Why Amazon Ads Show On Other Websites

Step by step

1. Open Campaign Manager in Seller CentralSellers reach it from the Advertising tab in Seller Central. Vendors use the Amazon Ads console.Advertising > Campaign Manager
2. Run the Sponsored Products placement reportThis is the report Amazon names for off-Amazon reporting. Pull the last 30 days so a single weekend does not drive the number.
3. Compare the off-Amazon line against the three on-Amazon placementsTop of search (first page), rest of search and product pages. Look at clicks, spend and orders per placement, not at spend alone.
4. Check your own campaign settings for the off-Amazon reach controlSellers report it at the bottom of campaign settings, campaign by campaign. Amazon has not confirmed the name or the location, so verify what your console actually shows before you count on it.
5. Open a case with Ads Support if you want outAn Amazon community manager in the Seller Central forums said sellers can open a case with Ads Support and request to be removed from off-Amazon placements. Attach the placement report numbers.
6. Re-run the report two weeks laterConfirm the off-Amazon line moved the way you expected. If nothing changed, the setting or the case did not take effect.

You open Campaign Manager, the campaign is spending, and the sales do not line up with the clicks. Then someone tells you about Amazon ads on other websites, and that not all of those clicks came from Amazon.

That part is true. Sponsored Products has served outside the Amazon store since October 25, 2023, when Amazon Ads announced that campaigns would appear on premium apps and websites, naming Pinterest, BuzzFeed, Hearst Newspapers, Raptive and Ziff Davis brands such as Lifehacker and Mashable. The ad still points to your Amazon product detail page, it only runs when the item is in stock, and it is billed as a click like any other.

Why Amazon ads show on other websites

Because off-Amazon is a placement, not a product you bought. There is no separate campaign to switch off and no separate budget: the same campaign, the same bid and the same daily number cover both sides.

What that means in practice is that a click from a news site competes for the budget of a click from a search results page, at the same cost-per-click pricing, while shopper intent on the two pages is not remotely the same.

Where the spend shows up

Amazon is explicit about the reporting: "Reporting will be available in the Sponsored Products placement report." In the Amazon Ads API the same breakdown comes from the placementClassification metric.

That report is also where you see the placements you can actually act on: top of search (first page), rest of search and product pages, each of which takes a placement bid adjustment of up to 900%.

So the first move is not a setting. It is pulling the report and seeing how much of the month went to the off-Amazon line, because until you have that number you are arguing about a leak you have not measured.

Which clicks actually paid for themselves?

Check my ad spend

What other sellers report, and what Amazon has confirmed

This is where the two levels have to stay apart.

Sellers in the Seller Central forums describe an off-Amazon reach setting that sits at the bottom of campaign settings and has to be changed campaign by campaign, and one long thread about checking your campaigns says it arrived switched on by default. In the European forums, another seller wrote that with the "Amazon and beyond" placements "there is no ability to opt-out". Amazon has not published a help page that names that control or its location, so treat it as a seller report: look for it in your own campaign settings instead of assuming it is where a forum post says.

What an Amazon community manager did say in that thread is that a seller can open a case with Ads Support and ask to be removed from off-Amazon placements. That is the one route Amazon staff has stated publicly.

How to stop it from surprising you again

Put the placement report in the same monthly pass where you check whether your invoice matches Campaign Manager, and read it before you raise bids, not after. A bid increase applies to every placement at once, which is how a budget quietly tilts toward the cheapest inventory.

If the off-Amazon line converts, it is traffic. If it does not, you now have the number you need for the support case, and the context for why your CPC can come out higher than your bid and for the rest of the levers in the Amazon PPC guide to campaigns, bids and placements.

“Reporting will be available in the Sponsored Products placement report.”

— Amazon Ads ↗

#amazon ppc#amazon ads#sponsored products#placements

👋Hey! I'm Amara

Press at SellerKey.co

☕ Espresso. Never a latte macchiato.

I cover Amazon fee and policy changes: what changed, when it applies and where Amazon published it.

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