Amazon Sponsored Brands Category Benchmark Report

The Amazon Sponsored Brands Category Benchmark Report, usually referred to as the CBR, provides crucial information about your brand’s standing as compared to your peers.

About The Report

The Amazon Sponsored Brands Category Benchmark Report, usually referred to as the CBR, provides crucial information about your brand’s standing as compared to your peers.

The report can be used by the advertisers to evaluate the performance of their Sponsored Brands campaigns based on metrics like impressions, click-through rates (CTR), advertising cost of sales (ACOS), and return on ad spend (ROAS).

To help brands compare themselves to their peers, the CBR breaks down performance into percentiles. It tells you how many impressions represent the median (50%), how many represent the bottom 25%, and how many represent the top 25%.

That way, if a brand sees that its impressions are below the median number given by Amazon, it knows that its performance is less than extraordinary. Alternatively, if its stats match the top percentile, then the brand can feel good about the success of its ad campaigns.

A point to remember is that this reporting is not done for Sponsored Brands Video campaigns.

Where to find the Sponsored Brands Category Benchmark report

This downloadable report is available to both Sellers and Vendors in Amazon’s Ad Console.

Here’s how to access it:

Login to your Ad Console.
On the left carousel, click on “Measurement and Reporting.”
Click on “Create Report.”
Select Sponsored Brands in the “Report Category” dropdown.
Select the report type as “Category Benchmark.”
Select your desired report period.
Click “Run report” on the top right corner.

Note: The maximum lookback window of a category benchmark report is 90 days.

How to Leverage the Reports

‍Understand your brand’s position in specific categories: The report can help you understand how your ad performance varies, compared to your peers, across categories. You might find that in one category you are in the top quartile for performance, while in another you are in the bottom percentile. That knowledge helps you make critical ad campaign decisions. In those categories where your impressions place you far below the median, for instance, you might consider increasing ad spend.
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‍Goal setting: While the report mainly evaluates your performance against your peers, it can also serve as an important reference point for your own advertising goals. By understanding what the median number of impressions is for a given category, for example, you can set more realistic performance targets for your Sponsored Brands campaigns.

Analyze the current performance of your Sponsored Brands and establish goals (e.g. increasing impressions or optimizing for a better CTR) that are realistic. Use this report to make data-driven decisions and keep track of how your new approaches are helping you compete better with your peers.