Sponsored Brands is the banner at the top of search — your logo, a headline, and several products. It sells the brand rather than one item, and it is the only ad type that can send a shopper to your storefront instead of a product page.

It also needs Brand Registry, so if the option is missing that is why.

[Watch the walkthrough](https://kb.trackiq.com/kb-assets/kbvideo-sb-campaign-explainer-b3b7d64e.mp4)

*Prefer to watch? One hundred and thirty-two seconds on the three goals and what each actually buys, the ad formats, and the measure that is fairer to a brand banner than ACoS.*

## **Creating the campaign**

**Amazon Ads console → Campaign manager → Create campaign → Sponsored Brands.**

![The three Sponsored Brands goals, priced differently](/kb-assets/shot-amz-sb-goals-186521.png)

**1. Choose the goal.** Three are offered, and they are priced completely differently:

| Goal | Success metric | You pay for |
|---|---|---|
| **Drive page visits** | Clicks | cost per click (CPC) |
| **Grow brand impression share** | Top-of-search impression share | 1,000 viewable impressions (vCPM) |
| **Reserve share of voice** | Top-of-search impression share | a fixed price |

**Choose drive page visits** almost every time. It bills per click, which is measurable, and every optimisation covered here assumes it.

The other two buy *placement*, not response. Impression share is a visibility target, so you are committing budget to appear at the top of search whether or not anyone acts. That is a brand-awareness purchase with far weaker attribution, and it is not where to learn what works.

**2. Name, dates, budget.** No end date unless the promotion genuinely ends. Daily budget conservative.

**3. Amazon or Amazon Business.** Leave it on Amazon unless you are genuinely B2B-heavy, in which case a separate Business-targeted campaign is worth running.

![Collections, Store spotlight and Video](/kb-assets/shot-amz-sb-format-aa9c81.png)

**4. Pick the format.**

**Collections** — several products, landing on a page you compose. The usual choice. You then pick a collection type: **automatic**, where Amazon assembles the products from your catalogue against your keywords, or **manual**, where you choose them. Start manual. Automatic is convenient, but it decides what shoppers see and you lose the ability to say why a banner worked.

**Store spotlight** — sends shoppers into your storefront. Good for a broad brand, weaker for a single hero product.

**Video** — the same campaign type with a video creative. Covered separately in [**Create a Sponsored Brands Video Campaign**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/create-a-sponsored-brands-video-campaign).

**5. Bidding.** Turn off Amazon's bid optimisation and control your own bids. You can add placement and audience adjustments later, once there is data to justify them.

**6. Targeting.** Keyword (exact, phrase, broad) or product (ASIN, category). **Start with exact.** Broad on a brand banner spends quickly and teaches you little.

**7. The creative.** This is where SB differs from everything else:

**Logo** — to Amazon's stated pixel specification, showing your brand name.

**Headline** — up to **50 characters**. It is the only copy you control at the top of search, so it deserves more than a product name.

**Products** — you will select three for display, drawn from the products on the campaign.

**Images** — use them. A banner of bare product shots performs worse than one with considered imagery.

![Raising bids on an audience built in AMC](/kb-assets/shot-amz-sb-audiences-250821.png)

**8. Bid adjustments.** You can raise bids by placement, and by audience. The audience option is worth knowing about: alongside Amazon's own prebuilt audiences, you can raise bids on **a custom audience you built in Amazon Marketing Cloud**. That is the point where your own data starts steering your bids rather than Amazon's segments. See [**Understanding AMC Cloud: New-to-Brand and Path-to-Purchase Insights**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/understanding-amazon-marketing-cloud-amc-insights).

Then submit. Sponsored Brands goes through creative moderation, so it is not live immediately — the button reads **Submit for review**, not *Launch*.

## **Judging it in TrackIQ**

![Campaign performance across every ad type](/kb-assets/shot-adv-campaigns-view-77ace2.png)

Sponsored Brands appears alongside your other campaigns in **Amazon Ads → Campaigns**, with the same columns and the same date range.

Three things to hold in mind that do not apply to Sponsored Products:

**Attribution is 14 days, not 7.** Recent days understate more than you are used to.

**Do not compare its ACoS with Sponsored Products.** They are doing different jobs. SB reaches people earlier, and its last-click ACoS will usually look worse. Judged only on that number, you will switch off the thing building the brand.

**It overlaps with Sponsored Products.** One shopper can see both, and both can claim the sale. This is why the ad types cannot be added together — see [**Why Sponsored Products, Brands and Display Numbers Do Not Simply Add Up**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/why-sp-sb-and-sd-numbers-dont-add-up), and, if you suspect real cannibalisation, [**Spot Cannibalisation Between Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/spot-sb-sp-cannibalisation).

## **The better measure: new customers**

Since SB works higher in the funnel, the honest question is not "what was the ACoS" but "did it bring people who did not know us".

That is a new-to-brand question, and it is answered in **AMC Cloud**:

**Are these new customers?** See [**NTB Customers: New vs Repeat, Counted as People**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/ntb-customers).

**Did it cause branded search to rise?** If people saw the banner and later searched your name, that is the banner working. See [**Brand Keywords: Proving Upper-Funnel Spend Works**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/brand-keywords).

**Does it appear early in the path?** See [**Path to Purchase: Which Ad Sequences Actually Convert**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/path-to-purchase).

## **Common mistakes**

**Choosing an impression-share goal** because the numbers look impressive. Impressions are not sales, and neither is share of voice.

**A headline that repeats the product title.** Fifty characters of prime placement, spent saying nothing.

**Judging on ACoS alone.** It reliably under-credits upper-funnel work.

**Broad match from day one.** Expensive discovery on your most visible placement.

## **Related**

- [**Amazon PPC: Core Terms and Metrics**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/amazon-ppc-terms-and-metrics) — the vocabulary.
- [**Create a Sponsored Brands Video Campaign**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/create-a-sponsored-brands-video-campaign) — the same campaign type, video creative.
- [**Prove Your Display Campaigns Created Demand**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/prove-display-created-demand) — the method, applied to upper funnel.