Sponsored Products is Amazon's pay-per-click ad format for individual ASINs. The ad looks like an ordinary search result with a small "Sponsored" label and appears in search results, at the top, middle and bottom of the page, and in placements on other product pages. You pay when a shopper clicks, and the click lands on your product detail page.
Why it matters
Sponsored Products is where most Amazon ad budgets go, and for good reason: it is the format closest to purchase intent. A shopper who has typed a search and sees your product ranked among the results is a step from buying. It is also the only major format that does not require Brand Registry, so it is available to any professional seller with an active offer that holds the Buy Box.
The format supports two targeting methods. Keyword targeting matches shopper searches in broad, phrase or exact match. Product targeting places your ad on chosen ASINs or categories, which is how brand defense and competitor conquest campaigns are built. Automatic campaigns let Amazon choose both, which makes them useful for discovering search terms you did not think of.
What moves it
- Bids and placement modifiers, which decide how often you win the top of search.
- Match type and negatives, which decide how much of your spend lands on irrelevant terms.
- Listing conversion, which decides what each click is worth.
- Buy Box ownership and stock. Ads stop serving for an ASIN that has lost the featured offer or gone out of stock.
- Daily budgets. A campaign that runs out at noon loses the evening's traffic.
How we use it
Sponsored Products is the backbone of every account we manage. We separate campaigns by purpose: exact-match campaigns for keywords that have proven they convert, broad and automatic campaigns for discovery, and product-targeting campaigns for defense and conquest. Search terms are harvested from discovery into control campaigns weekly, and bids are set by the job each keyword does.