You have already sorted your listing images. White background, 1600px on the long edge, product filling most of the frame. Then you open Amazon's ad console, upload the same file as a Sponsored Brands custom image, and moderation rejects it within the hour.
Amazon Ads runs an entirely separate image rulebook from Amazon listings. The rules are close to inverted: listings demand a pure white background, ads forbid one. Listings tolerate a 10MB file, some Amazon DSP display slots cap you at 40 kilobytes. If you treat your ad creative as a resized copy of your hero shot, you will keep collecting rejections and never know why.
This guide covers the current image specifications for Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display and Amazon DSP, plus the moderation rules that quietly kill the most creative.
The one rule that catches everyone: no white backgrounds in ads
Amazon's asset-based creative guidelines explicitly prohibit white or transparent backgrounds in custom ad images. The reasoning is structural, not aesthetic. Amazon's ad templates sit on white pages. A white-background image with no border dissolves into the page and the ad stops reading as an ad.
Amazon's moderation guidance is direct about this: ads without borders cannot use white or off-white backgrounds, and need a contrasting colour such as light grey to separate the creative from surrounding page content.
The same guidance also rules out a second habit: uploading individual product images on solid backgrounds, or a brand logo on its own, as the custom image. Neither passes. Amazon wants a lifestyle or contextual scene, and it provides separate slots for your logo and headline.
What else gets an image rejected
- Text overlays. No added text beyond what naturally belongs in the image, such as printing on the product packaging itself.
- Logos inside the custom image. Use the dedicated logo component instead. Combined or multiple logos in one image are prohibited.
- Calls to action. No "Shop now" or "Buy today" burnt into the pixels.
- Pricing and savings claims. Specific discounts such as "Save 50%" are not allowed. General phrasing like "Save now" belongs in the headline field, not the image.
- Letterboxing and pillarboxing. Black bars from a badly fitted crop are a straight rejection. Recrop rather than pad.
- Quality failures. Blurry, distorted, pixelated, smudged or stretched images. Amazon states a floor of 72 ppi and asks for the highest resolution available.
- Crowded compositions. Too many elements, or a product cropped so tightly it becomes unreadable at ad size.
Sponsored Brands and asset-based creative specs
Sponsored Brands and Brand Store creatives now run on Amazon's asset-based creative system. You upload assets in a few aspect ratios and Amazon assembles the ad for each placement. Upload all three ratios: Amazon recommends square, tall and wide so it can fill every slot without cropping your product out of frame.
| Asset | Aspect ratio | Recommended size | Minimum size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Square custom image | 1:1 | 1200 x 1200 px | 600 x 600 px |
| Wide custom image | 1.91:1 | 1200 x 628 px | 600 x 314 px |
| Tall custom image | 9:16 | 900 x 1600 px | 338 x 600 px |
| Brand logo | 1:1 | Fill the frame | 400 x 400 px |
File limits: 5MB or smaller, JPG or PNG. Amazon's in-console cropping tool needs at least 600 x 600 px to work with, so anything smaller removes your ability to reframe.
Logos: the logo must be your registered brand logo, must fill its 1:1 frame rather than float in whitespace, and must stay legible at small sizes on mobile. Use PNG when you need a transparent edge, JPG when the logo sits on a solid block.
Headline: 50 characters maximum. Every claim you were tempted to paint onto the image belongs here.
Sponsored Display custom images
Sponsored Display is the format where a single well-prepared file does the most work. Amazon takes one rectangular custom image, lets you crop a second square version from it, and serves those across up to 12,000 different size variations. Custom product images for Sponsored Display are available in Canada, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, India, Japan, the UAE, the UK and the US.
Practical specification: supply a rectangular image at 1200 x 628 px or larger, 5MB or smaller, in PNG, JPEG or GIF. Because that one file gets cropped into hundreds of shapes, composition matters more than resolution. Keep the product centred with generous margin on all four sides. Anything you push toward the edge will be cut off in the narrower crops.
eCommerce display creative logo specs
The eCommerce display creative slots use different logo rules from Sponsored Brands. Logos there need a minimum width of 600px and minimum height of 100px, up to 1,000kb, in JPG, GIF or PNG, with a maximum of two logos per custom image. Text in these creatives is capped at roughly 10 words.
