Sponsored Brand Ads, formerly known as Headline Search Ads, are a powerful part of your Amazon PPC toolkit. They grab a shopper’s attention by taking center stage at the top of search results, and they can be used to not boost their awareness and consideration of not just any one of your products, but of your entire brand.
Back in 2013, when Lorde released her first album, Pure Heroine, she had a line in “Glory and Gore,” that said, “Glory and gore go hand in hand, that’s why we’re making headlines.”
In the Amazon ad world, “glory and gore” go hand in hand when crushing your competition with Sponsored Brand Ads.
What are Amazon Sponsored Brands?
Amazon Sponsored Brands are essentially banner ads that appear at the top of Amazon’s SERP.
They have headline and image fields that you can tweak and customize to your liking. When a customer clicks on a Sponsored Brand ad, they can be taken to either a specific product listing or your Amazon Store page, depending on where exactly they click.
Why Should I Use Sponsored Brand Ads in Amazon Advertising?
Amazon Sponsored Brand Ads are the first thing that a potential customer sees on the search results page. They live at the top of the page, are keyword targeted, come with a written headline, and can feature at least three clickable products (or ASINs) at a time.
Here are the best reasons to use Amazon's Sponsored Brand Ads
- Amazon Sponsored Brand Ads attract TOFU customers.
- Amazon Sponsored Brand Ads are versatile.
- Amazon Sponsored Brand Ads create brand awareness.
- Amazon Sponsored Brand Ads have unique reporting capabilities.
These ads attract top-of-funnel customers who are in the mood to shop. Why else would they be on Amazon?
The difference between shoppers on Amazon and shoppers on Google is that shoppers on Amazon are generally further down the sales funnel and are prepared to make a purchase the same day as clicking on an advertisement.
"Consumers in the US and Europe are much more likely to discover the brand of a recent purchase from Amazon rather than from a traditional online search engine.”
Check out that Forrester report and everything it said here.
Another great feature of Amazon’s Sponsored Brands is its versatility. While you can only promote one product per Sponsored Product ad, you can showcase multiple products at one time with Sponsored Brands. This makes it great for advertising similar products or complementary products, like forks and spoons or peanut butter and jelly.
When you think of Sponsored Brand ads, think of creating brand awareness and promoting key features. Sponsored Brand Ads can take potential customers to three locations, and all are aimed to build trust with a customer:
- A brand page
- A unique Amazon web address
- A best-selling product
Staying on top of the creative for Sponsored Brand Ads is a worthwhile project, and our 2020 guide may be a helpful resource for you.
Another awesome reason to use Amazon Sponsored Brands is their unique reporting capabilities. Sponsored Brands reports boast new-to-brand metrics, which tell you how much of your sales come from first-time customers. With these metrics, you can understand how much your consumer base is growing year over year.
If reporting capabilities pique your interest, don’t miss our complete overview of Sponsored Brand Ads Search Term Reports.
How to Create Sponsored Brands Ads in Amazon Advertising
Stop! If you haven’t been accepted into Amazon’s Brand Registry program first, please learn how before attempting to build Sponsored Brand Ads.
Okay, let’s continue.
Amazon offers this quick guide for creating Sponsored Brand Ads. There are many ways to go about creating Sponsored Brand Ads. Like we said, Sponsored Brand Ads are geared towards the top of funnel customers who might need to be persuaded by a brand page or a landing page to show off products and legitimacy.
"When I look at setting up [Sponsored Brand] Ads, I definitely like to focus on keywords and groupings that make the most sense and that are opportunities for upsells or showcase a variety of products in your inventory."
Check out the entire Will Haire, from Bobsled Marketing, interview on Ecommerce Braintrust Podcast here.
Amazon Keywords and Ad Copy
Like all PPC ads, Sponsored Brand Ads are based on keyword bidding.
When setting up your campaign, Amazon will provide suggested keywords and you’ll be able to choose the campaign type.
It’s important to match keywords to their respective part of the marketing funnel. There are three main keyword categories to focus on:
- Generic product keywords (top of funnel, or TOFU)
- Brand keywords (middle of funnel, or MOFU)
- Brand + product or specific product keywords (bottom of funnel, or BOFU)
The main category to focus on for Amazon Sponsored Brands is the generic product keywords because these clients know they want a certain product but they are in the research phase of comparing brands. They may not know what brand they want to buy, but they know what type of product they want.
Another approach for maximizing Amazon Sponsored Brand Ads is to bid for your competitor’s keywords or complimentary product keywords.
