The 7 Most Frustrating Amazon PPC Challenges And How Optmyzr Fixes Them

“I’m running ads, adjusting bids… so why isn’t performance improving?”

It’s a question many Amazon advertisers ask right after realizing their ad budget’s nearly gone and performance isn’t keeping up.

Sure, Seller Central covers the basics when you’re managing Amazon ads. It helps you set up campaigns, manage budgets, and monitor ad performance. But when it comes to making sense of the why behind a sudden ACOS spike, missed keyword wins, or wasted spend, it’s often not enough.

That’s where Optmyzr steps in.

It adds a powerful layer of insights and automation on top of your Amazon Ads so you can fix inefficiencies faster, scale what’s working, and stay proactive instead of reactive.

In this article, we’ll unpack key challenges Amazon advertisers face and show how Optmyzr helps you go from manual firefighting to confident, data-backed decision-making.

7 challenges with running Amazon ads and how Optmyzr helps

1. Burning your budget without ROI

Problem: “My campaigns are overspending and I don’t know why.”

Leaving your budget spend unchecked is one of the fastest ways to erode your profit margins when advertising on Amazon. Without proper visibility and guardrails, you run the risk of burning through your monthly or daily budgets, sometimes on non-converting keywords or irrelevant placements. Often, you may find yourself reacting after the damage is done, instead of proactively controlling spend.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅Budget monitoring

Set monthly budget targets for each account and monitor daily pacing against those limits. In Optmyzr, you can configure the budget cycle (e.g., reset on the 1st of each month) and receive overpacing/underpacing alerts directly via email or Slack. This setup ensures real-time visibility and control without interfering with Amazon Ads platform configurations.

✅Spend projection

Using current spend trends, Optmyzr forecasts whether you’re on track to hit or exceed your monthly budget. This lets you proactively adjust bidding or pause inefficient campaigns before budget overruns happen.

✅Account alerts

Real-time alerts flag anomalies like a spike in spend or a drop in return, letting you intercept issues before they spiral. You can configure alerts based on ACOS, spend thresholds, or CTR drops, making them actionable and tailored to your KPIs.

Also read: 5 optimizations to boost Amazon PPC profitability

2. ACoS eating into your profits

Problem: “My ACoS is too high.”

High ACOS eats into profitability, especially for low-margin products where even small inefficiencies can negate your returns. Without a structured way to optimize bids, you risk wasting budget on keywords that fail to convert at a sustainable cost.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅Suggested bids

This tool uses Amazon’s API to recommend bid changes based on current keyword performance. You can:

• Automatically apply a percentage change (e.g., Suggested Bid +10%)
• Manually override with your own custom bid
• Filter by bid gap or performance thresholds

It’s ideal for routine tuning and works best when run every 7–14 days to account for performance lag.

✅Bid adjustment optimization

Optmyzr offers two rule-based strategies here:

• Change Bids Based on ACOS
  Automatically increases or decreases bids based on how a keyword’s ACOS compares to your target. It only acts on keywords with enough conversions, spend, and clicks to ensure reliable optimization. If a keyword is converting well and performing under your target ACOS, bids are raised to maximize volume. If it’s overspending with poor efficiency, bids are lowered to protect profitability.

   

• Set Bids to Reach Target ACOS
  Uses recent performance data to calculate the most efficient bid needed to meet your ACOS goal. You set boundaries like minimum and maximum bid limits and conversion thresholds, ensuring that only keywords with enough data are adjusted.

3. Blind spots costing you performance

Problem: “I don’t have enough visibility into what’s working or failing in my campaigns.”

When you don’t know which campaigns, keywords, or settings are delivering value, you can’t optimize confidently. You end up reacting to performance drops instead of preventing them, and potentially miss opportunities to scale what’s working.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅Account dashboard

Your performance command center. Switch between account, campaign, and ad group views to instantly see top-level KPIs. The dashboard highlights trends, helps spot optimization opportunities, and tracks shifts in performance at a glance.

✅Performance comparison

Easily compare campaign or ad group performance across two custom date ranges. For Amazon Ads, this tool highlights changes in key metrics like ACOS, ROAS, conversions, and cost, broken down by campaign or ad group.

Each result includes:

• Date 1, Date 2, and the % change
• Clear segmentation for faster insights

Use it to:

• Spot performance drops or gains
• Confirm the impact of recent optimizations
• Decide where to scale or cut back

Perfect for reviewing post-sale periods, new campaign launches, or monthly performance shifts.

✅Magic Quadrant

Get a visual snapshot of your top 100 campaigns, keywords, or ad groups—plotted into four categories:

• Stars: High performers
• Potentials: Strong in one metric, room to grow
• Opportunities: Underperforming but promising
• Laggards: Low-performing, need fixes

Customize the axes (e.g., ACOS vs. ROAS) and filter by scope. It’s a great way to see what you need to scale, fix, or pause, at a glance.

4. Wasting budget on irrelevant clicks

Problem: “I’m paying for traffic that doesn’t convert.”

Every click that doesn’t lead to a sale drains your budget. Whether it’s shoppers searching for “free samples” or traffic from irrelevant product queries, these wasted clicks reduce efficiency and inflate your ACOS, especially when they go unnoticed across large keyword sets.

How does Optmyzr help?

Optmyzr’s Rule Engine for Amazon Ads includes pre-built strategies specifically designed to reduce wasted spend and improve ad group targeting:

✅ Non-Converting Keyword and ASIN Search Terms

Get suggestions to block keywords or ASINs that fail to convert after a set number of clicks, defined by you. This helps filter out underperformers before they drain your budget.

✅ Expensive Search Queries

Find search terms that have high spend but no conversions. The strategy uses pre-set thresholds to flag them and recommends adding them as negative keywords, so your ads stop showing for those queries.

✅ Rule Automation

These strategies can run on a scheduled basis—daily, weekly, or monthly—so you can keep your account clean without doing the heavy lifting.

5. Missing keyword opportunities

Problem: “I’m missing valuable keyword opportunities.”

If converting search terms aren’t added as keywords, your ads may miss high-intent traffic. It means less visibility, lower relevance, and lost revenue, especially if those terms are already driving sales.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅ Keyword Lasso (Query Management)

This tool helps you turn converting search queries into keywords—quickly and efficiently. It aggregates performance data from similar queries by ad group and match type, and uses conversion and impression thresholds to ensure suggestions are based on statistically meaningful data. You can filter to focus on search terms with strong performance, then add them to existing or new ad groups.

✅ Add New Keywords (Rule Engine Strategy)

Automatically identifies converting search terms and suggests adding them as new keywords in your account. You can define when the rule runs (weekly, monthly) and set thresholds so only meaningful terms are suggested—keeping keyword lists fresh without manual effort.

✅ Keyword Report

Analyze which keywords are generating impressions, clicks, and sales—and which ones are underperforming or inactive. It’s a quick way to clean up low-value terms and double down on what works.

6. Poor campaign structure or hygiene

Problem: “I’m not sure if my campaigns are set up right or if they need to be improved.”

Without a solid campaign structure, your Amazon Ads account becomes inefficient. Poor naming, keyword clutter, or conflicting negatives can lead to wasted spend, limited visibility, and missed growth opportunities.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅ PPC Account Audit for Amazon

Optmyzr provides a library of audits that highlight issues across campaigns, ad groups, keywords, products, and placements.

Some examples:

• Conflicting Keywords: Catch cases where your negative keywords are blocking your positives.
• Ad Groups With Too Few or Too Many Keywords: Fix imbalanced targeting.
• Campaigns Hitting Budget Limits: Identify which campaigns are throttling performance.
• Campaigns With Low Impressions or Zero Sales: Detect wasted budget fast.
• Match Type Distribution: Analyze how keyword match types are performing

7. Reporting takes too long

Problem: “Reporting takes hours every week.”

Manually compiling reports eats into valuable time that could be spent optimizing campaigns. And when you’re managing multiple accounts or stakeholders, it’s even harder to deliver timely, consistent insights.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅ Create & Edit Reports with the Report Designer

Optmyzr’s Report Designer lets you create and automate beautiful, data-rich reports in minutes.

• Use pre-built templates or build your own with drag-and-drop widgets
• Add branded cover pages, custom metrics, AI-generated insights, and visual charts
• Schedule reports to be automatically emailed as PDFs or shared as links—daily, weekly, or monthly
• Reuse templates across multiple Amazon accounts for consistent reporting

You can even create multi-account reports or filter performance by campaign type, geography, or targeting strategy.

Run Amazon Ads like a pro with less manual effort

Managing Amazon PPC doesn’t have to be reactive or overwhelming. With Optmyzr, every part of your workflow, from controlling spend and optimizing bids to uncovering keyword gaps and automating reports, is transformed into a proactive, data-driven process. Tools like Rule Engine, Budget Monitor, Keyword Lasso, and Report Designer empower you to act fast, stay efficient, and scale with confidence.

Explore Optmyzr’s Amazon PPC toolkit today. Sign up for our 14-day free trial and see what smarter advertising looks like.

How to Lower ACoS with the Right Amazon Bid Type

Bidding on Amazon isn’t just about picking a number and hoping for the best. With so many options: Up & Down, Down Only, Fixed, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed or fall into autopilot. However, the best results don’t come from chasing the lowest ACoS or blindly increasing bids.

They come from aligning your bid strategy with your actual goals. Whether you’re launching a product, protecting your brand, or chasing profitability, the right bid type can make all the difference.

Amazon’s bid types

Not all bid types are created equal, and they’re definitely not interchangeable. Amazon gives you three core bidding options, and the trick isn’t to pick the most aggressive or conservative one. It’s to choose the one that aligns with what you’re actually trying to achieve.

At the center of Amazon’s bidding model are dynamic bids, letting Amazon raise or lower your bid based on the likelihood of a conversion, and fixed bids, where you retain full control. Here’s how they break down:

Beyond these, Amazon also supports rule-based bidding, where you set custom rules to adjust bids based on performance, budget thresholds, or time-of-day trends. In Sponsored Display, you can go deeper with audience-based bidding, fine-tuning bids based on who’s seeing your ads (like past buyers or high-intent viewers).

Aligning bid types to business objectives

One of the most common missteps in Amazon ads is choosing a bid type out of habit, or worse, guessing. Too often, advertisers overlook how each bid type interacts with Amazon’s algorithm.

Amazon prioritizes relevance, user intent, and conversion likelihood. When your bid type aligns with your campaign objective, whether that’s profitability, brand visibility, or new product launches, you’re giving the algorithm the right signals to work in your favor.

Misaligned bids don’t just underperform, they waste impressions, burn budget, and leave growth opportunities on the table.

Smart bidding starts with strategic intent, not just settings.

How to use a bid type based on the outcome you’re targeting

Objective: Profitable Sales

Recommended Bid Type: Dynamic Bids – Down Only

Why it works: When profit margins matter, control is key. Down Only lets Amazon lower your bids when it predicts a low likelihood of conversion, helping you avoid wasted spend. It’s not about pulling back reach entirely, it’s about trimming the fat. For advertisers looking to protect ROI, this is your safest bet.

👉Trade-offs: The downside to Down Only is that it won’t capitalize on every high-value opportunity.

If a certain search or placement is very likely to convert, Amazon won’t exceed your original bid to win that auction aggressively.

Thus, you might miss out on impressions or sales in extremely competitive moments.

Objective: Keyword Ranking

Recommended Bid Type: Fixed Bids

Why it works: Climbing the ranks on Amazon requires volume and consistency. With Fixed Bids, Amazon won’t reduce your exposure just because early clicks don’t immediately convert. This matters during ranking pushes, when your goal is visibility and share of voice, not short-term efficiency. You’re trading precision for momentum, and that’s a smart call in this phase.

👉Trade-offs: Fixed Bids won’t lower the price for low-value clicks, which means you can overpay significantly in many auctions.

Without dynamic adjustments, a fixed bid might apply equally to a great query and a marginally relevant one.

For instance, if you bid $2 for a keyword, you’ll pay up to $2 whether the click converts or not, whereas Down Only would have trimmed that for a low-conversion scenario.

Objective: Product Launch

Recommended Bid Type: Dynamic Bids – Up & Down

Why it works: Launching a new ASIN? You need flexible reach. Up & Down bidding lets Amazon lean in when signals look promising, while dialing back in low-quality auctions. It fuels Amazon’s learning phase, helping you ramp faster without throwing budget at poor placements.

👉Trade-offs: Your cost-per-click can rise, and you must be comfortable spending up to 100% more per click in those high-conversion scenarios.

If Amazon’s predictions are too “enthusiastic” or if your conversion rate falters, Up & Down can lead to higher ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sales) and spend. Close monitoring is critical, and you’ll want to watch if the extra spend is delivering proportional sales.

The good news is Amazon does cap the increases (doubling at most for top-of-search). Still, be sure your margins and budget can support the potential bid spikes.

Objective: Brand Protection

Recommended Bid Type: Fixed Bids

Why it works: Branded terms convert well, but they’re also where competitors love to poach. With Fixed Bids, Amazon won’t downscale your visibility based on perceived efficiency. You stay visible, dominant, and in control of your brand defense strategy.

Placements vs. Bids: Don’t default to bid increases

When performance dips, many advertisers instinctively raise bids. But that’s not always the smartest, or most cost-effective move. Instead of blanket increases, Amazon gives you a better option: placement modifiers.

Placement modifiers let you boost bids selectively based on where your ad appears, offering more control without overspending across the board. The two key placements you should care about:

• Top of Search (Search Results): The crown jewel of Amazon ads, this is where CTR and CVR peak. It’s worth paying more if it’s delivering profitable results.
• Product Pages: Often overlooked, these placements offer lower CPCs and large volumes, making them ideal for competitive conquesting or brand reinforcement.

Instead of applying the same bid across every auction, placement modifiers let you layer intent, raising bids only where it matters most. It’s a smarter way to scale performance without lighting your budget on fire.

Most advertisers optimize too early

One of the most costly mistakes in Amazon advertising? Optimizing too soon.

It’s easy to panic when you’ve spent money and haven’t seen conversions roll in. The knee-jerk reaction is to pause keywords, slash bids, or shut the campaign down entirely. But here’s the truth: Amazon doesn’t operate in real time.

• There’s often a 72-hour delay for performance data to fully populate in the ad console.
• Attribution can take up to 7 days, especially for Sponsored Display or upper-funnel campaigns.
• Campaign types vary wildly: branded campaigns convert quickly, while retargeting or awareness campaigns need time to mature.

When you act too early, you’re making decisions based on incomplete data. Worse, you could interrupt Amazon’s learning process and shut down campaigns that might have performed well if given the chance.

It’s better to build in a delay before optimizing. Give new campaigns or bid strategy shifts at least 3 to 7 days before making adjustments.

Let the data breathe. Let Amazon learn. Then step in with structured changes, not reactive ones.

Use Amazon’s suggested bids

When it comes to setting bids, intuition isn’t strategy. Amazon Ads provides real-time, data-backed bid recommendations, more likely to achieve better results.

What are suggested bids?

• Suggested Bid: A dynamic value based on historical auction performance, competitor activity, and your ad’s own conversion data.
• Suggested Bid Range: A reflection of how competitive (or volatile) the auction is, helping you decide if you should bid conservatively or lean in aggressively.

These aren’t random numbers; they’re Amazon’s best estimate of what it will take to stay competitive in a given auction environment.

Use these as your baseline, not your ceiling. For example, if the suggested bid is $1.20 and your campaign is converting efficiently at $1.05, stick with what works.

But if performance lags, consider moving closer to the upper end of the range.

Keyword match types and their role in bidding strategy

Your keyword match type doesn’t just define who sees your ad; it also shapes how you should bid. Think of it like casting a net: the wider you go, the more cautious you need to be with your budget. The narrower the focus, the more you can afford to be aggressive.

Here’s how to align bidding strategy with match intent:

Exact match

Best For: Branded searches or high-converting, well-known keywords.

Why: You want your ad to show only when someone searches for a specific, high-intent term, like your product name or a top-performing keyword.

Bidding Strategy: Use Fixed Bids or high Dynamic Bids to dominate impressions. This is ideal for brand protection and ranking pushes, where visibility is non-negotiable.

Phrase match

Best For: Mid-funnel discovery and niche targeting with moderate intent.

Why: Phrase match lets you appear for queries that include your keyword in order, giving you more reach without sacrificing too much precision.

Bidding Strategy: Use moderate Dynamic Bids (Down Only) or rule-based bidding to scale efficiently while keeping ACoS in check.

Broad match

Best For: Exploration and data gathering in the early stages of a campaign.

Why: Broad match casts the widest net, capturing long-tail and unexpected search terms. But with that reach comes risk.

Bidding Strategy: Bid low and cautiously. Layer in negative keywords early, and consider using Optmyzr Express to block irrelevant traffic and promote high-converting terms quickly.

When to trust Amazon’s automation and when not to

Use automation when:

• You have ≥30 clicks per campaign: Amazon’s machine learning needs volume to optimize effectively. Without enough data, automation simply can’t learn.
• You’re testing new audiences or categories: Let automation explore patterns and scale learnings faster than manual testing.
• You’re scaling proven products: If a product already converts well, automation helps expand reach without endless bid adjustments.

Use manual control when:

• Margins are tight: You can’t afford automation chasing reach at the expense of profitability.
• Precision is critical (e.g., branded terms): You want full control; automation may deprioritize high-performing branded queries.
• You need predictable ACoS: Manual bidding offers tighter reins for finance-sensitive campaigns.

Optmyzr Express can further help you make manual control scalable. It uses a 45-day lookback (with a 3-day offset) to surface:

• Non-converting keywords
• Wasteful product targets
• Irrelevant queries to block
• High-performing terms to promote

You stay in charge; nothing changes unless you click ‘Apply’. Or hit ‘Snooze’ if you’re not ready.

Ad format-specific bidding rules

Not all Amazon ad formats play by the same bidding rules, and that matters when structuring your campaigns. Each format offers different controls, objectives, and data visibility, so your bid strategy should adapt accordingly.

Sponsored products

The most versatile format, Sponsored Products supports all three bid types: Dynamic Up & Down, Down Only, and Fixed Bids. It also allows placement modifiers and keyword match types, making it ideal for performance optimization, A/B testing, and scale.

Use it to drive conversions at the ASIN level and to test bidding strategies across different goals.

🔄 Feature update: New-to-Brand (NTB) audience targeting is now available within Sponsored Brands campaigns. You can apply a dedicated bid boost for shoppers who haven’t purchased from your brand in the past 12 months.

With this, you can:

• Prioritize new customer acquisition directly in Sponsored Brands
• Boost bids specifically for NTB audiences to expand reach
• Optimize for growth and market share, not just conversions

NTB bid boosting aligns especially well with dynamic bidding strategies when aiming to scale brand visibility and acquisition during competitive shopping periods.

Sponsored brands

Sponsored Brands campaigns, those headline ads with logos, are designed for brand awareness and top-of-funnel visibility. They support Fixed Bids and Dynamic Bids – Up & Down only.

Since Sponsored Brands often target broader audiences, they benefit from higher bids on high-converting terms but should be monitored closely for ACoS performance.

Sponsored display

Geared for retargeting and audience targeting, Sponsored Display supports Fixed Bids or audience-based bidding, depending on the targeting type (e.g., views, interests, purchases).

While you lose keyword-level control, you gain precision through behavioral signals, making this format great for cross-selling, brand defense, or re-engaging past shoppers.

Knowing what each format allows and what it’s best suited for lets you plan campaigns that actually align with your strategy, not just your spend.

Make every Amazon bid count with Optmyzr

Smart bidding on Amazon isn’t about tweaking numbers all day; it’s about knowing what success looks like for your business. Instead of asking, “How much should I bid?”, ask, “What am I trying to achieve?” Whether that’s increased visibility, improved margins, or saving time, the right strategy begins with clear goals and the right tools.

Optmyzr helps you stay focused on what matters—your goals, not the grunt work.

Curious to see it in action? Try it for free for 14 days and decide if it’s a fit for you.

Amazon Ads and Inventory: When to Hit Pause and Why

One of the most important rules of selling on Amazon is not to run out of stock. Yet even the best-organized brands can’t always ensure this when unexpected factors like port delays or sales spikes occur.

If you’re running ads for such products on Amazon, the most important thing is to turn them off before the inventory runs out. Now, you might be wondering: Doesn’t Amazon automatically stop ads when a product is out of stock? So then, why is this relevant?

Well, there are a few reasons for that:

1. If stock is low but more inventory is on the way, temporarily pausing ads and discounts helps sellers stretch existing supply and buy time until the restock arrives, avoiding last-minute scrambles or disruptions to campaign momentum.
2. If you’re about to run out of stock, turning off ads helps you make more profit on the last few items, since they’ll likely sell without extra push
3. When inventory is low, your products might not be available in every warehouse. That means some customers will see longer delivery times, which can make them less likely to buy, driving up your ACOS.

If you only have about two weeks or less of inventory left, it’s a good idea to pause your ads to avoid selling out too quickly.