Amazon DSP static display: the 40kb problem
Amazon DSP is where file size, not dimensions, becomes the hard constraint. A 300 x 250 medium rectangle allows 40 kilobytes. Not megabytes. Your phone's product photo is roughly a hundred times that budget.
| Placement | Display size | @2x asset required | Max file size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Medium rectangle | 300 x 250 px | 600 x 500 px (mobile) | 40 kb |
| Leaderboard | 728 x 90 px | 1456 x 180 px (tablet) | 40 kb desktop / 200 kb tablet |
| Wide skyscraper | 160 x 600 px | - | 40 kb |
| Large rectangle | 300 x 600 px | - | 50 kb |
| Billboard | 970 x 250 px | 1940 x 500 px (required onsite) | 200 kb |
| Mobile leaderboard | 320 x 50 px | 640 x 100 px (required) | 50 kb |
| Mobile detail / search | 414 x 125 px | 828 x 250 px | 100 kb |
Accepted formats are JPG and PNG-8, RGB, static only. Animated GIFs are not accepted in these static slots.
Note the @2x requirement. Several placements demand you supply the asset at double the display dimensions so it stays sharp on retina screens, while the file size cap stays where it is. A 600 x 500 pixel image inside 40kb means aggressive JPEG compression, usually quality 55 to 70, on an image with a simple background and no fine texture. Busy lifestyle scenes are almost impossible to fit; a clean product on a flat colour block compresses beautifully.
How to actually hit 40kb
- Start from the highest-quality source you have, then resize once to the exact @2x pixel dimensions. Never resize twice.
- Choose a flat or gently gradated background colour. Noise, fabric texture and busy interiors are what blow the budget.
- Export JPEG at quality 60 and inspect. Step up in fives only if you can see damage at 100% zoom.
- If the image has fewer than 256 meaningful colours, such as a logo lockup or flat graphic, PNG-8 will usually beat JPEG.
- Strip metadata on export. EXIF and colour profiles can silently add several kilobytes to a 40kb budget.
If you are producing the same creative across Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display and half a dozen DSP slots, do the resizing in batch rather than one export at a time. A tool such as PixelPrep lets you push one master file out to every required dimension in a single pass, which is the difference between an afternoon of exporting and ten minutes.
Ads versus listings: the differences that matter
| Requirement | Amazon listing images | Amazon ad creative |
|---|---|---|
| Background | Pure white (RGB 255,255,255) on the main image | White and transparent prohibited; contrasting colour required |
| Text overlays | Not allowed on the main image | Not allowed; use the headline component |
| Logos | Only as printed on the product | Only via the dedicated logo asset slot |
| Frame fill | Product should fill about 85% of the frame | Leave margin for cropping across placements |
| File size | Up to 10MB | 5MB for custom images; 40kb for DSP static |
| Style | Isolated product | Lifestyle or contextual scene |
The short version: your listing hero image is the worst possible candidate for an ad creative, and your ad creative would be rejected as a listing main image. Shoot or brief them as two separate deliverables.
A workable production plan
On your next product shoot, capture two extra frames beyond the standard listing set: one wide lifestyle scene with the product roughly centre-left and plenty of clean space around it, and one on a flat mid-tone background. Those two frames feed every ad format below.
From the wide lifestyle frame, export 1200 x 628, 1200 x 1200 and 900 x 1600 versions, each under 5MB, keeping the product centred so Amazon's automatic crops never clip it. From the flat-background frame, export the DSP sizes at their @2x dimensions and compress hard to meet the kilobyte caps. Batch tools such as PixelPrep handle both passes without reopening an editor for each size.
Pre-upload checklist
- Background is a contrasting colour, not white or transparent
- No text, logo, CTA or price burnt into the image
- No black bars from letterboxing or pillarboxing
- All three ratios uploaded: 1:1, 1.91:1 and 9:16
- Logo supplied separately at 1:1, at least 400 x 400 px, filling the frame
- Headline within 50 characters
- Custom images under 5MB, JPG or PNG
- DSP assets exported at @2x and within their kilobyte cap
- Product centred with margin, so automatic crops do not clip it
- Image checked at 100% for blur, stretching or compression artefacts
Run that list once before you upload and you will spend your time optimising bids rather than resubmitting creative.