The Most Misunderstood Ad Type on Amazon
Sponsored Brands are the most expensive ad type on Amazon. They're also the most underutilized, under-optimized, and misunderstood.
We've audited hundreds of Amazon advertising accounts. In nearly every one, the Sponsored Brands campaigns are either bleeding money with terrible creatives, or barely spending because the bids have been optimized toward zero after months of poor performance. Both problems have the same root cause: nobody taught these sellers how to actually use Sponsored Brands.
That changes today.
This guide distills years of testing across millions in managed ad spend into a single resource. We'll cover everything from the structural foundations that make testing possible, to the copywriting psychology that turns a click into a sale, to the video strategies that consistently outperform static ads.
Sponsored Brands aren't just another ad type. They're your brand's storefront billboard on the most competitive retail platform in the world. Treat them accordingly.
If you've been phoning in your Sponsored Brands (generic headlines, recycled images, dumped-in keywords) you're not just wasting money. You're leaving premium placements on the table for competitors who are willing to put in the work on their creatives and targeting.
Let's fix that.
Sponsored Brand Formats & Capabilities
The Three Creative Formats
Amazon has invested heavily in Sponsored Brands over the last few years, adding formats, targeting options, and features that have made this ad type remarkably robust (and, admittedly, a bit complicated). Let's break down what's available.
Product Collection is the workhorse. It's the tried-and-true format that lets you feature a custom lifestyle image alongside three products, complete with star ratings, review counts, and Prime badges. Those product details are what make this format feel native to the shopping experience. The majority of your budget should live here.
Video is the disruptor. Click-through rates on well-produced video ads consistently run 2-3× higher than static ads. Amazon has also introduced vertical video formats specifically for mobile, and mobile is where most shopping happens. The challenge: CPCs are brutally competitive, and a bad video will burn through budget faster than any other format.
Store Spotlight has its place, but in our testing, it consistently underperforms Product Collection. The three store page links don't show product-level details like reviews and ratings, which makes it feel less relevant to the shopper's immediate intent. Use it for brand-building, not for conversion-focused campaigns.
If you can only pick one format for the rest of your life, pick Product Collection. It combines the best of brand storytelling (lifestyle image, headline) with the conversion signals shoppers need (reviews, ratings, Prime badge). Video is powerful but the CPCs can price you out. Product Collection is where we see the most consistent performance at manageable costs.
The primary placement (and the most valuable) is top of search. That big headline banner right above all the organic and Sponsored Product results. This is the endcap of the aisle. It's the first thing shoppers see, and it's where brand impressions are made.
But Sponsored Brands also appear in other locations:
- Rest of search: appearing within search results beyond the top-of-search banner
- Product detail pages: including within the customer reviews section
- Homepage: Amazon has started showing Sponsored Brands on the homepage, though volume is still minimal and targeting is opaque
The critical insight: non-top-of-search placements compress your creative. That beautiful lifestyle image and catchy headline? They get reduced to a tiny logo and brand name at the bottom of the page. This is why top of search matters so much for this ad type. It's the only placement that actually displays your full creative as intended.
For video: To win the top-of-search video placement, you must select "Amazon Store" as the landing page when creating the campaign. If you choose "Product Detail Page," the video ad will appear in the in-search placement further down the page. You can run both simultaneously to saturate the SERP with your video content.
Targeting: Same Foundation, Critical Differences
Sponsored Brands targeting mirrors Sponsored Products in most ways (keyword targeting, ASIN/product targeting, broad/phrase/exact match types). But there are two critical differences you need to understand.
Sponsored Brands broad match behaves differently from Sponsored Products broad match. It's much broader, opening up to synonyms, translations, and loosely related terms. If your broad match keyword is "red colored pens," Amazon might match it to "blue writing utensils."
The fix: modified broad match. Add a + sign before each word: +red +colored +pens. This tells Amazon that each individual word must appear in the search term, though they can appear in any order.
