Skip to main content
Metrics type: Key Metrics • Category: Ad Platform
Spend split between DSP and Sponsored surfaces, rebalances when DSP retargeting underperforms or upper-funnel spend is over-allocated.

​
At a glance

Spend allocation across the four Amazon Ads surfaces: Sponsored Products (SP), Sponsored Brands (SB), Sponsored Display (SD), and DSP. Donut visualisation of the budget split. The strategic mix question, are you over-investing in upper-funnel awareness (SB / DSP) or under-investing in bottom-funnel conversion (SP)? Healthy mature accounts: 60-80% SP, 10-20% SB, 5-10% SD, 0-30% DSP (DSP only at scale).

​
Calculation

Calculated automatically from your Amazon Ads data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

​
Worked example

Two illustrative US home-goods sellers, one without DSP, one with a DSP commitment. Both 30-day windows cover 14 Mar 26 to 12 Apr 26. Seller A ($26,800 total spend, no DSP) Seller B ($85,000 total spend, with DSP commitment) What’s interesting:
  1. Seller A’s mix is the textbook DTC-style Amazon-only seller. SP dominates (76%); SB / SD are awareness investments. No DSP because spend is below the 35Kminimum.∗∗Thisistherightmixforaccountsunder 35K minimum. **This is the right mix for accounts under ~50K/month**, there’s no DSP business case at small scale.
  2. Seller B’s 30% DSP allocation is intentional upper-funnel investment. The blended ACOS (28%) is higher than Seller A’s (21%), but Seller B is buying awareness that Seller A can’t afford. Judging Seller B on blended ACOS would be misleading. DSP’s value plays out via TACOS reduction over months, not via direct ACOS.
  3. DSP at 30% with poor ROAS is a warning shape, if TACOS is also rising, the upper-funnel spend isn’t lifting organic. The fix is to dial DSP back, not to demand DSP-side ACOS improvements (DSP isn’t designed for direct conversion).
  4. SP < 50% is the danger pattern for most categories. SP is the highest-converting placement; if upper-funnel is crowding out bottom-funnel, you’re paying for awareness without harvesting. Rebalance toward SP unless the brand is actively in launch / awareness phase.
  5. A donut visualisation is more useful than a number because the shape of the mix tells the story: SP-dominant = harvesting, SB-heavy = awareness-building, DSP-heavy = brand-building, balanced = mature multi-funnel.
Quick sanity tests:
  • SP > 70% = harvesting-dominant. Healthy for mature catalogues, may be under-investing in growth.
  • SP 50-70% = balanced multi-funnel. Healthy for growth-phase brands.
  • SP < 50% = upper-funnel heavy. Justifiable during launch / brand-building; alarm otherwise.
  • DSP > 40% = aggressive upper-funnel investment. Cross with TACOS to confirm it’s lifting organic.
  • DSP > 0% on accounts < $50K/month total = waste. DSP minimums make small-scale DSP economically unviable.

​
Sibling cards merchants should reference together

​
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in Amazon Ads Console + DSP Console: Amazon Ads Console > Campaign Manager shows SP / SB / SD spend in unified view. Filter by campaign type to see each surface separately. Amazon DSP Console is a separate console for DSP campaigns. Spend, audience, and reach reporting all live there. The card joins the two consoles into one mix view. Amazon Ads Console > Reports > Cross-Platform, some accounts have a unified report; many don’t. The mix calculation in this card is the canonical version. Why our number may legitimately differ from a manual sum: Cross-connector reconciliation:

​
Known limitations / merchant FAQs

What’s the right surface mix? Depends on phase and scale. Mature high-volume catalogue: SP 70-80%, SB 10-15%, SD 5-10%, DSP 0-15% (only at scale > $50K/month). Growth-phase brand: SP 50-65%, SB 15-25%, SD 5-10%, DSP 10-25%. Launch / awareness phase: SP 30-50%, SB 20-30%, SD 5-10%, DSP 20-40%. The right answer depends on your conversion-rate maturity. My DSP isn’t showing, is that a connector issue or a no-DSP case? Either. (a) If the merchant doesn’t have DSP at all (most accounts < $50K/month), the slice is genuinely zero. (b) If they have DSP but the DSP Reports API isn’t connected, the slice will show zero but the Sponsored shares will be artificially inflated. Check connector settings. Why is DSP separate from Sponsored? Different product, different attribution, different pricing, different audiences. Sponsored ads serve on Amazon.com (search results + product detail pages); DSP ads serve on the open web (apps, websites, streaming TV, Twitch). DSP uses CPM not CPC and has 14d-click + 14d-view attribution (vs Sponsored’s 14d-click only). My SP share is 90%, is that good? Probably. SP is the highest-converting placement on Amazon. 90% SP is consistent with a mature, harvest-mode account. The only risk is under-investment in awareness (SB, SD, DSP) which can leave organic-rank growth untapped. Cross with TACOS: if TACOS is falling (good), 90% SP is fine; if TACOS is rising, you may be over-harvesting on a shrinking brand awareness base. My DSP is 50% of spend but ROAS is dragging the blended number, what do I do? Don’t judge DSP on direct ROAS. DSP is upper-funnel; its value plays out via TACOS reduction over months. Test: pause DSP for 30 days. If TACOS rises (organic falls), DSP was working and you should resume. If TACOS holds, DSP wasn’t lifting organic and you can scale it back. What’s “Streaming TV (STV)”? A DSP sub-type. Amazon’s connected-TV ad inventory (Fire TV, Freevee, Twitch). Bucketed into DSP in this card. STV CPMs are typically 3-5× display CPMs, so STV-heavy accounts will look DSP-expensive without being inefficient. Multi-marketplace, can I see global mix? Not in a single card. Each Amazon Advertising account is single-marketplace. My SB share is climbing month-over-month, why? Three plausible causes: (a) The team is intentionally building brand awareness. (b) SP is auto-allocating budget away from SP toward SB (Amazon’s auto-budgeting can shift cross-surface). (c) A new SB campaign launched and is in test phase. Cross with Sponsored Brands Halo Effect to confirm the SB rise is producing organic lift. Why is the donut snapshot rather than a trend? Surface mix is slow-moving (weekly variation is mostly noise). The 30D snapshot is more useful than a daily trend. For mix trend over time, request the Spend by Surface Trend card.

​
Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

DSP vs Sponsored Spend Mix is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Amazon Ads and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.