An Amazon brand defense campaign pays only where rivals bid on your name, so test it before you fund it.

An Amazon brand defense campaign is worth its spend only on branded searches where competitors actually show ads; everywhere else it mostly buys sales your organic listing would have made anyway. So don't fund it because the ACoS looks good. Check who shows up on your brand name, bid only where rivals do, and run a pause test to see how many orders the ads really protect.

Most guides tell you to bid on your brand name, your product names and the misspellings, and stop there. This one adds what they leave out: why a 10% ACoS on brand terms can still lose money, what to bid on your own name, and how to prove the campaign earns its budget.

What an Amazon brand defense campaign covers

Amazon's keyword targeting guide defines branded keywords as brand names, product lines and brand terms, and suggests adding variations of your brand and product names to catch different search patterns. A brand defense campaign bids on those searches, and on your own product pages, so the ad slots there show your products instead of a rival's.

The same guide also suggests targeting other brands' products. That is what your rivals do to you. There are three places to defend:

• Brand keywords in Sponsored Products. Your brand name, product line names and common misspellings, in exact and phrase match. Sponsored Products is open to sellers on the Professional plan.
• Brand keywords in Sponsored Brands. The banner at the top of the results. Amazon offers Sponsored Brands only to brands in Brand Registry.
• Your own product pages. Product targeting on your own ASINs takes the ad slots on your detail pages before a competitor does. Our guide to Amazon product targeting shows how to price those targets.

Why a 10% branded ACoS can still lose money

Branded clicks come from shoppers who typed your name. Many of them would find and buy your product without an ad, because your organic listing sits right there. ACoS counts every one of those sales as if the ad made it.

The best-known test of this is not from Amazon. When eBay stopped buying ads on searches containing "eBay" on Yahoo and Microsoft, almost all the clicks and sales it lost came back through the free search results (NBER working paper, 2014). With no rival in the way, the brand ads bought nothing.

Amazon is different in one way that matters. When you stop advertising on your brand name, the slots above your organic listing don't stay empty if a competitor bids for them. So the value of a brand defense campaign depends on one thing: whether rivals are there.

Take an example. A product sells for $30 and leaves $9.90 per order before ads, so its break-even ACoS is 33%. The brand campaign spends $300 a week and is credited with 100 orders, $3,000 in sales. That is a 10% ACoS, and it looks like the best campaign in the account.

Before any pause, the product line sells 400 orders a week in total. Now pause the brand campaign for two weeks and count again:

• No rival ads on the brand search: orders fall to 390 a week. The campaign protected 10 orders, worth $99 in profit, for $300 of spend. Its real ACoS is $300 over $300 of lost sales: 100%.
• Rivals bidding on the brand name: orders fall to 340 a week. The campaign protected 60 orders, worth $594 in profit, for $300. Its real ACoS is $300 over $1,800 of lost sales: about 17%.

Same campaign, same reported ACoS. In one account it earns $294 a week. In the other it costs $201 a week. The report shows no difference between them.

The rule: pay to defend a brand term only where a rival's ad shows on it, and keep paying only while a pause test shows the orders you lose without it are worth more than the spend.

Check who is on your brand search

Start with your eyes. Search your brand name and your top product names on each marketplace you sell in, on a phone, signed out. Count the competitor ads above your first organic result. Do it on a few different days, because rivals' budgets run out.

Then read the numbers. Brand owners in Brand Registry get the Search Query Performance report, which shows for each search query the total impressions, clicks and purchases and your products' count and share of each. On your brand queries, your purchase share is the number to watch. If it slips while the query volume holds, someone else is taking those buyers. Our guide to the Search Query Performance report shows where to find it.

Check each marketplace on its own. A rival who bids on your name in Germany may not sell in France at all, so the same brand campaign can be essential in one market and wasted in the next.

What to bid on your own brand name

The ceiling is the same as any other bid: profit per order before ads × conversion rate. Branded clicks convert well. In the example, if 20% of branded clicks buy, the ceiling is $9.90 × 20%, or $1.98 a click.

That is a ceiling, not a target. The job of a defense bid is to hold the top slot against the rivals who are actually there. Start well below the ceiling. Raise it only when a competitor takes the top of the results on your name, and lower it again when they leave. Where no rival shows up, a low bid or no campaign at all is the right answer.

Keep brand terms in their own campaign with their own budget. Mixed into a generic campaign, their low ACoS hides losses on other keywords, and the budget meant for growth gets spent on shoppers who were already yours.

Run the pause test, then decide

A pause test answers the one question ACoS can't: how many orders does this campaign protect? Run it on one marketplace at a time, with nothing else changing.

Count total orders, not ad orders: the point is to see what happens to sales when the ads are off. Weekly sales move on their own, so a small gap proves little. A drop of 10 orders out of 400 is 2.5%, well inside a normal week's swing. Compare against a marketplace where the campaign keeps running, or against your non-branded sales over the same weeks.

Keep price, coupons and other campaigns unchanged during the test. And don't run it now. Black Friday is on 27 November 2026 and Cyber Monday on 30 November, as set out in our Q4 2026 Black Friday and Cyber Monday plan. Deal weeks change prices and traffic for everyone, so a pause run between now and then measures the deals, not your ads. Keep defense running through peak where rivals bid on your name, and test in January.

What to do this week

1. Search your brand and product names on each marketplace, on a phone, on three different days. Write down which searches show competitor ads.
2. Move brand terms into their own campaign, with exact and phrase match and their own budget, so their ACoS stops flattering the rest of the account.
3. Bid only where rivals show, starting well below the ceiling of profit before ads × conversion rate, and lower the bid or stop where they don't.
4. Watch purchase share on brand queries in the Search Query Performance report each week through peak.
5. Book the pause test for January, one marketplace at a time: two weeks off, total orders compared, campaign kept only if the lost profit beats the spend.

If you want the bids handled: the Mirox 14-day free trial runs live on up to 5 of your products in 1 marketplace, on campaigns Mirox builds for them, so your existing campaigns stay untouched. Every bid change comes with a written reason and the numbers behind it.

Common questions

Should I bid on my own brand name on Amazon?

Yes where competitor ads show on your brand search, because those ads take orders you would otherwise get. Where no rival shows up, most branded ad sales would have come through your organic listing anyway. A two-week pause test tells you which case you are in.

Can competitors bid on my brand name on Amazon?

Yes. Amazon’s own keyword targeting guide suggests advertisers target other brands’ products, so rivals can show ads on searches for your brand and on your product pages.

What is a good ACoS for a brand defense campaign?

The reported ACoS is the wrong test, because it counts sales your organic listing would have made anyway. Divide the spend by the sales you lose when the campaign is paused, and compare that incremental ACoS with your break-even ACoS.

Do I need Brand Registry for a brand defense campaign?

For Sponsored Brands, yes: Amazon offers it only to brands enrolled in Brand Registry. Sponsored Products is open to sellers on the Professional plan, so a Sponsored Products campaign on your brand keywords and your own product pages works without it.

The one-line version

Defend your brand name where rivals bid on it, judge the campaign by the orders a pause would lose, and stop paying for shoppers who were already yours.

Want to see the numbers behind a single bid? Read how transparency works, then see how Sponsored Brands builds branded search in the first place in our post on new-to-brand metrics.