We do not use standard broad match for Sponsored Brands. Period. The match type is too wide, the CPCs are too expensive, and the waste is enormous. Always use modified broad match (with plus signs) or stick to phrase and exact match.
Amazon now allows up to 10 different creatives within Sponsored Brands campaigns. The platform is actively encouraging advertisers to test multiple assets, and you'll even see a "Creative strength" indicator in the console that flags your ad as "Incomplete" if you haven't added enough images or headline variations.
This is a major shift. Amazon clearly wants advertisers doing more creative testing, and the expanded capacity gives you the room to experiment at scale. That said, ad groups with multiple creatives still have limitations when it comes to data clarity, which is why the single creative ad group structure (covered in Part 2) remains valuable for isolating what's actually working.
Amazon offers a targeting option called "Keywords related to your brand." Avoid it completely.
We tested this on two different accounts and the results were catastrophic. Conversion rates were the worst we'd ever seen and ACOS hit 500%. They're essentially auto campaigns for Sponsored Brands, which are far too costly for that kind of exploratory approach. You're going to do a much better job with modified broad match research where you're guaranteeing a minimum level of relevancy.
Campaign Structure That Wins
The Single Creative Ad Group (SCAG) Structure
This is the foundational structural decision that makes everything else in this guide possible. Without it, you can't test properly. Without proper testing, you're guessing. And guessing with $5-10 CPCs gets very expensive, very fast.
Amazon is actively pushing advertisers to upload multiple creatives per ad group, and their "Creative strength" meter will flag your ads as incomplete if you don't. We understand why Amazon wants this (more assets means more data for their optimization algorithms), but if your primary goal is clean, actionable testing data, the single creative ad group structure still gives you the clearest picture of what's actually driving performance. Use Amazon's multi-creative capacity to run more tests, but keep each test isolated so you know exactly what changed.
The logic is identical to why we use single product ad groups in Sponsored Products: we need to isolate variables. With Sponsored Brands, the variables aren't products, they're creatives. Each creative comprises a headline, a lifestyle image, and a product selection. To know which element is driving performance, you need to test them independently.
Why Single Creative Ad Groups Matter
When you put multiple creatives in the same ad group, Amazon picks a favorite almost immediately. It doesn't A/B test them evenly. It doesn't rotate them fairly. It assigns nearly all impressions to one creative, often not even the best-performing one. You're left with no data on the others and no ability to properly compare.
By separating each creative into its own ad group, you gain:
- Even impression distribution: Amazon treats each ad group as a separate competitor for the same keyword
- Keyword-to-creative correlation: you can see exactly which keywords drive sales for which creative
- Manual control: pause underperformers, boost winners, force testing of under-served creatives
- Clean data: isolate whether performance changes are driven by keywords or creative quality
Testing Variables: Change One Thing at a Time
The three modifiable variables in a Sponsored Brand creative:
- Headline (including call-to-action)
- Featured image (lifestyle image or video)
- ASIN selection (which 3 products you feature)
To run a valid A/B test, change only one variable between ad groups. If Creative A uses "Discover" as the CTA with a close-up image and Creative B uses "Shop" with a wide-angle image, and B wins, you don't know if it was the CTA or the image. Keep the image identical, change only the CTA, and now you have a clean test.
Most sellers and agencies are not actively testing their Sponsored Brand creatives. This alone gives you a massive competitive edge. As CPCs continue to climb, the sellers winning top-of-search placements at reasonable costs are the ones who've tested and optimized their creatives until the click-through rates and conversion rates earn them a better ad quality score from Amazon, resulting in lower CPCs and more impressions.
Include the key variables in your ad group name so you can identify what you're testing at a glance:
"Discover" | Close-up | B0xxx B0yyy B0zzz
"Shop Now" | Close-up | B0xxx B0yyy B0zzz
"Discover" | Wide-angle | B0xxx B0yyy B0zzz
This naming convention instantly tells you: which CTA is being tested, which image is being used, and which ASINs are featured. When you're managing dozens of ad groups across multiple keyword themes, this clarity is invaluable.
