Sponsored Display is a self-service display advertising product sold by Amazon Ads. It shows image or video ads for products listed on Amazon to shoppers chosen by what they have viewed, bought or browsed, rather than by what they typed into a search box. The ads appear on Amazon product detail pages, the Amazon home page, Twitch and third-party websites and apps. It exists to give sellers without a programmatic buying team a cut-down version of Amazon's demand-side platform (DSP): remarketing and audience targeting on Amazon shopping data, bought with a daily budget and a bid. Since late 2026 Amazon has described Sponsored Display as part of its "display ads" offering, and some of its own pages now call it simply "Display".

How it works

Eligibility is narrower than for Sponsored Products. Vendors, professional sellers enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry and agencies acting for them may run campaigns. In November 2022 Amazon extended the product to Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market; until then, according to Amazon, it was "only available for advertisers with products available for purchase on Amazon.com." Every ad promotes one or more Amazon Standard Identification Numbers (ASINs), and the click leads to the product's detail page. Ads stop serving when a product goes out of stock or loses the Featured Offer, the "Buy Box".

A campaign is built around an optimization goal and a targeting strategy. Three goals existed for most of the product's life: reach, billed per thousand viewable impressions (vCPM); page visits, billed per click (CPC); and conversions, also billed per click. Viewable impressions follow the Media Rating Council (MRC) standard of at least 50% of an ad's pixels in view for one continuous second. On April 4, 2025, Amazon moved all active Reach and Page Visit campaigns to the conversion objective, saying the change would help drive incremental sales, with return on ad spend (ROAS) and advertising cost of sales (ACOS) as the efficiency measures.

Each ad group uses either contextual or audience targeting, not both. Contextual targeting, called product targeting until June 2022, aims at specific ASINs or at categories refined by brand, price, star rating and Prime eligibility. Since that month such campaigns can also serve on web pages and apps off Amazon that Amazon's models judge to be related to the targeted products. Audience targeting covers three families. Views remarketing reaches shoppers who viewed the advertised product, or similar ones, within a lookback window, originally fixed at 30 days. Purchases remarketing reaches past buyers of a product or category, for repeat purchase or cross-selling. Amazon audiences, launched in April 2021, are prebuilt in-market, lifestyle, interest and life-event segments drawn from shopping, Prime Video, IMDb and Twitch signals. Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) audiences, built by the advertiser in Amazon's clean room, were added later.

Lookback windows for remarketing are now customisable. Amazon's remarketing guide gives examples of 7, 14 and 30 days and notes that shoppers take six to seven days on average to buy after starting to shop. The same guide states two different limits on audiences per ad group, "up to 200" in one section and "up to 20" in another.

Since August 15, 2025, conversion campaigns can switch on optimized targeting, in which Amazon chooses the audience itself and sets bids from its recommendations. Advertisers may run it alone or layer manual remarketing and contextual targets on top, according to Amazon.

Creative is largely assembled by Amazon from the product listing: image, price, star rating and a call to action. Advertisers can add a headline, logo or custom image and, since unBoxed in October 2022, video of up to 45 seconds. In April 2024 Amazon opened its AI image generator to Sponsored Display in eight marketplaces at no extra cost.

There is no minimum spend. The two cost types convert through click-through rate: a $5 vCPM bid on an ad clicked 0.3% of the time works out at about $1.67 per click.

Origin and evolution

Amazon launched Sponsored Display in beta in the United States in September 2019, open to professional sellers, vendors and agencies, according to Feedvisor and exchange4media. It absorbed Product Display Ads, an older unit, and was priced only on CPC; ads were free to show and charged on click. In October 2019 the beta reached vendors in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, India, Japan and Canada, according to Karooya.

The early targeting menu was short: views, interests, products and categories. Amazon released product targeting to US sellers in April 2020, and in November 2020 it launched Sponsored Display audiences in the United States for Brand Registry sellers and vendors, introducing views remarketing as a named tactic. Amazon audiences followed in April 2021, and in July 2021 similar product targeting arrived through the Advertising API in 12 markets. New-to-brand metrics, counting buyers who had not purchased the brand in 12 months, came to Sponsored Display on October 14, 2021.

Contextual targeting went off Amazon in June 2022, video arrived that October and grocery storefronts in November, while the vCPM reach goal let brands buy awareness inside a product designed for clicks.

Consolidation began in 2025. After the April 2025 shift to conversion optimisation and the August 2025 optimized targeting launch, Amazon presented a single Campaign Manager in beta on November 10, 2025, bringing sponsored ads and DSP buying into one interface. At unBoxed on September 29, 2026, the Amazon DSP name was retired in favour of DVA (display, video and audio), and Amazon Ads Agent became the platform's name.

Why it matters for marketers

Sponsored Display was Amazon's first attempt to sell off-search, audience-based advertising to the long tail of sellers. Before it, remarketing on Amazon's data required the DSP, whose managed service typically carried minimums in the tens of thousands of dollars.

It also sits at the junction of two measurement cultures. Search ads are judged on clicks and ACOS; display is judged on reach and view-through conversions. Sponsored Display reports both, which made it the product most affected when Amazon tightened view attribution on January 1, 2026. From that date, vCPM Sponsored Display campaigns, view-tracked Sponsored Brands and DSP campaigns on Amazon inventory moved to "shopping-signal enhanced" last-touch attribution. Click attribution stayed as it was. The old 14-day model remains visible under a "Purchases (all views)" metric family, so the same campaign now carries two ROAS figures. Amazon has not published the new window lengths.

Reporting has moved too. In Amazon's unified reporting, which reached general availability on June 8, 2026, 81 of 156 dimensions apply to Sponsored Display, against 137 for DVA+, 85 for Sponsored Products and 73 for Sponsored Brands. Two fields are unique to it, including "Matched target", the product page on which the ad appeared.

