A Beginner's Guide to Sponsored Brands on Amazon

Good news! A new and exciting opportunity has recently arrived for all US-based Amazon and Kindle sellers to help you up your ad game. In this article we’ll be covering the what, the why and the how of Sponsored Brand placements to help get you started! 

What are Sponsored Brand placements? 
The Sponsored Brand placements that are now available to KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) authors are actually nothing new. The only catch with them was that they were previously available to almost all Amazon sellers, apart from indie authors.  

​Type any book genre into Amazon and the Sponsored Brand placements are the three ads that show up first, right at the top of the search (see the highlighted red box on the below image). They shouldn’t be confused with the first two products in the search, which are Sponsored Product ads. 

Why should you use Sponsored Brand placements? 
Hopefully it’s clear from how prominent they are in an Amazon search that these ad placements can prove highly valuable to any Amazon seller!  They’re particularly perfect for series writers – in order to access them, you need at least three ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Number) in a single KDP account, aka three different products. This means you can display three books from your series in one single ad banner! However, they can of course also be used to advertise just one book in three different formats, as a paperback, ebook and audiobook each have individual ASINs. 

Since this feature is relatively new, there is still only low competition for each ad placement. There’s only one Sponsored Brand ad for each Amazon search, so the sooner you make a start at securing yours, the better! 

How do you use Sponsored Brand placements?
In the ad, you get a customisable headline of 50 characters. Try and think of a tagline you know will appeal to your target audience specifically, not just to anyone and everyone. Perhaps you’ve already got something from your marketing strategy you can use to help continue a cohesive marketing strategy. If you’re publishing with Rowanvale Books, you can always contact a member of our marketing team for help if you’re low on inspiration!  

Amazon will use your author photo as a default in the image for the ad. However, you can choose to instead use your logo or a section of your book cover. Again, don’t hesitate to message a member of our team if you need any help or a second opinion in choosing the right photo. ​

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