seller
Key takeaways
- Since January 28, 2026 a product collection ad needs 3 to 10 ASINs and Amazon generates the creative from your listings; headlines and lifestyle images are gone.
- Give every Sponsored Brands campaign one job: branded defense on ACoS, category video on new-to-brand share, competitor conquest as the first cut.
- Run the break-even math first: a $40 product at 35 percent margin loses money above a 35 percent ACoS, whatever the ROAS says.
| Before Jan 28, 2026 | After Jan 28, 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Custom headline on collection ads | ||
| Lifestyle image at top of search | ||
| Collections with 1 or 2 ASINs | ||
| AI picks products per shopper | ||
| Vertical 9:16 video accepted |
Reported by My Amazon Guy, CedCommerce, Nova Analytics, MinsterFB and Skale Strategy. Store spotlight keeps its custom headline.
What Amazon Sponsored Brands are and who can run them
Sponsored Brands are Amazon's brand-level ad type. A Sponsored Products ad promotes one listing; a Sponsored Brands ad promotes your brand with a logo, a set of products, a Brand Store page or an auto-playing video. Amazon's guide says they appear on top of and within shopping results and on product detail pages, and can send shoppers to a product page, your Brand Store or a landing page.
Eligibility is the first gate: Amazon lists sellers enrolled in Brand Registry, vendors and the agencies that manage them. Helium 10 adds the practical minimums: a real brand logo, an eligible category and at least three products of the same brand, or one if you only run video. Every ad goes through moderation, which Amazon says takes up to 72 hours.
The three formats after the January 28, 2026 change
Product collection used to be a logo, a custom headline, a lifestyle image and up to three products. On January 28, 2026 Amazon rebuilt it. My Amazon Guy, CedCommerce and Nova Analytics report the same change: a collection now needs 3 to 10 ASINs, custom headlines and lifestyle images are gone, and Amazon's AI picks which products each shopper sees from browsing and purchase signals. You can still choose the ASINs manually; the creative comes from your listings.
Campaigns with one or two ASINs keep running but cannot add new ad groups, and MinsterFB reports that the lifestyle image has also disappeared from top-of-search placements for old ads. Amazon can also drop products that lose the Buy Box from the ad, so a pricing or stock problem now edits your creative for you.
Store spotlight kept its headline: logo, custom headline and up to three Brand Store sub-pages, and Amazon requires a Store with at least three sub-pages, each holding a unique product. Video shows a six to 45 second clip that auto-plays in search and links to the product page, in its own placement and auction. Skale Strategy and MinsterFB both report that vertical 9:16 creative is now accepted alongside 16:9.
- Product collection: 3 to 10 ASINs, AI-selected creative, no custom headline or lifestyle image
- Video: 6 to 45 seconds, 16:9 or 9:16, links to the product page
Pricing, placements and the metrics Amazon tells you to watch
Sponsored Brands has no minimum spend. You bid per click (CPC) or per thousand viewable impressions (vCPM), and Amazon suggests at least $10 a day and at least 25 keywords across broad, phrase and exact match.
Published 2026 costs vary by source and category. Marknology's averages put Sponsored Brands CPC at $1.50 to $2.50 with ACoS of 25 to 40 percent, and video cheaper at $0.80 to $1.50. Skale Strategy reports click-through rates of 0.20 to 0.40 percent for static ads against roughly 0.40 percent for video, with video CPCs of $0.70 to $0.80. Treat these as ranges to test against, not targets.
Amazon's measurement advice disagrees with most sellers: its guide says a high ROAS should not be your primary success metric and points to new-to-brand metrics, meaning orders from shoppers who have not bought from your brand in the last 12 months. One caution for vCPM buyers: Skale Strategy reports that from January 1, 2026 view-based campaigns use a new shopping-signal attribution model, so 2025 view-attributed numbers do not compare with 2026.
A campaign structure where every Sponsored Brands campaign has a job
The most common mistake is one campaign that mixes your brand name, category terms and competitor names. Brand terms convert well and hide the cost of everything else, so the blended ACoS looks fine while category spend quietly loses money. Split by intent and give each campaign its own target.
Branded defense runs video or Store spotlight on your brand name and its top modifiers to own the top of your own search page. Category exploration runs video on the generic terms shoppers use before they know you and is judged on new-to-brand share, not ACoS. Competitor conquest targets rival brand names and is the first campaign to cut when margin tightens.
Video now carries most of the weight. Velocity Sellers estimates it at around 58 percent of Sponsored Brands spend in the first quarter of 2026 and reports that 71 percent of video plays are muted, so captions and a product in the first three seconds are not optional.
- Branded defense: brand name and modifiers, target a low ACoS
- Category exploration: generic terms, video, judged on new-to-brand share
- Competitor conquest: rival brand names, first to cut
Worked example: does a category video campaign pay on a $40 product?
