Amazon offers three core advertising formats, and confusing what each one is built for is a common way to waste budget on the wrong placement for the goal at hand.

The most common format by far: individual product ads that appear within and around search results and on product detail pages. SP is where most sellers should start — it’s the most directly tied to a purchase decision, since the ad and the buy button are effectively the same click.

Best for: driving direct sales on specific ASINs, keyword and search-term testing, the bulk of day-to-day PPC management.

A banner-style ad featuring your brand logo, a custom headline, and a small selection of products, appearing above search results. Unlike SP, SB sells the brand first and the individual product second.

Best for: brand awareness and defending branded search terms, cross-selling multiple products from a catalogue in one ad unit, sellers with at least a small registered brand and a few related products worth featuring together.

Not ideal for: single-SKU sellers with no real “brand story” to tell yet, or accounts still establishing whether individual products convert at all — SB works better once SP has already validated demand.

Retargeting that follows shoppers both inside and outside Amazon — showing your product to people who viewed it (or a similar one) but didn’t buy, on other pages across the web as well as on Amazon itself.

Best for: recapturing shoppers who viewed but didn’t convert, targeting competitor product pages, remarketing to past purchasers for repeat-purchase or complementary products.

How they fit together, not compete

A common, effective structure is SP driving the initial click and sale, SB building brand presence around the keywords SP has already proven convert, and SD catching the shoppers who viewed but left without buying. Treating the three as sequential layers — rather than three separate budgets fighting for the same money — is usually a better use of total ad spend than splitting evenly across all three from day one.