How to pause ads in Optmyzr when inventory runs low

Keeping an eye on inventory is essential, especially to avoid wasting spend or pushing products that are about to stock out.

With Optmyzr, you can set up a Rule Engine strategy to automatically pause ads when inventory levels fall below a certain threshold. The process starts with uploading your FBA inventory report (available through Amazon Seller Central) into a spreadsheet. This sheet then acts as the data source for Optmyzr’s Rule Engine strategy.

Here’s how the workflow typically looks like:

1. Download the FBA Inventory Report from Amazon Seller Central
2. Transfer key data (like ASIN and days-of-supply) into a simplified Google Sheet. This sheet will serve as the source for your Optmyzr strategy
3. Create a Rule Engine strategy in Optmyzr that checks this Google Sheet and pauses ads for ASINs that fall below your inventory threshold

Once the data is in place, Optmyzr checks product inventory against your defined thresholds and automatically pauses ads that need attention. This helps you:

• Prevent wasted ad spend on soon-to-be-out-of-stock products
• Maintain better control over campaign performance
• Save time managing ads for ASINs across multiple ad groups

Getting inventory supply levels from Amazon

The most reliable way to track inventory levels for this strategy is through Amazon’s FBA Inventory Report. Since this report isn’t available as a scheduled export, you’ll need to pull it manually or set up a method to retrieve it as needed.

Depending on your tech setup and team bandwidth, there are a couple of ways to do this:

• Using scripts: One of the easiest ways is to have a script that goes into Seller Central and downloads the FBA Inventory Report. You can run this locally or with a virtual machine like LightSail on AWS.
• Using manual method: If you’ll only be running this for one account a week, it might be easier for you to manually pull this report and then follow the same steps to automate the campaign adjustments.

Preparing your inventory data in Google Sheets

Once you’ve downloaded your FBA Inventory Report, the next step is to extract only the columns you need to inform your ad decisions—typically ASIN, available inventory, and days of supply. Copy this filtered data into a new Google Sheet, which will serve as the reference file within Optmyzr.

You can do this step manually or use a script to automate the transfer, depending on how frequently the inventory data changes. Before proceeding, rename the column that contains your product identifier (typically ASIN or SKU) to “Key”—this allows Optmyzr to correctly match inventory status with the corresponding ASINs.

Selecting the correct report columns

Creating the rule in Optmyzr will be easier if you only include relevant columns in the Google Sheet you are going to use to run the rule.

We recommend using the “days-of-supply” column for this automation, as it reflects available inventory based on forecasted demand. Avoid using Total Days of Supply (including open shipments)—while it may look more optimistic, those units aren’t sellable yet, and relying on them can hurt performance.

Amazon’s FBA Inventory Report has similarly named columns—this table highlights the key differences to help you choose the right one for your Optmyzr rule.

Building strategies in Rule Engine for smarter ad control

With Optmyzr’s Rule Engine and a connected spreadsheet, you can create a smart, responsive system that automatically pauses ads for low-stock items and re-enables them when inventory is replenished.

The Rule Engine allows you to match inventory metrics from an external spreadsheet to entities like ads, campaigns, or product groups. This is done using Key Value Pairs, where:

• The Key is a unique identifier (like ASIN or Ad ID)
• The Values are the data points associated with that key (e.g., Days Supply, Clicks, Conversions)

The Rule Engine uses the Key to match ASINs to their corresponding inventory levels and then evaluates the Values (like Days of Supply) to decide whether to pause or re-enable the ads for those ASINs.

Learn more: How Optmyzr customers use the Rule Engine to build powerful automations

Strategy 1: Pause ads when inventory is low

Goal: Avoid spending on products that are nearly out of stock.

Using Key Value Pairs, the rule knows which ad corresponds to which ASIN and applies the pause logic only when the condition is met.

Strategy 2: Reactivate ads for restocked products

Goal: Resume ads for products that are back in stock without delay. Here we apply three mandatory conditions for the ad to be re-enabled.

First, the product must have over 50 days of supply, above the low inventory threshold, to safely resume ads. Next, the ad must currently be paused, so active ads aren’t affected. Finally, the rule applies only to ads in a specific list: those previously paused by Optmyzr due to low inventory.

In the next section, we give you a step-by-step walkthrough of how you can implement this in Optmyzr

Setting up the rules in Optmyzr

Once your inventory data is cleaned and added to a Google Sheet, with ASIN or SKU labeled as “Key” you’re ready to build a rule in Optmyzr that uses this external data to pause ads for low-stock products.

In the Rule Engine, create a rule that looks up your campaign or product data against the Google Sheet. The condition you’ll typically set is to pause ads when “Days of Supply” falls below a defined threshold (e.g., 14 days). This approach gives your team more proactive control over spend and margin, especially during periods of tight supply

You can tailor this rule depending on whether you want campaigns to pause immediately when stock runs low or if you’d prefer a buffer window. Many brands choose to be conservative, pausing ads slightly before stockouts occur, to avoid poor delivery experiences and rising ACOS caused by delayed fulfillment windows.

Setting up the Google Sheet to add inventory data to the Rule Engine

1. In Seller Central, go to Reports > Fulfillment

2. Click Request .csv download and then ‘Download’

3. Open ‘Upload into New Google Sheet’ or ‘Copy and Paste over existing Google Sheet’

4. Click ‘Share’ to update share settings

5. Delete all other columns except for ASIN and quantity available. You should be left with Column A showing ASIN.

6. Change ASIN to Key and quantity available to Days Supply

How to set up the Rule Engine strategy to pause ads when inventory runs low

Once you have the inventory data ready to be linked to Optmyzr, simply follow the steps in this walkthrough to set up the rules to pause and re-enable ads using the Rule Engine.

Wrapping up: Smarter ad decisions when inventory runs low

By anticipating stockouts and adjusting ad visibility before they happen, you can protect margins, preserve campaign efficiency, and avoid disappointing customers. Using data from Amazon’s FBA Inventory Report and combining it with campaign-level controls in Optmyzr gives you a practical way to stay ahead of low-inventory risks, without having to make manual changes every week.

If you’re looking for a smarter, faster way to manage your Amazon ads alongside performance data, give Optmyzr a try. Sign up for our free 14-day trial, so you can see how easy it is to set up rules that work the way your business does.

Author Bio

Robyn has been heralded as one of the country’s foremost leaders on the topic of selling and marketing products on Amazon.com. Robyn has been a guest on shows like Entrepreneur on Fire, Confessions of A Marketer, and regularly speaks at shows all over the world about marketing on Amazon including SMX Munich, Pubcon, Prosper, and more.

Robyn is the co-founder of Marketplace Blueprint, a digital agency that specializes in listing optimization and advertising on Amazon. She has over a decade of experience of selling online on Amazon, eBay, and other eCommerce venues.

This article is a reflection of the author’s experiences and opinions. Optmyzr believes that there are many ways to win in digital advertising, and is committed to presenting a diverse range of ideas and approaches.

8 Common Amazon Ads Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)

Amazon ads can be incredibly powerful, but not always predictable.

Sometimes your strategy is solid, but it’s the overlooked patterns that quietly drain performance: brand terms showing up where they shouldn’t, auto campaigns running on autopilot, or decisions made too quickly on partial data.

This blog lists common mistakes in Amazon ads and how to troubleshoot them, the kind of fixes that actually improve efficiency, visibility, and return, not just check a box.

8 Mistakes Amazon advertisers make and how to fix them

Mistake #1: Mixing match types and goals in one campaign

One of the most common and costly mistakes advertisers make on Amazon is combining different match types and campaign goals in a single campaign or ad group. Think broad match for discovery, exact match for conversions, and phrase match for consideration, all lumped together.

The result? A confused algorithm and inefficient ad spend.

Amazon optimizes at the campaign level. So if your campaign is juggling discovery and brand defense keywords, the algorithm doesn’t know whether to go wide or go deep. It might pour budget into broad terms, which get clicks but rarely convert.

Meanwhile, exact match keywords, which are primed to convert, get sidelined.

To fix this, structure campaigns by match type and intent. Create separate campaigns for exact, phrase, and broad match keywords and align each with a specific goal.

For discovery, use broad match with tight controls. For conversions, use exact match and bid accordingly. This segmentation gives you cleaner data, smarter bids, and far better performance.

Mistake #2: Graduating keywords from auto campaigns too soon

Seeing a few conversions from an auto campaign can feel like a green light to move that keyword into a manual campaign. But acting too soon can backfire. Auto campaigns don’t just convert, they discover.

They surface valuable long-tail variations and let Amazon’s algorithm optimize bids dynamically. Prematurely pulling a keyword disrupts that discovery and may inflate costs in a manual campaign.

To avoid this, follow a deliberate three-step approach:

Step 1: Mirror the keyword.
When a search term shows consistent conversions and a healthy ACoS over time, add it as an exact match in a manual campaign. Do not remove it from the auto campaign yet.

Step 2: Validate performance in parallel.
Let both campaigns run side by side and look for clear, consistent wins in the manual setup.

Step 3: Move only after proof.
Once the manual version outperforms, apply a negative exact match in the auto campaign to avoid bidding overlap. This ensures smooth graduation without sacrificing discovery.

A tool like Optmyzr’s Magic Quadrants is invaluable here. It can help you visually map keywords across performance metrics like conversion rate and cost to help you identify which ones are ready to scale.

Say a coffee brand sees “Ethiopian Yirgacheffe whole bean” convert a few times in auto. Before graduating it, they check the quadrant view: if it lands in “Potentials” or “Stars” (strong conversion rate, sustainable cost), that’s the signal it’s ready to scale.

If it’s in “Laggards,” it needs more refinement before moving.

This visual, data-backed validation ensures you’re not promoting premature performers and sets your Amazon campaigns up for long-term profitability.

Mistake #3: Blending branded and non-branded keywords

One of the most overlooked mistakes in Amazon Ads strategy is combining branded and non-branded keywords in the same campaign. While it might seem efficient, this blending distorts performance data and undermines your ability to scale.

Branded terms, like your product or company name, naturally convert better because users already know you. Non-branded terms are used by shoppers still in the discovery or consideration phase.

When these keywords are lumped together, high-performing brand terms inflate overall metrics, masking the true efficiency (or inefficiency) of your acquisition efforts.

Here’s how to fix it:

• Separate your campaigns: Create dedicated campaigns for brand and non-brand keywords.
• Negate brand terms in your new customer acquisition campaigns to ensure the budget goes toward attracting net-new shoppers.
• Automate the cleanup: Use Optmyzr Express to Add Negative Keywords and block branded queries. Run it regularly to catch emerging brand-related searches and keep your targeting clean.

Mistake #4: Letting auto campaigns run on autopilot

Auto campaigns are powerful, but only when used with purpose. A common mistake advertisers make is treating them as a permanent traffic source rather than what they truly are: a research and discovery tool.

Left unchecked, auto campaigns often pull in loosely related or irrelevant search queries.

Without regular oversight, this leads to wasted spend, inflated ACoS, and bloated search term reports filled with noise instead of insight.

On the flip side, relying too heavily on auto campaigns can stall your keyword strategy by keeping you reactive instead of proactive.

Here’s the fix:

• Use auto campaigns for discovery only: Their strength lies in identifying new, converting search terms you can promote to manual campaigns.
• Clean them regularly: Add low-performing queries as negative keywords to control spend and improve relevance.
• Harvest winners into manual campaigns: Build a high-performing keyword set based on validated search terms uncovered in auto.

Mistake #5: Advertising products that are out of stock

Running ads for products that are nearly or completely out of stock is one of the most expensive (but avoidable) mistakes in Amazon ads.

While Amazon does stop ads when a product is fully unavailable, it often happens too late.

Meanwhile, your budget bleeds into campaigns that can’t convert efficiently, and shoppers may encounter delayed shipping, leading to poor user experiences and higher ACoS.

Even worse, if inventory is running low but hasn’t hit zero yet, your ads may continue to serve aggressively, driving demand you can’t fulfill.

This disrupts campaign momentum and can damage organic ranking if stockouts occur.

With Optmyzr’s Rule Engine and a connected inventory spreadsheet, you can build a responsive system that automatically pauses ads for low-stock ASINs and re-enables them when inventory recovers.

Here’s how it works:

• The Rule Engine matches a unique product identifier (like ASIN or Ad ID) to key inventory metrics like Days of Supply using Key Value Pairs.
• You define the threshold (e.g., < 14 days), and Optmyzr acts in real time, pausing or restarting ads accordingly.

This goes beyond what native tools offer, adding automation and customization that adapts to your goals.

Mistake #6: Relying on ads to make up for weak listings

High-performing Amazon ads don’t work in isolation; they depend on strong, optimized product listings to convert. Even the most finely tuned campaign can fall flat if the landing page experience doesn’t match shopper expectations.

When listings are incomplete, poorly written, or missing visuals, Amazon’s algorithm penalizes them with low relevance scores and poor click-through rates. That means fewer impressions, higher costs, and underwhelming return on ad spend. Ads might drive traffic, but they can’t fix a broken listing.

Here’s how to fix it:

Make listing optimization part of your ad strategy, not an afterthought. Clear, keyword-rich titles, compelling bullet points, and high-quality images all play a direct role in improving ad delivery and conversions.

Here are a few listing optimization tips that directly impact ad performance:

• Lead with value in your titles: Place the most relevant, high-intent keywords at the front and avoid fluff, repetition, or filler terms.
• Use bullet points strategically: Highlight benefits first, then features. Format consistently to improve readability and keyword indexing.
• Invest in your main image: A clean, high-contrast image on a white background is key to driving clicks. Avoid clutter and ensure the product fills ~85% of the frame.
• Add lifestyle and comparison shots: Use gallery images to show real-life use cases and differentiate your product from competitors.
• Leverage A+ Content: Tell your brand story, reduce objections, and reinforce trust with visual modules, feature highlights, and comparison charts.
• Audit regularly: Small listing tweaks can create noticeable shifts in CTR and ROAS. Track changes and their impact on performance over time.
  

👉 For a full walkthrough on what to fix and why it matters, read How to Optimize Your Amazon Listings to Boost Ad Performance.

Mistake #7: Slashing bids to improve ACoS

A high ACoS can be alarming, but slashing bids across the board isn’t the solution.

In fact, lowering bids without context can make things worse. Lower bids often mean your ads show less frequently or in less competitive placements, which hurts CTR. And when fewer (and less qualified) shoppers click, your conversion rate suffers too.

That’s where you spend less per click but sell fewer products, pushing your ACoS even higher at times.

A better approach:

• Refine your targeting: Make sure your ads appear for relevant, high-intent searches. Irrelevant traffic is the real ACoS killer.
• Improve listings: Optimize product images, titles, and bullet points to boost conversion rates from existing traffic.
• Use data-led bid strategies: Don’t lower bids indiscriminately. Optmyzr’s Rule Engine comes with pre-built strategies for Amazon Ads like Change Bids Based on Target ACoS and Set Bids to Reach Target ROAS that can help you automatically adjust based on performance.

Mistake #8: Making decisions based on same-day data

Amazon Ads data doesn’t tell the full story right away, and acting on it too quickly can do more harm than good. Sales attribution on Amazon can take 3 to 5 days to fully settle. Conversions often appear with a delay, especially in categories with longer purchase cycles.

So, when advertisers make bid or campaign changes within hours of launch, they risk disrupting performance based on incomplete or misleading data.

Read more: Amazon Ads reporting delay is killing your conversions. Here’s the fix (lessons from studying 14,991 campaigns)

The better strategy:

• Wait at least 3–5 days before making optimization decisions
• Analyze trends over multi-day windows (7, 14, or 30 days)
• Use stable indicators like ACoS, ROAS, and conversion rate to guide strategy, not real-time snapshots

Fix what’s holding back your Amazon Ads with Optmyzr

The most common Amazon ads mistakes often aren’t dramatic; they’re subtle, recurring issues.

Bidding too soon, ignoring inventory signals, trusting same-day data, these are the habits that quietly drain performance over time.

But they’re fixable with the right structure, automation, and visibility.

Start by tightening campaign structure, reviewing data over time (not just today), and using tools that help catch what manual checks often miss.

Optmyzr’s pre-built strategies and intelligent automations are designed to help advertisers do exactly that!

Want to catch more of the small issues that lead to big wins? Sign up for a fully functional 14-day trial today.

Google Ads Gets You Seen. Amazon Ads Gets You Sold. Here's How To Use Them Together.

Brands selling across multiple channels are adapting to how people actually shop — blending performance with discovery, and tailoring touchpoints around real behavior. A journey might start with a Google search, continue through a YouTube ad, and end with a purchase on Amazon.

But here’s the problem: these campaigns are often run in silos. Separate budgets, separate teams, and disconnected strategies.

This creates friction.

A shopper might click a YouTube ad, read your blog, then buy on Amazon—yet your data shows three disconnected actions. Attribution breaks, messaging misaligns, and worse, you may end up bidding against yourself for the same customer.

This is why advertisers who run both shouldn’t just run them side-by-side. Instead, they should consider a dual platform strategy.

It’s not just about doubling your spend. Rather, it’s about aligning platforms to the right funnel stages, routing traffic based on intent, and retargeting users where they’re most likely to convert.

In this blog, we’ll show you how to leverage a cross-platform ad strategy for your business and turn it into a smart system for better ROI.

Why combine Google and Amazon ads?

As consumers, we rarely move neatly from search to purchase. Instead, we zigzag between discovery and research, backtrack, and switch between tabs like the digital window shoppers we are.

Both Google and Amazon represent two distinct stages in this journey.

🔎Google: Often, where the journey begins, customers type in questions, compare different options, read reviews, and scan prices. It’s the platform for intent-based discovery and top-to-mid funnel engagement. You catch them while they’re curious.

🛒Amazon: Here, the mindset shifts. Shoppers come here with a higher intent to purchase. This is the platform for transactional behavior where searches more often than not translate into purchases.

Mapping the funnel: Google + Amazon

An efficient ad strategy combines both Google and Amazon so that they complement each other. The goal is to align each platform with the stage of the customer journey it best supports.

Top of funnel

This is where discovery happens.

The goal is not to really convert but to spark interest and highlight your USP. A great place for your brand story to shine.

Use YouTube, Display, and broad-match Search ads to build awareness around your brand, especially for category-defining terms.

Mid-funnel

This is the consideration phase where shoppers are evaluating their options.

The objective is to reinforce the interest you’ve earned. That means reminding shoppers why they engaged with your brand in the first place. Serve ads that help customers make informed decisions. It could be through product comparison pages, customer reviews, or even a ‘why choose us’ page.

Retargeting through Google Display campaigns brings them back to your product or educational pages, while your Amazon Storefront acts as a trust-building touchpoint, offering social proof, pricing, and delivery clarity.

Bottom funnel

Here the goal is simple— conversion.

Once the shopper knows what they want, Amazon becomes the closer. Sponsored Product and Sponsored Display ads work well here—capturing high-intent searches like brand or product names and retargeting users who’ve already shown interest.

How to launch a dual-platform funnel

Step 1: Set up your Google ads for broad reach and high-intent targeting

• Top of Funnel (ToF): Use YouTube, Display, and broad-match Search to capture interest through category keywords or competitor terms. This stage is about discovery and brand introduction.
• Mid Funnel (MF): Focus on branded search terms and set up retargeting via Display for users who visited your site but didn’t convert.
• Also consider layering in custom intent and in-market audiences to identify users who are actively researching products in your category.
• Use Customer Match to re-engage CRM audiences by uploading email lists (e.g. newsletter subscribers or past customers).

Step 2: Optimize your Amazon storefront to function like a high-converting landing page

• Design a clean, mobile-optimized layout with clear product sections and benefits-first messaging.
• Highlight USPs, reviews, product comparisons, and FAQs to remove friction.
• Set up Amazon Attribution links to measure how your external Google Ads influence Amazon conversions.
• Build Sponsored Brand campaigns that drive traffic to your Storefront, not just product listings—especially during branded or competitive search phases.

Step 3: Route traffic smartly to get the best out of your ads

• Send top-of-the-funnel Google traffic (e.g. YouTube viewers or broad search clicks) to brand.com for education and lead capture.
• Send middle-of-the-funnel and bottom-of-the-funnel traffic, like branded searches or remarketing audiences, to your Amazon storefront, where they’re highly likely to convert.
• Avoid pushing high-intent users to bare product pages with no context or proof.

Step 4: Stay visible and relevant after shoppers show interest

• Retarget customers who have visited your website but didn’t purchase with ads on the Google Display Network or YouTube to remind them of your product and bring them back to continue where they left off.
• Use Sponsored Display ads on Amazon to retarget people who viewed your product or added it to their cart but didn’t complete the purchase.
• Upload customer segments (like past buyers, newsletter subscribers, or high-LTV customers) into Google Ads using Customer Match for personalized follow-up across Search, YouTube, and Gmail ads.

