Most private label sellers run Sponsored Products and stop there. That's a mistake. Sponsored Products puts a single ASIN in front of a shopper — Sponsored Brands puts your brand in front of them, with your logo, a custom headline, and a curated set of products, sitting right above the organic search results where competitors can't buy their way past you. If you sell under one brand name with more than two or three products, and you're not running Sponsored Brands, you're leaving a prominent, high-converting placement entirely to competitors.
At StoreStride we build Sponsored Brands into almost every account we manage, specifically because it does something Sponsored Products cannot: it sells the brand, not just the ASIN. This guide covers every format, where each one places, how bidding differs from Sponsored Products, and how to structure campaigns that convert rather than just rack up impressions.
Who can run Sponsored Brands? You need to be Brand Registered. If you haven't enrolled yet, read our Brand Registry guide first — it's a prerequisite for this entire ad type, plus A+ Content, Brand Store, and most brand protection tools.
What Is Sponsored Brands?
Sponsored Brands (formerly Headline Search Ads) is Amazon's brand-level advertising format. Instead of promoting one product in the search results grid like Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands ads occupy a wide banner placement that typically sits above, alongside, or within the organic search results. The ad carries your brand logo, a custom headline of your choosing, and a set of up to three products — or, in video format, a single hero product with a looping video.
Because the ad is built around the brand rather than a single listing, it's the format best suited to driving shoppers into your Brand Store, cross-selling between products in the same range, and winning real estate at the very top of competitive search terms — including terms containing a competitor's brand name.
The Three Sponsored Brands Formats
Product Collection
A custom headline plus up to three of your products, shown as thumbnails. Clicking the headline sends shoppers to your Brand Store or a custom landing page; clicking a product goes straight to that listing. The most common and most flexible format.
Store Spotlight
A custom headline plus up to three sub-pages of your Brand Store, each with its own thumbnail. Built for multi-category brands — it routes shoppers to the specific Store page most relevant to what they searched, rather than one product.
Video
A single product promoted with an auto-playing, looping video (under 45 seconds, no sound by default). Clicking sends shoppers to that product's listing. Consistently the highest click-through rate of the three once the creative is right — see our Sponsored Brands video guide for creative specs.
All three formats compete in the same auction and can run against the same keywords. Most mature accounts run Product Collection as the default, Video for hero ASINs with strong creative, and Store Spotlight once the brand has more than one distinct product category.
Where Sponsored Brands Ads Appear
- Top of search — the banner directly above the first row of organic and Sponsored Products results. This is the premium placement most sellers mean when they talk about Sponsored Brands.
- Within search results — Amazon increasingly inserts Sponsored Brands placements midway down the results page, particularly on mobile.
- Product detail pages — Sponsored Brands can also appear alongside or below the buy box area on competitor and related listings, depending on targeting.
Top-of-search is almost always the placement worth paying up for. It sits above every organic result and every Sponsored Products ad on the page — there is no higher-visibility slot on an Amazon search results page.
Sponsored Brands vs Sponsored Products: The Real Differences
The two formats aren't competing for the same job. Sponsored Products is where most of your spend and most of your direct conversions should sit. Sponsored Brands is where you defend your brand name, win category-defining search terms, and turn a single-product shopper into a multi-product customer.
When Sponsored Brands Earns Its Spend
- Defending your own brand name. If a shopper searches your brand, you want your Sponsored Brands ad at the very top — above your own organic listing and above any competitor bidding on your name.
- Competitor and category terms. Bidding Sponsored Brands on a direct competitor's brand name or a broad category term puts your full product range in front of a shopper who hasn't decided on a brand yet — something a single-ASIN Sponsored Products ad can't do as effectively.
- Cross-selling a range. If you sell variations, complementary products, or a multi-SKU range, Product Collection and Store Spotlight actively introduce shoppers to products they didn't search for.
- New product launches. Routing search traffic for your best-selling ASIN's keywords into a Store Spotlight that also features a newly launched product gives the new ASIN visibility it couldn't win on its own merits yet.
It earns its spend less reliably on single-product brands with no Store built out, or on extremely long-tail, low-volume search terms where the auction isn't competitive enough for the premium placement to matter.
How to Structure a Sponsored Brands Campaign
Build the Brand Store first
Product Collection and Store Spotlight both rely on having a Brand Store with properly organised pages. Launching Sponsored Brands before the Store exists wastes the placement's biggest advantage — sending shoppers somewhere that sells the whole range, not just one listing.