Sponsored Brands Reporting That Shows What's Actually Working
AdLabs surfaces Sponsored Brands performance by keyword, placement, and creative — so you know exactly which headline, image, and targeting combination is driving clicks and sales. No more guessing which ad group to scale.
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Headlines & Copywriting Tactics
Your Headline Is Your Responsibility
As a PPC manager, you frequently don't control the lifestyle images (you work with the assets your brand provides). What you do control is the headline. If you write a bad headline and the ad performs badly, that's on you.
The good news: headline optimization is one of the highest-leverage changes you can make. We've seen headline changes alone drive 30-50% improvements in click-through rates and meaningful CPC reductions.
Two Approaches: Creative vs. Keyword-Dense
You have two broad approaches to headline writing:
The Single Keyword Headline Strategy
This is one of the highest-performing tactics we've deployed. The concept originates from Google Ads (SKAGs, single keyword ad groups), but it translates beautifully to Sponsored Brands.
The idea is simple: tailor your headline to match the exact search term the customer typed. If someone searches "fasting electrolytes," they should see a headline that says "Don't Break Your Fast — Zero Calorie Electrolytes." If they search "hangover hydration packets," they see "Last Night Was a Mistake. Hydrate Next Time."
There's something psychologically satisfying when a customer types in "red colored pens" and the headline says "Shop the Best Red Colored Pens." They recognize instantly: this is exactly what I was looking for. We've seen both click-through rates and conversion rates increase significantly with this approach.
We call these single keyword theme campaigns, not just single keyword campaigns, because you're not targeting one exact match keyword. You're targeting a keyword theme (phrase match, modified broad match) and crafting everything (headline, lifestyle image, landing page) around that theme.
Why Keyword-Dense Headlines Outperform
Every time we've tested keyword-dense headlines against generic ones, the keyword-dense versions win. It could be one of two reasons, or both:
- Amazon may be indexing headlines: giving your ad a higher quality/relevancy score when the headline matches the search query
- Customer psychology: when you use the same words the customer typed, you create an immediate sense of relevancy and trust
Either way, the result is the same: better click-through rates, better conversion rates, and often lower CPCs as Amazon recognizes your ad as high quality.
Don't write "iPhone Cases from PhonePros." Write "Discover iPhone Cases from PhonePros." That action verb (discover, explore, shop, elevate) tells the shopper what to do next. In every test we've run, headlines with CTAs outperform headlines without them. Amazon themselves use "Discover" across their marketing materials, and it consistently performs well for us too.
Conversion copywriters have consistently found that headlines pulled from customer review language outperform headlines written from scratch, even by experienced writers. The reason is simple: customers use language that resonates because it comes from genuine experience with the product, with all the passion, specificity, and emotional honesty that entails.
The lesson: your customers write better copy than you do. They use language that resonates because it comes from genuine experience with the product, with all the passion, the specificity, the emotional honesty.
Tactical application: Go through your product reviews (and competitor reviews). Find phrases that capture the product's value in the customer's own words. Use those phrases as headline inspiration. If a review says "these razors are so sharp I don't need to put anything on my face first," your headline writes itself: "So Sharp You Can Skip the Shaving Cream."
We used this technique for a men's grooming product. We pulled funny, specific phrases from reviews and worked them into our Sponsored Brand headlines. Click-through rates went through the roof.
Take the single keyword theme approach one step further: create dedicated store sub-pages as landing pages for each keyword theme.
When someone clicks your "Head Shavers for Bald Men" headline, they should land on a store sub-page where everything (imagery, messaging, product selection) is tailored to that exact search intent. Not your generic store homepage. A purpose-built page that makes them feel like they've landed in exactly the right place.
You can hide these sub-pages from your main store navigation so they don't clutter the browsing experience. They exist solely as Sponsored Brand landing pages.
