Overview

Amazon's pay-per-click advertising landscape has grown significantly more competitive in 2025, with rising cost-per-click rates, AI-powered auction systems, and increasingly sophisticated seller strategies changing how ads perform. For sellers aiming to protect margins while scaling revenue, mastering campaign architecture, bid management, and continuous optimization has become essential rather than optional.

Key Ad Formats Available to Sellers

• Sponsored Products — The workhorse of Amazon advertising, accounting for roughly 74% of seller ad usage. These appear directly in search results and on product detail pages, offering the most straightforward path to conversions.
• Sponsored Brands — Available to brand-registered sellers, these placements feature custom headlines, logos, and multiple products in a single ad unit, making them effective for building category visibility.
• Sponsored Display — Audience-based ads that reach shoppers both on and off Amazon, including retargeting capabilities for visitors who browsed similar products.
• Sponsored Brand Video — Video placements that consistently outperform static formats in engagement. Production costs can be kept modest with basic equipment and clean editing.

Combining Automatic and Manual Campaigns

Experienced sellers typically run both automatic and manual campaigns as complementary tools rather than treating them as an either-or choice.

Automatic campaigns allow Amazon's algorithm to determine which search terms and products trigger ad placements. They serve as a discovery mechanism, surfacing queries that sellers might miss through manual research alone. The tradeoff is limited control, which can result in spend on irrelevant or poorly converting searches.

Manual campaigns provide direct control over keyword targeting, individual bid amounts, and negative keyword lists. The proven workflow is to use automatic campaigns for keyword discovery, then migrate high-performing terms into structured manual campaigns where bids and budgets can be precisely calibrated.

Keyword Strategy: Intent Over Volume

Keyword selection remains the single most impactful lever in campaign performance. While high-volume generic terms are tempting, they come with steep click costs and attract browsers who may not be purchase-ready.