Amazon Advertising has ad types that suit different marketing objectives.
Sponsored Product Ads are well suited for reaching prospective customers with high purchase intent at the bottom of the marketing funnel, in the consideration and purchase stages. Advertisers use Sponsored Ads to make products viewable to high-intent customers to help drive sales campaigns..
Sponsored Brands Ads work well for top of the funnel advertising. Sponsored Brands feature products along with their logo and a custom headline to generate brand awareness.
Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands Explained
These advertising types vary in their functionality and how they appear to prospective customers within the Amazon marketplace.
Sponsored Products
- Advertises individual products
- The product’s detail page is the ad’s landing page
- Placements (where ads appear) are within product detail pages and search results
Sponsored Brands
- Advertises a collection of products
- Advert includes a custom headline and logo or image
- The landing page of a product featured is the product detail page
- The landing page of the headline, image or logo is brand’s Store or page featuring a collection of products
- Placements (where ads appear) are at the top, within, and at the bottom of search results
- A seller must be a brand owner that has registered the brand to use Sponsored Brands,
Sponsored Ads with mixed campaign objectives
Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands can be used together to drive sales, increase discoverability for a new product, and continue to capture engaged customers from display advertising campaigns
Drive Sales Goal
An advertisers that wants to focus on driving sales can use:
- Sponsored Products to advertise best-selling products
- Sponsored Brands to advertise the entire product suite
Launch New Products Goal
An advertisers that wants to focus on new line of products can use:
- Sponsored Brands for promoting products to prospects using the store or a product listing page to generate brand awareness.
- Sponsored Products for advertising products in search results and related product detail pages to increase discoverability.
Increase Reach Goal
When a company’s goal is to increase reach (maximum amount of Amazon users):
- Sponsored Brands to place their logo and message with the same products they are advertising in display campaigns to help drive reach and sales
- Sponsored Products to help ensure they capture the audience they are focusing on with their display campaigns.
The Auction Process of Sponsored Ads
Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands both use self-serving auction-based buying model. When a customer searches for items on Amazon, an auction is used to determine which sponsored ad will display.
Amazon uses an algorithm to determine the most relevant ads along with the highest CPC bid to show ads. The most relevant ad with the highest CPC bid wins the auction. The winner of the auction will pay an amount slightly higher than the second highest CPC bid if their ad is clicked. (Also known as a second-price auction).
Summary
The best starting points for Amazon Ads is often Product Ads for direct response advertising with ROAS goals. As you get more experience and want to increase reach, try running Brand Ads in conjunction with Product Ads.