For example, if we search for something like “North Face jackets”, we see a lot of advertisements from competitors trying to sway my attention away from the brand we originally searched.
If you were to search for a highly accessorized product like a camera, you may see advertisements for camera bags, lights, stands, etc. These are just some of the keyword strategies you can use and see what works best.
Final words of advice on Amazon keywords:
- Beware the rookie mistake of keyword dumping. Aim for an educated and precise approach.
- If your keywords aren’t getting the impressions or conversions you want, change your bidding approach.
- Seeking an automated approach? A tool like the Ad Bader App saves you time and money.
Whatever your keywords are, your ad copy should match the keywords that are most important for finding your product. This is one of the few times Amazon allows you to be creative with your ads. Take advantage of it and write something to truly capture a potential customer’s attention.
What's the Difference Between Amazon Sponsored Brand Ads and Sponsored Product Ads?
In Amazon PPC, Sponsored Brand Ads and Sponsored Product Ads are very similar to each other in terms of placement and what you’re trying to communicate to the shopper. A major difference is that Sponsored Brand Ads can only be set up in manual campaigns.
We have discussed the differences between manual and automatic campaigns before, but for the sake of time, here’s an infographic highlighting the differences:
Keeping track of the evolving differences between Amazon Advertising’s Campaign Types is difficult, so we made a comprehensive breakdown reference guide for you to access here.
Sponsored Brand Ads are cheaper than Sponsored Product Ads, but they convert less often than Sponsored Products.
“[Sponsored Brand Ads] are generally less expensive than Sponsored Product Ads. What we’ve noticed with our client portfolio is that the cost-per-clicks are a little cheaper. However, because it’s top of the funnel we get a lot of browsers, so a lot of customers who are just clicking through the products to see what’s out there.”
Plus, you can use the power of your Sponsored Products auto campaigns to beef up your Sponsored Brands. While you’re doing your RPSB keyword research in Sponsored Products, you can peel and stick your best-converting search terms into a Sponsored Brands campaign.
A Little More About Brand Pages and Custom URLs
Amazon provides custom templates to build out your brand page and a custom URL.
For your brand page, you can choose your Hero image, product, your best sellers, and brand page text. Brand pages are great for creating trust with a client and for promoting your products on social media with built-in social sharing buttons to drive traffic.
Here’s an Amazon article that provides more information on brand pages.
Each brand is capable of creating compelling ads. When you’re creating brand and landing pages, keep in mind some basics of advertising:
- Understand your unique value proposition
- My ads are different from my competition
- Provide your customers with a solution
- Have original ad copy that reflects your brand’s personality
Try to create a formula using power words so you can influence clicks. For example, try “our product is (multiple) X (desired outcome),” or to see it clearly, like “Our batteries last 5 times longer.”
It’s also useful to use words with a strong call-to-action.
When in doubt, stick to the Amazon Product Title Optimization basics.
Your brand page, URL, and your copy all influence your Sponsored Brand Ad’s CTR. Here’s a complete breakdown of everything that impacts your Amazon CTR and how to improve it as well.
Reach New Customers with Amazon's Sponsored Brand Ads
Sponsored Brand Ads in Amazon provide a great opportunity to build brand awareness, brand trust, and drive traffic and sales to a particular product or landing page.
Investing in Sponsored Brand Ads earns more revenue than other campaign ads, so it’s worth your time and resources! Fine-tune your Amazon keywords and bidding approach to make the most of this tactic in your marketing funnel.
Use your creativity and your ever-growing PPC knowledge to make headlines, like Lorde does.
- Free reference guide to Amazon Campaign Types
- Everything You Need to Know about Amazon Sponsored Products
- How to Change the Creative for Sponsored Brand Ads
- How to Increase Conversion Rates on Sponsored Brand Ads
- A comprehensive overview of Sponsored Brand Search Term Reports
- Never miss the latest in Amazon PPC tips and best practices.
- Learn the basics at Ad Badger’s Amazon PPC Membership Academy
- Join our private Facebook group
- Meet Ad Badger’s CEO and PPC Den host, Michael Facchin
- Get a product tour of the Ad Badger App. It’s the most powerful toolset to manage, automate, and monitor your Amazon campaigns around the clock.
Choose your podcast platform on Anchor.
If you missed an episode, here are our previous episodes of The PPC Den Podcast:
- Our 2022 Amazon PPC Wishlist: 22 Tools and Features
- 3 Filters to Use Weekly in Your Search Term Report on Amazon
- How Should Amazon Professionals Optimize Tax Planning?
- What Are The Biggest Trends in Amazon PPC Q4 of 2021?
