Amazon Marketing: All ad types and levers for sellers and vendors

An ad is supposed to get a coffee grinder into search results. A coupon is supposed to make buying it more attractive. Both are Amazon marketing, but they do different jobs. Using the coffee grinder brand BRAVIO as an example, this overview shows which lever fits which goal.

Amazon offers a good dozen marketing tools for this. The names keep changing: Sponsored Display is now called display ads, Sponsored TV is now streaming TV ads, and since the end of September 2026 the advertising console has been called Amazon Ads Agent.

Your product has to be found: in search, on other products’ detail pages, on streaming TV or through Google and social media. And it has to be bought once the shopper lands on the detail page or in the Brand Store. Advertising mainly brings visitors; the detail page, Brand Store and promotions are there to convince them to buy. In Germany and the US, Amazon is by far the largest network for retail media, meaning advertising sold directly by the retailer.

Amazon marketing at a glance: which lever for which goal

Goal	Lever
Get visible in search	Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands
Reach shoppers on detail pages and outside Amazon	Display ads
Reach and brand building (TV, video, audio)	Streaming TV ads, Amazon DSP
More purchases on the detail page	A+ Content, Brand Story
Your own brand presence	Brand Store
A price incentive to buy	Coupons, discounts, Lightning Deals, Subscribe & Save
First reviews for new products	Amazon Vine
Visitors from outside Amazon	External traffic, Amazon Attribution

Below you’ll find how each lever fits in and the matching detail article.

Amazon Ads: the ad types

On its German product page, Amazon splits campaigns into two groups: “Sponsored ads” (Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands) and “Display, video and audio” (Amazon Ads Germany: products and ad formats, in German). That page also lists “full-funnel campaigns”, which so far exist only in the US.

Since September 29, 2026, the shared platform for Sponsored Ads and DSP has been called Amazon Ads Agent. The new DSP campaign type DVA+ is in beta in the US; for Germany, Amazon says “coming soon”. Advertisers in Germany who already used Amazon DSP still see the familiar Amazon DSP interface.

The five most important ad types compared: what do you pay, who can book them and where does the ad appear?

Sponsored Products

Billing

CPC (per click)

Minimum budget

no monthly or upfront fees, daily budget

Who can book

Professional sellers, vendors, book vendors, KDP authors, agencies

Targeting

Keywords, products (manual or automatic)

Where the ad appears

in and next to search results, on product pages, also on Amazon sites and third-party destinations

Status in Germany

available

Sponsored Brands

Billing

CPC, vCPM or reserve share of voice (fixed upfront price)

Minimum budget

no minimum for CPC and vCPM; reserve share of voice with minimum commitment

Who can book

Vendors, professional sellers in Brand Registry

Targeting

not confirmed

Where the ad appears

Amazon store; formats: collection, Store Spotlight, video

Status in Germany

available

Display ads formerly Sponsored Display

Billing

CPC or vCPM

Minimum budget

no minimum

Who can book

Vendors, professional sellers in Brand Registry

Targeting

Context (products, categories), audiences (Amazon audiences such as interests or in-market, remarketing, AMC audiences)

Where the ad appears

Amazon store, Amazon sites such as Twitch, third-party websites and apps

Status in Germany

available; existing campaigns keep running

Streaming TV ads formerly Sponsored TV

Billing

Packages via self-service or managed service

Minimum budget

Self-service packages: USD 10,000 recommended

Managed-service packages: USD 50,000 minimum

Who can book

also advertisers who do not sell on Amazon

Targeting

not confirmed

Where the ad appears

Prime Video, Fire TV, Twitch, premium streaming apps

Status in Germany

Germany on Amazon’s country list, supply differs by country

The no-minimum self-service route (formerly Sponsored TV) is not available in Germany

Amazon DSP / DVA+

Billing

CPM (per 1,000 impressions) plus fees

Minimum budget

Managed service: usually from USD 50,000, varies by country

Self-service: own budget, no management fee

DVA+: no minimum spend US, beta

Who can book

all advertisers, also those who do not sell on Amazon

Targeting

Amazon audiences, keywords, products, in-market categories

Where the ad appears

Amazon-owned placements, streaming partners, third-party websites and apps

Status in Germany

Advertisers who used DSP before keep seeing the Amazon DSP interface

DVA+ for Germany Coming soon

Key: “US, beta” = only in the US, in beta · “Coming soon” = announced, not yet available · “not confirmed” = no checked source

As of 31 Oct 2026. Source: Amazon Ads product pages and announcements.

