Online advertising
Amazon Ads: How to Advertise on Amazon, Step by Step
The ad types that matter, how much you can pay per sale without losing money and your first auto campaign, based on Amazon's own best practices and a real test of three AIs.
Amazon Ads is Amazon's advertising platform: you pay to put your products at the top of Amazon search results and on other products' pages. The format almost everyone starts with is Sponsored Products, which you pay for per click. If you already sell on Amazon.com, you can have your first auto campaign live in an afternoon.
In the US, "amazon ads" gets about 18,100 searches a month and "how to advertise on amazon", 170 (DataForSEO, October 2026). This guide gets to the point: the ad types, what they cost, the ACoS you can afford and your first campaign, step by step.
It's the most purchase-driven corner of online advertising: the shopper is already looking for a product, and you pay to be in front of them.
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What is Amazon Ads and how does it work?
It's Amazon's ad system: you bid to show up when someone searches for something like what you sell, and you pay when they click.
Amazon Ads is Amazon's advertising platform. It lets sellers, brands and authors promote their products inside the store, in search results and on product pages, and beyond it. It runs on an auction: you set a maximum bid per click and Amazon decides which ad to show.
What it isn't: selling on Amazon. To advertise, you already need a seller account and live listings. Amazon Ads is the accelerator, not the car: if the listing doesn't convince, ads just bring more people who leave.
Types of Amazon ads: Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Display
You only need three names to start, and Amazon Sponsored Products drives almost everything early on.
| Ad type | Where it shows | Who can use it | How you pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sponsored Products | Search results and product pages | Sellers with stock and the featured offer | Per click |
| Sponsored Brands | Above search results, with your logo, a headline and several products or a video | Brand Registry members | Per click |
| Sponsored Display | On and off Amazon, to re-engage people who viewed your product | Brand Registry members | Per click or per impression |
| Stores | Your brand store inside Amazon | Brand Registry members | Free, it's not an ad |
| Amazon DSP and video | Prime Video, Twitch and outside websites | Larger budgets | Per thousand impressions |
Do you need Brand Registry to advertise on Amazon?
Not for Sponsored Products: a Professional seller account and a product in stock with the featured offer are enough. For Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display and a Store, yes: you need to enroll in Amazon Brand Registry, which requires a registered or pending trademark with an eligible office.
Amazon video ads: your options, what they cost and how to start
Amazon video ads come in two realistic flavors: Sponsored Brands videos that autoplay in shopping results, and streaming TV, video and audio ads bought programmatically. For a small seller, the first one is where you start.
| Option | Where it shows | How you pay | Who can use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sponsored Brands video | Autoplays in shopping results, 6 to 45 seconds | Per click, or per thousand viewable impressions | Brand Registry sellers, vendors and agencies |
| Programmatic video and audio | Prime Video, Twitch, Fire TV, Amazon and outside sites | Self-service with your own budget, or managed service with a minimum spend that varies by country | Any advertiser, even without products on Amazon |
Amazon's guide says Sponsored Brands has no minimum spend. For the video itself, it recommends 15 to 30 seconds, vertical (9:16) or horizontal (16:9), with the product on screen in the first 2 seconds and its function by second 5. Ads autoplay on mute, so add captions.
No video yet? Per Amazon's announcement, the Video Generator in Creative Studio builds up to six 15-second videos from one product image and an ASIN, at no additional cost. Authors can use it too.
The programmatic side has changed. Amazon says Amazon DSP is now part of Amazon Ads Agent, one platform for sponsored ads and programmatic buying, and existing campaigns carried over. Amazon's beginner guide still sends sellers to Advertising, then Campaign Manager, in Seller Central.
Amazon ads cost: what you pay and the ACoS you can afford
There's no fee and no minimum spend: you pay for each click at the auction price, within the daily budget you set.
Amazon's best practices guide for Sponsored Products says it plainly: they're cost-per-click ads with no monthly or upfront fees, and Amazon recommends starting with a daily budget of $10. So, how much does it cost to advertise on Amazon? Whatever your clicks add up to, capped by the budget you set.
The metric that runs everything is ACoS, advertising cost of sales: ad spend divided by the sales those ads generate. Spend $30, sell $120, and your ACoS is 25 percent.
How do you calculate break-even ACoS?
With your price, your costs and Amazon's fees. Here's an example with round numbers (real fees depend on your category):
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Selling price | $30.00 |
| Product cost | $7.00 |
| Referral fee (15 percent, example) | $4.50 |
| Fulfillment by Amazon (example) | $5.00 |
| Profit before ads | $13.50 |
Your break-even ACoS is 13.50 ÷ 30 = 45 percent. Above that, every ad-driven sale loses money. That's the real answer to ACoS on Amazon: it only means something next to your margin. Run your own product through our margin calculator before you set a single bid.
How to set up your first Amazon Sponsored Products campaign, step by step
Start with an automatic campaign for a single product: Amazon finds the searches that work and you learn from real data.
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Pick the product you'll advertise
One with stock, a competitive price, clear photos and the featured offer, the buy box on the product page. Without it, the ad won't show.
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Open Campaign Manager
In Seller Central, go to Advertising, Campaign Manager, Create campaign and Sponsored Products.
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Name it and set a daily budget
A name you'll understand in three months (SP, AUTO and the product) and a daily budget you can sustain for at least a month.