We deployed this for a household appliance brand where the same product could be used in multiple rooms. We created separate landing pages for kitchen, living room, and dining room, each with room-specific lifestyle images and messaging. The conversion rate improvements were dramatic because shoppers immediately saw the product in their context.
The Psychology of Branding
Why Branding Matters More Than Ever on Amazon
Every competitive category on Amazon is becoming commoditized. Ten, twenty, fifty sellers offering functionally identical products at similar price points with similar reviews. In that environment, the brands that win aren't the ones with the best product specs. They're the ones with the strongest brand identity.
Think about it: water is the most commoditized product on earth. And yet Liquid Death built a multi-billion-dollar brand selling water, by creating a brand identity so distinct and polarizing that it carved out an entirely new market segment. Their tagline? "Murder Your Thirst." They feature melting skulls on their cans. They partnered with people known for stunts and punk rock aesthetics.
They didn't innovate on the product. They innovated on the positioning.
Know Your Customer Before You Write a Single Word
The biggest mistake in Sponsored Brand creative is writing about how great your product is. Customers don't care about your product. They care about their problem.
You really have to understand the emotional driver behind why someone is going on Amazon and looking for a product like yours. Reflect that through every piece of your product page (the copy, the imagery). Make the end user the hero of your ad, not the product.
Where to research your customers:
- Customer reviews: the most honest feedback loop you have. How do they describe the product? What problem does it solve?
- Social media: TikTok, Reddit, Instagram. Lurk in the spaces where your target customers hang out. Note the language they use.
- Competitor reviews: what are customers complaining about? What do they wish existed? That's your differentiation.
- AI tools: ChatGPT and Claude can generate surprisingly thorough customer avatars when prompted correctly
Brands typically differentiate on one or two of these dimensions. You can't be everything, so pick your lane and commit:
- Price: Walmart's "everyday low prices." Difficult to defend for small brands.
- Beauty/Design: Apple. Products that look and feel premium.
- Technology/Innovation: A genuinely novel feature or approach.
- Quality: Built to last. Premium materials.
- Convenience: Easy to use, easy to buy, easy to maintain.
- Environmental Sustainability: Eco-friendly materials, carbon-neutral shipping.
- Community/Identity: Black Rifle Coffee Company's veteran community. Liquid Death's punk culture.
The powerful insight: if you lean heavily into one or two differentiators, customers will forgive weaknesses in others. People pay premium prices for Apple because the design and brand prestige outweigh the cost. Sustainability-focused customers will accept a product that doesn't perform as well if it aligns with their values.
Your Sponsored Brand creative should reinforce your chosen differentiators in every element (headline, image, product selection, and landing page).
Lifestyle Images: The Eye-Direction Trick
Always use lifestyle images in your Sponsored Brand ads. We've tested extensively, and ads with lifestyle images consistently outperform those without them in click-through rate.
Here's a specific technique that works: the direction the subject in your image is looking determines where the shopper looks. Eye-tracking studies have shown that when a model in an ad looks directly at the camera, shoppers look at the model. When the model looks at the product or headline, shoppers follow the model's gaze to the product or headline.
Use lifestyle images where the subject is looking toward your featured products or headline text. This naturally draws the shopper's eye to the elements you want them to engage with, increasing the likelihood they'll click through.
Video Ads That Actually Convert
The State of Video on Amazon
Here's the uncomfortable truth about Amazon video ads: most of them are terrible. Recycled product images in a Ken Burns slideshow. Stock footage with generic music. PowerPoint-style transitions showing bullet points from the listing. They're not videos, they're animated brochures.
Which means: the bar is incredibly low. Even modest improvements to your video strategy can produce outsized results.
What Makes a Good Video Ad
A good video isn't defined by production quality. It's defined by performance. A shaky iPhone video that converts is better than a $50,000 cinematic masterpiece that nobody clicks on.
One of the most common mistakes is making the product the hero of the video rather than making the end user the hero. If I'm shopping for an iPhone screen protector, I don't care how it installs. I care that it protects my screen. Show me a razor blade scraping across the protector with zero scratches, in the first two seconds. That's what hooks me.