Pitfalls to avoid

Launching a dual-platform strategy without proper guardrails can be a dangerous gamble and hurt your ROI before you can even catch it. Here are some things to keep in mind:

1. Overlapping audiences

Avoid targeting the same set of users in both brand and Amazon campaigns without segmentation.

For example, say you run a Google Ads campaign targeting “gut health granola” and direct users to brand.com. Simultaneously, you run a YouTube campaign using the same Custom Intent audience and drive that traffic to your Amazon Storefront.

Without exclusions, the same user could be shown both ads, driving up CPMs and CPCs across platforms. Plus, if they convert on Amazon, it’s unclear which campaign deserves credit, and your attribution gets muddled.

2. Poorly designed landing pages

When a user clicks on your ad, especially if it’s for a high-intent search, they’re definitely expecting a page that gives them all the information they need and makes it easy to convert.

A landing page with no clear explanation of benefits, reviews, trust signals, or product details can create doubt and may cause the user to bounce. You’re wasting a very valuable click and hurting your return on ad spend (ROAS).

3. Gaps in internal readiness

You run great ads and manage to attract several high-intent customers. But all of this amounts to nothing if your backend systems aren’t running properly. Even the best ads won’t convert effectively, and worse, you’ll end up creating a poor customer experience.

Measuring what matters across platforms

So you’ve set up a cross-platform ad strategy across the funnel. Now you want to measure how this adds value over time.

Here are a few different things you can do to measure and optimize your ad strategy.

1. Amazon Attribution

This is essentially a free, advertising and analytics measurement solution that gives you insights into how your marketing strategies across non-Amazon channels like search, social, display, video, email, and other campaigns helped customers discover and purchase your products on Amazon.

You can simply add Amazon Attribution tags to your Google ads to understand whether upper- or mid-funnel Google campaigns are assisting conversions that close on Amazon.

2. Google Analytics

Pair Amazon Attribution insights with Google Analytics to map user journeys and track how many touchpoints it takes before a user converts. You can also see whether your brand content plays a role in educating or nurturing a customer before a purchase.

3. Amazon’s New-to-Brand metrics

New-to-brand metrics allow you to measure orders, sales, and detail page views of your products generated from first-time customers of your brand on Amazon. They can help measure customer acquisition and tailor your campaign strategies.

Align your ad strategy to match shopper behavior and not just platforms

Instead of treating Amazon ads and Google ads as two separate platforms, sequence them according to your shopper’s mindset. This allows you to keep up with your customers with the right messaging as they move from discovery to consideration and finally, conversion. It lets you capture high-intent traffic, track them, and optimize better so you aren’t simply spending more but actually driving results from your ad campaigns.

Optmyzr comes with a comprehensive set of tools that can be used to automate your campaigns, segment audiences, and even run-rule based optimizations to keep your funnel efficient across platforms.

Try out Optmyzr’s free 14-day trial and explore how you can scale your campaigns the smart way.

Amazon Ads Reporting Delay Is Killing Your Conversions. Here’s the Fix (Lessons From Studying 14,991 Campaigns)

One of the first things you notice when managing Amazon Ads is that the data doesn’t settle right away. Clicks and costs show up fast, but conversions, sales, and impressions take longer to update. And those are the metrics that drive strategy.

That’s a problem.

Advertisers rely on timely data to make decisions. If you’re managing budgets or evaluating ROAS based on a snapshot that’s still shifting, you could be pausing profitable campaigns or under-crediting what’s actually working.

At Optmyzr, we decided to measure just how delayed Amazon Ads reporting really is. We looked at how much performance data changed over time, how often that change was significant, and what marketers can do to avoid making the wrong call too soon.

Here’s what we found.

What is Data Delay on Amazon ads?

Amazon Ads data delay refers to the lag between when an event (like an ad click or sale) occurs and when it gets fully reported in the Amazon Ads console or API. According to Amazon, it can take up to 14 days for conversion and sales data to settle, while metrics like impressions can also take time to complete.

Why is this important to understand?

Advertisers rely on timely data to:

• Optimize budgets
• Adjust bids
• Evaluate ROAS and profitability

If that data is still in flux, there’s a risk of making decisions based on a faulty snapshot, like turning off a high-performing campaign or under-crediting a successful tactic. For advertisers managing across platforms, Amazon’s delay creates a blind spot that’s easy to overlook but hard to ignore.

What we analyzed in our study

We ran a deep dive analysis using internal platform data from campaigns running on February 10, 2025. We pulled Amazon Ads performance data for that day repeatedly over the next 17 days, assuming the snapshot on February 27 was the most complete.

Our analysis included:

• 302 Amazon Ads accounts
• 14 global marketplaces
• 14,991 campaigns
• 79 unique users

Metrics tracked:

• Impressions
• Clicks
• Cost
• Attributed Conversions (14-day window)
• Attributed Sales (14-day window)

What we learned from the data

The results were eye-opening, especially when you zoom in on the campaigns most affected by Amazon’s reporting delays.

• In the top 5% of campaigns, impression counts changed by at least 36.67% from Day 1 to Day 17. That’s a significant swing in visibility data that could affect everything from pacing to optimization logic.
• For attributed sales, the top 5% of campaigns saw their revenue figures grow by at least 18.75% after the initial report. That’s enough to shift decisions about profitability and campaign continuation.

These aren’t fringe anomalies. These are real, measurable discrepancies that occurred in 1 out of every 20 campaigns in our dataset — a meaningful share for any large-scale advertiser.

Not all metrics are equally delayed

A key insight from the study: not every metric is equally delayed.

• Clicks and Cost data are reported relatively quickly and are much more stable.
• In contrast, Impressions, Conversions, and Sales take longer to finalize and are more susceptible to change.

For advertisers, this distinction matters:

• You can usually trust spend and click data right away.
• But metrics that reflect your business outcomes (like conversions or sales) require more patience.

Here’s a look at the delays for each of the analyzed metrics. Cells highlighted in yellow reflect delays between this day and the final data on day 17. I will explain below how to interpret the charts in more detail.

How should you interpret the “top X%” data?

You’ll notice we’ve included values like “Top 10%,” “Top 5%,” and “Top 1%” in our metrics. Here’s what those numbers mean:

Let’s take top 10% as an example:

• We measured how much each campaign’s data changed between Day 1 and Day 17.
• Then, we ranked all campaigns by that change.
• The Top 10% includes the campaigns with the biggest changes.
• The value we show is the smallest change within that group, so if your campaign is in the worst 10%, you’ll see at least that level of discrepancy.

This method helps quantify how bad things can get in edge cases, even if the average looks stable.

What can advertisers do based on our findings?

1. Be patient with conversion data. Avoid making ROAS decisions in the first 3 days after a campaign runs.
2. Educate clients or teams. Not everyone knows Amazon reporting is this delayed. Set expectations.
3. Align reporting windows. If you’re generating weekly reports, exclude recent days where data hasn’t stabilized.
4. Automate with caution. Don’t train bidding systems or make rules that act on unstable data.
5. Flag volatile campaigns. Watch for accounts or products that fall in the top 10% for delayed metrics.

The bottom line

Amazon Ads offers an enormous opportunity, but if you’re making decisions based on yesterday’s data, you could be misjudging performance by 100% or more.

Smart advertisers know that it’s not just about what the data says, but also when it says it. By understanding how long it takes for Amazon Ads data to settle, you’ll avoid premature decisions and unlock better optimization strategies.

Want to run better Amazon Ads with less manual effort? Try Optmyzr free for 14 days today.

Amazon Buy Box Basics: What It Is and Why It Matters to Your Ads

If you’re running Amazon ads without keeping an eye on the Buy Box, you’re flying blind.

Your campaigns are active. Your budget’s burning. And conversions? They’re going to whoever happens to own the Buy Box at that moment, which might not be you.

It’s not that your ads are broken. It’s that your strategy isn’t synced to the most important piece of the puzzle.

Optmyzr helps fix that. It gives you the automation and visibility you need to connect Buy Box status with ad performance, so you’re only spending when you’ve actually got a shot at the sale.

Let’s dig into what the Buy Box really controls and how to build smarter campaigns around it.

The Buy Box: Amazon’s shortcut to the sale

The Amazon Buy Box is the section on the product page where shoppers can choose to ‘Add to Cart’ or ‘Buy Now’. The box contains information about the price, when the item will be delivered, and the quantity you’re ordering.

What is the significance of the Buy Box?

Multiple sellers often offer the same product on Amazon, but only one can win the Buy Box at a time, which is the most prominent call-to-action on the page. This spot drives the majority of sales.

When you click “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now,” you’re buying from the seller currently holding the Buy Box. Check back later, and a different seller might be in that spot, based on real-time performance and pricing.

Other sellers can still be found under “Other Sellers on Amazon,” but the Buy Box winner gets prime placement, which is crucial for visibility and conversions.

How does Amazon select the Buy Box winner?

Only one seller at a time can “win” the Buy Box because Amazon wants to streamline the buying experience.

Instead of making the shopper compare multiple offers, Amazon automatically selects the seller it deems best based on factors like:

• Price (including shipping)
• Shipping speed and reliability
• Stock availability
• Seller performance metrics (e.g., feedback score, order defect rate)

Why the Buy Box deserves your attention

1. Ads can still show even without the Buy Box

Your ads will run even if you don’t currently occupy the Buy Box position. It can drive traffic, but not conversions.

2. Conversion rates can drop without the Buy Box

Amazon’s Buy Box streamlines the shopping experience for customers. In fact, 83% of all sales go to the seller occupying the Buy Box position.

3. Low Buy Box Win Rates = Higher Ad Costs, Lower Visibility

Amazon’s algorithm considers your Buy Box win rates when determining ad relevance and performance. A low win rate can lower your ad’s quality score since your offer may seem less competitive.

The 5 Buy Box factors that can make or break your ads

Winning the Buy Box is all about strategically balancing different factors so your offering is the most competitive and reliable option for Amazon shoppers.

1. The pricing strategy

Amazon looks at something called the landed price (item price + shipping cost) and checks if it is competitive enough to win or retain the Buy Box. Offering the cheapest pricing doesn’t guarantee you the Buy Box. In fact, if the price drops too low, your listing can be suppressed or the Buy Box may go to another seller.

2. Fulfillment

If you’ve outsourced shipping and logistics to Amazon (called FBA or Fulfillment By Amazon), you’re likely to get some preferential treatment over sellers who handle shipping in-house. They are also eligible to win the Buy Box but unlike FBA sellers, these sellers will also need to rely on other factors like shipping speed, order defect rate, seller ratings, and on-time delivery rates.

3. Inventory

If your inventory on Amazon runs out of stock frequently, Amazon can delist your products even if you offer the lowest price. This is because Amazon prioritizes sellers who can consistently fulfill orders quickly and reliably.

4. Account health

Amazon doesn’t just look at what you sell or how much—your day-to-day seller behavior matters as much. This makes it very important to closely monitor account health metrics like order defect rate, late shipment rate, cancellation rate, and on-time delivery.

When your account metrics stay within Amazon’s performance thresholds, you stay eligible more often, even against sellers with slightly lower prices.

5. Listing quality

Your Amazon product listing is the first thing shoppers see when they’re browsing for something. Poor images, weak titles, and low relevance can impact your conversions and ranking, both of which play a role in higher buy box win rates. Make sure you use richer visuals, detailed product storytelling, and highlight benefits to improve your listing score.

A strong listing creates a positive feedback loop by increasing conversions. This in turn tips the scale in your favor with stronger metrics, more visibility, and subsequently more Buy Box wins.

How to align your ads with the Buy Box

Running Amazon ads without owning the Buy Box means compromising your ad spend, conversions, and CPCs.

Here are a few tips on how you can adopt a smarter ad strategy around the Buy Box.

1. Understand the Buy Box status

Check your Buy Box status at the moment you plan to activate or scale your ads. If you’re not winning it, especially for high-competition or shared listings, you may want to consider delaying your ads or adjusting the ad investment. This ensures you’re only spending when you have a real shot at converting and owning the sale.

2. Monitor the Buy Box daily for active campaigns

When you’re actively advertising your products, it’s important to keep a daily check on your Buy Box status to see whether you’re winning or not.

This makes sure you don’t miss windows where your ads are burning the budget and helps in diagnosing sudden performance drops. More importantly, if you have a record of daily data, you can actually use automation to pause ads or lower bids based on the Buy Box share.

You can check your Buy Box share or percentage on Amazon’s Business Reports.

3. Let ad data guide pricing

Noticed your CPCs suddenly spiking but conversions staying flat? That’s often a sign you’ve lost the Buy Box or your price isn’t competitive anymore.

When that happens, Amazon sees your offer as less relevant, so CPCs go up, and shoppers start buying from someone else.

Keeping an eye on your ad data can help you spot this before it reflects in your Buy Box report.

Use Optmyzr’s Account Alerts to notify you whenever there is a spike in CPC, a decline in ROAS, or a rising ACoS.

Any changes in these metrics may mean you need to reassess your pricing strategy. It may also mean that Amazon sees your offer as less competitive, which can cause your relevance to drop.

4. Run Sponsored Product ads to protect visibility

Say you lose the Buy Box but still want to keep your listing in the game till you win it back to protect organic rankings, traffic, and sales.

Instead of disappearing completely, a good strategy is to run Sponsored Product ads so you still show up in searches and protect your brand presence. Even if conversion is lower, you stay top-of-mind and may still pick up sales from comparison shoppers.

5. Use brand defense strategies

If your competitor wins the Buy Box on your listing, you’re no longer the default seller. In such scenarios, you want to retain shopper attention, reduce sales to low-quality sellers, and protect your brand.

This is where you can run brand defense strategies such as:

• Branded keyword ads: Bid on your own brand name and product keywords to ensure your listing stays at the top of search results
• Sponsored Display ads for retargeting: Remarket to shoppers who viewed your product but didn’t purchase to re-capture high-intent traffic that may have slipped away due to your Buy Box loss.
• Product targeting campaigns: Target your own ASINs so that your version of the listing shows up under “Sponsored Products related to this item.

6. Manage ad performance during inventory transitions

If you’re transitioning from FBM (Fulfilled By Merchant) to FBA or waiting for an FBA restock, your chances of winning the Buy Box decrease temporarily. This is because during this period, your fulfillment method is weaker or delayed.

During such periods, it’s best to scale back on your ads or switch tactics to protect campaign and budget performance. What you can do is:

• Reduce daily budgets or lower bids on SKUs undergoing fulfillment transition temporarily to minimize spend while the Buy Box win rate is unstable.
• Run branded or Sponsored Brand ads to keep visibility up without pressuring sales performance.

How to review Buy Box impact over time

Once your ad strategy is aligned with the Buy Box, the next step is to track performance consistently. It’s always best to establish a proper reporting cadence so you can continuously optimize your ad efficiency and spot issues before they escalate.

Here are a few tips on how you can structure your reporting frequency.

1. Weekly reviews

Buy Box winners can rotate daily, sometimes even hourly, based on different factors. Weekly reviews can help you identify patterns that may be affecting your ad performance.

During weekly reviews, look out for:

• Watch Buy Box shifts on top-spending ASINs: If conversions drop, the Buy Box may be the issue.
• Review SKUs triggering auto-pause or bid cuts: Frequent pauses may indicate underlying problems like price, inventory, or fulfillment gaps.
• Track how Buy Box status impacts key metrics: Finding a clear correlation helps you optimize ad spend

2. Monthly reviews

While weekly checks catch short-term fluctuations, monthly reviews reveal structural trends, like why you’re consistently losing the Buy Box on certain SKUs.

During monthly reviews, keep an eye out for:

• Price changes across your catalog vs. top competitors: Adjust pricing or match competitors where you’re losing share
• Fulfillment mode comparisons (FBM vs FBA impact on Buy Box share): Consider switching high-potential SKUs to FBA if FBM isn’t competitive
• Inventory lags or shipping performance dips: Optimize restocking cycles to maintain consistent eligibility

3. Quarterly reviews

Quarterly reviews help you zoom out and optimize ad spend at the portfolio level.

What to look for:

• Products with high Buy Box % + strong ROAS: These are your most reliable revenue drivers—scale spend confidently where your ads are actually closing the sale.
• Campaigns hurt by low Buy Box control: Reduce or pause investment to protect ROAS and clean up performance data.
• Budget split across stable and listings: Misallocated spend can drag overall efficiency. Shifting budget toward Buy Box-stable ASINs boosts returns and protects visibility.

Smarter Amazon ads start with Buy Box awareness

The Amazon Buy Box is a critical feature that can directly impact a seller’s sales and profitability. But winning the Buy Box depends on a combination of factors. The most important takeaway for sellers is that it’s absolutely essential to make sure that every part of your ad strategy is strategically aligned with your pricing, inventory, fulfillment, and real-time Buy Box status, so you’re only spending when you have the best shot at winning the sale.

Optmyzr offers several advanced capabilities that allow you to automate ad decisions, monitor key metrics, and stay ahead of costly surprises.

Sign up for Optmyzr’s 14-day free trial to see how you can easily turn your Amazon ads into a profit engine.

The 4-Part Amazon Ads Strategy to Drive Real Profit and Scale With Confidence

Amazon advertising can be complex, and success comes down to mastering a few critical elements. It begins with a product listing engineered to convert interest into decisive purchases.

From there, a focused keyword strategy ensures budgets are spent on terms that truly deliver results. A clear campaign structure then provides the control needed to scale efficiently.

Finally, disciplined optimization uncovers opportunities before they slip away.

This guide breaks down the four essential pillars of an Amazon Ads strategy that drives sustainable growth and profitability.

1. Make sure your listing can actually convert before you increase ad spend.

Before increasing ad spend, it’s worth stepping back to ask: Is the listing built to convert?

Ads can drive traffic, but it’s the product page that needs to close the deal. Without a compelling listing, those clicks often lead nowhere.

What to optimize first

These are the essentials to dial in before scaling ad efforts:

• High-quality images: Clear, professional visuals that show the product in use tend to build trust. Lifestyle shots, close-ups, and comparison charts can make a major difference.
• Keyword-rich, readable title: Titles that balance strong keywords with readability are more likely to catch attention and earn clicks.
• Benefit-focused bullet points: Rather than listing specs, top-performing listings highlight how the product solves a problem or adds value to everyday life.
• Trust-building description: This space often helps overcome objections and reinforce why the product stands out. A good description builds confidence and connection.
• A+ Content (for brand-registered sellers): Enhanced content with visuals and storytelling elements helps establish credibility and differentiate the brand.
• 20+ solid reviews: Social proof plays a major role in conversions. Building up review volume through compliant post-purchase strategies often pays off.

Why this matters

When conversion rates improve, Amazon takes notice. Strong listings can earn better ad placements and lower CPCs, creating a healthier feedback loop for growth.

Before scaling spend, a listing audit is often the first (and smartest) move.

2. Start broad with keywords, but refine quickly based on real performance.

Keyword strategy can make or break Amazon campaigns. It’s not about adding more keywords, it’s about focusing on the ones that drive results.

It can be helpful to start broad and then refine. Automatic campaigns can provide insights into how shoppers are searching, and some search terms might be different from expectations.

Once you have some data, get intentional with your targeting.

Keyword strategy tips

• Start broad, refine fast: Starting with 50–100 keywords and evaluating performance can help identify which keywords might be worth continuing and which could be adjusted.
• Promote proven performers: Monitoring keywords that generate sales with a reasonable ACoS (2+ sales at under 30% ACoS) may indicate areas that could warrant further investment.
• Know your terms: Keywords are what advertisers bid on. Search terms are what shoppers type. That distinction is key to optimizing effectively.
• Use match type with purpose: Choose keyword match type based on your goal—broad match types can uncover new opportunities, phrase match types can offer a bit more control, and exact match types can help with targeting specific queries.

Use negatives when needed

Cleaning up traffic is just as important, as not all visits may lead to the desired outcomes. It can be useful to evaluate spend efficiency, especially if certain terms consistently use a significant portion of a product’s price without generating conversions.

This could be a signal to reconsider those terms.

Negative keywords, when applied at the right level, whether campaign or ad group, can help curb unnecessary spend.

Regular audits are a good practice, as keywords that didn’t convert last month may still be affecting the budget, making it worth checking in on performance periodically.

To make this process easier, Optmyzr’s Rule Engine includes a pre-built strategy that flags non-converting search terms and ASINs, so you can quickly add them as negatives and keep your campaigns efficient.

{{< figure src="/forestry/optmyzr-amazon-ads-non-converting-keywords-and-asin-terms.webp" >}}

Similarly, missing out on converting search terms means leaving potential revenue on the table.

That’s where another pre-built strategy, “Add converting search terms as keywords,” helps you capture these valuable opportunities.

{{< figure src="/forestry/optmyzr-amazon-ads-add-new-keywords.webp" >}}

This way, you’re not just spending efficiently, but also driving real profit from terms that convert.

3. Structure your Amazon Ads account like a blueprint for scalable growth.

A messy campaign structure leads to wasted spend and missed opportunities. If you want to scale efficiently, your account needs to be clean, organized, and easy to optimize.