Segment campaigns by intent, not by product
Run separate campaigns for brand-defence terms (your own name), competitor terms, and category/generic terms. Each has a different acceptable CPC, a different expected click-through rate, and needs its own budget so one doesn't starve the others.
Write headlines that aren't generic
"Shop Our Range" wastes the one piece of custom copy Amazon gives you. A headline naming the specific benefit or occasion — and matching the searched keyword's intent — consistently outperforms generic copy on click-through rate.
Pick the right three products
Lead with your best-converting, best-reviewed ASIN, then use the remaining two slots to introduce lower-visibility products in the same range. Don't feature three near-identical SKUs — it adds nothing a single product wouldn't already show.
Bid up on brand-defence, bid carefully on category terms
Brand-name defence terms convert at a very high rate and justify a strong bid almost without exception. Broad category terms are far more competitive and expensive — start conservatively and scale only once ACOS data confirms the term is profitable at the Sponsored Brands premium.
Track new-to-brand rate separately from ACOS
A Sponsored Brands campaign with a mediocre ACOS but a high new-to-brand percentage may still be doing its job — acquiring customers who weren't buying from you before. Judge it against that metric, not purely against direct ACOS.
Keyword and Targeting Strategy
Sponsored Brands has no automatic targeting — every campaign runs on keywords or product targets you choose manually, which makes keyword research non-negotiable before launch. Pull your highest-converting terms from Sponsored Products search term reports and your search term report, then layer in:
- Your own brand name and common misspellings, as exact and phrase match
- Direct competitor brand names where legally permitted and commercially sensible
- Broad category and generic terms with meaningful search volume
- Negative keywords copied across from your Sponsored Products campaigns to avoid wasted spend on irrelevant terms
Use the same match type discipline you'd apply to Sponsored Products: start narrower, expand once a term proves itself, and move winning terms into their own tightly controlled campaign once volume justifies it.
Pair it with Sponsored Display. Shoppers who click a Sponsored Brands ad but don't convert are a strong retargeting audience. Layering in Sponsored Display to follow up with that audience, both on and off Amazon, closes a loop most sellers leave open.
Common Sponsored Brands Mistakes
- Running it before the Store is built. Sends traffic to a half-finished destination and wastes the format's main advantage.
- Treating the ACOS target the same as Sponsored Products. The premium placement carries a premium CPC — expecting identical ACOS to your best Sponsored Products campaigns usually means under-bidding and losing the placement entirely.
- One campaign, one bid, every keyword. Brand-defence, competitor, and category terms have wildly different economics and need separate campaigns and separate bidding logic.
- Ignoring new-to-brand reporting. It's the clearest signal Amazon gives you that this ad type is doing a job Sponsored Products can't.
- Never refreshing the headline or creative. Click-through rate decays as the same headline is shown repeatedly to the same shopper pool — rotate headlines and video creative on a regular cycle.
Want Sponsored Brands built properly, not bolted on?
StoreStride structures Sponsored Brands as part of a full-funnel Amazon PPC strategy — alongside Sponsored Products, Sponsored Display, and the Brand Store that makes it convert. Book a free audit and we'll show you exactly what it could be doing in your account.
Get Free Amazon PPC Audit →Common Questions About Sponsored Brands
Do I need Brand Registry to run Sponsored Brands?
Yes. Sponsored Brands, like A+ Content and the Brand Store, is only available to Brand Registered sellers with an approved trademark. If you haven't enrolled, that's the first step before any of this applies.
Is Sponsored Brands worth it for a single-product brand?
It can still be worth running on your own brand name for defence, and on a handful of high-intent category terms, but the cross-sell and Store Spotlight advantages are minimal with only one SKU. Most of the format's value compounds once you have a genuine range.
Should Sponsored Brands get a bigger or smaller budget than Sponsored Products?
For most private label sellers, smaller. Sponsored Products should carry the bulk of spend because it drives direct, trackable conversions on proven ASINs. Sponsored Brands is a brand-building and defence layer on top — typically 10–25% of total PPC spend, depending on how competitive the brand-name auction is.
Can I run Sponsored Brands on a competitor's brand name?
Generally yes, bidding on a competitor's brand name as a keyword is permitted by Amazon's policies, though your ad creative cannot use the competitor's trademarked name or logo. Commercial and legal judgement still applies — some sellers choose not to for relationship or risk reasons.