Sponsored Brands bid strategies — the rules are different here.

Sponsored Brands bid strategies do not map cleanly onto the SP three. SB has manual bidding plus three optimisation modes — and the choice of optimisation mode interacts with the campaign's optimisation goal in ways that the UI does not advertise.

Manual bidding (the default)

You set keyword-level or target-level bids and Amazon places them. Manual is the right default for SB. The realised CPC is bounded by your bid, the auction does its second-price work, and the only modifier on top is the bid-by-placement adjustment.

Rule-based bidding

Amazon raises bids automatically to chase a target ROAS you specify. Bids can move significantly in either direction. Rule-based bidding requires a meaningful conversion history on the campaign before Amazon's system has enough signal to behave well — for new SB campaigns it tends to overspend.

The optimisation goal that changes everything

Sponsored Brands campaigns are created with one of two optimisation goals: optimise for page visits or optimise for conversions. This is not a bid strategy in the UI sense, but it is the bigger lever:

• Page visits tells Amazon to spend wherever it can drive clicks to your Store / landing page. Use it when the goal is brand discovery and the destination is a Store page.
• Conversions tells Amazon to spend where conversions are most likely. Use it when the destination is a product detail page and the goal is units.

The optimisation goal is locked at campaign creation. Switching means a new campaign.

Bid by placement

SB has its own placement-modifier set: top-of-search, rest-of-search, home page, product page. Modifiers can be set independently per surface. For brand-defence SB campaigns we typically push top-of-search modifier hard (+50% or higher) and leave the others flat — the goal is the very top of the brand SERP, not visibility elsewhere.

Defaults

Brand-defence SB campaign: manual bidding, optimise for conversions, top-of-search modifier +50–100%. Brand-discovery SB campaign pointing at a Store: manual bidding, optimise for page visits, modifiers flat. Conquesting SB campaign on competitor terms: manual bidding, optimise for conversions, modifiers conservative.