Jody Biggs, Director of Ads Monetization for Amazon Stores, has a clear message for marketers still drawing a hard line between brand and performance advertising: you’re leaving money on the table.
“Successful marketers no longer see brand and performance as opposing forces,” Biggs said in a recent briefing. “They’re complementary tools. The moment you can measure exactly how brand advertising amplifies performance across the entire customer journey, the debate stops being ‘Should I invest in brand?’ and becomes ‘How do I maximize its multiplier effect?’”
Biggs argues that the old complaint—“brand advertising is unmeasurable”—is outdated. The real issue, she says, is that many marketers are still measuring the wrong things.
“Move beyond awareness and favorability surveys,” she urges. “Look at behavior. Track the lift in branded versus generic search volume. Compare click-through rates on the same keywords for audiences exposed to your brand creative versus those who weren’t. Measure downstream conversion rates for shoppers who have seen your brand ads. These are hard, attributable signals that prove brand building directly improves performance efficiency.”
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The payoff is significant. Biggs points to three quantifiable advantages strong brands consistently enjoy on Amazon and beyond:
-Higher branded search volume and cheaper, more prominent organic visibility.
-Better click-through rates—even on generic searches—because familiar logos stand out.
-Materially higher conversion rates as trust removes friction at the point of purchase.
A real-world example she often cites: when shoppers search for “55-inch TV,” a recognized brand like Samsung can command $328, while an unknown competitor struggles to sell the same-spec set at $260—despite having identical star ratings. “That $68 premium isn’t vanity,” Biggs notes. “It’s the measurable return on years of brand investment.”
The ripple effects compound. Branded searches cost dramatically less than generic keywords, ads rank higher naturally, and the total advertising cost of sale (TACoS) trends downward over time as organic traffic and repeat purchase rates climb.
“Brand advertising isn’t the ‘soft’ budget line anymore,” Biggs concludes. “Done right and measured properly, it’s the highest-ROI performance multiplier in your stack. The brands winning today aren’t choosing between awareness and conversion—they’re using one to supercharge the other.”
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