Amazon Sponsored Brand Ad: The Know-All Guide

If you aren’t using Sponsored Brand ads yet, you’re behind. Being a brand-centric form of advertising, it helps acquire new-to-brand shoppers, improves awareness, and increases consideration. Besides, they stretch across the top of the search result page, making them more noticeable than any other PPC ads.

Let’s dive deeper to know what are Sponsored Brand ads, how they work, general FAQs, and the best practices to optimize their performance.

What are Sponsored Brand ads?

Sponsored Brand Ads are banner ads that showcase your logo, custom message, and up to 3 products to improve brand recall and awareness.

Sponsored Brand ads appear right in the middle of the Amazon advertising funnel and appeal to shoppers who are not yet ready to buy the product but are still browsing to find a suitable product. Sponsored Brand ads make your products more discoverable and improve brand recall. This will help keep your brand and products on the top of the minds of customers when they go farther down the funnel.

How do Sponsored Brands Ads work?

Similar to Sponsored Product ads, Sponsored Brand ads are keyword-driven, pay-per-click ads. A shopper enters a keyword/search term in the search bar and if that keyword matches the keywords in your campaign, your ad appears among the results. Just like any Amazon sponsored ads, you can optimize the performance of the campaign by adding keywords and negative keywords, tweaking bids, and more.

Sponsored Brand ads offer a unique reporting tool called New-to-Brand metrics that allows advertisers to measure sales generated from first-time customers of your brand.

The main ad formats available in Sponsored Brand ads are:

#1: Product collection ads

Product collection ads let you advertise any three products from the catalog. You can club any two top-selling ASINs with one low-selling ASIN to improve traffic on the latter. Just like Sponsored Product ads, you can opt for keyword and product targeting. You can divert the clicks on your branded Amazon storefront or on a custom landing page where only your products and your products will be displayed. When customers click on your logo, they’re taken to a store page or custom landing page and when they click on a product in the ad, they’re taken to the product page. Your ads can be customized by adding a brand logo and an attractive tagline.

Below is an example of a product collection ad:

#2: Store Spotlight ads

This ad format allows you to drive traffic on your Amazon seller storefront page instead of the product detail page. There will be no ads placed on your storefront, so there are no other distractions. To be eligible for this ad format, you must have a storefront with at least three sub-pages, and within each sub-page, you must have at least a unique product. This ad format is highly valuable for brands with a full-fledged storefront as instead of advertising three products; they can advertise three entire store pages!

Below is an example of a store spotlight ad:

#3: Sponsored brands videos

This ad format is truly a game-changer. It is a relatively new ad format that incorporates video ads in between search result pages. No wonder why Sponsored Brand video ads are known to have scroll-stopping powers. Once clicked, your shoppers will be sent directly to the product page instead of a custom landing page or storefront.

Below is an example of a Sponsored Brand Video ad:

Learn more about Sponsored Brand Video ads here: Optimize your sponsored brand video ads in 6 simple steps.

Sponsored Brand Ads FAQs

Q1: What are the eligibility criteria?

Sponsored Brand ads are available for professional sellers with Brand Registry, vendors, book vendors, and agencies.

Q2: Where will the ads appear?

Your ads will be displayed on top of, alongside, or within shopping results. These ads appear on both mobile and desktop.

Q3: Where will the shoppers land once they click on the ad?

That depends on the ad format you are using. However, your shoppers can be directed to a custom landing page, product detail page, or storefront.

Q4: What is the cost?

SB ads are pay-per-click ads, so you pay only for the clicks and not impressions. The total cost depends on your product, the category you are selling in, keywords, and the optimization techniques you are using. For best results, consider hiring an Amazon PPC optimization agency.

Q5: What are the countries where Sponsored Brand Ads are available?

North America

• USA

• Canada

• Mexico

South America

• Brazil

Europe

• Germany

• Spain

• France

• Italy

• UK

• Dutch

Middle East

• Saudi Arabia

• UAE

Asia Pacific

• Australia

• India

• Japan

The history of Sponsored Brand Ads

There was a time when Sponsored Brand Ads were known as Headline Search ads. Initially, they were reserved for sellers operating through Vendor Central and Vendor Express or the sellers registering themselves as vendors just to take advantage of the vendor privileges (yes! Vendor privileges were a thing). In August 2017, it was extended to third-party sellers with a brand registry. Around that time, Amazon also introduced two new bidding options (automatic & manual bidding) and new placements (left side and bottom of the SERPs). In the early 2020s, Amazon released a new feature that allows advertisers to create video ads that appear amidst the search result page. To date, Amazon is continually making changes to help advertisers run profitable and effective campaigns. You can catch up on all the changes in our Monthly Updates blog or on our updates page.

Updates in 2018:

• Additional placements were offered alongside the bottom and sides of the search results page

Updates in 2019:

• Dynamic ASIN optimization that displays ASINs based on what Amazon predicts

• Inclusion of negative keywords, category, and ASIN targeting

Updates in 2020:

• Additional placements to include product detail pages

• Brands can now create multi-language content

How to create a Sponsored Brand ad campaign?

Setting up your Sponsored Brand ad campaigns is straightforward. You don’t need a large budget to start, but you would need a comprehensive keyword list derived from reputed keyword tools.

Step 1: Go to the advertising tab > Campaign manager

Step 2: Click on Sponsored Brand ads under Choose your campaign type

Step 3: Choose your ad format

Step 4: Enter your campaign name, daily budget, and the keywords

Step 5: Submit your ad for review. It will be reviewed within 72 hours

Best practices for Sponsored Brand ads

1. Determine your goal before you start. If your goal is brand awareness, you should look at the impressions, if your goal is sales, you should care about your ACOS and conversions and if your goal is acquiring new customers, you can leverage New-to-brand metrics

2. Segment branded and non-branded keywords as branded keywords tend to have high intended and low ACOS

3. Add high-converting keywords from your manual and automatic campaigns

4. Do not make your campaigns before you have a comprehensive keyword list ready with you. You can also harvest additional keywords from auto campaigns. Hiring our keyword research service is the best way to ensure a quality keyword list for your campaign

5. A/B tests different combinations to determine what works best. You can test and adjust the following metrics: headline, image, ASIN selection, and store vs. custom landing page

6. Give more priority to the top of the search placements

7. For your header image, you can either display your brand logo or another product image and see which one works better

8. Your ad copy should reflect the customer’s search intent or should include a USP of your brand or products advertised

Final thoughts

Sponsored Brand ads are impactful, enticing, and prominent. They allow advertisers to curate a branded shopping experience while also diverting them away from distractions. Any Sponsored ad type you use on Amazon will direct shoppers to the detail page where competitors’ ads are littered all over the page. That’s not the case with Sponsored Brand ads. Your shoppers are diverted to a custom landing page where there is no noise. Besides, this ad type is visual, which is one of the most powerful forms of advertising.

That said, if you have a brand registry, you should go for it without any second thoughts. And if you don’t have a brand registry yet, don’t just sit there. Get up, get your brand registered, create a Sponsored Brand campaign, build a brand, and make yourself heard because, in the end, this investment will pay for itself.

Before you start, make sure you have a powerful advertising strategy in your arsenal. Don’t worry if you don’t have it. Our Amazon consultants will be more than happy to help!