Sponsored Products

Sponsored Products promote a single product in and next to search results and on detail pages. Amazon builds the ad from your product data. You pay per click, and you don’t need a minimum budget. In Germany, too, the ads run by default on websites and in apps outside Amazon as well.

Professional sellers, vendors, book publishers, KDP authors and agencies can book them. The product must hold the Featured Offer. For most brands, Sponsored Products is the first campaign.

Sponsored Brands

Sponsored Brands show your brand: logo, headline and several products, a video or pages from your Brand Store. The formats are called product collection, Store Spotlight and video. You pay per click, per 1,000 viewable impressions (vCPM) or a fixed price up front (Reserve Share of Voice).

Professional sellers need Brand Registry for this; vendors can book Sponsored Brands directly.

Display ads (formerly Sponsored Display)

Sponsored Display is now called display ads. Existing campaigns keep running. The ad is built automatically from your detail page. You target it at products and categories or at audiences: for example, shoppers who looked at the BRAVIO coffee grinder but didn’t buy it. You pay per click or by vCPM, with no minimum budget.

Display ads appear on Amazon and, with audience targeting, also on Twitch and in third-party apps and websites. When this article first came out in 2020, only vendors could book the format in Germany. Today, Professional sellers with Brand Registry can book it too. More in the article on display ads.

Streaming TV ads (formerly Sponsored TV)

Streaming TV ads are video spots on Prime Video, Fire TV, Twitch and in streaming apps. The old Sponsored TV self-service route exists only in the US, Canada, Brazil, Mexico and the UK. In Germany, you now book streaming TV through “Display, video and audio”, meaning through the DSP. The article on Sponsored TV and streaming TV ads describes how to get there.

Amazon DSP and DVA+

With Amazon DSP, you buy display, video and audio ads programmatically, on and off Amazon: on Prime Video, Twitch and Fire TV, and in Germany also on Netflix and Disney+. You pay per 1,000 impressions (CPM) plus fees.

The managed service, where Amazon runs the campaigns for you, usually starts at USD 50,000. In self-service, you set your own budget and pay no management fee. The new campaign type DVA+ has no minimum budget, but it is only available in the US and as a beta.

Other formats: audio, out-of-home, devices, Sponsored Prompts

Amazon’s German product page also lists audio ads, out-of-home ads (for example on packaging, in-store displays and pickup locations) and ads on devices such as Fire TV, Echo Show and Fire Tablet. Whether each of these formats can be booked in Germany is not confirmed. Ads in the shopping assistant (Sponsored Prompts) exist only in the US, where Amazon Rufus is now called “Alexa for Shopping”.

Measuring and managing advertising

ACoS puts ad spend in relation to the sales Amazon attributes to the ads. ROAS is the inverse. Amazon deducts VAT from the attributed sales, so compare your ACoS with your net margin. You can work out your break-even ACoS with the article on ACoS. The ROAS and ACoS calculator converts one into the other.

The campaign is live. The work goes on: check search terms, adjust bids, shift budgets. Week after week. Optimizing Amazon PPC campaigns shows how to go about it. Amazon will switch off the old reports pages in the advertising console on December 31, 2026.

Amazon Attribution measures which clicks from Google, Meta, newsletters or influencers lead to purchases on Amazon. The tool is free.

Amazon Marketing Stream sends advertising data automatically to your own AWS account, broken down by hour. You need access to the Amazon Ads API for this. It pays off mainly for agencies and teams with their own dashboards.

Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) analyzes advertising data across all ad types: for example, which combination of Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products leads to the purchase of a BRAVIO coffee grinder. Since September 16, 2025, every advertiser with Sponsored Ads can open AMC directly in their account, in Germany too.

Promotions: coupons, discounts, Lightning Deals and Subscribe & Save

The shopper is on the coffee grinder’s detail page. Promotions give them a reason to buy now, for example with a lower price. A discount alone hardly helps a product get found. Amazon has changed fees and rules several times since mid-2025. Check the current terms in Seller Central before you plan a promotion.

Amazon coupons show a clickable discount in search results and on the detail page. The shopper first “clips” the coupon, and the discount is taken off at checkout.

A discount shows the reduced price next to the struck-through old price. Since January 7, 2025, you also create Prime exclusive discounts there; Amazon retired the separate tool for them.

