Sponsored products

Sponsored products are ads for single products that appear as listings in a retailer's or marketplace's search results, category pages and product pages, usually sold per click through an auction on keywords or product targets.

Sponsored products are the core format of retail media. The IAB describes them as product listings shown prominently in search results, category pages, product pages or recommendation carousels, tied to specific SKUs (IAB, July 2025). They look like organic listings with a "sponsored" label, and a click takes the shopper to the product page.

The buying model comes from search. Advertisers choose products, pick keywords or let the platform target automatically, set a bid and a budget, and pay per click. The retailer ranks ads by bid and relevance, so a high bid on an irrelevant product does not guarantee a slot. Because the retailer sees the resulting sales, it can report return on ad spend and new-to-brand sales directly.

Sponsored products sit closer to the sale than any other ad format a retailer sells. That makes the quality of click and impression counts important, and some networks have sought outside accreditation for them.

Example: Amazon Ads describes Sponsored Products as cost-per-click ads that promote individual product listings on Amazon and on selected apps and websites (Amazon Ads, accessed 9 November 2026). On 16 October 2025 Walmart Connect said its Sponsored Search click and impression metrics had earned Media Rating Council accreditation (Walmart Connect, 16 October 2025).

Related terms: onsite media, CPC, retail media network, closed-loop measurement, ROAS, retail media self-serve.

Authoritative source: IAB, "Defining Commerce Media and Its Ecosystem" (July 2025), on-site formats.