The Video Funnel: Different Videos for Different Stages
Don't use your awareness video in a conversion placement, and vice versa
The biggest mistake we see: brands create one awareness-style video (beautiful, cinematic, brand-focused) and then dump it into every placement, including search, product pages, and Sponsored Brand video campaigns. That's like putting a Super Bowl commercial on a shelf tag in a grocery store.
- Sponsored Brand video (in search) = Consideration stage. Lead with value. Hook in 2 seconds. Show why your product solves their specific problem.
- Product page video = Conversion stage. Go deeper. Show the product in action. UGC-style testimonials work incredibly well here because shoppers are already on your page, they just need the final push.
- Off-Amazon video = Awareness stage. Brand storytelling, lifestyle content, entertainment value. This is where the cinematic production belongs.
Shoppers scrolling through Amazon search results will linger on your video for about two seconds before moving on. If you don't hook them in that window, you've lost them.
Bad hooks: Product shot with brand logo. Slow-motion unboxing. "Easy to install" message.
Good hooks: The dramatic result. The problem being solved visually. A bold text overlay that matches their search intent. "Replace Your Jumper Cables. No Help Needed."
The best-performing video ad we found during our analysis opened with "Replace Your Jumper Cables. No Help Needed," immediately addressing the core value proposition. No fancy production. Just a clear, compelling statement in the first frame.
Amazon has introduced vertical video formats specifically for mobile. They fill the screen naturally as shoppers scroll, creating a more immersive experience than cropped horizontal videos.
In our testing, vertical video ads have shown click-through rates 2-3× higher than traditional horizontal video ads. Part of this may be the mobile-native format; part may be the novelty factor as adoption is still low.
How to use vertical video without VCPM: When creating a Sponsored Brand video campaign, select "Amazon Store" as the landing page (not Product Detail Page). This unlocks the top-of-search placement. In the creative section, you'll see a dropdown to choose "Horizontal" or "Vertical" orientation. Select vertical to use your vertical video with CPC bidding, no need to accept the VCPM cost model.
We recommend running both orientations in separate ad groups to compare performance: one horizontal for desktop, one vertical for mobile.
Sponsored Brands video ads autoplay without sound. The majority of shoppers will watch your entire video on mute, so any spoken dialogue or voiceover is effectively invisible unless you add subtitles or on-screen text. Treat every video as if there's no audio at all: use text overlays to communicate your key selling points, calls to action, and product benefits visually. This one change alone can dramatically improve engagement and click-through rates.
Placement-Level Data for Sponsored Brands — Top of Search vs. Everything Else
AdLabs shows you CVR, ACOS, and spend broken down by placement so you know exactly how much to increase your top-of-search modifier and where to set your base bid. No more flying blind on placement adjustments.
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Placement Optimization
How Sponsored Brand Placements Differ from Sponsored Products
Sponsored Products let you increase bids for top of search, rest of search, and product pages. Sponsored Brands historically worked differently: your base bid was your top of search bid, and you could decrease bids for non-top-of-search placements using negative modifiers.
As of February 2, 2026, Amazon deprecated negative bid adjustment values for Sponsored Brands placement groups. You can no longer decrease bids for non-top-of-search placements. Going forward, Sponsored Brands placement modifiers work like Sponsored Products: you can only increase bids above your base for specific placements. This means your base bid now applies to your lowest-value placement, and you bid up from there for higher-performing placements like top of search.
This is a significant shift in how you think about Sponsored Brands bidding. Previously, you could set an aggressive base bid for top of search and dial it down for everything else. Now, you need to set your base bid at the level that makes sense for your weakest placement and use positive modifiers to push your bids higher where the data supports it.
Sponsored Brands: Base bid + increase for higher-value placements (negative modifiers no longer available)
Calculating Placement Adjustments
With negative modifiers gone, the approach flips. Set your base bid at the level appropriate for your lowest-performing placement, then use positive modifiers to increase bids for placements where performance justifies the extra spend.
