Sponsored Display is the odd one out. Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands target *searches*. Sponsored Display targets *people* — shoppers who viewed something, bought something, or fit a behaviour Amazon has inferred — and it can follow them off Amazon.

That difference changes how you judge it, which is where most Display budgets get cut by mistake.

[Watch the walkthrough](https://kb.trackiq.com/kb-assets/kbvideo-sd-campaign-explainer-005b8e17.mp4)

*Prefer to watch? One hundred and eighteen seconds on the optimisation strategy that quietly softens your numbers, the five targeting families, and the budget that gets cut by mistake.*

## **Creating the campaign**

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

**1. Name, dates, budget.** Start the budget low — Display reaches broadly and can spend quickly. Something in the region of a quarter of what you would give a Sponsored Products campaign is a sensible opening.

![Sponsored Display ad format: image or video](/kb-assets/shot-amz-sd-format-b4008b.png)

**2. Creative type: image or video.** Either can land on a specific product or on your storefront. Product page is the usual choice; storefront suits a broad range.

![Reach, Page visits and Conversions](/kb-assets/shot-amz-sd-optimise-e68551.png)

**3. Optimisation strategy.** Three, and the pricing differs:

| Strategy | Cost type | Conversions attributed to |
|---|---|---|
| **Reach** | vCPM | viewable impressions *and* clicks |
| **Page visits** | CPC | clicks |
| **Conversions** | CPC | clicks |

**Optimise for conversions.** This is the one to use.

**Avoid reach.** It bills per thousand viewable impressions, and because it credits conversions to *impressions* as well as clicks, its reported results are far softer than they look. You will be buying exposure with no reliable way to tell whether it did anything.

**4. Set your bids.** Sponsored Display bids per target, so each audience you add gets its own bid in the targeting table. There is also an optional **cost control** setting, currently in beta, that lets Amazon manage bids to hold a metric at or below a value you name. Leave it off until the campaign has a baseline — it takes around 72 hours to settle, and you cannot read a campaign that is being steered while you are still learning what it does.

![The five Sponsored Display targeting families](/kb-assets/shot-amz-sd-targeting-4ac158.png)

**5. Choose your targeting.** Five families, and they behave nothing alike:

| Family | Who it reaches | Realistic job |
|---|---|---|
| **Contextual** | shoppers on chosen products or categories | conquesting, defending |
| **Remarketing** | people who viewed or purchased, over a lookback window | **the warmest — start here** |
| **In-market** | people shopping the category now | reach, cold |
| **Interest and lifestyle** | long-run behavioural groups | coldest, broadest |
| **Custom audiences** | a segment you built yourself in AMC | precise, and yours alone |

**Start with views-remarketing.** Smallest, warmest, cheapest to prove. Note the **lookback window** on each remarketing target — 30 days by default — which decides how far back a view still counts. Expand outward once it works.

**Custom audiences are the interesting one.** They are built in Amazon Marketing Cloud rather than picked from a list, which means you can target a segment defined by your own data instead of one of Amazon's presets. 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).

**6. Build the creative.** Headline to **50 characters**, logo showing your brand name, image or video to Amazon's stated specification. Then launch.

## **Judging it in TrackIQ**

![Audiences, segmented by type](/kb-assets/shot-b37-aud-top-42c60d.png)

**Amazon Ads → Audiences** reports one row per campaign per segment, with a **Segment type** column that groups them into those four families. See [**Audiences: Segment Performance**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/audiences-segment-performance).

**Compare within a family, never across it.** Remarketing beating lifestyle on ACoS is not a finding, it is arithmetic. The warm audience was always going to win a last-click comparison.

**Judge each family against its own job:**

**Remarketing should convert.** If it does not, the problem is the listing, not the audience.

**In-market and lifestyle should bring new people.** Held to a conversion target they will always fail, and cutting them removes the thing that fed remarketing its audience in the first place.

**Attribution is 14 days.** Recent days understate more than Sponsored Products does.

## **The measure that actually settles it**

For the cold families, last-click ACoS is the wrong instrument. The right question is whether they brought customers who did not know you.

**AMC Cloud → NTB Customers** gives new versus repeat as people, not orders. See [**NTB Customers: New vs Repeat, Counted as People**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/ntb-customers).

**AMC Cloud → Path to Purchase** shows whether Display appeared *first* in the journey or merely intercepted a sale already in progress. That distinction is the whole argument. See [**Path to Purchase: Which Ad Sequences Actually Convert**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/path-to-purchase).

The full method is [**Prove Your Display Campaigns Created Demand**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/prove-display-created-demand).

## **Sponsored Display is not Amazon DSP**

They are frequently confused. Sponsored Display is self-service, sits in the Ads console beside your other campaigns, and reports under **Amazon Ads → Audiences**.

Amazon DSP is a separate programmatic platform with its own console, its own audiences and its own reporting, under **Amazon DSP** in TrackIQ. See [**DSP Audience Segments**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/analyzing-your-dsp-performance).

## **Common mistakes**

**Judging cold audiences on ACoS.** The most common way a working Display budget gets cut.

**Starting with lifestyle audiences** because the reach numbers are large. Start warm.

**Adding segment sales together.** Segments overlap; one shopper can sit in several.

**Reading a segment with forty clicks.** Not enough to mean anything.

**Choosing the reach objective.** You will not be able to prove it worked.

## **Related**

- [**Audiences: Segment Performance**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/audiences-segment-performance) — the screen, in full.
- [**Shift Budget from Harvesting to Acquisition**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/shift-budget-to-acquisition) — when efficiency has crowded out growth.
- [**What 'New to Brand' Actually Means**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/what-new-to-brand-means) — defined differently in different places.