- The Complete Amazon Campaign Types Reference Guide
- Thank You for an Incredible Year!
- Should You Use Amazon Ad’s New Budget Rules?
- Q4 Strategy for Amazon Advertising in 2021: How Do You Prepare?
- How do I fix my decreasing conversion rate on Amazon Advertising?
- Find Your Bid Style: Which of These 7 Amazon PPC Personalities Are You?
- Should You Trust Amazon Advertising’s New Opportunity Tabs?
- How to Tell a Story with Amazon PPC Data to Boost Client Satisfaction
- Why Community Matters for Amazon Advertising
- How to Send Google Ads Traffic to Your Amazon Listing
- Who To Hire for Your Amazon Growth Team
- How to Optimize for Total ACOS Goals in Amazon Advertising
- A Case for Segmenting Branded Keywords in Amazon PPC
- Ask Any PPC Question with Steven Pope of My Amazon Guy
- 5 Important Factors That Influence Amazon Ranking
- Now Hiring Amazon PPC Digital Marketer
- What To Do When Diagnosing ACOS Increase
- What To Do About Low Click – Low Sales Keywords
- How to Use Amazon’s New Budget Tab and Report
- What To Do About Rising CPCs (PPC Boosters Series)
- Should You Segment Automatic Sponsored Product Campaigns?
- When to Pause an Amazon Advertising Campaign
- Your Guide to Amazon Prime Day 2021
- Search Term Impression Share Reports for Amazon PPC
- How to Scale Your Amazon PPC Account
- How You Can Approach Seasonality in Amazon PPC
- Getting the Most Out of Amazon Reporting
- Amazon’s New Sponsored Display Audiences
- The Sponsored Display Double-Tap
- 10 Tips to Become a Great Amazon PPC Manager
- Getting the Most Out of Amazon PPC Management
- The ACOS Power Ratio for Amazon PPC
- Balancing Amazon PPC Optimization and Expansion
- 3 Reasons You’re Still Not Using Bulk Sheets & What to Do About It
- 5 Hidden Amazon PPC Ratios
- Is Exact Match Always Best?
- 3 Questions to a Perfect Amazon Product Page
- The Trinity of Amazon PPC Revenue
- Ad Badger’s Amazon SEO Guide Part 4: Combining PPC and SEO
- Ad Badger’s Amazon SEO Guide Part 3: Into the Strike Zone
- Ad Badger’s Amazon SEO Guide Part 2: The Midgame
- Ad Badger’s Amazon SEO Guide Part 1: Getting Started
- A Look at Amazon’s New Sponsored Display Reports
- What are Dayparting and Weekparting in Amazon PPC?
- Our Wish List for Amazon PPC
- Thinking Strategically About Amazon Advertising
- How Keyword Dumping Ruins your PPC Campaigns
- How to Become an Amazon Sponsored Display Master
- How and Why to use Negatives in your Amazon PPC
- Amazon’s New Sponsored Brands Reports
- How to Find New PPC Keywords with Reverse ASIN Lookup
- Getting High-Quality Product Reviews on Amazon with Andy Lam
- The Podcast Turns 100
- How to Optimize Hundreds of Auto Campaigns at Once
- Prime Day Preparation: Capitalizing on the Most Important Days of the Year
- Ad Badger & Bobsled Marketing: Staying on the Cutting Edge of Amazon PPC
- What Do I Do When a Keyword Doesn’t Convert?
- Keyword Cannibalization: Good or Bad?
- How One Keyword Can Apply to Multiple Products
- Ad Badger & TurnKey: Amazon Product Listing Optimization
- Seven Habits of Highly Effective Amazon PPC-ers
- Ad Badger and ZonGuru: Boost Your SEO with High Value Keywords
- Answered Prayers: Negative ASIN Targeting Comes to Auto Campaigns
- Much Ado About Budgets
- How to Get Over 100% Conversion Rates on Sponsored Display Ads
- New Launch Strategy for New Products: Skip the Auto?
- Amazon PPC Data Trends to Shape Your 2020 Strategy
- How Does Amazon PPC Work With Misspellings?