Think of structure as your growth blueprint. It’s what gives you visibility, control, and the ability to scale what’s working

Here’s a simple but effective framework:

1. Start with discovery through Automatic Campaigns.

Automatic campaigns in Amazon Ads are campaigns where Amazon decides which search terms and product pages your ads show up for, based on your product listing content (title, bullets, description, backend keywords, etc.).

These campaigns act as search engines. Use them to uncover real search terms your customers are using, often different from what you expect.

Let Amazon match your products to related queries and ASINs. Watch what gets clicks, what converts, and where your wasted spend is going. Then mine those insights for manual targeting and negatives.

2. Get specific with manual keyword targeting.

Once you’ve identified high-performing search terms, move them to manual campaigns where you can optimize bids, match types, and placements. This gives you full control over your strategy, enabling you to maximize ROI.

For example, let’s say a brand sells wireless smart speakers. After running automatic campaigns, it discovers that terms like “best wireless speaker for home,” “smart speaker with Alexa,” and “portable Bluetooth speaker” are generating solid clicks and conversions.

These high-performing keywords can now be transferred to a manual campaign, where the brand can adjust bids for each term.

3. Outsmart competitors with product targeting.

Product targeting offers a more direct approach than traditional keyword targeting.

While keyword targeting involves bidding on search terms that potential customers might use, product targeting lets you place your ads alongside specific products, categories, brands, or product features.

You can compete directly with other brands by showing your ads on their product pages. This strategy can help draw attention away from their listings and direct it toward yours.

For example, if a brand sells premium coffee makers, they could use product targeting to display ads on product pages for similar coffee makers or within categories like “coffee machines” or “home brewing equipment.”

Moreover, it’s not limited to Amazon’s platform. Sponsored Display ads extend your reach beyond Amazon, appearing on external websites or apps that your potential customers visit.

4. Double down on what works with winner campaigns.

Don’t let your best keywords or targets stay buried in broader campaigns. Once a product or term consistently hits your performance benchmarks, move it into a dedicated campaign.

This gives you tighter budget control, clearer reporting, and the ability to scale spend without interference from underperformers in the same campaign.

Best practices for a manageable and scalable structure

• One campaign, one ad group: Keep campaigns focused. This helps pinpoint what’s working and what’s not, allowing for better control over bidding, budgets, and scaling.
• Shift spend with intent: Regularly evaluate performance and reallocate budget to high-performing campaigns, based on metrics like ACoS, ROAS, or conversions.
• Use clear, consistent naming conventions: Make campaign names simple and descriptive. Include details like targeting type (auto/manual), product type, and performance tier for easy understanding and error reduction.

4. Use automation and alerts to respond faster to performance shifts.

Success on Amazon isn’t a one-time effort, it’s about ongoing analysis and action. Regular optimization ensures that you’re staying ahead of the competition and making the most out of your ad spend.

Track and act on these key metrics:

• ACOS, ROAS, TACoS: Keep a close watch on these key performance indicators to assess how efficiently you’re spending on ads versus the returns you’re getting.

• CTR, conversion rate: These metrics help gauge the effectiveness of your ad copy, targeting, and landing page experience.

• Search term performance: Regularly evaluate which search terms are driving the best results and ensure they’re incorporated into your manual campaigns.

• Sales (ad-attributed + organic): Track both ad-driven and organic sales to understand how your paid efforts are affecting long-term growth.

   

• Impression share: This metric tells you how much visibility your ads are getting compared to the competition. A low impression share might signal a need for higher bids or more targeted campaigns to capture more of the market.

   

What to do & when

• Weekly: Review your campaigns and add negative keywords. This prevents wasted spend on irrelevant or underperforming search terms, ensuring you’re only paying for traffic that’s likely to convert.
• Bi-weekly: Dive into your automatic campaigns to identify new high-performing keywords and search terms. These hidden gems should be moved to manual campaigns for better control and optimization.
• Monthly: Take a step back to assess your overall performance. Reallocate budgets to campaigns that are delivering the best results. Focus on profitability metrics and adjust bids where needed to maintain efficiency.
• Quarterly: Refine your entire strategy by restructuring your campaigns. Use performance data to make informed decisions about targeting, bidding strategies, and creative adjustments. A quarterly review helps ensure that your approach remains aligned with evolving market conditions and consumer behavior.

Take control of your Amazon Ads with Optmyzr.

Amazon Ads success largely depends on four things: listings that convert, keywords that work, campaigns built to scale, and constant optimization that protects your profit.

But managing all these components can quickly become complex and time-consuming.

That’s where Optmyzr makes a difference. Our tools simplify campaign management by uncovering high-impact keywords, organizing account structure for scalability, and automating routine optimizations, freeing you up to focus on strategy and growth.

Ready to take control of your Amazon advertising performance? Start your fully functional 14-day free trial today!

Why Most Amazon PPC Campaigns Fail (And How to Structure Yours Right)

Without the right campaign structure, your Amazon ads are flying blind. It becomes difficult to know what’s working well and how efficiently your budget is being spent. Whether it’s lumping too many keywords together or blending match types, small missteps can snowball into inefficiency.

In this blog, we’ll explore how to structure your campaigns for maximum ROI, common mistakes to avoid, and practical tips to control performance and spend.

Why a proper campaign structure is important to drive ROI

A proper campaign structure is key to profitably scaling your ads in a competitive marketplace. Segmenting your campaigns by product lines, match types, and keyword intent gives you complete visibility into what’s working and what’s not. It’s about setting your campaigns up for long-term success.

Having a good campaign structure also helps you:

• Identify top-performing segments easily and allocate budgets efficiently
• Track the performance of your Amazon ads with clear insights into ACoS, ROAS, and TACoS by group
• Adjust bids, scale winners, or pause underperforming campaigns
• Set smarter based on how likely a keyword or audience is to convert
• Optimize product listings more effectively for targeting and ad relevance, so your ads show up in the right searches and convert better

Common mistakes when structuring Amazon campaigns

• Mixing high/low performers (products or keywords) in one campaign: High performers can eat up the budget and mask low performers, giving limited visibility into what’s actually working.
• Overstuffing ad groups with too many SKUs: Grouping too many SKUs in one ad group can dilute impressions. With limited data per SKU, Amazon’s algorithm may struggle to identify and prioritize top-performing products.
• Blending match types in a single ad group: Each match type behaves differently, and blending them makes it harder to know which search terms are coming from which match type, making it tough to optimize bids or add negatives properly.
• Misusing single keyword campaigns (SKAGs) without reason: Although you get more precise control with SKAGs, overusing them without proper intent simply bloats your account structure and makes it difficult to scale.
• Vague naming: If your campaigns, ad groups, or products are not named correctly, reporting becomes very confusing because you lose track of what each campaign is supposed to do.

How to structure Sponsored Product campaigns

Here are a few things to keep in mind when structuring Sponsored Product campaigns.

1. Naming conventions

• Use consistent, easy-to-understand, and descriptive names. You should be able to easily identify the product, campaign type, and targeting strategy.
• Include product/ASIN, campaign type, match type, objectives, and bid adjustments if needed.
• Use delimiters to separate elements.

Your naming structure should look like:

[Product Name]_[ASIN]_[Campaign Type]_[Targeting Type]_[Objective]_[Bid Adjustment]

2. Match type segmentation

Create separate campaigns for different match types for better performance insights, bidding, and budget allocation.

How to implement match type segmentation for your campaigns:

• Pick your keyword or product category. Let’s take Running Shoes.
• Create three different campaigns for each match type
  • Campaign 1: “Running Shoes – Broad”
  • Campaign 2: “Running Shoes – Phrase”
  • Campaign 3: “Running Shoes – Exact”
• Add the same keyword to each campaign, but use the correct match type in each.
  • Broad match: running shoes
  • Phrase match: “running shoes”
  • Exact match: [running shoes]
• Set different bids as needed. For instance, since exact match type is more targeted, it can get a higher bid.

Why this helps:

• You can easily identify which match type works best.
• You get better budget control.
• No overlap between your own keywords.

3. Keyword grouping

Structure campaigns or ad groups so that similar types of keywords are grouped together. You can segment by:

Brand vs Non-brand:

• Separate your keywords that include your brand name (e.g. nike running shoes) from generic terms (e.g. men’s running shoes) since brand terms usually have higher conversion rates.
• Use negative keywords to clearly separate them. For example, you can add your brand as a negative keyword in non-brand campaigns.

High vs Mid intent:

• High-intent keywords signal strong purchase intent, while mid-intent terms come from shoppers still in the consideration phase.
• Compare high-intent vs mid-intent groups on metrics like spend, CTR, ACoS, and ROAS.
• If high-intent terms perform well, increase bids or budget, and expand with similar keywords.
• If mid-intent terms underperform, add negatives, refine copy, or use ASIN targeting to reach more relevant product pages.

Top keywords vs long-tail

• Top keywords are individual words, phrases, or product categories customers use to search for products.
• Long-tail keywords are specific, detailed, lower-volume terms, e.g., “trail running shoes for flat feet”.
• Top keywords give you reach and data, making it important for long-term growth and visibility. Group them into dedicated campaigns with sufficient daily budgets so your highest-impact terms stay active all day.
• Putting long-tail keywords in a separate campaign helps improve ad relevance and uncover ‘hidden gem’ search terms. Since these keywords are detailed but flexible, they trigger related searches. Reviewing your search term report then reveals specific, high-converting terms with low ACoS you might have otherwise missed.

4. ASIN grouping

• Putting too many SKUs in a single ad group may lead them to compete, and your top performers might not get enough visibility. Plus, it becomes harder to adjust bids based on margins or conversion rates of different SKUs.
• If you want to reduce wasted spend, get more actionable data, and set more accurate bids, it’s better to group your SKUs by:
  • Similar price points or margins
  • Product lifecycle (e.g., launch, mature)
  • Performance tier (e.g., hero products vs. support products)

5. Auto campaigns

Auto campaigns can be used as a keyword discovery tool. They allow Amazon’s algorithm to automatically target search queries that are likely to result in conversions.

• Run auto campaigns for a few weeks to get insights into high-performing, high-intent keywords that Amazon finds relevant for your products.
• Once you have a list of such terms, move the top 20% of terms with high conversion rates into manual campaigns for better bidding and targeting control.
• Don’t forget to add negative keywords to auto campaigns to prevent keyword cannibalization and wasted spend.

Also Read: How Optmyzr Users Automate Amazon PPC

Use portfolios for better control

Think of a portfolio as a folder that contains a specific set of campaigns with a shared objective. It brings order and control to your Amazon ads strategy, especially when campaigns scale. It helps you set shared budgets, create reports by portfolio, and track performance at a higher level.

When using portfolios, you can group campaigns by:

• Product line (e.g., skincare, supplements)
• Funnel stage (e.g., brand awareness vs. conversion)
• Ad type (Sponsored Products, Display, Brands)

How to structure other ad types

Here’s a quick overview of how you can structure other ad types in Amazon.

1. Sponsored Brands

• Use Case: Branded keyword coverage, top-of-search visibility
• Structure Tip: Segment campaigns by keyword themes (e.g., branded vs category), and tailor creative by product group or landing page type (Storefront vs Product Collection).

2. Sponsored Display

• Use Case: Retargeting, competitor conquesting, category targeting
• Structure Tip: Separate campaigns by audience type (views, interests, product targeting), and group ASINs by pricing tier or conversion data.

3. Sponsored TV

• Use Case: High-impact, upper-funnel brand awareness
• Structure Tip: Structure around audience personas or lifestyle segments; creative variations should match each segment’s interests and behaviors.

Bidding strategies for profitability

Using the right bidding strategies is key for profitability when advertising on Amazon.

You can start by setting your initial bids based on keyword intent and competition.

• High-intent keywords are likely to get higher conversions, so it makes sense to set higher bids for them.
• On the other hand, it’s better to be cautious when bidding for upper-funnel or broader terms because they are less likely to result in conversions.

Next, you can choose your bidding strategy based on the level of control you need and your goals.

• Fixed bids give you greater control and may be better for testing or when you have a limited budget.
• Dynamic (up/down) bidding allows Amazon’s algorithm to raise or lower bids based on the likelihood of conversions. It can be efficient when optimized correctly.

That’s where ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales) comes in. It tells you how much you’re spending on ads to generate each dollar of revenue. A lower ACoS means more profitable conversions, while a high ACoS may signal wasted spend. Simply put, it’s not just about whether a keyword converts. It’s about whether it converts efficiently.

To act on this, tools like Optmyzr’s Bid Adjustment Optimization let you automatically increase bids for keywords that are performing below your target ACoS (cost-effective), and decrease bids for those above it (inefficient). This removes the guesswork from bid management and ensures your budget is focused on the terms that actually contribute to profitability.

{{< figure src="/forestry/change-bids-based-on-acos-amazon-ads-in-optmyzr.webp" alt=“Change bids based on ACoS - Amazon Ads in Optmyzr” >}}

Bid optimization tips

• For better ROI, make small, incremental changes to your bids (between 5-10%) to test performance over time
• Monitor key indicators like CTR, CPC, ROAS, and TACoS weekly to see whether your bids are delivering expected results. You can easily set up KPI and budget alerts to get notified these metrics shift—so you can act fast or roll back changes.
• Use search term reports to identify irrelevant keywords or high-converting search queries

Take control of your Amazon ads with better structure and smarter tools.

Implementing a proper campaign structure for your Amazon ads ensures you have clear control over your budgets, bids, and performance.

A key part of this is consistently auditing and refining your campaigns so you can accurately identify what’s working and what needs improvement. Optmyzr’s powerful tools streamline these processes by automating bid adjustments, running in-depth audits, and providing actionable insights.

Sign up for Optmyzr’s free 14-day trial and explore how you can optimize your Amazon PPC campaigns for better ROI.

How Optmyzr Users Automate Amazon PPC: Real Strategies from Real Advertisers

Analyzing, monitoring, optimizing, and then reporting - this sounds like four full-time jobs rolled into one when managing an Amazon Ads account. Multiply that effort across multiple accounts, and it becomes overwhelming fast.

Worse yet, most advertisers find themselves stuck in reactive mode, spotting issues only after wasting valuable dollars or missing optimization opportunities.

That’s where Optmyzr’s Rule Engine for Amazon PPC automation comes in. Our customers are using this powerful tool to automate repetitive tasks across campaigns, search terms, placements, keywords, ASINs, and more — saving time and boosting performance.

What you’ll learn in this blog

• Real strategies advertisers use to improve Amazon Ads performance with less effort
• How to automate keyword, ASIN, audience, and placement bid optimizations using rules
• Ways to reduce wasted spend and scale what works — without giving up control

Note: All thresholds and conditions mentioned in the strategies below are placeholders. They are not recommendations from Optmyzr but serve as starting points that you should customize based on your business goals and campaign performance.

What is the Rule Engine?

Rule Engine is a powerful feature within Optmyzr that lets you build optimization strategies using simple “If this, then that” logic. Think of it as your hands-free PPC assistant that identifies trends, optimizes bids, and flags anomalies so you can focus on strategy.

For example, you could tell it: “If a keyword has more than 20 conversions but sales have dropped in the past 14 days, increase its bid by 5%.” And just like that, it’ll do the work for you — either on a schedule or when you choose to apply it.

You can choose how often the rule runs — daily, weekly, or monthly. And you stay in control: you can preview the changes before they’re made or let the system run them automatically.

Amazon has its own built-in automation tools, but they can feel rigid, limited, and hard to trust. You don’t get much control, and customization is minimal.

With Optmyzr, it’s easier. You can build your own rules, use external data like spreadsheets or CRMs, and make changes across your accounts — all from one place.

You decide what happens and when.

With Rule Engine, you can:

• Get alerts for performance changes
• Build custom reports for Amazon Ads optimization
• Automatically increase or decrease bids
• Add high-performing search terms as keywords
• Pause underperforming ASINs or ads
• Work across scopes like campaign, ad group, placement, product target, and more
• Integrate external data to drive decisions

Growth-driven Amazon PPC automation: Boost what works

1. Report of trending search queries

Scope: Ad Group Search Term

This rule helps you find search terms that are gaining popularity week over week. For example, if a query had 100 impressions last week and now has 200, that’s a trend worth noticing.

You can also layer in performance filters like Orders > X, Ad Sales > Y, and ROAS > 200 to narrow it down to terms that are not only trending but also driving sales.

Why do this: Understanding which search terms are becoming more popular helps you know what your shoppers are searching for right now. You can then optimize your ads, keywords, and even product listings to match what they’re looking for.

2. Increase bids for high-converting keywords

Scope: Target → Keyword

Create a rule that looks for keywords that used to perform really well (say, more than 10 conversions in the last 90 days) but haven’t made many sales recently. Then, the rule increases the bid slightly to give that keyword a better chance to show again.

There’s also a reverse version of this strategy: decrease bids on keywords that have a high ACoS (they’re costing you more than they earn) and haven’t converted in a while.

Why do this: This strategy helps you give a gentle push to good keywords that might be losing visibility, and at the same time, avoid wasting money on poor performers.

3. Increase bids for high-converting audience targets

Scope: Target → Audience

Just like with keywords, you can apply the same logic to audience targeting, especially for Sponsored Display campaigns. If certain audiences are converting well, you can increase your bids to reach them more effectively.

Why do this: This ensures that your best-performing audience segments are getting the attention (and budget) they deserve. You don’t want to miss out on people who are most likely to buy.

4. Add converting ASIN search terms as product targets

Scope: Ad Group Search Term

Some search terms include ASINs, which means someone searched for a specific product. If your ad showed up and led to a conversion, you may want to target that ASIN directly.

Create a rule to find these ASIN search terms with good performance (maybe high ROAS or conversions), and add them as product targets.

Why do this: If a specific ASIN search is already converting, it’s smart to create a direct product targeting ad for it. You’re basically doubling down on what’s already working.

Waste-reducing Amazon PPC strategies: Pause what’s not performing

5. Pause non-converting ASINs

Scopes: Ad Group and ASIN

Let’s say you’ve structured your campaigns so that each ASIN has its own ad group. In that case, you can use the Ad Group scope to create a rule that directly pauses the entire ad group when the ASIN it represents isn’t performing well.

If your campaign structure is broader (where multiple ASINs exist within one ad group), use the ASIN scope to generate a report of individual ASINs that are underperforming. This lets you take action manually or explore restructuring if needed.

Why do this: If a product isn’t converting, there’s no point in continuing to spend on it, especially when budgets are limited. This helps you cut waste and focus on products that are bringing in sales.

6. Find incomplete or paused ads

Scope: Ads

Sometimes ads stop running due to issues like budget caps or Amazon policy review. This rule helps you spot those issues before they cost you days of lost visibility.

Set a condition like: If serving status is “Out of Budget”, “Incomplete”, “Paused”, etc. → Include in Report.

Why do this: You don’t want to miss out on traffic just because of a setup issue. This keeps your ads running smoothly.

Precision targeting: Smarter keyword lists & placement bidding

7. Add keywords based on text matches in search terms

Scope: Ad Group Search Term

Let’s say you want to add keywords that contain your brand name or competitor names. You can write a rule that checks for those words in customer search terms and adds them as keywords.

You can also link a spreadsheet with the list of words you want to match and reference it using “External List Data.”

Why do this: This makes your keyword strategy much more flexible and easy to update, especially if you work across multiple brands or categories.

8. Add high-performing search terms as keywords

Scope: Ad Group Search Term

Use this rule to convert successful search terms (those that brought in sales or had great ROAS) into actual keywords. You can use the pre-built strategy, “Add New Keywords“, to get started.

Why do this: High-performing search terms deserve to be tracked and optimized as exact-match keywords. It gives you more control over bidding and performance.

9. Increase bids for ‘Rest of Search’ placement

Scope: Campaign Placement

Not all ad placements are equal. While top-of-search is often seen as the premium spot, the “Rest of Search” can also bring great results at lower costs. You can set a rule to monitor its performance (in terms of sales, clicks, conversions, etc.) and increase bids if it’s doing well.

Why do this: This helps you make the most of every placement opportunity — even the ones other advertisers often ignore.

Start automating Amazon PPC with Optmyzr

You now have nine practical Amazon PPC automation strategies used by actual advertisers that you can try in your own accounts. From bid and keyword optimization to placement targeting, each strategy is designed to reduce manual effort while keeping your performance in check.

In fact, here’s what one customer, Matthieu Tran-Van, had to say:

“Rule Engine is certainly one of the amazing sections of Optmyzr because it’s really like your dedicated, highly flexible, and scalable optimization hub where you can automate a lot of very valuable optimizations for your clients with infinite customizations.”

And the best part? You don’t need to build them from scratch. You can start with our pre-built templates, like:

• Expensive Search Queries
• Bid to Target ACoS
• Find Campaigns Limited by Budget

Try them out, tweak the conditions, and set them on automation.

If you’re not an Optmyzr customer yet, start a 14-day free trial and test these strategies in your own account. If you need help, our support team is always available to walk you through the setup.