Lightning Deals and Best Deals are time-limited deals that appear on Amazon’s deals page and cost a fee.

With Subscribe & Save, shoppers get a discount when they have a product delivered regularly. That suits consumables such as coffee, pet food or filters.

The most important date for promotions is Prime Day. In 2026 it ran in Germany from June 23 to 26, four days in total. All other dates are in our overview of Amazon events.

Brand presence and detail page

An Amazon Brand Store gives your brand its own page on Amazon, with several subpages, images, videos and products. The store is free, and you don’t have to run ads to have one. Sellers need Brand Registry; vendors and agencies can create a store directly. Shoppers reach the store through the brand link below the product title, through Sponsored Brands and display ads, or through the short URL amazon.de/yourbrand (Amazon Ads Germany: Brand Stores, in German).

On the detail page, the coffee grinder has to convince. A+ Content replaces the plain product description with modules containing images, comparison tables and text. The Brand Story above it introduces the brand and links to more products.

New products without reviews have a hard time. With Amazon Vine, selected reviewers receive the product and write a review.

External traffic

Not every shopper searches Amazon for a coffee grinder. Google ads, Instagram, a newsletter or an influencer can send buyers straight to your detail page. Here’s how to build and measure external traffic. TikTok is an option too: Amazon Ads on TikTok. Amazon Attribution shows which channel leads to purchases.

From Amazon Marketing Services to Amazon Ads

Until 2018, Amazon’s advertising offers for sellers and vendors were called Amazon Marketing Services (AMS). Alongside them were Amazon Media Group (AMG) and the Amazon Advertising Platform (AAP). In September 2018, Amazon merged all three under the name “Amazon Advertising” (Amazon Ads blog, archived version). AAP became Amazon DSP, and Headline Search Ads became Sponsored Brands. Later, Amazon renamed the division “Amazon Ads”, and since September 29, 2026, the platform has been called Amazon Ads Agent. So if you’re searching for “Amazon Marketing Services”, that’s where you’ll find the tools today.

Keeping track of ads and promotions with AMALYTIX

One coupon, one Lightning Deal, one campaign: you can still follow that in Seller Central and the advertising console. With four marketplaces, two dozen deals and Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and display ads all at once, the question becomes: what is still running? Often it’s only the sales figures that reveal Amazon canceled a Lightning Deal or a coupon’s budget is almost used up.

Under Marketing, AMALYTIX shows all discounts with their status: active, upcoming, expired or canceled. You also see units sold and revenue. When Amazon changes the status of a deal, you get a notification. Under Coupons, you see budget usage and how often the coupon was clipped and redeemed. In Advertising, you also see which ad type brings how much revenue on which marketplace.

You still choose the promotions and ad types and create them in Seller Central, Vendor Central or the advertising console. AMALYTIX shows where things stand and reports changes.

Conclusion: where to start?

• Start with Sponsored Products for the products that already sell.
• Register your brand with Brand Registry. Only then can you use Sponsored Brands, a Brand Store and A+ Content as a seller.
• Add display ads to win back shoppers who viewed your product and didn’t buy it.
• DSP and streaming TV only pay off once you have the budget and reach is your goal.
• Use promotions deliberately, for example around events and at product launch, not all year round.
• Measure everything with ACoS and ROAS, and use Amazon Attribution for external channels.

Frequently asked questions about Amazon marketing

What is Amazon marketing?

Amazon marketing covers everything that makes a product visible on Amazon and sells it: advertising, promotions, Brand Store, A+ Content and external traffic. Amazon Ads is the advertising part of it.

How much does advertising on Amazon cost?

Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and display ads cost per click or per 1,000 viewable impressions; there is no minimum budget. Only the fixed price for Sponsored Brands (Reserve Share of Voice) requires a minimum amount. Amazon DSP charges per 1,000 impressions plus fees; the managed service usually starts at USD 50,000.

What happened to Amazon Marketing Services?

In September 2018, Amazon merged AMS with its other advertising offers into “Amazon Advertising”. Today the division is called Amazon Ads and the platform Amazon Ads Agent.

Can sellers in Germany book display ads?

Yes. Professional sellers with Brand Registry can book display ads in Germany, and so can vendors.

What is Amazon Ads Agent?

Since September 29, 2026, Amazon Ads Agent has been the shared platform for Sponsored Ads and DSP. The new DSP campaign type DVA+ is so far only available there as a beta in the US.