- Following Amazon’s Suggestions? The Mysterious “Suggested Bid”
- Negative ASIN in Amazon PPC Auto Campaigns: Is it Possible (Part 2)
- Negative ASIN in Amazon PPC Auto Campaigns: Is it Possible (Part 1)
- When You Should DIY Your PPC (and When You Shouldn’t)
- An Introduction to Targeting Options on the Amazon DSP
- Optimizing on a Hunch
- 5 Things You Don’t Know About Product Targeting
- Amazon PPC Stats During COVID-19| April 2020
- Sponsored Brand Ads Update: Now You Can Edit Creatives
- Amazon PPC Stats During COVID-19
- Seller Central Campaign Manager is Moving to Amazon Ad Console in 2020
- Taking Your Amazon Products & Campaigns Global: A Primer
- Best Practices for Selling on Amazon During COVID-19
- Principles and Mindset for Amazon Marketers During Coronavirus
- Coronavirus (Covid-19) and Your Amazon PPC Campaigns
- Incorporate “Adjust Bids by Placement” into Your Keyword Bids (Part 2): Multi-Keyword Campaigns
- Incorporate “Adjust Bids by Placement” into Your Keyword Bids (Part 1): Single Keyword Campaigns
- Grow Your Amazon Campaigns with Demographics Data
- What Consumer Behavior Says About You: Amazon Brand Analytics
- How to Raise Lifetime Value with Market Basket Report
- Search Frequency Rank: How to Identify Most Important Keywords
- Long Tail Search Terms: Amazon PPC Silent Killer
- 7 Tips to Get More Clicks on Amazon Ads
- LIVE Amazon PPC Campaign Audit
- Amazon PPC Keyword Research in 2020: RPSB Revisited
- Our Top Predictions for Amazon PPC in 2020
- 7 Bad PPC Habits to Kick in 2020 (And 3 Good Ones to Start)
- The PPC Tasks We Put on Our Project Management Tools
- A Data- Oriented Approach to Advertising in December
- The Wait is Over… Search Term Reports for Sponsored Brand Ads are Here
- What to Do When It’s Time to Sell Your Amazon Business with Coran Woodmass
- Ramping Up for Cyber Monday and Black Friday with Data-Driven PPC Strategies
- Amazon PPC Campaign Structure: 6 Layers of Complexity
- Amazon PPC Today vs. Yesterday: What’s Changed, What Hasn’t
- Make Your Best Keywords Better with Single Keyword Campaigns
- 6 Levels of Amazon PPC Mastery
- How to Advertise Commodity and Unique Products with Lukas Matthews
- Amazon SEO – Bridging the Gap with PPC
- Amazon’s New Sponsored Display Ads (Beta)
- Listener Q&A: Optimizing Placement Settings
- The Problem With Optimizing Low-Converting Products (And How to Solve It)
- 4 Reasons Why Lowering Your Bids Won’t Always Lower your ACOS
- What to Expect From 30 Days of Running Amazon Ads
- Should You Segment Your Branded Keywords in Amazon Ads?
- Promoting your Products with Amazon Coupons
- Three Effective Ways to Optimize Amazon PPC Bids
- 4 Things Amazon Does Better than Google and Facebook
- Amazon DSP with Kiri Masters
- Increase Conversion Rates for Sponsored Brand Ads
- Clickfraud, Who to Hire, and More Common Amazon PPC Questions
- A Data-Driven Approach to Prime Day PPC
- Improving Your Account With Amazon Reports
- The Complete Guide to Self-Auditing Your Campaigns
- A Round-Table Discussion About Placement Settings
- My 5 Predictions for the Future of Amazon PPC
- The Importance of Indexation for Amazon PPC
- Click Through Rate (CTR) Rundown
- An Introduction To Bulk File Operations
- The Latest Sponsored Brand Ad Updates
- Defining Your PPC Goals & Setting ACOS Targets
- Making Sense of New to Brand Metrics
- Should You Bid on Competitors’ Branded Keywords
- Our Gripes About Amazon Sponsored Brand Ads
- Amazon Advertising Launch Strategy for New Products
- The Ultimate Amazon PPC Roadmap
- How to Scale Using PPC – A Case Study
- The Star-Crossed Lovers (Organic & Paid Traffic)
- Cranking Up Conversion Rates
- All Things Negative Keywords
- The Dreaded Amazon Data Reporting Delay
- What We Love About Amazon PPC
- First Look on New Bid Options in Amazon
- Dissenting Thoughts on PPC Budgets
- The Strangest, Most Popular PPC Strategy: The Keyword Dump
- Product Targeting – Into the Great Unknown
- Campaign Naming Systems
- Hitchhiker’s Guide to Sponsored Products (Part 2)
- Hitchhiker’s Guide to Sponsored Products (Part 1)
- Amazon PPC Advertising Stats
- The Advanced Basics of Amazon PPC
- Amazon’s New Product Targeting Features
- The Bid+ Conundrum
- Why We’re Living In The Golden Age of Amazon PPC
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