People also ask

1. What is Optmyzr’s Rule Engine, and how does it help with Amazon Ads?

It’s a tool that helps you build custom rules for managing your Amazon Ads, without needing to write any code. You tell it what to look for and what to do when those conditions are met.

2. Will the Rule Engine make changes automatically without me knowing?

No. The Rule Engine will never make changes to your Amazon Ads account without your explicit approval. By default, all strategies show a preview of suggested changes before anything is applied. You can also configure it to only send notifications, even if automated. Automatic changes only happen if and when you turn it on deliberately.

3. How is this better than Amazon’s built-in automation?

Optmyzr offers more control, custom rules, and the ability to use external data sources. Plus, it works across accounts and has built-in reporting and alerting.

4. Do I need to be technical to set this up?

Not at all. If you know what you want to optimize, the tool helps you build the rule logic step-by-step. Pre-built templates are also available to get you started faster.

Amazon Ads Strategy 2025: How to Boost Visibility, Sales & Organic Rankings

Amazon is one of the largest product discovery and shopping platforms globally, with millions of high-intent shoppers searching every day.

For ecommerce sellers and advertisers, this offers real-time access to a vast, ready-to-buy audience. The key advantage? Most shoppers on Amazon are already deep in their purchase journey. Advertising here means reaching the right customers when they’re most likely to convert.

In this blog, we look at why Amazon advertising is a must-have strategy in 2025, how different ad types impact visibility, and the key tactics sellers can use to improve rankings, scale performance, and grow profitably on the world’s biggest ecommerce stage.

Why advertisers cannot ignore Amazon ads in 2025

Research shows that the average conversion rate for Amazon Ads is approximately 9.5 to 10%, significantly outperforming the average ecommerce conversion rate of around 1.33% on non-Amazon platforms.

This high conversion rate is attributed to Amazon’s ability to target users who are deep in the decision-making phase, increasing the likelihood of purchase and making it attractive to sellers.

Aside from this, Amazon’s algorithm is designed to promote:

• Products that are already selling well, and
• Clearly match what customers are looking for

So when you run ads, it directly influences both of these factors, which in turn influence your organic rankings.

Amazon’s unique edge lies in its first-party data. Advertisers get insights into shopping behavior from the data collected directly from customers who use Amazon and its services. You get to target specific customer groups, customize the data for advanced analytics, and even track off-Amazon conversions.

How to get seen: Winning visibility in competitive categories

The average customer probably sees dozens of listings for a single search. This is not surprising since it is common for thousands of brands to sell similar products on Amazon, sometimes even in the same price range.

To stand out, you would need a strong strategy that drives visibility for your products.

But before we dive into this, it is important to understand how different Amazon ad types impact visibility.

What are the different types of Amazon-sponsored ads, and how do they work

1. Sponsored Products

These are targeted ads that appear in search results and product detail pages. They are shown to shoppers actively searching for a product. Sponsored Products can be used to capture high-intent traffic and drive direct conversions.

For example, if a shopper searches “wireless earbuds,” your Sponsored Product ad can show up at the top of search results if you bid on that keyword.

2. Sponsored Brands

Sponsored Brands focus on brand awareness and allow businesses to customize ads by including their brand logo, a custom headline, and multiple products within product detail pages and shopping results.

They are great for increasing awareness across your product line and driving traffic to your Amazon store.

3. Sponsored Display

This is a type of display advertising where you can target specific audiences based on their browsing behavior on Amazon. Ads will be displayed on Amazon as well as on third-party websites and apps for a wider reach. You can reach customers who viewed your products but didn’t purchase, or even shoppers browsing competitor products.

Sponsored Display ads can be used to stay top-of-mind and bring shoppers back to your offerings.

4. Sponsored TV

Sponsored TV is Amazon’s premium video ad format that lets brands appear on streaming content via Amazon Freevee, Fire TV, and other connected TV (CTV) placements. These are non-skippable, full-screen ads that reach audiences watching shows, movies, and live sports.

Sellers can use Sponsored TV for building brand awareness at the top of the funnel, especially for launches or seasonal campaigns.

Key levers to boost visibility and sales on Amazon

1. Understand Amazon’s A9.

The Amazon A9 algorithm is the system that determines which products should rank within search results. Since Amazon’s goal is to sell products, the algorithm will prioritize products with high-performing ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Number).

The A9 algorithm also prioritizes listings based on:

• Keyword relevance: How relevant the keywords used in your listing match a search query
• Sales velocity: How often are your products being searched for, viewed, and purchased
• Conversion rate: How many views or impressions are converting into actual sales

When you understand these ranking signals, you can optimize your listing and advertising strategy to trigger them. For example:

• Identifying high-volume, relevant keywords and incorporating them into your product title, bullet points, description, and backend search terms enhances your Amazon SEO.
• Driving immediate traffic to your listings with high-intent, keyword-targeted ads. This helps generate initial sales, which signals popularity to Amazon’s algorithm.

Optimizing your listings for conversions by working on product images, title, bullet points, description, A+ content, and price, and growing your review count.

2. Study competitor pricing strategy.

Amazon shoppers often view multiple product listings to compare prices before making a purchase. If your pricing does not match your customers’ expectations or what your top competitors are offering, you risk losing clicks and sales.

To improve your pricing strategy:

• Benchmark against top sellers in your category
• Look for patterns in your competitor’s pricing strategy, like bundles, coupons, or other interesting strategies like psychological pricing ($1.99 vs $2.00)
• Adjust pricing strategically to reflect the product’s value relative to others in the same category

3. Use Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display strategically.

Sponsored Product ads are displayed to shoppers who are actively searching for a product, making them great for conversions. But if you’re in a crowded market, it’s very important to build brand recognition and trust.

A stronger strategy may look like this:

• Sponsored Brands include prominently placed ads that can improve brand awareness and engage shoppers
• Sponsored Display keeps your brand top-of-mind by retargeting shoppers who viewed your product or similar ones.

This allows you to cover every stage of the buyer journey, improving visibility and conversions, especially in competitive categories.

4. Maintain stock availability.

One of the most important principles when selling on Amazon is that you don’t run out of stock. However, unexpected spikes in sales or port delays can cause stockouts even for the most well-planned brands.

During such instances, it’s important to pause your ads before your stock runs out.

While Amazon automatically stops ads once a product is out of stock, proactively pausing them helps preserve margin and gives your incoming inventory time to be received and restocked, avoiding wasted ad spend and poor customer experience.

You can set up a strategy on Optmyzr’s Rule Engine to automatically turn off ads when your inventory levels are running low.

Define the threshold for low inventory using your preferred metric, such as days of supply, and link a Google Sheet that lists ASINs below that threshold. Campaigns associated with those ASINs can be paused until inventory recovers.

You can also create a complementary rule to re-enable ads once inventory levels rise above the defined threshold, ensuring your campaigns resume without manual effort.

Watch: Supercharge Your Amazon PPC Campaigns with This Toolkit

Using ads can boost organic growth on Amazon

Amazon’s algorithm, like we discussed before, ranks products based on their sales velocity, conversion rates, and customer experience.

There’s a catch, though. New listings will struggle to rank because they lack reviews, sales, and CTR data.

Without visibility, it would be harder to get the momentum needed to improve rankings.

In scenarios like this, using ads can help you kickstart the performance of your listings and help them rank higher. Here’s how you can use them strategically:

• Use Sponsored Products to show up for top-searched terms. Focus on keywords that drive both visibility and conversions.
• Bidding on high-visibility placements helps you win shopper attention even if your organic rank is low.
• Run Sponsored Product and Display ads on competitor listings to keep your brand top-of-mind for shoppers in the consideration stage.

How to amplify what’s working for you

Once you’ve identified what’s driving results, the next step is to double down on high-performing campaigns and product lines. Here’s how brands can scale smartly:

1. Use Amazon ads to amplify top-performing products.

• Scale Sponsored Products with high sales and strong ROI by increasing budgets.
• Use Sponsored Brands to highlight top performers and boost brand recall. Run Sponsored Display to retarget past viewers and reach in-market audiences with winning SKUs.

2. Cross-sell and upsell with Sponsored Brand and Display ads.

• Use Sponsored Brands to showcase products that go well. E.g., Coffee machine + compatible coffee pods.
• Use Display ads to show add-ons or upgrades to shoppers who have already bought a product.

3. Scale profitable campaigns.

• Use the Search Term Impression Share report to find high-converting terms with low impression share. indicate strong performance but limited visibility, which could be due to low bids or budget.
• Increase the budget or bids for campaigns targeting those terms.

4. Use Amazon Attribution to get the full funnel picture.

• Use Amazon Attribution to measure how external channels impact your Amazon sales.
• Scale the campaigns that drive meaningful traffic, conversions, and ranking boosts.

5. Use dynamic bidding and placement adjustments to scale.

• For campaigns that are performing well but struggle with impressions, consider using Dynamic - Up and Down Bids to capture more high-converting impressions.
• If your campaign performs well at the top of search, apply a bid adjustment (e.g., +10%) to win that placement more often. It’s a precise way to boost performance where it matters most.

Power up your Amazon PPC with data-driven automation.

Running Amazon ads in 2025 is a crucial growth lever for e-commerce businesses. Ads can boost organic rankings, improve visibility, and drive high-intent traffic that converts into sales.

However, running successful campaigns on Amazon means making sure you have the right data on what’s working and what’s not and then using those insights to optimize performance and scale your winning strategies.

With automation tools like Rule Engine, budget optimization, and custom reporting, Optmyzr makes it easy to identify high-performing campaigns, scale them intelligently, and eliminate wasted spend.

Sign up for Optmyzr’s free 14-day trial and explore how you can scale your Amazon PPC campaigns for success.

How to Optimize Your Amazon Listings to Boost Ad Performance

Many advertisers invest significant time and effort into setting up Amazon ads, refining targeting, and monitoring performance metrics. Despite this, conversions can remain frustratingly low.

Often, the missing piece isn’t the ad strategy itself, but the product listings. While it’s easy to focus on ad optimization, the quality of a product listing plays a critical role in turning ad clicks into actual sales.

Elements like titles, images, bullet points, and A+ content might seem like minor details, but they directly influence click-through rates, relevance scores, and ultimately, conversions.

This article explores why listing quality deserves as much attention as advertising strategy and how strengthening it can drive better performance and more sales.

What you’ll learn in this guide:

• The connection between product listing quality and Amazon Ads performance
• How to craft better product titles, bullet points, and descriptions
• Why keyword research matters (and how to do it effectively)
• How to use A+ Content and images to boost conversion rates
• Tips for syncing listing optimization with campaign structure
• Common pitfalls to avoid (and how to fix them)
• Tools that can help speed up and scale your optimization efforts

The connection between listing quality and ad performance

Amazon’s algorithm evaluates both organic and paid placements as part of the same system.

This means the quality of the product listing affects not just organic search rankings, but also ad placement, CPCs, and ROAS.

Amazon uses a Product Listing Quality Score (PLQS) to rate your listing’s clarity, completeness, and relevance. It’s based on two things:

1. How well listings are optimized
2. How often shoppers view them

Better scores correlate to better visibility of paid and organic results.

Source

How listing elements impact different advertising metrics

Main Image → Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Your main image drives clicks. If it’s blurry, cluttered, or doesn’t stand out, shoppers scroll past. That means you’re paying for impressions that don’t convert to visits.

Gallery Images, Bullets, A+ Content → Conversion Rate

Once shoppers land on your page, your gallery, bullet points, and A+ content need to close the sale. Weak visuals or vague info lead to hesitation and lost conversions (even if your ad targeting was perfect).

Keywords → Relevance Scores

Keywords in your title, bullets, and backend fields help Amazon match your product with the right searches. Stuffing keywords won’t help; relevance and intent alignment matter more.

Where bad listings drain your budget

The account might be bidding and targeting efficiently, but poor listings can still burn through ad spend. Here’s where most sellers lose money without realizing it:

• Paying for clicks that bounce: Even well-placed ads can fail if shoppers land on a confusing or underwhelming product page. Each bounce is a paid visit that goes nowhere
• Attracting the wrong audience: When listings lack precision, especially in keyword usage and messaging, you end up drawing clicks from people who were never a good fit
• Missing chances to build trust: If a brand is enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry but isn’t using Enhanced Brand Content (A+ Content), it’s missing out on the opportunity to add rich visuals, comparison charts, and detailed product storytelling to its listings. This extra content helps differentiate the brand, reduces purchase hesitation, and ultimately boosts conversions
• Lower future ad efficiency: Poor engagement metrics (like bounce rate and low conversion) signal to Amazon that listings underperform, which can increase CPCs over time

Start with competitor analysis

Even if your ads are already running, revisiting your competitors’ listings and ad strategies can highlight gaps in your own.

It’s especially useful if you’re seeing high click volume but poor conversions, signs that your competitors may be doing a better job aligning their listings with search intent.

1. Search top keywords on Amazon

Think like your customer. What exact phrases would they type to find your product? This is your opportunity to see who ranks organically and who’s actively paying for ads.

Note the brand names, keywords they used, and the overall presentation of their main images.

For example, a brand launching a 32L carry-on travel backpack would want to search for terms like ‘32L travel backpack’ or ‘carry-on travel backpack’ on Amazon.

Dive into both organic and sponsored listings to gather insights:

• Top organic results: Established brands like Nomatic, Samsonite, or Venture Pal may often be seen leading the way.

• Top ad results: The Sponsored Product spots may feature newer or lesser-known brands trying to secure the top positions.

2. Check “Customers also viewed” & “Compare with similar items”

Scroll down and check the “Customers Also Viewed” and “Compare with Similar Items” sections.

These sections show what else customers are seriously considering — they’re a shortcut to understanding their decision-making.

For the backpack, competitors like Osprey, Thule, or private-label sellers may appear.

Pay attention to highlighted features like expandable compartments, anti-theft zippers, or USB charging ports; these are likely important to the target audience.

3. See who’s bidding on your keywords

Pay attention to the sponsored ads for your keywords. These are the brands actively paying to get in front of your audience.

Are big brands defending their turf, or are new players trying to break in?

Also, observe how frequently brands appear. Daily visibility may mean solid budget backing. In-and-out appearances might suggest testing or limited spend.

4. Analyze their product listings

Now, dig into the nitty-gritty of competitors’ product pages. Start with their titles. Are they packing in high-ranking keywords like “airline-approved,” “water-resistant,” or “weekender”?

Titles are prime real estate. Make sure yours is packed with the right high-intent terms.

Next, check out their bullet points and descriptions. How do they position the benefits of their products? Are they focusing on comfort, durability, or something else?

This gives you a sense of what their audience values. Additionally, see if they are using A+ content for better visibility.

Check the type of visuals they are using as well. Are they using lifestyle shots (someone at an airport, packing for a trip) or sticking to white-background product photos?

Lastly, don’t skip the reviews. They give you a window into customer priorities, praise, and complaints

5. Monitor their ad activity over time

One search isn’t enough. Revisit your top competitors’ listings regularly (e.g., every few days for 2–3 weeks).

Track how frequently their ads show up and how their placements change. This helps you spot trends:

• Are brands investing long-term?
• Are they testing new creatives?
• Is seasonality playing a role?

Tracking this over time will help you get a sense of who’s really investing and who’s just dipping their toes in the water.

6. Study their video ads (if any)

If your competitors are running video ads, take a close look at them.

Video is a huge opportunity to connect with your audience, so pay attention to the style and pacing. Are they showcasing the product’s features, or are they telling a story?

Clear calls-to-action and real-life visuals usually do the heavy lifting. Think about how you could use these elements to position your product in a way that resonates.

7. Estimate their budget and ACoS

You can’t see your competitors’ exact ad spend, but you can make some pretty solid guesses based on how often their ads show up and what keywords they’re bidding on.

Start by checking the price point of their product. If they’re running lots of ads for a $30 item, their ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale) needs to stay fairly low to stay profitable, which might mean they’re optimizing hard or have strong conversion rates.

If a brand keeps appearing for expensive keywords like “carry-on travel backpack” every time you search, chances are they’ve got a healthy budget or they’re laser-focused on dominating that niche.

Over time, tracking how often they show up can give you a decent estimate of who’s really investing in ads (and who might be easier to outbid).

8. Organize your findings in a spreadsheet

All these insights are only helpful if you can keep track of them. Create a simple spreadsheet to compare competitors side-by-side. Here’s what to include:

• Competitor names and ASINs: So you can quickly revisit their listings and track changes over time
• Key products and price points: What are their best-selling or most visible items? How are they priced compared to yours?
• Primary keywords they target: Which search terms consistently trigger their ads or organic placements?
• Unique selling propositions (USPs): What do they emphasize: durability, style, features, eco-friendliness?
• Ad types they use most: Are they relying on Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, or video ads?
• Estimated ad spend: Based on frequency of ads and keyword competition (You won’t get exact numbers, but rough guesses help.)
• Strengths and weaknesses: Where do they shine, and where could you do better? Maybe they have great lifestyle images, but weak bullet points

9. Tips for putting your research into action

Now that you’ve done the research, here’s how to turn it into action:

1. Test before you go all-in: If you spot something clever in a competitor’s ad strategy, don’t blindly copy it. Run a small campaign to see if it actually works for your product and audience.
2. Look for gaps they’re missing: Sometimes the best opportunities are where others aren’t looking. Find keywords that still get searches but don’t have a lot of competition and claim that space.
3. Lean into what makes your product better: Don’t just blend in. If you offer something competitors don’t (better warranty, more durable material, simpler design), make it loud and clear in your ads and listings.
4. Be strategic with your bids: You don’t need to outspend everyone. Just make sure you’re bidding smart on the keywords that matter most for your conversions.
5. Use their weak spots to your advantage: If other listings are vague or missing reviews, make your copy sharp and specific. Highlight trust signals like customer testimonials, guarantees, or certifications.
6. Stay flexible with your budget: If big brands are flooding the space, you may need to invest more to compete or get creative and focus on angles they’re ignoring.

Optimizing titles

Your product title is one of the most important elements Amazon uses to rank and display your listing. It’s also one of the first things shoppers see, so it needs to be both keyword-rich and customer-friendly.

Each category has specific title length limits (typically around 200 characters including spaces, but some are lower). Yet, it’s recommended to keep your title under 80 characters.

Here are some more guidelines to optimize your titles:

• Place your primary and most relevant keywords at the beginning of the title
• Avoid creating keyword fluff by repeating primary keywords or their synonyms
• Use numerals instead of spelling out numbers (e.g., pack of 2)
• Avoid adding subjective commentary like bestseller, customer favorite, hot selling, etc.
• Add information related to size and color variants in the child ASIN (not the product ASIN)

For example, here’s a title that breaks all of these rules:

• It repeats similar phrases like “Food Storage Container,” “Food Keeper,” and “Storage Solution”
• It includes hype words like “Bestselling,” “Hot Selling,” and “Must-Have”
• It spells out the number “Three” instead of using “3”
• It mentions “Clear Color,” which should only appear in the child ASIN
• The primary keyword isn’t placed at the front

A better version that follows all the guidelines would be:

• The keyword is placed at the beginning
• No repetition or unnecessary synonyms
• Numerals are used
• No subjective terms
• Variant info, like color, is left for the child ASIN

How to find the right keywords for your titles

Before you even write your title, you need to know which keywords your customers are actually using and, just as importantly, which ones to avoid.

A good starting point is to:

• Look at top-ranking listings for your main product terms and note the keyword patterns they use
• Use tools like Amazon’s Search Term Report (via Sponsored Products) to see what queries are already bringing traffic
• Explore autocomplete suggestions in the Amazon search bar to see real-time popular phrases
• Pay attention to reviews and competitor A+ content to catch recurring language customers use organically

Using bullet points

Bullet points do more than just list out features; they work in two key ways.

First, they help shoppers quickly see what your product offers, which can lead to more sales.

Second, bullet points give you a natural place to work in relevant keywords. When written well, they improve your visibility without feeling forced.

So they’re not just helpful for people, they’re helpful for algorithms too.

To make the most of your bullet points, follow this structure for high-converting results:

• Keep formatting and length consistent: When your bullets are roughly the same length and follow a consistent format, shoppers are more likely to read through them instead of skipping.
• Use all available bullet points: Amazon gives sellers 5 and vendors 10 bullets. Each bullet is an opportunity to add value, address concerns, or highlight use cases that resonate with different types of buyers.
• Lead with benefits, follow with features: Think like a shopper. Instead of saying, “Made with stainless steel,” say, “Rust-resistant and built to last- made with durable stainless steel.” The benefit captures attention; the feature supports it.
• Avoid keyword repetition: Repeating the same phrases wastes space and doesn’t help with ranking. Instead, spread out your keyword targeting by using related terms and phrases across different bullets.

Image optimization

Your product images aren’t just decorative, they directly impact how many people click on your listing in search results and ads.

The critical role of the main image in ad CTR

The main image is the first thing shoppers see when your product appears in search results or Sponsored Product ads. It’s what gets them to slow down, take notice, and click.

A compelling, high-quality main image can significantly improve your click-through rate (CTR), which in turn feeds into your ad performance and organic rankings.

