The Amazon advertising account — and what you need before bidding.

Before you can place a single bid, Amazon needs you to clear a small but non-trivial set of prerequisites. None of them are technically hard — but every one of them has tripped up sellers we work with, and the failure modes are silent. A campaign that looks live in the UI can fail to deliver for days because a billing card was never validated. This episode walks the full pre-flight in order.

Seller Central vs the advertising console

Your Seller Central account is the seller-side infrastructure: inventory, orders, returns, Buy Box. The advertising console (advertising.amazon.com, or "Campaigns" inside Seller Central) is the buy-side infrastructure for Sponsored Ads. They share a login, but they are distinct products with separate permission models. Granting someone Seller Central access does not give them advertising access.

For agencies and internal teams alike, this matters: the person managing PPC needs an explicit advertising role, not just a Seller Central seat. Set this up properly at the start; retrofitting access for a new analyst on a Saturday morning is no fun.

The four prerequisites

1. A verified payment method

Sponsored Ads bills on a threshold-and-monthly basis. The first invoice attempt fails silently if your card is unverified or has an expired AVS check. Add the card, run a small test spend, and confirm the first invoice settles. Treat this as a gate before scaling spend, not an afterthought.

2. A valid tax profile for the marketplace

Amazon requires complete tax information for every marketplace you advertise in. Missing or expired VAT numbers (EU) or W-8/W-9 forms (US) will block campaigns from launching, often without a clear error message in the UI. Check Settings → Tax Settings before you build a single campaign.

3. Brand Registry (if you want Sponsored Brands or Sponsored Display)

Sponsored Products is available to every seller in Buy Box. The two brand-level ad types — Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display — require Amazon Brand Registry. Registration takes a few days and a registered trademark in the marketplace's jurisdiction. If you are not yet registered, your Module 2 learning still applies; just plan the registration in parallel.

4. At least one ad-eligible ASIN

Ad eligibility is its own subject (Episode 03), but at minimum: an ASIN must be in Buy Box, in stock, and not in any of Amazon's restricted categories without prior approval. An otherwise perfect campaign on a non-eligible ASIN will register zero impressions.

Access roles you actually want

Amazon offers four advertising permission levels: Admin, Editor, Viewer and Billing. As a rule of thumb:

• One Admin per account (founder or head of marketing).
• Editor for the people running the day-to-day work.
• Viewer for analysts and external stakeholders who only need to read reports.
• Billing only for finance.

The most common mistake we see is making every operator an Admin. Roll back permissions to the minimum the role needs; Amazon's audit log is not granular enough to clean up after a mistaken bulk-bid change.

Multi-marketplace accounts

If you sell in multiple marketplaces (DE, FR, IT, ES, NL, SE, PL, plus UK), each marketplace has its own ad account, its own billing, its own tax profile. The UI groups them under one login but they are operationally separate. Set up each one deliberately; do not assume "I configured DE so the others will work" — they will not.

The pre-flight checklist

• Payment method verified, first invoice settled.
• Tax profile complete for every marketplace.
• Brand Registry confirmed (or in progress) if SB/SD is in scope.
• At least one ad-eligible ASIN per campaign.
• Access roles assigned to humans, not just "the agency".

With these in place, the Sponsored Ads console will actually let you spend money. Episode 03 covers what "ad-eligible" really means — and the surprisingly long list of ways a product can lose eligibility without anyone noticing.