Amazon has become one of the most powerful advertising platforms for brands selling online. Whether you are just starting out or looking to grow across borders, understanding how Amazon’s ad formats work is essential for making smart decisions about your marketing budget. This article breaks down each ad type, when to use it, and how it fits into a broader e-commerce growth strategy.
What is Amazon advertising and how does it work?
Amazon advertising is a pay-per-click (PPC) system that allows sellers and brands to promote their products directly within the Amazon marketplace. Ads appear in search results, on product pages, and across Amazon-owned properties. You only pay when a shopper clicks your ad, and campaigns are managed through Amazon’s Ads console or via third-party tools.
The system works by targeting keywords, product categories, or specific audiences. When a shopper searches for a relevant term, Amazon’s algorithm determines which ads to show based on bid amount, relevance, and account performance history. For brands operating under Amazon FBA, advertising is especially powerful because sponsored listings can trigger fast delivery badges, which tend to increase click-through and conversion rates significantly.
Amazon advertising is not just about visibility. It directly influences your organic ranking too. Strong ad performance signals to Amazon’s algorithm that your product is relevant and converting well, which can boost your organic position over time.
What are the main types of ads on Amazon?
Amazon offers three core ad formats available to most sellers and vendors: Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display. Each serves a different purpose in the customer journey, from initial discovery to the final purchase decision.
- Sponsored Products: Promote individual product listings in search results and on product detail pages
- Sponsored Brands: Showcase your brand logo, a custom headline, and multiple products at the top of search results
- Sponsored Display: Retarget shoppers on and off Amazon based on browsing and purchase behaviour
There is also a fourth format called Sponsored Brand Video, which falls under the Sponsored Brands umbrella but uses autoplay video to capture attention in search results. For larger advertisers, Amazon DSP (Demand-Side Platform) offers programmatic display and video advertising with advanced audience targeting, but this is typically reserved for brands with substantial ad budgets.
What are Sponsored Products ads and when should you use them?
Sponsored Products ads are the most widely used Amazon ad format. They promote individual product listings and appear in search results and on product detail pages. They look nearly identical to organic listings, which makes them highly effective for driving purchase intent at the moment a shopper is actively searching.
You should use Sponsored Products when:
- You are launching a new product and need initial visibility and sales velocity
- You want to defend your position against competitors targeting your brand keywords
- You are running Amazon FBA and want to capitalise on Prime eligibility in your ad results
- You need a cost-effective way to test which keywords convert best before scaling
Sponsored Products work with both automatic and manual targeting. Automatic campaigns let Amazon decide which searches to match your product to, which is useful for discovering new keyword opportunities. Manual campaigns give you full control over which keywords and bids you manage. Most experienced advertisers run both simultaneously, using automatic campaigns to mine new terms and manual campaigns to scale what works.
What’s the difference between Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products?
The key difference is intent and placement. Sponsored Products promote a single product to shoppers ready to buy, while Sponsored Brands promote your brand identity and a selection of products to shoppers who may still be deciding. Sponsored Brands appear at the top of search results as a banner with your logo, a custom headline, and up to three products.
Here is how they compare side by side:
- Sponsored Products: Single product focus, blends into organic results, best for conversion
- Sponsored Brands: Multi-product or brand store focus, prominent banner placement, best for awareness and consideration
Sponsored Brands also allow you to link to a custom landing page or your Amazon Brand Store, giving you more control over the shopping experience after the click. This makes them particularly valuable for brands that want to tell a story, upsell related products, or build long-term customer loyalty rather than just capturing a single transaction.
For brands serious about growth, running both formats together creates a full-funnel presence. Sponsored Brands capture attention at the top of the page, while Sponsored Products close the sale further down in the results.
How does Sponsored Display advertising work on Amazon?
Sponsored Display ads work by targeting audiences based on their behaviour rather than just keyword searches. They can appear on Amazon product pages, in customer review sections, and even off Amazon on third-party websites and apps. The targeting is based on what shoppers have viewed, searched for, or purchased previously.
There are two primary targeting approaches within Sponsored Display:
- Audience targeting: Reaches shoppers who have viewed your product or similar products, allowing you to retarget warm audiences who did not convert
- Contextual targeting: Places your ads on relevant product detail pages, targeting shoppers browsing similar or complementary items
Sponsored Display is particularly effective for reducing cart abandonment and staying visible throughout a longer purchase decision cycle. If a shopper views your product but does not buy, a Sponsored Display ad can bring them back days later. For Amazon FBA sellers with strong inventory availability, this format ensures you remain in front of interested buyers even when they leave the platform.
Which Amazon ad type is best for scaling a brand internationally?
For international brand scaling, Sponsored Brands combined with Sponsored Products delivers the strongest results. Sponsored Brands build recognition in new markets where shoppers do not yet know your name, while Sponsored Products capture demand from shoppers actively searching for what you sell. Together, they cover both awareness and conversion across different Amazon marketplaces in Europe and beyond.
