Sponsored Products vs Sponsored Brands: how to split your Amazon ad budget

Start with Sponsored Products, because it sells individual products in the searches where shoppers are already looking, and add Sponsored Brands once you have Brand Registry and search terms that have proven they convert. Amazon gives no formula for the split, so set it from your own numbers: compare each ad type’s share of spend with its share of sales, and judge Sponsored Brands on new-to-brand sales rather than ROAS alone.

What is the difference between Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands?

Sponsored Products are “cost-per-click (CPC) ads that promote individual product listings”. On Amazon they can appear at the top of, alongside or within shopping results and on product pages, and a click takes the shopper to the advertised product’s detail page.

Sponsored Brands are “customizable ads that feature your brand logo, headline, video or lifestyle image, and multiple products”. They appear on top of and within shopping results, on product detail pages and on the homepage, and they can send shoppers to your Brand Store or detail pages.

	Sponsored Products	Sponsored Brands
What it promotes	One product	Your brand and several products
Where a click goes	The product’s detail page	Your Brand Store or detail pages
Who can run it	Professional sellers, vendors and others, with products eligible for the Featured Offer	Vendors and others, and professional sellers enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry
Formats	Product ads	Collection, Brand Store spotlight, video

The eligibility line matters for planning. A Sponsored Products ad needs its product to be eligible for the Featured Offer, so a lost Buy Box can stop it; we covered why your Amazon ads stop when you lose the Buy Box. Sponsored Brands needs Brand Registry before you can run it at all.

How does each ad type charge?

Sponsored Products is simple: there are no monthly or upfront fees, and you bid the most you are willing to pay when a shopper clicks.

Sponsored Brands gives you three ways to pay. Amazon’s product page lists cost per click, cost per 1,000 viewable impressions (vCPM), and fixed upfront pricing with reserve share of voice. CPC and vCPM have no minimum spend, but “reserve share of voice requires a minimum spend commitment.”

Budgets differ too. Sponsored Brands lets you set a campaign-level budget for the whole run as well as a daily one, and Amazon notes that you can only increase a campaign-level budget, so start it low.

Which Sponsored Brands format should you use?

Amazon lists three formats: collection, Brand Store spotlight and video.

• Collection shows your logo, a headline and several products, which suits a range a shopper might browse.
• Brand Store spotlight sends shoppers into sections of your store. Your store needs at least three sub-pages, each with a unique product.
• Video plays a six to 45-second auto-playing video in shopping results for relevant keywords.

Video has a budgeting quirk worth knowing. Amazon says Sponsored Brands video has its own ad placement and auction, so it won’t compete against your other self-service campaigns. That makes it the easiest Sponsored Brands budget to add without bidding against your own Sponsored Products ads.

How should you judge each ad type?

Judge Sponsored Products on ACoS and ROAS. It sells a specific product to someone searching for it, so efficiency is the right test. Our guide on how to lower ACoS on Amazon covers the levers.

Judge Sponsored Brands differently. Amazon is direct about it: “high ROAS shouldn’t be your primary success metric with Sponsored Brands, which is designed to promote discovery with shoppers who are browsing what to buy.” It adds that driving first-time purchases often costs more than driving repeat ones.

The metric to watch is new-to-brand. Amazon’s new-to-brand metrics measure orders and sales over the last 12 months from first-time customers of your brand. A Sponsored Brands campaign with a higher ACoS than your Sponsored Products campaigns can still be doing its job if a large share of its orders come from new customers.

Amazon also reports, from its own data, that Sponsored Brands advertisers who raised bids by 100% or more for new-to-brand shoppers saw 2x more new-to-brand orders than those who didn’t.

Not sure how your budget splits across ad types today? Take the 2-min fit check and we'll send you a $-weighted opportunity map.

How do you split budget between Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands?

There is no Amazon formula, and a fixed ratio would ignore your account. What Amazon does describe is an order: “While Sponsored Products builds initial visibility, Sponsored Brands enhances your presence by combining top-of-search placement with engaging brand storytelling.” On the same page it reports, from its own data, that brand owners who use Sponsored Brands see 23% higher sales after 13 weeks.

That suggests a practical sequence:

1. Fund Sponsored Products first. Cover your best-selling products and let the search term report show which terms convert.
2. Add Sponsored Brands on proven terms. Once Brand Registry is in place, point Sponsored Brands at the terms Sponsored Products has already shown will convert, so the brand placement shows to shoppers who are likely to buy.
3. Compare spend share with sales share. Each month, set each ad type’s share of total ad spend against its share of ad-attributed sales. A type that earns more than its share of spend has room for more budget; one that earns less needs fixing before it gets more.
4. Count new customers for Sponsored Brands. Before you cut a Sponsored Brands campaign for its ACoS, check its new-to-brand orders.

Remember that daily budgets don’t spread themselves out. On Sponsored Products, Amazon says daily budgets are not paced throughout the day, so a small budget can be spent in minutes when demand is high. An ad type that runs out of budget early will look smaller in your numbers than it really is.

Amazon’s own guidance is to use the ad types together. It says Sponsored Brands and other self-service ads can be combined with your Sponsored Products campaign to help generate more impressions.

How does ShelfRadar handle budget across ad types?

ShelfRadar’s Budget Retargeting targets budgets across ad types to ensure optimum performance through the funnel. Its budget allocation by ad type sets each ad type’s spend share against its sales share, and the agents’ bid-budget experiments feed the optimization plan. Amazon experts review every recommendation and present it for your approval.

Frequently asked questions

Do you need Brand Registry for Sponsored Brands?

For professional sellers, yes. Amazon says Sponsored Brands is available to vendors, book vendors, KDP authors, agencies and professional sellers enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry. Sponsored Products doesn’t need it, but the product must be eligible for the Featured Offer.

Should Sponsored Brands have a lower ACoS than Sponsored Products?

Not necessarily. Amazon says high ROAS shouldn’t be the primary success metric for Sponsored Brands, which is built for discovery, and that first-time purchases often cost more than repeat ones. Judge it on new-to-brand orders and sales as well as ACoS.

What percentage of budget should go to Sponsored Brands?

Amazon doesn’t publish one. Start with Sponsored Products, add Sponsored Brands on terms that already convert, and move budget toward the ad type whose share of sales is higher than its share of spend.

Does Sponsored Brands video compete with my other ads?

Amazon says Sponsored Brands video has its own ad placement and auction, so it won’t compete against other self-service campaigns you are running.