data the other types benefit from.
What ads can’t fix
Ads send shoppers to your product page. They can’t make it convert. If the listing has weak images, thin copy, few reviews, or an uncompetitive price, advertising just brings more people to a page that gives them a reason to leave. Get the listing right first and every ad type works harder.
It also pays to watch your ad spend as a share of total sales, not only the return on each campaign. Ads that take credit for sales you’d have made anyway look efficient in a report without growing the business.
Ads bring shoppers to your listing. Only the listing can close the sale.
The bottom line: start with Sponsored Products, add the other types as each one has a clear job to do, and fix the listing before you scale the spend. If you’d like help deciding where your budget should go, we’re happy to take a look.