seller
- What changed
- Cost-per-click ads for individual products in search and on product pages
- When
- Updated October 2026
- Who it affects
- Professional sellers, vendors, KDP authors and agencies
- What to do
- Run an auto campaign for two weeks, then build manual exact and phrase campaigns
Key takeaways
- Sponsored Products charge per click, need no Brand Registry and only run while the product wins the featured offer.
- Use auto campaigns to find search terms, then move winners into manual exact and phrase campaigns.
- Group products by price and margin so one target fits every item in an ad group.
- 1Group products
Similar price and margin
- 2Auto campaign
Bid by targeting group
- 3Harvest terms
After about two weeks
- 4Manual exact
Bid highest on winners
- 5Negatives
Cut terms after 20 clicks
What are Amazon Sponsored Products?
Sponsored Products are the ads labeled Sponsored that look almost like organic results. They appear at the top of, alongside and within shopping results, and on product pages, and Amazon says they can also show on Amazon-owned and third-party sites across desktop, mobile and apps.
You pay only when a shopper clicks. There are no monthly or upfront fees: you choose a daily budget and a maximum bid, and the auction sets the actual cost per click, which Amazon says will never exceed your maximum adjusted bid. For a wider view of how this ad type fits with Brands, Display and video, start with our Amazon advertising guide.
Who can use Sponsored Products?
Amazon lists professional sellers, vendors, book vendors, KDP authors and agencies as eligible. Products must be in eligible categories and able to win the featured offer, the offer shown above the Buy Now button. Adult products, used and refurbished items and closed categories cannot be advertised.
Ads also stop when stock runs out, because a product that is out of stock cannot win the featured offer. That is one reason to watch inventory alongside ads, not separately.
- Professional selling plan, not Individual
- Product in an eligible category
- In stock and winning the featured offer
- New sellers may qualify for up to $1,000 in ad credits under Amazon's current offer terms
Eligibility check
- Professional selling plan
- Eligible category
- In stock
- Winning the featured offer
- Not used, refurbished or adult
Automatic targeting: the four groups
In an automatic campaign Amazon chooses where to show your ad based on your listing. You can bid separately on four targeting groups, which is the first lever most sellers miss.
- Close match: search terms closely related to your product
- Loose match: search terms loosely related to your product
- Substitutes: detail pages of products similar to yours
- Complements: detail pages of products that work alongside yours
Automatic targeting groups
| Where it shows | Use it for | |
|---|---|---|
| Close match | Closely related searches | Core sales |
| Loose match | Loosely related searches | Discovery |
| Substitutes | Similar product pages | Conquesting |
| Complements | Companion product pages | Cross-sell |
Manual targeting: keywords and products
Manual campaigns let you choose the keywords or products to target. Keyword targeting has three match types. Broad match is the widest and can include synonyms and related terms. Phrase match needs the words in the same order. Exact match must match the search word for word, plus plurals, and Amazon notes it tends to convert best.
Product targeting places your ad on chosen ASINs or whole categories, refined by brand, price, rating or Prime eligibility. Keywords are limited to 10 words and 80 characters. Amazon recommends bidding highest on exact, lower on phrase and lowest on broad, and not mixing targeting types in one ad group.
How to set up a Sponsored Products campaign, step by step
This launch sequence follows Amazon's own guidance and keeps early spend under control.
- Choose the products: group closely related items at a similar price
- Set a daily budget; Amazon suggests about $10 to start
- Launch an automatic campaign with a bid per targeting group
- Check results at least twice a week in the first week
- After about two weeks, move converting search terms into manual exact and phrase campaigns
- Add negatives for terms that spend without selling
- Optimize on the first 30 days of data, then review every two weeks
Bids, budgets and placements
Your bid is the most you will pay per click. Three bidding strategies control how Amazon adjusts it: fixed bids, dynamic bids down only and dynamic bids up and down. Placement adjustments of up to 900% can be added for top of search, rest of search and product pages. Our guide to Amazon PPC bidding strategies explains when to use each.
Budgets are daily and not paced through the day, so a campaign can spend its full budget early. A month's spend can reach about 31 times the daily budget. If good campaigns keep running out of budget, raise it; if they never spend it, check bids and relevance first.
A campaign structure that protects margin
Keep structure simple enough to manage weekly. One common setup uses three layers per product group: an automatic research campaign, a broad and phrase discovery campaign and an exact performance campaign. Search terms flow from research to performance, and each layer gets its own budget and target.
Group products by price and margin so one ACoS target fits every item in the ad group. Amazon's guidance makes the same point: bids apply to every product in an ad group, so mixed prices create mixed results.
Negative keywords and the search term report
The search term report shows the real searches that triggered your ads. Read it weekly. Amazon recommends phrase and exact negatives and suggests judging a term after at least 20 clicks, then letting changes run for two weeks or more before judging again.
How PPC Spider runs Sponsored Products
PPC Spider manages Sponsored Products with SpiderOS, which watches bids, budgets, search terms and stock around the clock and sets every target ACoS from the product's margin after fees. See how we work on our Amazon PPC management page, or start with a free Amazon audit of your current campaigns.
Sources
- Amazon Ads: Sponsored Products (advertising.amazon.com/solutions/products/sponsored-products)
- Amazon Ads: A guide to targeting with Sponsored Products (advertising.amazon.com/en-us/library/guides/targeting-with-sponsored-products/)
- Amazon Ads: Best practices for your Sponsored Products ads (advertising.amazon.com/library/guides/sponsored-products-best-practices)
- Amazon Ads: Frequently asked questions (advertising.amazon.com/resources/faq)
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