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Choose automatic targeting
Amazon matches your product to close-match and loose-match searches, plus substitute and complementary products.
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Pick a bidding strategy
To start, dynamic bids down only: Amazon lowers your bid when a click is less likely to turn into a sale.
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Set your bid and launch
Start near the suggested bid or slightly below, and launch the campaign.
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Review without overreacting
Check the data twice a week during the first week, as Amazon suggests, and save your first real optimization for weeks two to four.
Should you start with an auto campaign or a manual one?
Auto to discover, manual to profit. The auto campaign shows you what shoppers really type; when a search term sells, move it into a manual Amazon PPC campaign with exact match and its own bid.
Here's the search term report from my Amazon auto campaign (columns: term, clicks, spend, orders, sales). My break-even ACoS is [X] percent. Sort every term into: move to manual exact match, add as negative, or wait for more data, and explain each call in one line.
How to optimize Amazon PPC after the first month
You optimize with three levers: negatives to cut waste, manual campaigns for what sells and a listing that converts.
You already have negatives and manual campaigns. The third lever is the one people forget: if shoppers click and don't buy, the problem isn't the bid, it's the listing. Photos, title, price and reviews decide your conversion rate, and your conversion rate decides your ACoS.
Delivery speed matters too. If you're weighing shipping yourself against Amazon's logistics, read what is fulfillment and when outsourcing pays off. And when the account grows past what you can review each week, that's the moment to bring in a media buyer.
Amazon advertising on a small budget: your maximum CPC
The bid you can afford comes from three numbers: price, break-even ACoS and how many clicks turn into orders.
Maximum CPC = price × break-even ACoS × conversion rate. In our example, $30 × 45 percent × 10 percent (an example conversion rate) = $1.35. Bid above that and every click costs more than the order it brings.
With $10 a day, that's about 220 clicks a month at $1.35, or roughly 22 orders if the 10 percent holds. Small, but enough to learn which searches sell. Knowing how to advertise on Amazon is the easy part; knowing what you can pay is the part that makes money.
Amazon ads for books: how to advertise a KDP book
To run Amazon ads for books, open the Marketing tab in the KDP Portal, click Learn more in the Amazon Ads section and choose Start Advertising. Amazon creates a separate ads account for each country where you list a title.
Start with Sponsored Products. Sponsored Brands needs at least one pen name with three unique titles in Author Central. Two timing details from the KDP help: ad review usually takes about 24 hours and can take up to 3 business days, and orders can take up to 12 hours to show in your reports. Don't judge a campaign before that.
For an author, your margin is your royalty. Take an ebook at $4.99 on the 70 percent option: KDP pays 70 percent of the price minus delivery costs, which average about $0.06 per unit, so you keep roughly $3.43. Your break-even ACoS is 3.43 ÷ 4.99, about 69 percent. Your maximum CPC is the royalty times your conversion rate: with a 5 percent rate (an assumption), about $0.17 per click.
That's a thin bid, so expect to win only the cheaper searches at first. KDP also offers a free AI image generator for ad images, and it recommends a strong detail page and an up-to-date Author Central bio before you pay for traffic.
Frequently asked questions about Amazon Ads
How do Amazon ads for authors work?
Amazon ads for authors run from your KDP Bookshelf: next to each title there's an option to promote and advertise, which takes you to an Amazon Ads campaign tied to your author account. You pay per click, like any seller, and you can start with Sponsored Products. Launch an auto campaign to learn what readers search for, then add keywords with similar authors and titles once you have data.
Where do I log in to the Amazon Ads console?
Sellers reach it from Seller Central: open the menu, go to Advertising and then Campaign Manager. You can also sign in at advertising.amazon.com with the same account. KDP authors get there from the promote and advertise option in their Bookshelf. If you see an empty console, check that you're in the right marketplace, since Amazon.com, Amazon.ca and other stores each have their own campaigns.
What is Amazon Ads Academy?
Amazon Ads Academy is Amazon's free advertising training: courses, videos and certifications covering everything from Sponsored Products to programmatic buying. It's useful for learning the console and the jargon, and the certifications help if you freelance or work at an agency. Just keep in mind it teaches the tools, not how much you can afford to pay per sale. That number comes from your margin.
Are Amazon ads worth it?
They're worth it when the product already converts and the margin can absorb the ad cost. Shoppers on Amazon are searching to buy, so a good listing in front of the right search turns clicks into orders faster than most channels. They're not worth it for a listing with no reviews, a weak main image or a margin too thin to absorb any ad cost. Run a month-long test and judge it against your break-even ACoS.
What is a good ACoS?
A good ACoS is any ACoS below your break-even ACoS, which is your profit before ads divided by your selling price. There's no universal number: 30 percent is a disaster for a product with a 20 percent margin and a bargain for one with 45 percent. Many sellers accept a higher ACoS while launching a product to collect reviews and sales history, then tighten it once the product ranks.
What is Amazon PPC?
Amazon PPC is the common name for Amazon's pay-per-click sponsored ads, mainly Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands. You bid on searches or products, and you pay only when a shopper clicks. It's the same thing as Amazon Ads, the brand Amazon has used since late 2021, when it quietly replaced the older name, Amazon Advertising. An Amazon PPC campaign is simply one of those sponsored ad campaigns.