For example: if your revenue per click on top of search is significantly higher than rest of search or product pages, increase your TOS modifier accordingly. Pull your placement reports and calculate the relative outperformance of top of search to determine how much to bid up.
By default, Amazon enables "automatically optimize bids for placements" on Sponsored Brands. This gives Amazon control over your placement adjustments. Turn this off immediately. In the bulk sheet, set the bid optimization strategy to "false" to enable manual control.
In the ad console, Amazon gives you controls for adjusting placement bids. With the deprecation of negative modifiers, you're now working with positive adjustments only, similar to how Sponsored Products placements work.
The bulk file (specifically the multi-ad-group format) still gives you the most granular control. You can set individual positive adjustments for each placement type separately rather than using a single slider.
This matters because the performance difference between rest of search and product pages can be dramatic. Setting different positive modifiers for each gives you tighter control over where your spend goes.
A good starting point: Set your base bid conservatively (aligned to your weakest placement), then increase top of search by 50-100% depending on your data. Refine based on actual performance. Most accounts we manage end up with significant TOS increases to stay competitive in the banner placement.
CPC vs CPM: Which Cost Type Wins
The Attribution Problem
Amazon offers two cost models for Sponsored Brands: CPC (cost per click) and vCPM (cost per thousand viewable impressions). On the surface, vCPM sounds attractive (you pay for eyeballs, not clicks). In practice, it's a minefield.
The core issue: vCPM uses view-based attribution. If a shopper scrolls past your ad (50% visible for 1 second), then later buys your product through an organic click, that sale gets credited to your vCPM campaign. You didn't earn that sale. Your ad happened to be on the screen while someone who was already going to buy your product was browsing.
When we first launched vCPM display campaigns, we saw campaigns spending $10 and reporting $1,000 in sales. It looked miraculous. In reality, it was just cannibalizing organic sales. The organic sales went down by almost exactly the amount that appeared in the vCPM campaigns. It was purely an attribution shift, no new revenue was generated.
Our Recommendation: CPC as Default
Because Amazon is inherently a bottom-of-funnel platform (shoppers are actively searching with purchase intent), CPC aligns better with what's actually happening. You pay when someone engages with your ad, and you can measure that engagement directly.
The exception: vertical video ads currently require vCPM. If you want access to this format, you'll need to accept the cost model. Monitor click-attributed sales separately (available in the Sponsored Brands search term report) to ensure you're not just cannibalizing organic revenue.
Even when using vCPM campaigns, you can still calculate your effective CPC by dividing total spend by clicks. Compare this to your standard CPC campaigns. If the effective CPC on vCPM is 5× higher than your regular CPC campaigns, the "cheaper impressions" aren't actually translating to cheaper traffic, they're just generating a lot of views that don't convert to clicks.
When creating any Sponsored Brand campaign, Amazon enables "Keep cost controls at or below a desired value" by default. This is catastrophic for optimization because it disables your ability to set individual keyword bids. Amazon takes control of all bid allocation.
Turn this off immediately. Every keyword converts at a different rate and deserves its own bid. Handing Amazon blanket control over your most expensive ad type is a recipe for wasted spend.
With Sponsored Brands, you can disable this after the fact (unlike Sponsored Display, where it's permanent). But don't let it run even for a day. The data it generates with automated bidding can skew your early performance signals.
See How Sponsored Brands Contribute to Your Total TACOS
Track TACOS, organic %, and total sales across all ad types in one dashboard. Know when your Sponsored Brands spend is driving incremental growth versus cannibalizing organic sales — the visibility most advertisers don't have.
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The Complete Sponsored Brands Strategy
Putting It All Together
Everything in this guide (structure, copywriting, branding, video, placements, cost types) converges into a single, integrated strategy. Here's how we deploy Sponsored Brands for maximum impact.