If your image is unclear, too zoomed out, or doesn’t stand out visually, your listing is more likely to be ignored (even if your product is great).

What makes an effective main image?

If you’re wondering whether your main image is doing its job, ask yourself these questions:

👉Is the background pure white?
Amazon requires a true white background (#FFFFFF) to keep listings clean and consistent. This also helps your product stand out in search results.

👉Does the product fill the frame correctly?
Aim for about 85% of the frame; big enough to show detail, but not so large that it gets cropped or looks awkward. Is your product too small or too zoomed in?

👉Are the colors and contrast accurate?
Good lighting should bring out the product’s true color and texture. Is the product clearly visible, or do shadows and low contrast make it look dull?

👉Is there anything extra in the image?
The main image should be clean; no text, logos, badges, or extra props. Those elements can go in your secondary images, where you have more creative flexibility.

Gallery images best practices

Your main image grabs attention, but gallery images help seal the deal. They give shoppers a deeper look at what your product can do and how it fits into their lives.

Here are some simple tips to make your gallery images work harder👇

• Lifestyle images showing use cases: People want to see how your product fits into their daily life. Instead of just showing the product on its own, show it being used in real situations.

  For example, say someone searches for “waterproof earbuds for swimming.” To resonate deeply with the researcher, here’s an image that will work:

Source

• Infographics for key features: Sometimes, words can’t do the product justice. Infographics are great for highlighting standout features quickly and clearly. You can use them to explain things like durability, functionality, or what makes your product unique.
• Size/dimension references: Size is one of the biggest questions shoppers have. A simple image showing your product next to a common item (like a coffee cup or a piece of furniture) or with clear dimensions helps them understand exactly what they’re buying.
• Before/after demonstrations: If your product promises results, like a cleaning product or a beauty tool, before-and-after shots are incredibly powerful. It’s one of the best ways to prove your product works and build trust with potential buyers.
• Text overlays with consistent branding: Gallery images are a great place to add text overlays, but keep them minimal and consistent. Whether it’s highlighting a special feature or reinforcing your brand, make sure your text style and tone match the rest of your listing.

A+ Content

A+ Content goes beyond the basics to tell your product or brand story in a more engaging, visual way.

High-quality visuals and clean layouts grab attention faster than plain text.

You can proactively address common customer concerns and questions through dedicated modules within your A+ content.

Why A+ content sells

Here’s how A+ Content helps you sell more:

• It grabs attention: Bold visuals and clean design stand out more than plain text and keep shoppers engaged.
• It explains your product better: Highlight key features and help shoppers understand how your product solves a problem or fits into their lives.
• It builds trust: Professional, polished content gives your brand credibility and shoppers the confidence to make a purchase.
• It answers common questions: Use your A+ modules to proactively address common hesitations and reduce drop-off.
• It looks great on mobile: A+ Content is built to work on small screens, too, which is important for shoppers browsing and buying through mobile devices
• It tells your story: Don’t just list features; tell people why your brand exists, what makes you different, and why they should choose you.

What makes A+ content really work?

If you want your A+ Content to truly drive conversions, keep these pointers in mind:

👉Stick to a clean, consistent look. Match your brand’s colors, fonts, and tone. Keep the design simple and easy to follow. You don’t want a cluttered layout getting in the way of your message.

👉Use comparison charts. If you have similar products or different models, a side-by-side chart helps shoppers quickly spot the differences. It makes decisions easier and quicker.

👉Add lifestyle photos. Show your product in action. Whether it’s a kitchen gadget in a real kitchen or a beauty product in a daily routine, these images help people picture themselves using it.

👉Highlight real problems (and how you solve them). Think about what pain points your product solves. Show the “before and after.” Make it obvious how your product makes life easier or better.

👉Include subtle social proof. While you can’t repost customer reviews, you can mention awards, recognition, or even use callouts like “trusted by thousands” (as long as it’s true and within Amazon’s guidelines). It helps reassure new buyers that they’re making a smart choice.

Monitoring and optimization

Listings need consistent oversight to maintain strong performance. Here’s how to build a reliable system for monitoring and improving them:

Track changes and their impact

Document all listing updates, including titles, images, descriptions, keywords, and monitor the effect on performance metrics like impressions, clicks, CTR, and conversions.

Run regular audits

You don’t want to wait until something’s broken to look for issues. Set aside time every couple of weeks to run a full audit of your account.

This will help you catch underperforming campaigns or missed opportunities before they add up.

Optmyzr offers a solid set of Amazon audits you can use to dig deep. These audits cover everything from:

• Campaign performance: Are any of your campaigns running below target ROAS, or not spending their full daily budget?
• Ad groups: Check for ad groups that have too many keywords or not enough, so you can optimize targeting.
• Keywords: Identify expensive keywords that aren’t converting, or low-CTR terms that might need tweaking.
• Products: Get visibility into ASINs that aren’t showing up in campaigns or performing poorly.
• Placements and audiences: See which placements and audience targeting are driving the most engagement and conversions.

Running these audits regularly helps you make sure everything’s working together to drive results.

Stay on top of seasonal shifts

Seasonality can have a huge impact on keyword performance. Things like Black Friday, Prime Day, or back-to-school sales can shift how consumers search for products.

Track keyword trends and be ready to adjust your bidding and targeting strategies accordingly.

Keep an eye on competitors

Competitors are constantly adjusting their strategies, too. Take note of their listing updates, like new images or updated keywords, and see how it impacts their performance.

If they’re gaining traction, maybe it’s time to tweak your listings or adjust your ad strategy to stay competitive.

Better listings power better ads

Optimizing your Amazon ads goes far beyond adjusting bids. More often than not, the real issue is what happens after the click. Weak images, vague bullet points, or unclear value props quietly chip away at your conversions and your budget.

That’s why it pays to keep a close eye on your listings, not just your campaign settings.

Optmyzr helps you spot where things are falling through the cracks, like which products are eating up spend without selling, or which keywords bring in traffic but not results.

Want to see how it can help? Sign up for a fully functional 14-day trial today!

Amazon PPC Audit: A Step-by-Step Guide to Cut Wasted Ad Spend

Wasted ad spend doesn’t just hurt campaign performance, it slows growth.

When ACoS rises and sales stall, scaling becomes harder. Even experienced Amazon advertisers often struggle to trace where the budget is leaking or which campaigns are pulling their weight.

That’s why audits matter. They’re not just a fix — they’re PPC insurance. Regular audits safeguard your budget, protect performance, and catch issues early. It’s part of Optmyzr’s approach to campaign management: keeping your account resilient with layered automation that flags inefficiencies before they snowball.

This guide walks through what to check, how often, and why, so you can reduce waste, align with your TACoS goals, and keep your Amazon ad strategy as efficient as it is scalable.

What wasted spend looks like in Amazon PPC

If your ACoS is climbing and your ROAS is dipping, something’s off. Here’s how wasted spend typically shows up:

• High-traffic keywords are getting clicks, but no orders
• ASINs are eating budget but not converting
• Campaigns are going out of budget mid-month
• Performance has flatlined, even after several tweaks

Often, the problem isn’t what you’re doing — it’s what you’re missing, like overlooked negative keywords or campaign structures that don’t match buyer intent because of poor audience targeting.

Let’s fix that.

Amazon PPC audit framework: a step-by-step guide

Step 1: Monitor key performance metrics regularly

Start by tracking the basics:

• TACoS (Total Advertising Cost of Sales)
• ROAS
• Conversion Rate (CVR)
• Click Share
• Impressions
• Add-to-Cart Rate
• Detail Page Views
• New-to-Brand Metrics
• Brand Halo Sales

It’s not just about watching them — it’s about understanding how these metrics are trending and what they mean for your profitability.

💡 Pro tip: Set up automated alerts to catch changes early. You don’t want to discover a runaway ACoS after you’ve already blown through half your monthly budget.

If you’re looking for a platform to help you with this, Optmyzr’s Alerts Management System is a great place to start. You set the threshold, and the system flags metrics that are off-track.

Step 2: Identify expensive keywords and search queries - and add negatives

Few things bleed budget more quietly than irrelevant traffic.

Pull your Amazon Search Term Report regularly. Flag:

• Search terms with high spend and zero conversions
• Keywords driving tons of clicks but no orders
• Terms loosely related to your product that aren’t converting

Regularly adding negatives based on this data prevents repeat waste — this is where implementing a strong harvesting strategy and search term isolation comes in.

Want to speed this up? Optmyzr generates automated reports for:

• Expensive Search Queries
• Top Traffic-Driving Keywords

The best part? These are pre-built strategies available in Optmyzr’s Rule Engine. You can customize them to match your goals and automate the report delivery with just a few clicks — no manual setup required.

Step 3: Audit non-converting products

Some ASINs just don’t perform well in ads — and that’s okay. But they shouldn’t drain your budget.

Review ASIN performance to identify products that:

• Get clicks but no sales
• Are live in multiple campaigns with little return

Note: This isn’t always a “pause it” situation. Sometimes, it’s a signal to:

• Switch campaign types
• Test different placements
• Modify ad copy and image quality
• Improve product page retail readiness (images, A+ content, reviews, pricing)

You can use Amazon’s Advertised Product reports for this, or audit faster with Optmyzr’s Audit tool, which flags inefficiencies like poor ASIN performance, low-converting placements, and missed opportunities tied to weak retail readiness.

Step 4: Review budget pacing and bid strategy

Budget pacing often gets overlooked, but it’s one of the fastest ways to either waste money or miss growth opportunities.

Ask yourself:

• Are campaigns running out of budget too early in the day or month?
• Are high-performing campaigns getting the funding they deserve?
• Are your bids aligned with your target ACoS or profitability goals?

It’s worth setting alerts to monitor budget burn and checking spend projections mid-month. Even better, build automation safeguards that continuously monitor pacing and flag bid inconsistencies early.

If you manage bids manually, keeping everything aligned can get tedious fast, especially across multiple campaigns. That’s where automated budget pacing and smart bid rules can save time and protect spend.

As Inés Martín, Head of Performance at Línea Gráfica, puts it:

“My favorite aspect of managing Amazon Ads with Optmyzr is how easy it is to manage manual bidding compared to how tedious it is to do it directly on Amazon Ads.

With Optmyzr, in just a glance it’s easy to understand which bids I’m interested in modifying and how, without requiring cumbersome and time-consuming analysis.”

Step 5: Check campaign structure for hidden inefficiencies

Your campaign structure directly affects ad delivery, budget allocation, and ROI.

Watch for:

• Campaigns with zero or low impressions — often due to low Buy Box ownership or suppressed listings
• ASINs grouped too broadly
• Products that are advertised in multiple campaigns
• Missing segmentation by brand, funnel stage, or product type

Structure issues can swing both ways — either you’re overspending on poor matches or starving your top performers. Both cost you.

Beyond that, strong Amazon campaign structures often align with product lifecycle stages (launch vs. scale) or repeat-purchase behavior, ensuring ads are matched to how people actually buy.

Use Amazon’s Campaign Reporting or Ads Console to regularly spot these inconsistencies, especially around suppressed listings or Buy Box loss.

Metrics that reveal wasted spend

Track these Amazon PPC performance metrics closely:

• CTR: Low = poor ad copy or targeting
• Impressions vs Orders: High views, no buys = wasted visibility
• ACoS: Anything over your margin threshold = inefficient
• ASIN-level ROAS: Segment by ASIN to find underperformers
• Orders per Click: A proxy for targeting quality

As a baseline, CTRs below 0.3% often indicate targeting issues, while ROAS under 2x typically signals poor campaign efficiency.

Mistakes advertisers make during manual audits

You’re not alone — we’ve seen these over and over:

1. Overlooking Amazon’s auto-suggestions

These reflect what customers actually type in. Reviewing them can validate your keyword strategy (or reveal what needs to be negated).

2. Reacting too slowly to KPI changes

Catching the issue is one thing. Fixing it quickly is another. Build workflows to take action fast — like adjusting bids on overvalued placements that aren’t converting.

3. Only auditing before client reviews

Audits should be monthly or even weekly. If you’re only doing them before a stakeholder check-in, you’re missing growth opportunities — and probably bleeding budget in the meantime.

4. Over-relying on Amazon’s default recommendations

While helpful, Amazon’s default suggestions often prioritize visibility over profitability. Blindly applying these can lead to inflated ACoS and wasted spend.

How to automate and scale Amazon PPC audits

Running manual audits across multiple accounts? Painful. That’s where audit automation makes a huge difference — and not just in time savings.

Platforms like Optmyzr help automate:

• Budget pacing and KPI anomaly alerts
• Keyword and product performance reports
• Campaign structure insights
• Optimizations like negating irrelevant terms, pausing non-converting keywords, etc.

Watch this quick video to see how Optmyzr helps you audit and optimize during peak seasons.

And here’s what that looks like in practice: Morefire was able to cut 15% of their account management hours per week using Optmyzr, with audit automation playing a key role in that time savings. That’s not just time saved — it’s bandwidth reallocated toward growth-driving tasks.

The ROI of eliminating wasted spend

Cutting waste improves profitability across the board:

• Lower ACoS
• Higher ROAS
• More sales on high-margin SKUs
• Improved organic rankings due to better conversion velocity

Final thoughts: Get audit-ready, gain efficiency

Audits aren’t just a maintenance routine — they’re your PPC insurance. Regularly checking for spend leaks, structural inefficiencies, and underperforming ASINs helps you safeguard your budget and performance. That’s the idea behind automation layering: setting up proactive systems to catch issues early, before they snowball.

Here’s what you should consistently track:

• Rising ACoS or dropping ROAS
• ASINs or search terms with spend but no conversions
• Budget pacing issues or misaligned bids
• Campaigns with poor structure or segmentation

Whether you’re managing one account or a portfolio, structured audits are how you stay competitive and profitable.

And if you’re ready to scale without the manual slog, start your free Optmyzr trial and run a smart, automated Amazon Ads audit — covering 25+ performance and structure checks in minutes.

People Also Ask

1. How do I identify wasted ad spend on Amazon?

Start by reviewing key performance metrics like ACoS, ROAS, CTR, and Orders. Look for keywords, search terms, or ASINs that are spending budget but not driving conversions. Regularly audit your campaigns to catch issues like irrelevant queries, underperforming SKUs, or poor budget pacing. Use tools like the Amazon Search Term Report and Advertised Products Report — or automate the process with audit platforms that flag inefficiencies across keywords, products, and structure.

2. What are the most common causes of poor ROAS in Amazon Ads?

Poor ROAS is often caused by irrelevant keywords, weak negative keyword management, poor product targeting, and underperforming ASINs receiving too much budget. Other common issues include campaigns running out of budget too early, misaligned bids, and weak campaign structure. Regular audits help catch these problems before they impact profitability.

3. What does out-of-budget mean in Amazon Ads?

In Amazon Ads, “out-of-budget” means a campaign has exhausted its daily budget and is no longer eligible to show ads for the rest of the day. When this happens, Amazon may stop ad delivery entirely or significantly throttle impressions for the rest of the day. Either way, you risk missing out on valuable traffic, especially during high-converting hours. Monitoring budget pacing helps you avoid these drops and make sure your best campaigns stay live when it matters most.

Amazon TACoS 101: Reduce Ad Dependency and Sustain Growth

Success in advertising isn’t just about driving immediate sales; it’s about building long-term growth and sustainability. While most advertisers rely on metrics like ROAS and ACoS to measure campaign performance on Amazon, these metrics don’t speak to how your overall sales have grown due to your advertising activities.

You need to look beyond short-term wins and focus on strategies that improve your overall paid and organic business growth.

For Amazon advertisers, TACoS is a more robust metric that can provide you with a more complete picture of your campaign’s performance.

In this article, I’ll walk you through everything you need to know to get started with TACoS and how to manage it for greater product visibility and less reliance on ads.

What is Amazon TACoS?

Amazon TACoS, or Total Advertising Cost of Sale, is a metric that measures ad spend against total sales (both ad-driven and organic). Monitoring TACoS enables you to gauge the efficiency and impact of your Amazon ads on a more macro level, as I’ll discuss in the following sections.

Unlike ACoS (Amazon Advertising Cost of Sales; which only accounts for revenue generated through ad-driven sales), TACoS helps you see how your ad efforts contribute to your total sales growth, including organic sales (which might be influenced by advertising).

Why you should consider organic sales when evaluating ad performance

Organic sales (i.e., sales generated through non-paid sources) increase with greater brand awareness or organic rankings, both of which your ads might influence (either directly or indirectly). When you evaluate ad performance with only ACoS, you overlook the long-term impact ads can have on organic sales—whereas TACoS captures the full picture.

Declining TACoS over time shows that your business is becoming less reliant on ads to drive revenue and more on organic growth.

The difference between TACoS, ACoS, and ROAS

Every metric offers a different perspective on advertising efficiency, and understanding each of their distinct roles and the specific insights they provide helps you know which metric(s) to track.

Here’s a quick overview of the metrics:

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

ROAS, or Return on Ad Spend, measures ad efficiency in terms of revenue generated relative to ad spend.

When to track ROAS: Use ROAS to measure campaign-level profitability, especially in paid search and display advertising. Since ROAS only accounts for ad spend and revenue, it omits the impact on organic sales and thus doesn’t provide a complete picture of how your ads affect total sales.

Advertising Cost of Sale (ACoS)

ACoS, or Advertising Cost of Sale, measures the cost of advertising relative to the revenue generated solely from ad-driven sales. You can use it to assess the immediate efficiency of your ad spend (a lower ACoS is more efficient).

When to track ACoS: Use ACoS to answer the question, “How much did I spend to make this sale through ads?” You can also use it to measure campaign performance over the short term (i.e., when the goal is direct sales through ads).

Total Advertising Cost of Sale (TACoS)

TACoS, or Total Advertising Cost of Sale, includes both ad-driven and organic sales to give a fuller picture of the impact of ads on total revenue. It can indicate how your ads contribute to both immediate sales and brand growth over the long run.

When to track TACoS: TACoS is invaluable for guiding long-term strategy. It helps you track organic growth alongside ad spend, making it a key metric for brand-building campaigns where you want to see a reduction in TACoS over time (as organic sales increase). TACoS that declines over time suggests a healthy balance between ad-driven and organic sales, and signals reduced dependency on paid ads.

Why TACoS is north star metric for Amazon advertisers

While ACoS has been the traditional metric Amazon advertisers use to measure ad spend efficiency, we’ve seen (in the previous sections) that it has a very narrow focus.

You need to track TACoS for a more comprehensive picture of your company’s performance. It is important to note again that the goal of investing in advertising is not just to get more ad-driven sales, but also to build awareness, improve rankings, and ultimately lower your reliance on paid ads—all of which you can track by monitoring TACoS.

While ACoS may remain stable or even increase during certain periods, if your TACoS goes down, it’s a sign that your ads are working as planned, creating more organic interest and sales.

So, a lower TACoS means you’re getting more value out of your ad bucks and becoming less dependent on ads to keep sales steady.

In a way, TACoS is like a long-term health check for your ad strategy. If your TACoS is dropping, it’s telling you that your brand is gaining strength organically, which is what every business wants.

Manage TACoS in Amazon Ads: Best practices

Now that you know when to track TACoS, follow the best practices below to ensure that you’re getting actionable insights from this data:

1. Include all product variations to avoid skewed data
2. Balance between product and brand campaigns
3. Track TACoS by product or product group
4. Set different KPIs for TACoS at various stages of the product’s lifecycle

1. Include all product variations to avoid skewed data.

Make sure you include all variations of your products (i.e., different sizes, colors, flavors, etc.) when tracking TACoS. This helps you get an accurate view of how your whole product line is performing. With all variations included, you can easily spot which products are naturally gaining organic traction and which ones might still need a little extra ad support.

This will prevent you from overspending on ads for products that are doing well on their own, and enable you to allocate budget where it will make a bigger difference.

2. Balance between product and brand campaigns.

Amazon offers different types of ads to help you reach your goals: Sponsored Brand Ads to build brand awareness and Sponsored Product Ads to drive sales of specific products. Knowing when to use each type can make a big difference in managing your TACoS.

Brand campaigns can have a powerful, long-term impact on TACoS. They work by boosting brand awareness, which translates into more organic sales over time, gradually lowering your TACoS. On the other hand, product-specific campaigns tend to generate quicker sales but often rely more on ad spend, which can keep TACoS higher initially.

A smart approach is to balance your ad spend between these objectives:

• Use brand campaigns for steady, long-term TACoS improvement
• Use product campaigns to drive immediate sales when needed

This way, you’re setting yourself up for both immediate results and lasting growth.

3. Track TACoS by product or product group.

While tracking ACoS at the campaign level can give you some insight into ad performance, it doesn’t tell the whole story—especially since each product behaves differently depending on where it is in its lifecycle.

When you track TACoS at the product level, you get a clearer view of which items are thriving from your ad spend in terms of both paid and organic growth. Products that perform well typically have a lower TACoS because they’re gaining strong organic sales, while newer products may have a higher TACoS as they rely more heavily on ads to get noticed.

