Sponsored Product Ads (SPA)

For OTTO sellers, Sponsored Product Ads (SPA) are the product ads on the marketplace: they make individual items visible in search results, product lists and on product detail pages. Billing is per click; budget and bid are set by the seller.

What are Sponsored Product Ads on OTTO?

SPA are paid placements for items you sell on OTTO.

OTTO generates the ads automatically from your product data; you do not need your own creatives. They appear on otto.de in the desktop browser, on mobile devices and in the OTTO app, and are labelled as advertising. A click leads to the product detail page of the advertised item. According to OTTO, there are up to 11 ad slots in product lists, 11 on search results pages and 30 on product detail pages.

How is SPA billed?

SPA works on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis: costs arise only when someone clicks on the ad. According to OTTO, there are no monthly or upfront fees.

For each campaign you set a total budget and your maximum bid per click. The more competitive the bid, the more likely the ad is shown. According to OTTO, the minimum CPC is currently 20 cents; the actual click price depends on the competition in the category. According to the API documentation, the budget can apply per day, week, month or for the entire runtime and be spent as quickly as possible or evenly.

You can pause a running campaign and reactivate it later; advertised items and keywords are retained. If a campaign has passed its end date or was cancelled, it is permanently ended. Then you create a new campaign.

Automatic targeting or keyword targeting?

With automatic targeting, OTTO shows the ads context-based in search results, product lists and on product detail pages. You exclude unsuitable search terms with negative keywords.

With keyword targeting, you choose the search terms yourself; the ads then appear on search results pages, and you can control bids per keyword. OTTO recommends combining an automatic campaign with a keyword campaign. How the two work together and how to steer bids and search terms is shown in the guide optimising OTTO advertising.

When is SPA worth it?

SPA is worth it as long as the contribution margin of the items sold covers the click costs.

You calculate the highest affordable click price like this: conversion rate times contribution margin before advertising per sale. An item at EUR 59.50 gross with EUR 16.57 contribution margin and a 2% conversion rate can bear 2% × EUR 16.57 = EUR 0.33 per click. If returns come into play and only EUR 10.96 remains per order, that is EUR 0.22, barely more than the minimum bid. The same limit as a KPI is the break-even ROAS.

For the decision “advertising on or off” per item you need the advertising costs per item. These are delivered by the reporting of the OTTO Marketing API: costs, clicks and attributed revenue per day, campaign and advertised item.

SPA vs. SDA: what is the difference?

SPA advertises individual items and is billed per click. Sponsored Display Ads (SDA) are banner formats billed per 1,000 impressions and also shown outside otto.de.

SPA reaches customers who are searching or comparing right now, and its costs come back per item. SDA aims more at reach and re-engagement; the effect on individual items is harder to measure.

When SPA pays off against the contribution margin is shown in a worked example: OTTO advertising costs 2026: SPA, SDA and the Marketing API explained →