Run the math before the campaign, not after. These numbers are illustrative, chosen inside the published 2026 ranges above; replace them with your own data.
Take a $40 product with 35 percent margin after Amazon fees and product cost, so $14 of contribution per unit. That makes 35 percent your break-even ACoS. Now assume a category video campaign at a $0.80 CPC and an 8 percent conversion rate. Cost per order is $0.80 divided by 0.08, or $10. ACoS is $10 divided by $40, or 25 percent, leaving $4 of profit on every ad-attributed order.
Scale it: 1,000 clicks cost $800 and produce 80 orders and $3,200 in sales. If half those orders are new-to-brand, you have paid $800 to acquire 40 first-time customers, or $20 each, while still making $320 on the ad orders. A branded defense campaign at an illustrative $0.50 CPC and 15 percent conversion costs $3.33 per order, an 8 percent ACoS, but wins almost no new customers. Both work; they do different jobs and need different targets.
Flip one input and the picture changes. At a 4 percent conversion rate the same campaign costs $20 per order, a 50 percent ACoS, and loses $6 a unit. That is when you fix the listing or the video before you touch the bid.
Sponsored Brands playbook: six steps for the next 30 days
- Brand owner, Seller Central Brand Registry and Stores: confirm enrolment and build a Store with at least three sub-pages, one unique product each. Metric: Store spotlight appears in the campaign builder.
- Ads manager, Campaign Manager: audit every live product collection. Any ad group with one or two ASINs gets a replacement with 3 to 10 in-stock, Buy Box winning ASINs. Metric: impressions on the new campaign match the old one within 14 days.
- Ads manager, Campaign Manager: split one mixed campaign into branded defense, category and competitor campaigns with separate budgets. Metric: branded ACoS below break-even, category new-to-brand order share rising week over week.
- Creative lead, Creative tools or your video supplier: cut a 15 to 30 second video with captions and the product on screen in the first three seconds, in 16:9 and 9:16. Metric: video CTR above the static ad it replaces.
- Ads manager, Reports: build a Sponsored Brands report with new-to-brand metrics and read it weekly next to TACoS. Metric: new-to-brand orders per $100 of category spend trending up.
- Finance or owner, your profit sheet: set break-even ACoS per product from margin after fees and keep each campaign target below it. Metric: no campaign above break-even for two consecutive weeks.
When Sponsored Brands are the wrong spend
Skip or pause Sponsored Brands when any of these is true. You are not in Brand Registry, because you cannot run them. You have one or two products and no plan for bundles, because collections need three ASINs. Your margin after fees is under about 20 percent, because at the CPC ranges above a category campaign has little room to profit and exact-match Sponsored Products will usually return more. Your hero product is close to stocking out, because Amazon now removes products that lose the Buy Box from the ad.
The other case is a Brand Store that does not convert. Paid traffic to a weak Store multiplies the problem. Point the campaign at the product page first and revisit spotlight once Store visits convert.
- Not in Brand Registry: ineligible
- Fewer than three ASINs and no bundles: collections are closed to you
- Margin after fees under about 20 percent: exact-match Sponsored Products usually win
How PPC Spider runs Sponsored Brands
Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Brands video are included in every PPC Spider Amazon PPC plan alongside Sponsored Products and Sponsored Display. Plans are flat monthly retainers tied to a spend band, never a percentage of ad spend: Launch is $995 a month for up to $10k of monthly ad spend, Growth is $1,250 a month for up to $40k and adds daily bid and budget management and a campaign architecture rebuild, and Scale is $2,200 a month for up to $120k with a dedicated strategist and SpiderOS access.
Every campaign gets a profit-capped ACoS target set from the product's margin, the same break-even math as the worked example, and the account is managed to a TACoS that leaves money after fees. A 30 second product video with captions and a Sponsored Brands cut is a one-time $960, and a Brand Store build gives your ads a branded destination with no competitor ads. The free Amazon audit will tell you whether your current structure passes the test above.
Sources
- Amazon Ads, Your complete guide to Sponsored Brands (advertising.amazon.com)
- My Amazon Guy, Sponsored Brands product collections update, February 2026 (myamazonguy.com)
- CedCommerce, Amazon overhauls Sponsored Brands product collections (cedcommerce.com)
- Nova Analytics, Sponsored Brands collections now require 3 to 10 ASINs, February 2026 (novadata.io)
- MinsterFB, Changes to Amazon Sponsored Brands, June 2026 (minsterfb.com)
- Helium 10, How to use Amazon Sponsored Brand ads (helium10.com)
- Marknology, Amazon Advertising 2026: costs and trends, September 2026 (marknology.com)
- Skale Strategy, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display in 2026, August 2026 (skalestrategy.com)
- Velocity Sellers, Amazon Sponsored Brands strategy 2026, May 2026 (velocitysellers.com)
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