If you’re only looking at ACoS, high numbers might seem concerning. But TACoS paints a fuller picture by factoring in organic sales generated by your advertising. In the early stages, you might see a higher TACoS, but as the product gains traction and starts pulling in organic sales, TACoS should naturally decrease.

Tracking TACoS at the product level helps you stay focused on both short-term and long-term goals. It allows you to see where ad spend is working to boost organic growth, so you’re not just chasing immediate results but building a more sustainable business.

ACoS may remain stable or increase, but if a product performs well, tracking TACoS will reveal a decline over time as organic sales grow and reliance on ad spend decreases.

4. Set different KPIs for TACoS at various stages of the product’s lifecycle.

Now that you know that TACoS can vary across product groups and lifecycle stages, it’s good practice to also set different expectations for each group or stage:

How to improve TACoS and overall ad strategy

The bottom line is that lower TACoS means less reliance on ad spend to drive product sales. Follow these tactics to position your product listings for organic growth so that you can divert ad budget to where it’ll make the greatest impact:

1. Optimize product listings for organic visibility
2. Focus on long-tail keywords in ads
3. Leverage seasonal and promotional campaigns
4. Use bid adjustments to optimize spend
5. Analyze and pause non-performing ads

1. Optimize product listings for organic visibility.

If a product’s TACoS remains high despite consistent ad spend, the listing may need better content. Improve your product titles and descriptions with relevant, high-traffic keywords to increase organic searchability.

High-quality visuals and Enhanced Brand Content (EBC or A+ content) help improve conversion rates, which can drive organic ranking. When your listings are optimized and appealing, you’ll rely less on ads to maintain visibility, which helps bring down TACoS.

2. Focus on long-tail keywords in ads.

Long-tail keywords are usually less competitive and can yield higher conversion rates than more generic head terms. These keywords help drive initial sales without significant ad spend, increasing organic ranking over time and reducing TACoS.

Keep an eye on which keywords perform well and refine your targeting to make sure your product appears in the right searches. Also, be aware that optimizing product listings for long-tail keywords likely means fewer impressions relative to head terms (but, again, these terms should convert more frequently as well).

3. Leverage seasonal and promotional campaigns

Increase ad spend during high-demand seasons like holidays and festivals to maximize sales and organic ranking. Even if TACoS goes up a bit during these periods, the boost to organic sales afterward can be well worth it.

If you run a promotion, monitor TACoS afterward to see if those extra organic sales persist. If so, your strategy has likely helped build a stronger organic presence.

4. Use bid adjustments to optimize spend

Regularly review and pause or lower bids on keywords that don’t convert as well. Direct more budget to high-conversion keywords that support both ad-driven and organic sales to improve TACoS.

Adjust and increase your bids during high-demand times, like holiday seasons, to capture more conversions when shoppers are most active. This can increase ad-driven conversions and reduce the need for ad visibility throughout the year, helping you improve your TACoS over time.

Products with lower TACoS benefit from high organic sales, so you can gradually reduce ad spend and adjust your bids to focus on cost-effective keywords. This frees up budget to support newer or underperforming products. Allocate more budget here and increase your bids to improve visibility and drive early growth.

5. Analyze and pause non-performing ads

Make it a habit to review your ads at regular intervals, pausing any that aren’t bringing in conversions or have a high ACoS. By reallocating budget to ads that consistently perform well, you not only improve immediate results but also increase the chance of these ads positively impacting organic rankings.

Build a sustainable growth strategy with TACoS

Using TACoS effectively means thinking beyond the immediate results of your ads and recognizing the broader role they play in building sustainable, organic growth. By tracking TACoS, you’re able to see not only how your ads perform but also how they help your products gain traction over time.

If you have your TACoS data, Optmyzr can make all actionable steps, like bid adjustments and keyword optimizations, simpler by enabling bulk changes. You can use the Rule Engine to integrate TACoS data directly into your ad strategy and automate your ad spend optimization based on that data.

When tracked efficiently, TACoS can reveal your business’s growing independence from ad spend. It can be your strategic tool for building a stronger, more self-sustaining brand on Amazon.

5 Optimizations to Boost Amazon PPC Profitability

$15.73 billion – that’s billion with a big ol’ B – is how much Amazon made from PPC advertising through its online marketplace in 2020. With that, it is currently the third-largest ad platform in the US. So if you’re advertising for retail goods, digital content, or some other line of work that sells on Amazon, ignore it at your own financial peril.

Setting Amazon Advertising’s growth aside, there’s another reason you should consider advertising on the platform: transactional search intent. Users searching for a product on Amazon are more likely to be close to a purchase, while searches on engines like Google are more likely to be informational.

Understanding user intent on Amazon is more straightforward than Google or Microsoft; people are there to buy products. There may be customers who go straight to Amazon for product-related queries, and you don’t want to miss out on those potential conversions.

Despite many advertisers relying on Amazon Advertising, resources to help with optimization can be hard to come by. So we’ve put together a list of five optimizations that can power up your Amazon ad campaigns.

1. Optimize Bids for Placements

Optimizing for placements gives you more control over where your ads appear and how much you’re willing to pay for them. Placements for which you can set bids include Top of Search, Rest of Search, and Product Pages.

After setting your base bid on Amazon Advertising, you can improve your products’ visibility by setting bid adjustments for Top of Search and Product Pages. There is no bid adjustment for Rest of Search, so this placement will operate with the base bid you set.

You can view the product placement report for every campaign you run on Amazon. You can see which placements worked best for you, and based on these insights, set the appropriate placement bid multiplier between 0-900% to improve your odds of increasing conversions and improving awareness.

Here’s an example of the placement report you can download from the Reporting Center on the Amazon Ads Console:

Identify which placements worked best for you based on your advertising goals and bid higher for those positions.

You can find the performance-by-placement data by opening a campaign and clicking on the “Placements” tab. You’ll be taken to a page that looks like this, where you can adjust your bids.

2. Increase Budgets for Special Events Using Budget Rules

The newly launched Budget Rules feature allows you to set schedule-based rules. You can increase daily budgets for your campaigns for special events recommended by Amazon (like Prime Day or Black Friday) or for custom periods (like the Christmas holiday season). For recommended events, Amazon also suggests a suitable percentage increase to your daily campaign budgets.

It also allows you to set performance-based rules to increase your Sponsored Product campaign budget based on performance metrics such as ACoS, CTR, and CVR.

The tool helps reduce the manual effort that goes into adjusting your campaign budgets for special events or custom periods. Budget Rules are still relatively new and are being rolled out gradually, so they might not be available to advertisers in all marketplaces at the moment.

3. Use Product Targeting to Show Off Your Product Next to Competitors

Product Targeting lets you refine the placement of your ads. It allows you to identify products similar to yours, and to display your Sponsored Product ads on those ASIN pages and in category search results.

Positive product targeting boosts your visibility by putting your product in line with related items in the marketplace. Negative product targeting can be used in cases where you do not want your product to appear along with other products, ASIN pages, or category search results. It’s like adding negative keywords to your search campaign.

To see a quick way to implement this strategy, check out how to do it in Optmyzr further below.

4. Optimizing your ACoS

As far as Amazon Advertising is concerned, your Advertising Cost of Sales (ACoS) is the measure of your success. It is a measure of campaign effectiveness based on sales generated and amount spent on advertising.

If you’re familiar with Google Ads and the concept of ROAS, ACoS is easy to understand as the inverse of ROAS.

ACOS = Total Ad Spend / Total Sales

ACoS lets you know how much you can spend on your ads and helps you plan your campaign budgets. If you have great ACoS, you don’t want to budget too little and miss out on the exposure required to push the product, or if your ACoS is bad, it can tell you to lower bids so you don’t spend too much and lower your profit margin.

If a product that costs you $75 to make (manufacturing costs, shipping costs, Amazon fees, etc.) is sold at a price of $100, the profit margin is $25 or 25% in this case. This is your profit margin before ad spend and therefore also your breakeven ACoS. If you spend all of the $25 on ads you’re left with no profits, and if you end up spending more than that, then you’re running a loss.

Target ACoS (TACoS) is a portion of ACoS that you would actually spend on advertising. In the example above, if your target profit is $10 or 10% in this case, then you’re left with $15 or 15% to spend on ads. TACoS tells you how much you should be spending on your ads to stay profitable. What you consider a good TACoS depends on your goal: increasing profits or visibility.

Several tools allow you to automate bidding calculations based on TACoS. We even have some prebuilt Rule Engine strategies in Optmyzr if you’re looking for an easy way to get started with this optimization technique.

5. Harvest Keywords

According to a 2019 report, almost 45% of shoppers only scroll through the first two pages of search results while searching for a product on Amazon. Getting visibility on those first few pages requires strong and high-performing campaigns made of the right keywords.

Having keywords that are closely related to search queries is more important on Amazon than it is on Google. Google has evolved beyond keywords to intent and topic and is better at matching keywords with relevant queries. Amazon still lays a lot of emphasis on keywords. They are still a key factor in determining product ranking on the platform.

Another reason you want to spend more time choosing and monitoring keywords on Amazon is that although Amazon also uses close variants for exact match keywords, Google’s linguistic AI is far more developed. Google’s clear definition of a close variant also makes matching query intent to a keyword more accurate. So, you want to be more thorough with picking out relevant keywords and adding negative ones on Amazon.

Keyword Harvesting involves transferring search terms, keywords, or ASIN targets from one ad group or campaign to another. The end goal of harvesting keywords is to identify converting search terms and bid more on those keywords that will improve your performance.

You can harvest keywords manually by looking at your Search Terms Report, which gives you actual customer data. It tells you exactly what customers have been typing in to find your products.

Manually identifying profitable keywords can be tough and time-consuming. By using automated keyword harvesting tools you no longer need to spend time looking for keywords by manually combing through search terms.

Optmyzr Express helps you manage search terms and keywords on Amazon through three optimizations - Add Negative Keywords, Add New Keywords and Pause Non-Converting Keywords.

Optmyzr Solutions For Your Amazon PPC

Optimizing your Amazon campaigns keeps them fresh and relevant, and also gives you a clear picture of their performance over time.

Implementing these optimizations can help you create and maintain a successful Amazon business. And Optmyzr capabilities can be helpful building blocks to get you started.

1. Product Targeting Using Optmyzr Rule Engine

At Optmyzr, we support optimizations and automation based on product targeting using Rule Engine.

2. Bid to Target ACoS

Optmyzr’s prebuilt Rule Engine strategy, ‘Bid to Target ACoS’, allows you to use your target ACoS to set the CPC bid using historical sales data for a keyword.

Using Bid to Target ACoS, you can increase or decrease your bid based on the TACoS you put in.

Retail e-commerce is PPC's new frontier & Why Amazon SHOULD matter to you

I had an illuminating conversation about Amazon Ads and PPC with an industry colleague recently, not long after we announced Optmyzr’s new Amazon Ads functionality. Our discussion shined a spotlight on a potential emerging threat for PPC pros – channel complacency. 

Understandably, a lot of people in our space are deeply rooted in Google and Bing. It makes sense. Agencies have achieved greatness by making it possible for clients to dominate in the highly lucrative paid search engine results. Google and Bing are, without question, the primary search engines – and we are search marketers by trade. By a wide margin, standard Internet searches happen on these two platforms, with Google still the runaway leader – and its SERPs providing highly valuable paid (and organic) information.

Product Search – PPC’s hottest battleground

While Google maintains its overall Internet search dominance, actual product search has seen a quiet revolution in the background. Somewhere between 2015 and 2018, Amazon swiped the top spot for product searches, according to a study done by Jumpshot. 

What? Did we hear that correctly? Amazon is the search king? But they’re eCommerce, not search!

Yes. For product-specific searches, Amazon seems to have hip-checked Google off the mountaintop. At the time of the Jumpshot study, Amazon held 54% of that type of search activity, compared to 46% for Google. Those figures were inverted just three years earlier. In the months since the study, Amazon has invested massively to deepen and further refine its search capabilities. 

Google has fought back, of course, significantly enhancing its pay-for-play product search results, while deepening the experiences with Shopping Ads and Showcase Shopping Ads. Expect the battle to wage intensely for market dominance in product search. 

Why? As we all know from years gauging searcher intent, product-specific search is a strong indicator that someone is stampeding down the funnel toward conversion. After all, a person typically doesn’t search [brand] [product] [size] [color] if they are trying to get general ideas for fashion trends for the upcoming season. Many of those searchers are seeking best price, convenience, and shipping options to purchase NOW. 

So, PPC pros who dismiss Amazon search as not being “search marketing” are likely missing a huge opportunity not considering queries on Amazon as “search.”

Millions upon millions of searches are happening in the Amazon search box each day. Semantics and intent may be different than how many searches happen in the Google box, but make no mistake about it – Amazon is a search platform and there’s gold in them thar’ searches.

It’s been interesting observing reactions after we launched Amazon Ads functionality as part of the Optmyzr PPC Management Suite. PPC rockstars were all over it. They received the news with an almost “about time!” mindset, expanding their capabilities virtually overnight. Visionary PPC pros are looking beyond Google and Bing in their expanding definition of “search.” 

Many other very talented pros in our space, however, are still connecting the dots of how search is morphing and seeing the broader landscape beyond the king (Google) and the queen (Bing) of search. The emergence of Amazon (and Facebook) as actual search platforms creates a big new opportunity for PPC pros looking to own a bigger piece of the overall digital marketing mix. 

And since most agencies get paid based on how much spend they manage, any opportunity to significantly move the needle on spend under management should be seen as a tremendous opportunity, especially when the new platform isn’t all that difficult to manage with the right tools like Optmyzr.

Expanding the PPC universe – Simplified

Here’s the great news: It’s not difficult to expand PPC programs beyond Google and Bing. Again, the intent and behaviors in the various search boxes may be different, but the underlying mechanics are remarkably similar.

Think about it…Search > Algorithms > SERPs. Just as with Google and Bing, the Amazon machine churns out results against searches while allowing retailers and brands alike to buy their way to dominance for the keywords they want.

Optmyzr Rule Engine is the core of our Amazon offering. You can read more in our blog post announcing the Amazon capability, but here it is in a nutshell: Optmyzr makes it really easy for PPC pros to manage paid search across Google, Bing, and Amazon from a single interface. Manage critical aspects of paid search in Amazon, including the ability to set bids for a range or to meet a target ACOS goal. We allow the PPC pro to include negative keywords to reduce poor performing search terms and identify the positive keywords that convert in the Amazon universe. 

Holiday shopping is ramping up as we speak. Hundreds of millions of searches for specific products will happen in the Amazon search box. You really don’t want to miss out on that lucrative search traffic. Your clients REALLY don’t want to miss out on it either!

The 7 Most Frustrating Amazon PPC Challenges And How Optmyzr Fixes Them

“I’m running ads, adjusting bids… so why isn’t performance improving?”

It’s a question many Amazon advertisers ask right after realizing their ad budget’s nearly gone and performance isn’t keeping up.

Sure, Seller Central covers the basics when you’re managing Amazon ads. It helps you set up campaigns, manage budgets, and monitor ad performance. But when it comes to making sense of the why behind a sudden ACOS spike, missed keyword wins, or wasted spend, it’s often not enough.

That’s where Optmyzr steps in.

It adds a powerful layer of insights and automation on top of your Amazon Ads so you can fix inefficiencies faster, scale what’s working, and stay proactive instead of reactive.

In this article, we’ll unpack key challenges Amazon advertisers face and show how Optmyzr helps you go from manual firefighting to confident, data-backed decision-making.

7 challenges with running Amazon ads and how Optmyzr helps

1. Burning your budget without ROI

Problem: “My campaigns are overspending and I don’t know why.”

Leaving your budget spend unchecked is one of the fastest ways to erode your profit margins when advertising on Amazon. Without proper visibility and guardrails, you run the risk of burning through your monthly or daily budgets, sometimes on non-converting keywords or irrelevant placements. Often, you may find yourself reacting after the damage is done, instead of proactively controlling spend.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅Budget monitoring

Set monthly budget targets for each account and monitor daily pacing against those limits. In Optmyzr, you can configure the budget cycle (e.g., reset on the 1st of each month) and receive overpacing/underpacing alerts directly via email or Slack. This setup ensures real-time visibility and control without interfering with Amazon Ads platform configurations.

✅Spend projection

Using current spend trends, Optmyzr forecasts whether you’re on track to hit or exceed your monthly budget. This lets you proactively adjust bidding or pause inefficient campaigns before budget overruns happen.

✅Account alerts

Real-time alerts flag anomalies like a spike in spend or a drop in return, letting you intercept issues before they spiral. You can configure alerts based on ACOS, spend thresholds, or CTR drops, making them actionable and tailored to your KPIs.

Also read: 5 optimizations to boost Amazon PPC profitability

2. ACoS eating into your profits

Problem: “My ACoS is too high.”

High ACOS eats into profitability, especially for low-margin products where even small inefficiencies can negate your returns. Without a structured way to optimize bids, you risk wasting budget on keywords that fail to convert at a sustainable cost.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅Suggested bids

This tool uses Amazon’s API to recommend bid changes based on current keyword performance. You can:

• Automatically apply a percentage change (e.g., Suggested Bid +10%)
• Manually override with your own custom bid
• Filter by bid gap or performance thresholds

It’s ideal for routine tuning and works best when run every 7–14 days to account for performance lag.

✅Bid adjustment optimization

Optmyzr offers two rule-based strategies here:

• Change Bids Based on ACOS
  Automatically increases or decreases bids based on how a keyword’s ACOS compares to your target. It only acts on keywords with enough conversions, spend, and clicks to ensure reliable optimization. If a keyword is converting well and performing under your target ACOS, bids are raised to maximize volume. If it’s overspending with poor efficiency, bids are lowered to protect profitability.

   

• Set Bids to Reach Target ACOS
  Uses recent performance data to calculate the most efficient bid needed to meet your ACOS goal. You set boundaries like minimum and maximum bid limits and conversion thresholds, ensuring that only keywords with enough data are adjusted.

3. Blind spots costing you performance

Problem: “I don’t have enough visibility into what’s working or failing in my campaigns.”

When you don’t know which campaigns, keywords, or settings are delivering value, you can’t optimize confidently. You end up reacting to performance drops instead of preventing them, and potentially miss opportunities to scale what’s working.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅Account dashboard

Your performance command center. Switch between account, campaign, and ad group views to instantly see top-level KPIs. The dashboard highlights trends, helps spot optimization opportunities, and tracks shifts in performance at a glance.

✅Performance comparison

Easily compare campaign or ad group performance across two custom date ranges. For Amazon Ads, this tool highlights changes in key metrics like ACOS, ROAS, conversions, and cost, broken down by campaign or ad group.

Each result includes:

• Date 1, Date 2, and the % change
• Clear segmentation for faster insights

Use it to:

• Spot performance drops or gains
• Confirm the impact of recent optimizations
• Decide where to scale or cut back

Perfect for reviewing post-sale periods, new campaign launches, or monthly performance shifts.

✅Magic Quadrant

Get a visual snapshot of your top 100 campaigns, keywords, or ad groups—plotted into four categories:

• Stars: High performers
• Potentials: Strong in one metric, room to grow
• Opportunities: Underperforming but promising
• Laggards: Low-performing, need fixes

Customize the axes (e.g., ACOS vs. ROAS) and filter by scope. It’s a great way to see what you need to scale, fix, or pause, at a glance.

4. Wasting budget on irrelevant clicks

Problem: “I’m paying for traffic that doesn’t convert.”

Every click that doesn’t lead to a sale drains your budget. Whether it’s shoppers searching for “free samples” or traffic from irrelevant product queries, these wasted clicks reduce efficiency and inflate your ACOS, especially when they go unnoticed across large keyword sets.

How does Optmyzr help?

Optmyzr’s Rule Engine for Amazon Ads includes pre-built strategies specifically designed to reduce wasted spend and improve ad group targeting:

✅ Non-Converting Keyword and ASIN Search Terms

Get suggestions to block keywords or ASINs that fail to convert after a set number of clicks, defined by you. This helps filter out underperformers before they drain your budget.

✅ Expensive Search Queries

Find search terms that have high spend but no conversions. The strategy uses pre-set thresholds to flag them and recommends adding them as negative keywords, so your ads stop showing for those queries.

✅ Rule Automation

These strategies can run on a scheduled basis—daily, weekly, or monthly—so you can keep your account clean without doing the heavy lifting.

5. Missing keyword opportunities

Problem: “I’m missing valuable keyword opportunities.”

If converting search terms aren’t added as keywords, your ads may miss high-intent traffic. It means less visibility, lower relevance, and lost revenue, especially if those terms are already driving sales.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅ Keyword Lasso (Query Management)

This tool helps you turn converting search queries into keywords—quickly and efficiently. It aggregates performance data from similar queries by ad group and match type, and uses conversion and impression thresholds to ensure suggestions are based on statistically meaningful data. You can filter to focus on search terms with strong performance, then add them to existing or new ad groups.