Step 1: Identify Your Keyword Themes
Use Product Opportunity Explorer and SQP data to identify high-volume keyword themes, not just individual keywords, but clusters of related terms. For an electrolyte brand, your themes might be: "fasting electrolytes," "hydration packets," "hangover hydration."
Each theme becomes its own campaign with tailored creative.
Step 2: Build Single Keyword Theme Campaigns
For each theme, create a Sponsored Brand campaign with:
- Keyword-dense headline matching the theme (including CTA)
- Lifestyle image reflecting the use case for that theme
- Relevant product selection from your catalog
- Negative keywords: negate your own brand, competitor brands, and keywords from other theme campaigns to prevent overlap
- Modified broad match + phrase + exact: covering all relevant variations within the theme
Step 3: Pair With Sponsored Products
When you're running Sponsored Brand ads on a keyword theme, always pair them with Sponsored Product campaigns on the same keywords. The multi-touch effect is powerful: a shopper searches "fasting electrolytes" and sees your video ad at top of search, your product in a sponsored product slot, and perhaps another video ad further down the page. That's three brand impressions in one search.
We've seen that pairing Sponsored Brands with Sponsored Products on the same keywords drastically improves conversion rates on the Sponsored Product campaigns. The brand exposure from the Sponsored Brand ad creates familiarity, so when shoppers see the product listing, they're more likely to click and convert.
Step 4: Test Creatives Systematically
Within each keyword theme campaign, create multiple ad groups, each with a single creative variation. Test one variable at a time:
- Week 1-2: Test 3 different headlines (same image, same products)
- Week 3-4: Take the winning headline, test 3 different lifestyle images
- Week 5-6: Take the winning headline + image, test different product selections
Pause underperformers. Amplify winners. This iterative approach compounds. Each round of testing produces a creative that's measurably better than the last.
Step 5: Optimize Placements and Bids
Once you have performance data:
- Calculate placement adjustments using revenue-per-click ratios (Part 6)
- Set your base bid conservatively and use positive modifiers to increase bids for top-of-search where performance justifies it
- Use the bulk file for granular per-placement control
- Monitor and adjust weekly
Here's a tactic that provides modest but meaningful lift for new product launches: feature your new, low-review product alongside your established bestsellers in a Product Collection ad.
The established products lend credibility. Their strong review counts and ratings build trust. Meanwhile, the new product gets exposure to shoppers who might not have discovered it otherwise.
It won't drive massive traffic directly to the new product (remember, roughly 90% of Sponsored Brand clicks go to the store page, not individual product listings). But it creates awareness and generates some initial traffic that can help jumpstart your review velocity.
Making It All Work Together
The Compounding Advantage
Each element in this guide compounds the others. Better headlines increase click-through rates. Higher CTRs improve your ad quality score. Better quality scores lower your CPCs. Lower CPCs mean more clicks for the same budget. More clicks with optimized creatives mean more conversions. More conversions improve your organic ranking. Better organic ranking reduces your dependency on ads.
This is the flywheel. And it starts with one thing: taking Sponsored Brands seriously.
Where to Go From Here
Sponsored Brands are the most expensive real estate on Amazon, but they're also one of the most powerful tools you have for building brand recognition, capturing market share, and driving long-term growth. The sellers and agencies who treat them as a strategic investment (not an afterthought) are the ones consistently winning premium placements at manageable CPCs.
The playbook is straightforward: build single keyword theme campaigns with tailored creatives, test systematically, optimize your placements, and let the data guide every decision. None of this is complicated. It just requires discipline and the willingness to do the work that most advertisers won't.
If you're managing Sponsored Brands today, revisit your campaigns with fresh eyes. Are your headlines tailored to the search terms you're targeting? Are you testing creatives in isolated ad groups? Are your placement modifiers aligned to actual performance data? If the answer to any of those is no, you have immediate opportunities to improve.
This guide is based on years of managing Sponsored Brands across hundreds of Amazon advertising accounts, combined with research from That Amazon Ads Podcast and That Amazon Ads Masterclass.