Sponsored Brands vs Sponsored Products: When to Use Each

New advertisers often ask which is “better” — Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands. It’s the wrong question. They do different jobs. One drives sales of a single product. The other builds your brand and shows off your range. Here’s how to tell them apart and use both on purpose.

Sponsored Products: your workhorse

Sponsored Products promote one product at a time in search results and on detail pages. They look like organic listings, so shoppers click them naturally, and they point straight to a product detail page.

• Best for: direct sales, ranking a specific ASIN, defending or attacking a keyword.
• Why it matters: this is where most sellers make most of their ad profit. If your account only has budget for one ad type, it’s this one.

Sponsored Brands: your storefront ad

Sponsored Brands are the banner-style ads — usually your logo, a headline, and several products — that sit at the top of search. They can send shoppers to your Brand Store or a custom landing page instead of a single listing.

• Best for: brand awareness, launching a range, defending your branded search, telling a story.
• Why it matters: they own premium real estate at the top of the page and showcase more than one product, which lifts the whole catalog.

How to combine them

• Build the base with Sponsored Products. Get your key ASINs profitable first.
• Layer Sponsored Brands on top to own the top of search for your best category and branded terms.
• Defend your name. Run a Sponsored Brands ad on your own brand keywords so competitors can’t sit above you.
• Point Sponsored Brands at your Store when you want shoppers to browse your range, not just one item.

The two aren’t rivals. Sponsored Products makes the sale; Sponsored Brands makes the brand. Together they cover more of the page and more of the shopper journey.

Not sure how to split budget between them? Get a free audit and we’ll map it to your catalog.