Sponsored Brands

Sponsored Brands (formerly Headline Search Ads) are the upper-funnel banner format inside Amazon Advertising. Unlike Sponsored Products, which promote a single ASIN inside an organic-looking slot, Sponsored Brands occupy a wide creative unit — typically the top banner of a search results page — combining a brand logo, custom headline copy, and either a multi-product carousel, a single-product video (Sponsored Brands Video), or a "store spotlight" that links into curated Brand Store sub-pages. Only sellers enrolled in Brand Registry or vendors can run them.

Why Sponsored Brands matter strategically

Sponsored Brands work differently from Sponsored Products at the unit-economics level. Their CTR is almost always lower (a banner click rate is structurally below a native search result), but each click is more valuable: the shopper lands either on a multi-ASIN landing page or your Brand Store, where average order value is materially higher than a single PDP. Fewer clicks, deeper baskets — that's the entire reason to fund the format.

Three jobs Sponsored Brands do better than any other ad type:

1. Defend branded search. When a competitor bids on your brand name, the cheapest defence is a Sponsored Brand banner you own outright on your own term. The banner sits above their Sponsored Product and recaptures the click.
2. Launch a category, not a SKU. When you release a line (e.g. five SKUs in one collection), a Sponsored Brand carousel introduces the whole range in a single impression.
3. Drive Brand Store visits. Shoppers who land on a Brand Store via a Sponsored Brand click convert at roughly 2–3× the rate of cold PDP traffic and have a higher repeat-purchase rate within 90 days.

The three creative formats

• Product Collection — banner with up to three ASINs plus headline and logo. Most common, supports lifestyle background image. Use for category-level keyword targeting.
• Store Spotlight — banner highlighting three sub-pages of your Brand Store rather than three products. Useful when the catalogue is broad.
• Sponsored Brands Video — a 6–45-second muted-autoplay video unit that drops into search results. The single highest-CTR Sponsored Brand format by a wide margin.

Targeting modes

Sponsored Brands accept keyword targeting (broad, phrase, exact — see Match Type) and product targeting (ASIN and category). The dominant mix:

• Branded keywords — exact match on your own brand name and top branded long-tails. Defensive, lowest ACOS, highest ROAS.
• Competitor brand keywords — exact match on adjacent competitor brand names. Higher ACOS, conquest play.
• Generic high-intent keywords — phrase or broad match on category descriptors. The hard-working middle.
• Category targeting — broad coverage of an Amazon browse node.

Measurement caveats

Sponsored Brands attribution is reported separately from Sponsored Products and historically uses a different default attribution window (14 days vs. 7 days for SP). Normalize to the same window in your reporting layer or you systematically over-credit Sponsored Brands.

Also: New-to-Brand (NTB) is reported only for Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display. For incrementality-focused advertisers, NTB% is a more honest north-star than raw ACOS.

Common mistakes

• Treating Sponsored Brands like Sponsored Products. The economics are different; the targets should be different.
• Static creative. Sponsored Brand creative fatigues fast. Rotate every 6–8 weeks; use the built-in A/B headline test.
• Ignoring the video format. Sponsored Brands Video is usually the most efficient unit in the account once production is amortized.
• Bidding to a Sponsored-Product ACOS. Sponsored Brands carry Brand-Store-landing-page conversions not reported in the standard ACOS view. Set the bid against blended ACOS with NTB% weighted.