How to Advertise on Amazon: Step-by-Step Guide for Sellers (2026)

Advertising on Amazon isn't optional anymore. It's the cost of doing business. Five years ago, a great product with good reviews could rank organically and print money. That era is over. The brands winning on Amazon in 2026 are the ones who treat advertising as a core growth lever — not an afterthought.

But "just run some ads" isn't a strategy. After managing advertising for 50+ brands with $205M+ in total Amazon sales, I can tell you that the gap between brands who advertise well and brands who advertise poorly is enormous. This guide walks you through exactly how to advertise on Amazon, step by step, from zero to a profitable, scalable advertising system.

Step 1: Meet the Requirements

Before you can advertise on Amazon, you need:

• A Professional Seller Account ($39.99/month) — Individual accounts can't run ads

• Products in the Buy Box — If you don't own the Buy Box, your ads won't show. This is mainly an issue for resellers; private label sellers typically own their Buy Box.

• Brand Registry (for Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display) — You need a registered trademark and enrollment in Amazon Brand Registry. Sponsored Products don't require this, but the other ad types do.

• A listing that's ready — This means optimized title, bullet points, images, and ideally 15+ reviews. Running ads to a bad listing is like paying to send customers into a store with the lights off.

If you don't have Brand Registry yet, start with Sponsored Products while you get your trademark registered. The process takes 3-6 months but it unlocks the full advertising toolkit plus A+ Content, Amazon Stores, and the invaluable Search Query Performance Report.

Step 2: Understand Amazon's Ad Types

Amazon offers multiple ad types. Here's when to use each one.

Sponsored Products — Your Foundation

Sponsored Products promote individual listings in search results and on product pages. They look almost identical to organic listings with a small "Sponsored" label.

Use for: Direct sales, keyword ranking, product launches, and everyday revenue generation. This should be 60-80% of your ad budget. How they work: You target keywords (what shoppers search) or products (specific ASINs). When a shopper searches your keyword, Amazon runs an auction. If your bid wins, your ad appears. You pay when they click.

Sponsored Brands — Brand Building

Sponsored Brands are banner ads at the top of search results featuring your logo, headline, and multiple products. They can link to your Amazon Store or a custom landing page.

Use for: Brand awareness, launching new product lines, capturing shoppers at the top of the search funnel. Budget 10-20% here. How they work: Similar keyword-targeted auction system, but the ad format showcases your brand rather than a single product. Sponsored Brands Video is particularly effective — video ads in search results have significantly higher CTR than static ads.

Sponsored Display — Retargeting & Conquest

Sponsored Display ads target audiences based on shopping behavior. They appear on product detail pages, review pages, and across the web.

Use for: Retargeting shoppers who viewed your product but didn't buy, targeting shoppers viewing competitor products, and reaching audiences off-Amazon. Budget 10-20% here once your fundamentals are solid. How they work: Instead of keywords, you target audiences (views remarketing, purchase remarketing) or products (your ad appears on specific product pages).

Step 3: Set Up Your First Campaign

Here's the exact process for launching your first Amazon advertising campaign.

Create a Sponsored Products Auto Campaign

• Go to Campaign Manager in Seller Central

• Click Create Campaign → Sponsored Products

• Name it clearly: `[Product Name]-Auto-Discovery`

• Set daily budget: $30-50 (enough to gather data without overspending)

• Choose Automatic Targeting

• Set default bid: $0.75 (adjust for your category — use Amazon's suggested bid as a reference)

• Select the product you want to advertise

• Set campaign to No End Date

• Launch

Why auto first: Automatic targeting lets Amazon's algorithm decide which search terms to show your ad on. This is a discovery mechanism — Amazon will test your product against thousands of search terms and you'll learn which ones convert. This data becomes the foundation for everything else.

Create a Sponsored Products Manual Campaign

After 7-14 days of auto campaign data:

• Download your Search Term Report from Campaign Manager → Reports

• Find search terms with 2+ conversions and acceptable ACoS

• Create a new campaign: `[Product Name]-Manual-Exact`

• Choose Manual Targeting → Keyword Targeting

• Add your converting search terms as Exact Match keywords

• Set individual bids 10-20% higher than what worked in auto (these are proven terms)

• Set daily budget: $50-100

• Go back to your auto campaign and add these keywords as Negative Exact matches (prevents overlap)

Add Negative Keywords

From your search term report, find:

• Irrelevant terms (searches completely unrelated to your product)

• High-spend, zero-conversion terms (terms you've spent $20+ on with no sales)

Add these as negative keywords to your auto campaign. This is the single fastest way to improve campaign efficiency.

Step 4: Optimize Your Campaigns Weekly

Advertising on Amazon isn't set-and-forget. The sellers who win are the ones who optimize consistently. Here's the weekly rhythm.

