Sponsored Brands for authors: Learn how to grow your business

• Below the top of shopping results
• Within shopping results
• On product detail pages (these are the pages a shopper sees after clicking on a specific item)

1. Meet the requirements. You must have three or more eligible titles under the same author’s name, and they must adhere to the ad policy for books. Additionally, the books must appear in Author Central, and the books you advertise must be available in the country where you’re advertising. Familiarize yourself here with Amazon Ads guidelines and acceptance policies.
2. Register. To create and manage ads, you must have an Amazon Ads account. You can register here.
3. Sign in. After you’ve registered, you can sign into the advertising console to launch or manage your ad campaigns.

Keyword targeting: These words or phrases help you match your ad with customer queries. The keywords you choose should describe different aspects of your book or your brand (“19th century authors” or “romance novels”) to help improve its visibility and reach.

Product targeting: This matches your ads to either 1) specific products, similar books, or the product page of these books or 2) entire categories or genres. The product you might choose to target if the book being advertised is Wuthering Heights could be the ASIN for Jane Eyre, for example, while the categories to target could be “fiction classics,” “Gothic romance,” or “literary fiction.”

When creating your Sponsored Brands ad, you’ll want to consider how closely you would like your ad to match what buyers are looking for through their shopping queries, and if there are any words or products you want to avoid being affiliated with. To do this, you can use the following tools:

Match types: This determines how closely a customer’s query must match a keyword for an ad to be shown. You’ll specify which match type you want to use: broad, phrase, or exact.

• Broad match: This query can contain the keyword terms in any order, including singulars, plurals, variations, synonyms, or related terms. The keyword itself may not be contained in the shopping query. For example, the keyword “classic novels” may match broader queries such as “classic books” and “classic horror novels,” or “19th century literature.” You should choose this option to expand your keyword coverage, helping to potentially increase the reach of your campaigns. It’s especially useful for an author’s first campaign, because it allows you to measure keyword performance and then make changes accordingly.
• Phrase match: It’s more restrictive than broad match, but phrase match may generally result in more relevant placements for your ad. The shopping query must contain the exact phrase or sequence of words, and it must include plurals. For example, the keyword “classic novels” may match queries such as “19th century classic novels” or “classic novels by women.” You should use phrase match when you want to balance relevance with reach, or for keywords you’ve chosen based on high performance in prior campaigns.
• Exact match: This is the most precise match type, but also the most relevant to a query, so the potential likelihood of a sale is higher. The shopping query must exactly match the keyword or sequence of words for the ad to show, and will also match close variations of the exact term, such as plurals. For example, the keyword “classic novel” may match queries such as “classic novels.” You should use exact match when you know the specific keywords that result in the highest performance for ads.

Negative targeting: These are keywords or products you don’t want people to associate with your ad and could be based on insights from campaigns that have run previously and underperformed.

A bid is the price you’re willing to pay for a shopper to click on your ad. Because multiple advertisers usually target the same keywords or products, how much you bid, along with the relevance of your ad to the shopper’s query, determines which ads will be shown. For example, if you’re advertising a fictional book about war, you might select “war novels” for keywords and set your bid at $0.75. Another author also chooses the keywords “war novels” and sets their bid at $0.60. Because your keywords are the same and your bid is higher, your ad will display.

Budgeting

You have two budgeting options: a daily budget or a lifetime budget. A daily budget allows you to determine the maximum amount you’re willing to spend on your campaign daily. This is averaged over the course of a month. So, if you budget $10 a day for 30 days, that’s $300, and spending is paced day by day. With a lifetime budget, you set the maximum amount you’re willing to spend on the entire advertising campaign (must be at least $100). Then you reach that amount, the ads stop running. Lifetime budgets are spent as quickly as possible and won’t be paced throughout the day. This system allows you to benefit from high traffic periods; however, a smaller budget could be spent in a few minutes.

Launch your Sponsored Brands campaign

Launching your first Sponsored Brands campaign is simple. Follow these steps to get started:

1. Sign into the advertising console.
2. Choose a name for your campaign. This should be something that’s easy for you to identify (no one else will see it) and can include details of the books you’re advertising and your targeting tactic. For example, if you’re creating a Q3 campaign for your thrillers, you could name it “Fall2024_keyword_thrillers.”
3. Set the dates you’ll run ads and your budget. Choose your launch date for your ads and determine how much you want to spend. For many authors, $10 a day is a good place to start. It’s helpful to not set an end date, so you can watch and learn.
4. Select your preferred ad format. Decide between Product Collection and Video Ads. Product Collection helps promote multiple books using large, custom images. Video Collection tells the story of your book using video creative.
5. Choose the books you want to showcase on your landing page. If you selected your Author Page as your landing page (note: this is currently only an option in the US), you can select the three books you wish to appear in your ad from the “Creative” section at the bottom of the campaign page. If you choose “new landing page,” you can select the books to advertise from the list of eligible titles in your catalog. Selecting the titles with the highest customer review scores may make the ad more attractive to shoppers.
6. Think about the ways you want to target shoppers. If you’ve run an Amazon Ads campaign before, you’ll already have insights into which keywords or products perform well. Include those in your targeting. If this is your first ad campaign, use Amazon’s suggestions for keywords and products to target, or choose words yourself and use what you learn to inform future ads. If it’s your first campaign, consider using all match types to see what keywords and products perform well.
7. Define your bidding. Try using the suggested bids when you launch your ad, and adapt them over time depending on how they do.
8. Create your ad. All ads must include an author profile picture or publisher logo, and the image must be at least 400x400 pixels and under 1MB (see examples here). You’ll also need to create a headline to attract readers. It helps to keep it simple, like “Discover easy vegetarian recipes from (Pen Name),” or “The latest terrifying thriller in the XYZ series.” Then, add a custom image or video creative that represents your books or brand.
9. Review reports to analyze your performance. Your first campaign is an opportunity to refine your strategy. Review your keyword reports and search term reports to learn what’s performing well. Then, adjust your targeting and bidding accordingly. Experimentation is the key to fine-tuning your strategy. Learn more about reports for book advertising.