Overview

Amazon has released an official advertising checklist to help sellers fine‑tune their Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns. The guide outlines creative standards, brand‑store layout rules, responsive ad formats, and stricter compliance timelines. Sellers who follow the checklist can secure more visibility during the two biggest shopping days of the year.

Key Points

• Creative standards — Use a single, high‑resolution product image with minimal text; for example, a 2000 × 2000 px photo of a smartwatch displayed against a solid‑color background.
• Brand‑store layout – Adopt the required widget‑banner‑grid structure; a holiday‑themed widget at the top, a “Limited‑Time Offer” banner in the middle, and a product grid of up to 12 items at the bottom.
• Responsive e‑commerce creative — Enable Amazon’s automated format that pulls directly from product detail pages; a seller with 150 SKUs can generate dozens of ad variations without manual design work.
• Policy enforcement — Expect tighter review of promotional language; phrases like “Free Shipping” must appear only inside the approved widget, or the ad will be rejected.
• Submission timeline — Upload all assets 10‑14 days before Black Friday to avoid queue delays; sellers who missed the 2023 deadline lost an average of 12 % of holiday sales, according to internal Amazon data.
• Backup creative — Prepare at least one alternate image set per major deal; if the primary ad is flagged, the backup can be swapped in within 24 hours.

How the Advertising Checklist Works

1. Audit creative assets — Review each product image, headline, and call‑to‑action against the checklist. Example: A seller of kitchen gadgets replaces a cluttered collage with a single, bright‑colored image of a blender, reducing on‑screen text from 30 words to a concise “Blend Faster, Save 20 %.”
2. Configure the brand store — Insert the holiday widget at the top of the store, add a centered text banner that reads “Black Friday Blowout – Ends Monday,” and populate the bottom grid with the top‑selling items. : A cosmetics brand creates two separate stores, one labeled “BF2024” and another “CM2024,” each showing the appropriate date‑specific banner.