Amazon Ads Tutorial

An Amazon Ads tutorial teaches sellers how to pay for better visibility inside Amazon's own store. Amazon Ads is Amazon's advertising platform, and its three main self-service formats for sellers are Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display, all charged mainly per click and measured against sales on Amazon.

• Sponsored Products: Single listings shown in search results and on product pages, the format most sellers start with.
• Sponsored Brands: A logo, a custom headline and several products, or a short video, usually for sellers in Brand Registry.
• Sponsored Display: Ads that follow shoppers who viewed similar products, on and sometimes off Amazon.
• Pricing model: Mostly cost per click through an auction, with daily budgets you control.
• Key reports: Spend, sales, ROAS, ACoS and the search terms that triggered each ad.

This tutorial follows one example: a small Jaipur brand selling hand block-printed cotton bedsheets on Amazon.in. Its double and king size sheets have good reviews, but a shopper searching "jaipuri cotton bedsheet king size" sees dozens of larger brands first. The owner wants more orders without selling any sheet at a loss.

Prerequisites for Amazon Ads

• A professional seller account: Sponsored Products generally requires an active professional selling plan on Amazon.in.
• Eligible listings: Products must be in stock, in an eligible category and usually winning the Buy Box, or the ad does not show.
• Brand Registry, for more formats: Sponsored Brands, Stores and some Sponsored Display options need enrollment in Amazon Brand Registry, which requires a registered or applied-for trademark.
• Strong listings: Clear titles, bullet points and images, with at least a few genuine reviews, since ads send shoppers straight to the listing. Product feed optimization covers how to improve them.
• Your margin per product: Know the break-even ROAS of each sheet before spending anything.

Setup: Open Campaign Manager

1. Sign in to Seller Central and open Advertising > Campaign Manager.
2. Add a billing method for advertising charges, since ad costs are billed separately from selling fees.
3. Select Create campaign and choose Sponsored Products for the first campaign.
4. Use a naming pattern that explains itself, such as "SP | King sheets | Auto" and "SP | King sheets | Exact", so reports stay readable as the account grows.

Step-by-Step: Run Your First Amazon Ads Campaigns

Step 1: Launch an Automatic Campaign

Create a Sponsored Products campaign with automatic targeting for the four best-selling king size sheets. Amazon reads the listings and chooses searches and products to show them against. It groups these into close match, loose match, substitutes and complements, and each group can have its own bid.

Set a modest daily budget at the campaign level, and begin with the suggested bid shown in the console rather than a guess.

Step 2: Choose a Bidding Strategy

Amazon offers several bidding strategies. Dynamic bids, down only lowers the bid when a sale looks less likely and is the safer choice for a new account. Up and down can raise bids when a sale looks likely, and fixed bids keep the exact amount you set. You can also raise bids for the top of search placement if that position sells better.

Step 3: Build a Manual Keyword Campaign

After about two weeks, download the search term report and find searches that brought orders at a healthy ROAS, such as "jaipuri bedsheet king size cotton". Add them to a new manual campaign with exact match, and add a few broader ideas with phrase match or broad match. The keyword match types lesson explains how these differ.

Add each moved search term as a negative exact keyword in the automatic campaign, so the two campaigns do not bid against each other.

Step 4: Add Product Targeting

Create a manual campaign that targets specific product pages (ASINs) or whole categories. The Jaipur brand targets pages of pricier printed sheets, where its lower price and similar style can win the click. Avoid targeting products that clearly outsell yours on price and reviews.

Step 5: Add Negative Keywords

In the search term report, look for searches with many clicks and no orders, such as "bedsheet under 300" or "single bed polyester sheet". Add them as negative keywords, which is one of the quickest ways to cut wasted spend in a new account.

Step 6: Add Sponsored Brands Once Registered

When the brand joins Brand Registry, create a Sponsored Brands campaign with the logo, a headline such as "Hand block-printed in Jaipur", and three sheets, or a short video of the printing process. It usually appears above or among search results and sends shoppers to the brand's Store or a product.

Step 7: Test Sponsored Display

Sponsored Display can reach shoppers who viewed the sheets but did not buy, or who viewed similar products. Start it only after search campaigns are profitable, with a small budget, because it reaches people earlier in their decision.

Step 8: Read the Reports Weekly

The metrics in these reports are explained in ROAS vs ACoS vs TACoS.

Common Mistakes

• Ignoring margin: A campaign with a good-looking ROAS can still lose money on a low-margin sheet.
• One campaign for everything: Mixing cheap and premium products hides which one is losing money.
• Never adding negatives: Automatic campaigns keep paying for poor searches until someone blocks them.
• Changing bids daily: Small data swings are normal, so wait for enough clicks before judging.
• Spending mostly on your own brand name: These searches look highly profitable but often bring shoppers who would have bought anyway.
• Ads on weak listings: Blurry images or missing sizes waste every paid click.

Next Steps

• Compare marketplaces: Run the same product on Flipkart with the Flipkart Ads tutorial.
• Understand the model: Read what is retail media for how every marketplace ad network works.
• Track the whole business: Use TACoS to see whether ads also lift organic sales.

How AI Changes Amazon Ads

What AI Automates Now

Amazon's systems already choose searches for automatic campaigns and adjust bids in real time under dynamic bidding. Amazon has also added generative AI tools that create lifestyle images and video for ads from a product photo, and assistants that suggest campaign settings.

What Still Needs a Human

Only the seller knows each sheet's margin, stock levels and which designs to push before a festival. A person must set the break-even ROAS, decide how much to spend on the brand's own name, and check that AI images show the real print and colour of the fabric.

Risk to Watch

AI-generated lifestyle images can make a sheet look brighter or softer than it is, which leads to returns and bad reviews. Automated bidding can also spend heavily during sale events when bids rise. Cap daily budgets, and compare every AI image with the actual product.

Do It with AI

Use this prompt to review a search term report and plan changes; it works in ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini.

1. Download the search term report for the last 14 to 30 days and remove anything that identifies a customer.
2. Run the prompt and recheck the ROAS of the top five search terms by hand.
3. Move winners to exact match, add negatives, and note every change with the date in a sheet.
4. Review the same report again after two weeks and compare against break-even ROAS.

Check Before You Use It

• Facts: Confirm every figure against the Campaign Manager report before changing bids.
• Brand fit: Keep searches tied to the brand's handmade Jaipur story even if they sell slowly at first.
• Compliance: Follow Amazon's advertising policies, and never write ad headlines claiming "best" or "number one" without proof.