After examining two months’ worth of search results across the top 10,000 most frequently searched branded search terms, it’s clear that a growing share are showing organic results first – before any paid placements. This emphasizes that Amazon wants top branded searches to remain highly relevant, even if a brand steps back from the defensive top of search branded spend. Naturally, this opens up avenues for top brands to achieve greater advertising efficiency as well.

While we observed this same phenomenon across top branded search terms in the beauty category, in October 2024, organic results were the first result across 18.7% of top branded search terms on Amazon US as a whole compared to just 17.3% the month prior. 

On a time-series basis, there was a steady increase in the share of branded terms exhibiting this ‘organic-first’ SERP beginning in the weeks following Prime Big Deal Days.

Biggest Takeaways for Brands

• If you’re a big enough brand, you can probably get more efficient in terms of branded ad spend
  • Amazon is clearly prioritizing relevancy for important branded terms over search ad revenue
    • They would rather force a top organic result to the top of the SERP versus allowing a smaller competing brand to take the top slot with Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands
  • This represents a tremendous opportunity for large, well-known brands to achieve greater efficiency overall by reducing defensive ad spend on their own branded terms
• For brands that do step back from branded ad spend, be sure to monitor over the holiday peak period in particular
  • While these changes accelerated across categories over the month of October, the calculus on the part of Amazon could change during the Cyber Week and holiday period since CPCs are higher
    • If you do decide to step back from spending on certain branded terms, track the top of search results of those terms continuously throughout the lead up to Cyber Week and through the shipping cutoff