> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://www.laurence.com/docs/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Sponsored Ads > Amazon's three ad products, how a campaign is built, and how a target matches a shopper's search An advertiser on Amazon buys clicks on its products through three ad products, organizes them into campaigns, and chooses targets: the searches or products its ads should appear on. How loosely a target matches a search decides which shoppers see the ad. ## The three ad products * **Sponsored Products (SP).** An ad for one product, shown in search results and on other products' pages. The bulk of most accounts' spend. * **Sponsored Brands (SB).** A banner-style ad for the brand: a logo and headline with a collection of three products, a video with one to three products, or a spotlight of the brand's store. * **Sponsored Display (SD).** Ads for one product shown to audiences and on product pages, on and off Amazon. Amazon also sells **Amazon DSP** (demand-side platform): programmatic display and video ads across Amazon and other sites, bought outside the sponsored ads auction. ## How a campaign is built Ads are organized as **campaigns**, which hold **ad groups**, which hold the **ads**, the **targets** and the **negative targets**. A campaign carries the daily budget and the bidding settings; each target carries its own bid, the most the advertiser will pay for one click. There are two kinds of target: * **Keyword.** A search text the ad should appear on, with a match type that controls how loosely it matches. * **Product target.** A specific product (ASIN) or a category the ad should appear on, usually on product pages. An **AUTO** campaign has no keywords; Amazon chooses where the ad appears through four groups: close match, loose match, substitutes and complements. ## Match types | Match type | Serves the ad on | Example: keyword "dog collar" | | - | - | - | | `Exact` | The keyword and its close variants | "dog collar", "dog collars" | | `Phrase` | Searches containing the phrase in order | "gps dog collar" | | `Broad` | Searches with the keyword's words in any order, plus related words | "collar for large dogs" | **Exact is not exact.** Amazon also serves an exact keyword on close variants of its text. On our own search-term reports, lowercasing, punctuation, dropped function words and plurals explain almost all of the traffic an exact keyword gets on a differently written search. Of the impressions where the search added or dropped a word, 60% involved just "be" or "for". So two of our exact keywords whose texts differ only that way are, to Amazon, one target with two bids. ## Negative targets A **negative keyword** blocks an ad from searches that match it (negative exact or negative phrase). A **negative product target** blocks it from a product's page. Negatives keep spend off irrelevant searches and keep each search on the campaign meant for it. ## Bids, budgets and placement modifiers Each target has a bid. Each campaign can raise its bids for particular placements on the page with a **placement modifier** (a percentage boost), and can let Amazon adjust bids at auction time with **dynamic bidding**. How those settings turn into a price is on [The Auction](https://www.laurence.com/docs/amazon/the-auction.md); how the placements differ is on [Placements](https://www.laurence.com/docs/amazon/placements.md). ## What we have measured | Fact | Evidence | Source | | - | - | - | | An exact keyword also serves close variants of its text | `Amazon-documented` | Amazon Ads match type documentation; confirmed in our search-term reports | | Lowercasing, punctuation, dropped function words and plurals explain 97% of the impressions an exact keyword receives on a search with a different text | `Measured` | Our search-term reports, June to September 2026 | | Of the impressions where the search added or dropped a word versus the keyword, 60% involved "be" or "for" | `Measured` | Same reports and period | | When two of an advertiser's exact keywords fall in one close-variant class, Amazon enters the higher bid in each auction | `Unmeasured belief` | Inferred from how the report credits impressions to one keyword id, Sep 2026 | | AUTO campaigns target through close match, loose match, substitutes and complements | `Amazon-documented` | Amazon Ads API targeting clauses | This documentation is built and hosted on [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com), a developer documentation platform.