Weekly Optimization Checklist

Search Term Review (15 minutes)

• Download search term report

• Identify new converting terms → Graduate to manual exact match

• Identify waste terms → Add as negatives

• Look for patterns — are certain keyword themes consistently converting?

Bid Adjustments (10 minutes)

• Keywords with strong ACoS and room to scale → Increase bid 10-15%

• Keywords with poor ACoS and enough data (30+ clicks) → Decrease bid 15-20%

• Keywords with zero conversions after 40+ clicks → Pause or negate

Budget Check (5 minutes)

• Are any campaigns running out of budget before end of day? If yes, either increase budget or lower bids to spread spend across the full day

• Are any campaigns consistently underspending? Consider increasing bids on top performers

Listing Check (5 minutes)

• Has anything changed with your listing (review count, rating, price)?

• Are competitors running aggressive promotions that might be affecting your conversion rate?

That's 35 minutes per week per product. Non-negotiable if you want profitable advertising.

Step 5: Scale What Works

Once you have 4-6 weeks of data and a clear picture of what converts, it's time to scale.

Horizontal Scaling (More Keywords)

• Mine your auto campaign for new converting terms continuously

• Run reverse ASIN lookups on top competitors to find keywords you're missing

• Test mid-tail and long-tail variations of your winning keywords

• Launch Sponsored Brands campaigns targeting your top 10-15 performing keywords

Vertical Scaling (More Budget on Winners)

• Increase bids on exact match keywords with strong ACoS and growing impressions

• Increase daily budgets on campaigns that consistently hit their cap

• Add top-of-search placement modifiers for keywords where your conversion rate justifies the higher CPC

New Ad Types

• Sponsored Brands Video: Create a 15-30 second product video. These ads appear in search results and typically have 2-3x the CTR of static ads. The video doesn't need to be Hollywood quality — clear product demonstration with text overlays works.

• Sponsored Display Retargeting: Target shoppers who viewed your product in the last 7-30 days but didn't buy. These are warm leads — they already showed interest.

• Product Targeting: Place your ads on specific competitor product pages. Works best when your product has a clear advantage (better price, better reviews, better features).

Step 6: Measure the Right Metrics

Don't just look at ACoS. Here's the full picture.

ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale)

Ad spend / ad revenue. Your primary efficiency metric. Target: below your break-even margin.

TACoS (Total Advertising Cost of Sale)

Ad spend / total revenue (organic + paid). This tells you if PPC is building organic momentum or creating ad dependency. If TACoS is declining over time while revenue grows, your strategy is working. We track this across every brand in our portfolio — it's the metric that matters most for long-term health.

Conversion Rate

Percentage of clicks that result in a sale. Industry average on Amazon is 9-15% depending on category. Below that? Your listing needs work — not your ads.

Impression Share

Percentage of available impressions you're capturing for a keyword. Low impression share on converting keywords means there's untapped volume. Increase bids or budget.

New-to-Brand (Sponsored Brands)

Percentage of purchases from customers who haven't bought from your brand in the last 12 months. This measures actual customer acquisition versus repeat purchases.

Common Advertising Mistakes on Amazon

Advertising a product that isn't ready. If your listing has 3 reviews, a phone photo for a main image, and bullet points written in 5 minutes — don't advertise it. You'll spend $1,000 to learn what you already know: the listing doesn't convert. Running only auto campaigns forever. Auto campaigns are for discovery. Manual campaigns are for performance. Sellers who never graduate from auto to manual leave 30-50% efficiency on the table. Optimizing daily. Amazon data has a 24-48 hour attribution lag. Daily bid changes based on yesterday's data means you're reacting to incomplete information. Weekly is the right cadence for most accounts. Not tracking profitability. Revenue means nothing without margins. Use a tool like Seller Board to calculate actual profit per unit, then set ACoS targets based on real margins — not guesses. Giving up too early. PPC compounds over time. The first month is the most expensive and the least profitable. Month 2-3 you start finding what works. Month 4-6 the flywheel kicks in. Sellers who quit in month 1 because ACoS was 50% never make it to month 4 where it's 18%.

What To Do Next

Advertising on Amazon is a skill. Like any skill, it gets better with practice and worse with neglect. The brands that commit to a weekly optimization rhythm and treat advertising as a core business function — not a side task — consistently outperform those that don't.

If you're spending money on Amazon ads and not seeing the returns you expected, the issue is almost always diagnosable. Bad campaign structure, wrong keyword targeting, or a listing that doesn't convert — these are fixable problems.

Book a free strategy call — We'll review your current advertising setup, identify the biggest gaps, and give you a clear action plan. Whether you execute it yourself or want our team to handle it, you'll walk away with clarity on what needs to change.

Hunter Harris is the founder of GigaBrands, an AI-assisted Amazon growth agency managing 50+ brands with over $205M in total Amazon sales.