Limitations and disputes

The product's identity is the first open question. Amazon's DVA+ product page describes DVA+ as a unified campaign type for campaigns "previously created through Amazon DSP, Sponsored Display, and Sponsored TV." Yet Amazon's September 29, 2026 DVA+ announcement does not name Sponsored Display, and the Ads Agent page places programmatic buying alongside Sponsored Display rather than over it, as PPC Land set out in October 2026. Destaney Wishon, chief executive of the agency btr media, wrote that it "is no longer Sponsored Display, it is now merged with DVA," while adding that "SD falls under DVA, but it is not the core." Amazon's Sponsored Display page says the product "is now known as display ads" and that existing campaigns "will continue to run uninterrupted," according to Canopy Management. No dated rename notice has been found.

Pricing transparency is the second dispute. The complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and 22 states on August 31, 2026 alleges undisclosed reserve pricing across Amazon's auctions, and PPC Land's report says second-price behaviour stopped holding "by 2023 for Display Ads." The complaint uses the "Display Ads" label rather than naming Sponsored Display. Amazon disputes the allegations, and no liability has been found.

Measurement is the third. Off-Amazon placements are opaque: advertisers cannot bid by placement, and site-level reporting for Sponsored Display is limited. Performance claims, such as Amazon's figure that "up to 82%" of sales from audience campaigns come from new-to-brand customers, rest on internal data without external audit. View-through credit for remarketing to shoppers who had already visited a product page has long been criticised for rewarding sales that would have happened anyway.

Not the same as

Sponsored Products. Cost-per-click ads for individual listings, triggered by keywords and products, in search results and on detail pages. No audience targeting.

Sponsored Brands. Brand-level ads with a logo, headline and several products or a video, sold mainly against search queries, for Brand Registry advertisers.

DVA+ (formerly Amazon DSP buying). A CPM-billed programmatic campaign type in Amazon Ads Agent spanning streaming TV, online video, display and audio, open to brands that do not sell on Amazon. Sponsored Display is limited to products sold in Amazon stores.

Sponsored TV. Self-service streaming TV ads on Fire TV, Twitch and other apps. It shares Sponsored Display's self-service model but not its formats or remarketing targets.

Recent developments

On September 29, 2026, Amazon put a four-step DVA+ campaign builder into extended US closed beta, with sponsored ads advertisers given the automated tier and advanced settings available on request. Amazon's announcement said open beta was expected in late October 2026 and general availability across 35 markets in the first quarter of 2027.

As of November 2026, Sponsored Display campaigns continue to run, now labelled display ads in parts of the console. Unified reporting, updated on November 11, 2026, still lists Sponsored Display as a distinct ad product, and legacy sponsored ads report pages are scheduled to close on January 31, 2027, a month later than the December 31, 2026 date first given. Whether display ads will fold entirely into DVA+ is a question Amazon has not answered.

Timeline

  • September 2019: Sponsored Display launches in US beta for professional sellers, vendors and agencies, priced on CPC; Product Display Ads absorbed
  • October 2019: Beta extends to vendors in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, India, Japan and Canada
  • April 2020: Product targeting released to US sellers
  • November 2020: Sponsored Display audiences and views remarketing launch in the US
  • April 14, 2021: Amazon audiences (in-market, lifestyle, interests, life events) launch in eight marketplaces
  • July 2021: Similar product targeting available through the Advertising API in 12 markets
  • October 14, 2021: New-to-brand metrics added to Sponsored Display
  • June 23, 2022: Product targeting renamed contextual targeting and extended to off-Amazon sites and apps
  • October 26, 2022: Video creative of up to 45 seconds announced at unBoxed 2022
  • November 17, 2022: Sponsored Display extends to Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market
  • April 2024: AI image generation opens to Sponsored Display in eight marketplaces
  • April 4, 2025: Reach and Page Visit campaigns move to conversion optimisation
  • August 15, 2025: Optimized targeting launches for conversion campaigns
  • November 10, 2025: Campaign Manager beta combines sponsored ads and DSP buying
  • January 1, 2026: Shopping-signal enhanced view attribution applies to vCPM Sponsored Display campaigns
  • June 8, 2026: Unified reporting reaches general availability
  • August 31, 2026: FTC and 22 states sue Amazon over undisclosed reserve pricing, including in Display Ads auctions
  • September 29, 2026: Amazon DSP name retired for DVA; DVA+ enters US closed beta; Amazon Ads Agent named
  • November 11, 2026: Unified reporting dimensions page lists 81 attributes for Sponsored Display
  • January 31, 2027: Legacy sponsored ads report pages scheduled to close

Summary

Who. Amazon Ads sells Sponsored Display to vendors, Brand Registry sellers and agencies, including advertisers on Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market. Agencies, the FTC and 22 states are among those questioning how its attribution, pricing and naming work.

What. A self-service display product promoting Amazon listings to shoppers chosen by product views, purchases, contextual relevance or Amazon audience segments, billed by CPC or vCPM and, since April 2025, optimised for conversions. Amazon now calls it display ads in parts of its interface.

When. Launched in US beta in September 2019, extended with audiences in 2020 and 2021, taken off Amazon for contextual targeting in June 2022, re-optimised in April 2025, subject to new view attribution from January 1, 2026, and repositioned beside DVA+ from September 29, 2026.

Where. On Amazon product detail pages, the home page and shopping results, on Twitch, and on third-party websites and apps, across more than 30 marketplaces listed by Amazon in April 2025.

Why. It brought remarketing and audience targeting built on Amazon shopping data to sellers who could not use the DSP. Its unaudited performance claims, opaque off-Amazon placements, contested view-through credit and uncertain place inside DVA remain the points of dispute.