Amazon Vendor Central Ads: How 1P Vendors Get Into the Ads Console and What They Can Run

Someone on your team asks for access to "the ads," and the obvious place to look is Vendor Central, where the rest of the account lives. The campaigns aren't there, because Amazon Ads runs in its own console at advertising.amazon.com, under its own advertiser account, with its own users and its own billing. Your Vendor Central login is how you register for it, but from then on, who can see campaigns and how ads get paid for are both managed on the advertiser account.

Most of what ranks for "amazon vendor central ads" explains what Sponsored Products is and stops there. This guide covers the part a vendor gets stuck on: how the Ads console connects to a 1P account, how to get yourself and your teammates in at the right permission level, what a vendor account can run, and the one reporting mechanic that differs from a seller account.

Vendor Central and Amazon Ads Are Separate Accounts

Think of the Ads console as a second account that sits next to Vendor Central. Amazon tells vendors to register for advertising using their Vendor Central or Advantage Central account, so the credentials you already have are the way in. What that registration creates, though, is an advertiser account with its own settings, its own user list, and its own payment method.

That separation has three practical consequences:

• Users are added separately. The advertiser account keeps its own user list, and only an Admin on that account can invite someone into it, so plan on a separate invite for everyone who needs to work on ads.
• Billing is set up separately. The advertiser account has its own invoice recipient, billing details, and payment method, chosen when the account is created.
• Campaign reports live in the console. Campaigns and their reports sit in the Ads console, so anyone who only needs to read results still needs a role there, even if it's only Viewer. The vendor portal orientation maps where everything on the Vendor Central side lives.

Getting Into the Ads Console as a Vendor

There are two ways in, depending on whether your company already has an advertiser account.

If nobody has set up advertising yet:

1. Go to advertising.amazon.com and register with your Vendor Central or Advantage Central credentials.
2. Select Create advertiser account. Amazon places this in Access and Settings (it can also be started from the Amazon DSP campaign manager).
3. Enter your business details, or import them from your existing Amazon retail selling account so you aren't retyping what Amazon already has on file.
4. Set up billing: choose the invoice recipient, enter billing details, and pick a payment method.

If an advertiser account already exists: someone with Admin access invites you. Managing users is an Admin-only job, so a teammate who holds Editor or Viewer can't add you. The Admin's path, as third-party guides describe it, is:

1. Sign in and select the correct advertiser account.
2. Open Administration, then Account access and settings, then Users.
3. Select Invite users.
4. Choose the permission level.
5. Select the marketplaces the user should see and send the invitation.

Menu labels can shift between account types and console updates, so if your screen doesn't match, look for the account access settings on the advertiser account itself.

Paying for ads. Vendors can pay by credit card (personal or corporate) or through Deduct from Payment (DFP), which pays advertising costs out of your Amazon retail proceeds with no manual step. DFP isn't available to third-party account managers or to inactive accounts, which matters if an agency set up the advertiser account on your behalf. Whichever you choose, the budget isn't locked in, and you can change it at any time.

Who Can Get In, and at What Level

The Ads console has four permission levels:

A sensible default for a vendor team:

• Admin: one or two people inside your company who own the account. Keep this internal, because Admin controls account links and payment settings.
• Editor: whoever builds and adjusts campaigns day to day, including an outside agency.
• Viewer: leadership and anyone who reads results without touching them.
• Custom (billing): finance, so they can see charges without access to campaigns.

Each invite also picks marketplaces, so a regional team can be limited to the marketplaces it runs.

What a 1P Account Can Run

A Vendor Central brand can run Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and Amazon DSP, and it can build a brand Store:

• Sponsored Products. Ads for individual product listings, targeted to search terms or to other products, shown in search results and on product detail pages.
• Sponsored Brands. Several of your products together with your logo and a custom headline, shown prominently in search results and linking to a landing page or your Store.
• Sponsored Display. Available to Vendor Central brands alongside the two above.
• Stores. A free multi-page brand Store on Amazon, which also serves as a Sponsored Brands destination.
• Amazon DSP. Amazon's demand-side platform, which Vendor Central brands can also use.

DSP's entry requirements changed in November 2025, when Amazon removed the self-service DSP spend floor, so the old $35,000 commitment no longer applies to self-service. The managed-service tier still carries a large minimum that varies by account manager. If your team passed on DSP before because it couldn't justify that commitment, self-service is worth a fresh look.

If You Came From Seller Central: The Attribution Window Is Different

The same Sponsored Products campaign reads differently depending on which side of Amazon runs it. Sponsored Products uses a 7-day click attribution window for Seller Central accounts and a 14-day click window for Vendor Central accounts, while Sponsored Brands uses 14 days regardless of account type and Sponsored Display uses 14 days in most placements.

What that means in practice:

• A vendor Sponsored Products campaign can credit purchases made 8 to 14 days after the click, which a seller campaign would never count. That's why vendor ACOS and ROAS benchmarks borrowed from seller sources aren't measuring the same thing.
• If you run a hybrid account, your 1P and 3P Sponsored Products results use different windows. Compare them with that in mind, or compare Sponsored Brands, where the window matches.
• Since a click can still earn credit for a purchase two weeks later, wait until a new campaign's first 14 days have passed before you judge it.

What Vendor Central Will Not Give You

Once campaigns are running, the question changes from "can I get in" to "is this ad spend paying off on each ASIN," and you can't answer it from either side alone. Your ad spend and ad sales are reported in the Ads console, inside an advertiser account that's separate from Vendor Central, so putting them next to what each ASIN sold and how much stock it has means bringing exports from both sides together yourself.

The Amazon advertising reporting guide for vendors walks through that join step by step: which Ads console export to pull, which Retail Analytics report to match it against, and how to read ad spend next to sales and stock for each ASIN.

Before your first campaign, confirm four things: an internal Admin holds the advertiser account, every other user has the narrowest role that does their job, billing runs by card or DFP the way your finance team expects, and anyone reading results knows Sponsored Products on a vendor account counts 14 days of sales after the click.