When expanding internationally, consider these priorities:
- Localise your keyword strategy for each marketplace. Search behaviour in Germany differs from the UK or France, even for the same product category
- Use Sponsored Brands to introduce your brand identity in markets where you have no organic ranking yet
- Lean on Sponsored Products with automatic targeting initially to discover how local shoppers search for your products
- Layer Sponsored Display retargeting once you have sufficient traffic to re-engage warm audiences
Amazon FBA plays a critical role in international scaling because it gives your listings local fulfilment, which is a strong conversion signal in every market. Without fast, reliable delivery, even well-optimised ads will underperform. The combination of a localised advertising strategy and FBA logistics is what separates brands that grow sustainably in new markets from those that struggle to convert traffic.
How Distrilink helps you scale with Amazon advertising
At Distrilink, we help brands grow quickly and in a controlled way on Amazon and other major online marketplaces. Instead of building your own marketplace team, IT infrastructure, or logistics operation from scratch, you can activate and scale immediately through us. We represent more than 25 brands and are connected to all major European marketplaces.
Our approach covers everything you need to succeed with Amazon advertising and beyond:
- Full campaign management: From Sponsored Products to Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display, we manage your entire Amazon advertising strategy
- Data-driven optimisation: We use our own platform to manage and optimise products centrally across all channels, giving you clear insight into performance
- End-to-end fulfilment: Our in-house warehouse handles logistics so your listings benefit from fast delivery, which directly supports ad performance
- International activation: We connect your brand to European marketplaces without the operational complexity of doing it yourself
- Customer service included: We take on the full operational execution, from activation and optimisation to logistics and customer care
Brands that work with us can expand their e-commerce presence without adding complexity. You supply the products and information, and we handle the rest with speed, control, and full transparency into your results. Ready to scale on Amazon? Get in touch with us and find out how we can activate your brand on the right marketplaces.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much budget do I need to get started with Amazon advertising?
There is no minimum budget required to run Amazon ads, but most experienced sellers recommend starting with at least €10–€20 per day per campaign to gather meaningful data. For new product launches, a higher initial budget helps build sales velocity faster, which also benefits your organic ranking. Start with Sponsored Products using automatic targeting to keep costs manageable while you learn which keywords and placements convert best for your product.
How long does it take to see results from Amazon ad campaigns?
Sponsored Products can start driving clicks and sales within hours of going live, but meaningful performance data typically takes 2–4 weeks to accumulate. This is the minimum timeframe needed to identify which keywords, bids, and targeting strategies are working before making significant optimisation decisions. Patience is key — making changes too early based on limited data is one of the most common mistakes new advertisers make.
What is ACoS and how do I know if my campaigns are profitable?
ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale) is the percentage of ad-attributed revenue spent on advertising — calculated by dividing your ad spend by your ad revenue and multiplying by 100. To know if your campaigns are profitable, compare your ACoS to your break-even ACoS, which is based on your product margin. If your product margin is 35%, any ACoS below that means your ads are contributing to profit, while anything above means you are spending more on ads than you are earning from those sales.
What are the most common Amazon advertising mistakes to avoid?
The most common mistakes include running only automatic campaigns without transitioning winning keywords into manual campaigns, setting bids and forgetting them without regular optimisation, and neglecting negative keywords — which causes your ads to show for irrelevant searches and waste budget. Another frequent error is advertising products with poor listings, since even the best ad strategy cannot compensate for low-quality images, weak titles, or missing product information that fails to convert clicks into sales.
Do I need Brand Registry to run all Amazon ad types?
No, Brand Registry is not required for Sponsored Products — any seller with an active product listing can run them. However, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Brand Video, and access to Amazon Brand Store all require Amazon Brand Registry enrollment. If you are serious about building long-term brand equity on Amazon and want access to the full suite of ad formats, enrolling in Brand Registry is a worthwhile early step that also unlocks additional brand protection tools.
Can I run Amazon ads in multiple European countries at the same time?
Yes, Amazon allows you to run campaigns across multiple European marketplaces such as Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and the UK, but each marketplace requires its own separate campaign setup and localised keyword research. Simply translating your existing campaigns is not enough — search behaviour, competitor landscape, and consumer preferences vary significantly by country. Working with a partner who understands each local marketplace, like an experienced e-commerce distributor, can significantly reduce the time and cost of getting international campaigns right from the start.
How does Amazon advertising interact with organic search rankings?
Amazon advertising and organic ranking are closely linked through a metric called sales velocity — the rate at which your product sells. When your ads drive consistent clicks and conversions, Amazon's A9 algorithm interprets this as a signal that your product is relevant and popular, which can improve your organic position over time. This means a well-managed ad campaign does not just deliver immediate sales; it also builds long-term organic visibility, making your advertising investment compound in value the longer you run it.