✅ Add New Keywords (Rule Engine Strategy)

Automatically identifies converting search terms and suggests adding them as new keywords in your account. You can define when the rule runs (weekly, monthly) and set thresholds so only meaningful terms are suggested—keeping keyword lists fresh without manual effort.

✅ Keyword Report

Analyze which keywords are generating impressions, clicks, and sales—and which ones are underperforming or inactive. It’s a quick way to clean up low-value terms and double down on what works.

6. Poor campaign structure or hygiene

Problem: “I’m not sure if my campaigns are set up right or if they need to be improved.”

Without a solid campaign structure, your Amazon Ads account becomes inefficient. Poor naming, keyword clutter, or conflicting negatives can lead to wasted spend, limited visibility, and missed growth opportunities.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅ PPC Account Audit for Amazon

Optmyzr provides a library of audits that highlight issues across campaigns, ad groups, keywords, products, and placements.

Some examples:

• Conflicting Keywords: Catch cases where your negative keywords are blocking your positives.
• Ad Groups With Too Few or Too Many Keywords: Fix imbalanced targeting.
• Campaigns Hitting Budget Limits: Identify which campaigns are throttling performance.
• Campaigns With Low Impressions or Zero Sales: Detect wasted budget fast.
• Match Type Distribution: Analyze how keyword match types are performing

7. Reporting takes too long

Problem: “Reporting takes hours every week.”

Manually compiling reports eats into valuable time that could be spent optimizing campaigns. And when you’re managing multiple accounts or stakeholders, it’s even harder to deliver timely, consistent insights.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅ Create & Edit Reports with the Report Designer

Optmyzr’s Report Designer lets you create and automate beautiful, data-rich reports in minutes.

• Use pre-built templates or build your own with drag-and-drop widgets
• Add branded cover pages, custom metrics, AI-generated insights, and visual charts
• Schedule reports to be automatically emailed as PDFs or shared as links—daily, weekly, or monthly
• Reuse templates across multiple Amazon accounts for consistent reporting

You can even create multi-account reports or filter performance by campaign type, geography, or targeting strategy.

Run Amazon Ads like a pro with less manual effort

Managing Amazon PPC doesn’t have to be reactive or overwhelming. With Optmyzr, every part of your workflow, from controlling spend and optimizing bids to uncovering keyword gaps and automating reports, is transformed into a proactive, data-driven process. Tools like Rule Engine, Budget Monitor, Keyword Lasso, and Report Designer empower you to act fast, stay efficient, and scale with confidence.

Explore Optmyzr’s Amazon PPC toolkit today. Sign up for our 14-day free trial and see what smarter advertising looks like.

How to Lower ACoS with the Right Amazon Bid Type

Bidding on Amazon isn’t just about picking a number and hoping for the best. With so many options: Up & Down, Down Only, Fixed, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed or fall into autopilot. However, the best results don’t come from chasing the lowest ACoS or blindly increasing bids.

They come from aligning your bid strategy with your actual goals. Whether you’re launching a product, protecting your brand, or chasing profitability, the right bid type can make all the difference.

Amazon’s bid types

Not all bid types are created equal, and they’re definitely not interchangeable. Amazon gives you three core bidding options, and the trick isn’t to pick the most aggressive or conservative one. It’s to choose the one that aligns with what you’re actually trying to achieve.

At the center of Amazon’s bidding model are dynamic bids, letting Amazon raise or lower your bid based on the likelihood of a conversion, and fixed bids, where you retain full control. Here’s how they break down:

Beyond these, Amazon also supports rule-based bidding, where you set custom rules to adjust bids based on performance, budget thresholds, or time-of-day trends. In Sponsored Display, you can go deeper with audience-based bidding, fine-tuning bids based on who’s seeing your ads (like past buyers or high-intent viewers).

Aligning bid types to business objectives

One of the most common missteps in Amazon ads is choosing a bid type out of habit, or worse, guessing. Too often, advertisers overlook how each bid type interacts with Amazon’s algorithm.

Amazon prioritizes relevance, user intent, and conversion likelihood. When your bid type aligns with your campaign objective, whether that’s profitability, brand visibility, or new product launches, you’re giving the algorithm the right signals to work in your favor.

Misaligned bids don’t just underperform, they waste impressions, burn budget, and leave growth opportunities on the table.

Smart bidding starts with strategic intent, not just settings.

How to use a bid type based on the outcome you’re targeting

Objective: Profitable Sales

Recommended Bid Type: Dynamic Bids – Down Only

Why it works: When profit margins matter, control is key. Down Only lets Amazon lower your bids when it predicts a low likelihood of conversion, helping you avoid wasted spend. It’s not about pulling back reach entirely, it’s about trimming the fat. For advertisers looking to protect ROI, this is your safest bet.

👉Trade-offs: The downside to Down Only is that it won’t capitalize on every high-value opportunity.

If a certain search or placement is very likely to convert, Amazon won’t exceed your original bid to win that auction aggressively.

Thus, you might miss out on impressions or sales in extremely competitive moments.

Objective: Keyword Ranking

Recommended Bid Type: Fixed Bids

Why it works: Climbing the ranks on Amazon requires volume and consistency. With Fixed Bids, Amazon won’t reduce your exposure just because early clicks don’t immediately convert. This matters during ranking pushes, when your goal is visibility and share of voice, not short-term efficiency. You’re trading precision for momentum, and that’s a smart call in this phase.

👉Trade-offs: Fixed Bids won’t lower the price for low-value clicks, which means you can overpay significantly in many auctions.

Without dynamic adjustments, a fixed bid might apply equally to a great query and a marginally relevant one.

For instance, if you bid $2 for a keyword, you’ll pay up to $2 whether the click converts or not, whereas Down Only would have trimmed that for a low-conversion scenario.

Objective: Product Launch

Recommended Bid Type: Dynamic Bids – Up & Down

Why it works: Launching a new ASIN? You need flexible reach. Up & Down bidding lets Amazon lean in when signals look promising, while dialing back in low-quality auctions. It fuels Amazon’s learning phase, helping you ramp faster without throwing budget at poor placements.

👉Trade-offs: Your cost-per-click can rise, and you must be comfortable spending up to 100% more per click in those high-conversion scenarios.

If Amazon’s predictions are too “enthusiastic” or if your conversion rate falters, Up & Down can lead to higher ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sales) and spend. Close monitoring is critical, and you’ll want to watch if the extra spend is delivering proportional sales.

The good news is Amazon does cap the increases (doubling at most for top-of-search). Still, be sure your margins and budget can support the potential bid spikes.

Objective: Brand Protection

Recommended Bid Type: Fixed Bids

Why it works: Branded terms convert well, but they’re also where competitors love to poach. With Fixed Bids, Amazon won’t downscale your visibility based on perceived efficiency. You stay visible, dominant, and in control of your brand defense strategy.

Placements vs. Bids: Don’t default to bid increases

When performance dips, many advertisers instinctively raise bids. But that’s not always the smartest, or most cost-effective move. Instead of blanket increases, Amazon gives you a better option: placement modifiers.

Placement modifiers let you boost bids selectively based on where your ad appears, offering more control without overspending across the board. The two key placements you should care about:

• Top of Search (Search Results): The crown jewel of Amazon ads, this is where CTR and CVR peak. It’s worth paying more if it’s delivering profitable results.
• Product Pages: Often overlooked, these placements offer lower CPCs and large volumes, making them ideal for competitive conquesting or brand reinforcement.

Instead of applying the same bid across every auction, placement modifiers let you layer intent, raising bids only where it matters most. It’s a smarter way to scale performance without lighting your budget on fire.

Most advertisers optimize too early

One of the most costly mistakes in Amazon advertising? Optimizing too soon.

It’s easy to panic when you’ve spent money and haven’t seen conversions roll in. The knee-jerk reaction is to pause keywords, slash bids, or shut the campaign down entirely. But here’s the truth: Amazon doesn’t operate in real time.

• There’s often a 72-hour delay for performance data to fully populate in the ad console.
• Attribution can take up to 7 days, especially for Sponsored Display or upper-funnel campaigns.
• Campaign types vary wildly: branded campaigns convert quickly, while retargeting or awareness campaigns need time to mature.

When you act too early, you’re making decisions based on incomplete data. Worse, you could interrupt Amazon’s learning process and shut down campaigns that might have performed well if given the chance.

It’s better to build in a delay before optimizing. Give new campaigns or bid strategy shifts at least 3 to 7 days before making adjustments.

Let the data breathe. Let Amazon learn. Then step in with structured changes, not reactive ones.

Use Amazon’s suggested bids

When it comes to setting bids, intuition isn’t strategy. Amazon Ads provides real-time, data-backed bid recommendations, more likely to achieve better results.

What are suggested bids?

• Suggested Bid: A dynamic value based on historical auction performance, competitor activity, and your ad’s own conversion data.
• Suggested Bid Range: A reflection of how competitive (or volatile) the auction is, helping you decide if you should bid conservatively or lean in aggressively.

These aren’t random numbers; they’re Amazon’s best estimate of what it will take to stay competitive in a given auction environment.

Use these as your baseline, not your ceiling. For example, if the suggested bid is $1.20 and your campaign is converting efficiently at $1.05, stick with what works.

But if performance lags, consider moving closer to the upper end of the range.

Keyword match types and their role in bidding strategy

Your keyword match type doesn’t just define who sees your ad; it also shapes how you should bid. Think of it like casting a net: the wider you go, the more cautious you need to be with your budget. The narrower the focus, the more you can afford to be aggressive.

Here’s how to align bidding strategy with match intent:

Exact match

Best For: Branded searches or high-converting, well-known keywords.

Why: You want your ad to show only when someone searches for a specific, high-intent term, like your product name or a top-performing keyword.

Bidding Strategy: Use Fixed Bids or high Dynamic Bids to dominate impressions. This is ideal for brand protection and ranking pushes, where visibility is non-negotiable.

Phrase match

Best For: Mid-funnel discovery and niche targeting with moderate intent.

Why: Phrase match lets you appear for queries that include your keyword in order, giving you more reach without sacrificing too much precision.

Bidding Strategy: Use moderate Dynamic Bids (Down Only) or rule-based bidding to scale efficiently while keeping ACoS in check.

Broad match

Best For: Exploration and data gathering in the early stages of a campaign.

Why: Broad match casts the widest net, capturing long-tail and unexpected search terms. But with that reach comes risk.

Bidding Strategy: Bid low and cautiously. Layer in negative keywords early, and consider using Optmyzr Express to block irrelevant traffic and promote high-converting terms quickly.

When to trust Amazon’s automation and when not to

Use automation when:

• You have ≥30 clicks per campaign: Amazon’s machine learning needs volume to optimize effectively. Without enough data, automation simply can’t learn.
• You’re testing new audiences or categories: Let automation explore patterns and scale learnings faster than manual testing.
• You’re scaling proven products: If a product already converts well, automation helps expand reach without endless bid adjustments.

Use manual control when:

• Margins are tight: You can’t afford automation chasing reach at the expense of profitability.
• Precision is critical (e.g., branded terms): You want full control; automation may deprioritize high-performing branded queries.
• You need predictable ACoS: Manual bidding offers tighter reins for finance-sensitive campaigns.

Optmyzr Express can further help you make manual control scalable. It uses a 45-day lookback (with a 3-day offset) to surface:

• Non-converting keywords
• Wasteful product targets
• Irrelevant queries to block
• High-performing terms to promote

You stay in charge; nothing changes unless you click ‘Apply’. Or hit ‘Snooze’ if you’re not ready.

Ad format-specific bidding rules

Not all Amazon ad formats play by the same bidding rules, and that matters when structuring your campaigns. Each format offers different controls, objectives, and data visibility, so your bid strategy should adapt accordingly.

Sponsored products

The most versatile format, Sponsored Products supports all three bid types: Dynamic Up & Down, Down Only, and Fixed Bids. It also allows placement modifiers and keyword match types, making it ideal for performance optimization, A/B testing, and scale.

Use it to drive conversions at the ASIN level and to test bidding strategies across different goals.

🔄 Feature update: New-to-Brand (NTB) audience targeting is now available within Sponsored Brands campaigns. You can apply a dedicated bid boost for shoppers who haven’t purchased from your brand in the past 12 months.

With this, you can:

• Prioritize new customer acquisition directly in Sponsored Brands
• Boost bids specifically for NTB audiences to expand reach
• Optimize for growth and market share, not just conversions

NTB bid boosting aligns especially well with dynamic bidding strategies when aiming to scale brand visibility and acquisition during competitive shopping periods.

Sponsored brands

Sponsored Brands campaigns, those headline ads with logos, are designed for brand awareness and top-of-funnel visibility. They support Fixed Bids and Dynamic Bids – Up & Down only.

Since Sponsored Brands often target broader audiences, they benefit from higher bids on high-converting terms but should be monitored closely for ACoS performance.

Sponsored display

Geared for retargeting and audience targeting, Sponsored Display supports Fixed Bids or audience-based bidding, depending on the targeting type (e.g., views, interests, purchases).

While you lose keyword-level control, you gain precision through behavioral signals, making this format great for cross-selling, brand defense, or re-engaging past shoppers.

Knowing what each format allows and what it’s best suited for lets you plan campaigns that actually align with your strategy, not just your spend.

Make every Amazon bid count with Optmyzr

Smart bidding on Amazon isn’t about tweaking numbers all day; it’s about knowing what success looks like for your business. Instead of asking, “How much should I bid?”, ask, “What am I trying to achieve?” Whether that’s increased visibility, improved margins, or saving time, the right strategy begins with clear goals and the right tools.

Optmyzr helps you stay focused on what matters—your goals, not the grunt work.

Curious to see it in action? Try it for free for 14 days and decide if it’s a fit for you.

Amazon Ads and Inventory: When to Hit Pause and Why

One of the most important rules of selling on Amazon is not to run out of stock. Yet even the best-organized brands can’t always ensure this when unexpected factors like port delays or sales spikes occur.

If you’re running ads for such products on Amazon, the most important thing is to turn them off before the inventory runs out. Now, you might be wondering: Doesn’t Amazon automatically stop ads when a product is out of stock? So then, why is this relevant?

Well, there are a few reasons for that:

1. If stock is low but more inventory is on the way, temporarily pausing ads and discounts helps sellers stretch existing supply and buy time until the restock arrives, avoiding last-minute scrambles or disruptions to campaign momentum.
2. If you’re about to run out of stock, turning off ads helps you make more profit on the last few items, since they’ll likely sell without extra push
3. When inventory is low, your products might not be available in every warehouse. That means some customers will see longer delivery times, which can make them less likely to buy, driving up your ACOS.

If you only have about two weeks or less of inventory left, it’s a good idea to pause your ads to avoid selling out too quickly.

How to pause ads in Optmyzr when inventory runs low

Keeping an eye on inventory is essential, especially to avoid wasting spend or pushing products that are about to stock out.

With Optmyzr, you can set up a Rule Engine strategy to automatically pause ads when inventory levels fall below a certain threshold. The process starts with uploading your FBA inventory report (available through Amazon Seller Central) into a spreadsheet. This sheet then acts as the data source for Optmyzr’s Rule Engine strategy.

Here’s how the workflow typically looks like:

1. Download the FBA Inventory Report from Amazon Seller Central
2. Transfer key data (like ASIN and days-of-supply) into a simplified Google Sheet. This sheet will serve as the source for your Optmyzr strategy
3. Create a Rule Engine strategy in Optmyzr that checks this Google Sheet and pauses ads for ASINs that fall below your inventory threshold

Once the data is in place, Optmyzr checks product inventory against your defined thresholds and automatically pauses ads that need attention. This helps you:

• Prevent wasted ad spend on soon-to-be-out-of-stock products
• Maintain better control over campaign performance
• Save time managing ads for ASINs across multiple ad groups

Getting inventory supply levels from Amazon

The most reliable way to track inventory levels for this strategy is through Amazon’s FBA Inventory Report. Since this report isn’t available as a scheduled export, you’ll need to pull it manually or set up a method to retrieve it as needed.

Depending on your tech setup and team bandwidth, there are a couple of ways to do this:

• Using scripts: One of the easiest ways is to have a script that goes into Seller Central and downloads the FBA Inventory Report. You can run this locally or with a virtual machine like LightSail on AWS.
• Using manual method: If you’ll only be running this for one account a week, it might be easier for you to manually pull this report and then follow the same steps to automate the campaign adjustments.

Preparing your inventory data in Google Sheets

Once you’ve downloaded your FBA Inventory Report, the next step is to extract only the columns you need to inform your ad decisions—typically ASIN, available inventory, and days of supply. Copy this filtered data into a new Google Sheet, which will serve as the reference file within Optmyzr.

You can do this step manually or use a script to automate the transfer, depending on how frequently the inventory data changes. Before proceeding, rename the column that contains your product identifier (typically ASIN or SKU) to “Key”—this allows Optmyzr to correctly match inventory status with the corresponding ASINs.

Selecting the correct report columns

Creating the rule in Optmyzr will be easier if you only include relevant columns in the Google Sheet you are going to use to run the rule.

We recommend using the “days-of-supply” column for this automation, as it reflects available inventory based on forecasted demand. Avoid using Total Days of Supply (including open shipments)—while it may look more optimistic, those units aren’t sellable yet, and relying on them can hurt performance.

Amazon’s FBA Inventory Report has similarly named columns—this table highlights the key differences to help you choose the right one for your Optmyzr rule.

Building strategies in Rule Engine for smarter ad control

With Optmyzr’s Rule Engine and a connected spreadsheet, you can create a smart, responsive system that automatically pauses ads for low-stock items and re-enables them when inventory is replenished.

The Rule Engine allows you to match inventory metrics from an external spreadsheet to entities like ads, campaigns, or product groups. This is done using Key Value Pairs, where:

• The Key is a unique identifier (like ASIN or Ad ID)
• The Values are the data points associated with that key (e.g., Days Supply, Clicks, Conversions)

The Rule Engine uses the Key to match ASINs to their corresponding inventory levels and then evaluates the Values (like Days of Supply) to decide whether to pause or re-enable the ads for those ASINs.

Learn more: How Optmyzr customers use the Rule Engine to build powerful automations

Strategy 1: Pause ads when inventory is low

Goal: Avoid spending on products that are nearly out of stock.

Using Key Value Pairs, the rule knows which ad corresponds to which ASIN and applies the pause logic only when the condition is met.

Strategy 2: Reactivate ads for restocked products

Goal: Resume ads for products that are back in stock without delay. Here we apply three mandatory conditions for the ad to be re-enabled.

First, the product must have over 50 days of supply, above the low inventory threshold, to safely resume ads. Next, the ad must currently be paused, so active ads aren’t affected. Finally, the rule applies only to ads in a specific list: those previously paused by Optmyzr due to low inventory.

In the next section, we give you a step-by-step walkthrough of how you can implement this in Optmyzr

Setting up the rules in Optmyzr

Once your inventory data is cleaned and added to a Google Sheet, with ASIN or SKU labeled as “Key” you’re ready to build a rule in Optmyzr that uses this external data to pause ads for low-stock products.

In the Rule Engine, create a rule that looks up your campaign or product data against the Google Sheet. The condition you’ll typically set is to pause ads when “Days of Supply” falls below a defined threshold (e.g., 14 days). This approach gives your team more proactive control over spend and margin, especially during periods of tight supply

You can tailor this rule depending on whether you want campaigns to pause immediately when stock runs low or if you’d prefer a buffer window. Many brands choose to be conservative, pausing ads slightly before stockouts occur, to avoid poor delivery experiences and rising ACOS caused by delayed fulfillment windows.

Setting up the Google Sheet to add inventory data to the Rule Engine

1. In Seller Central, go to Reports > Fulfillment

2. Click Request .csv download and then ‘Download’

3. Open ‘Upload into New Google Sheet’ or ‘Copy and Paste over existing Google Sheet’

4. Click ‘Share’ to update share settings

5. Delete all other columns except for ASIN and quantity available. You should be left with Column A showing ASIN.

6. Change ASIN to Key and quantity available to Days Supply

How to set up the Rule Engine strategy to pause ads when inventory runs low

Once you have the inventory data ready to be linked to Optmyzr, simply follow the steps in this walkthrough to set up the rules to pause and re-enable ads using the Rule Engine.

Wrapping up: Smarter ad decisions when inventory runs low

By anticipating stockouts and adjusting ad visibility before they happen, you can protect margins, preserve campaign efficiency, and avoid disappointing customers. Using data from Amazon’s FBA Inventory Report and combining it with campaign-level controls in Optmyzr gives you a practical way to stay ahead of low-inventory risks, without having to make manual changes every week.

If you’re looking for a smarter, faster way to manage your Amazon ads alongside performance data, give Optmyzr a try. Sign up for our free 14-day trial, so you can see how easy it is to set up rules that work the way your business does.

Author Bio

Robyn has been heralded as one of the country’s foremost leaders on the topic of selling and marketing products on Amazon.com. Robyn has been a guest on shows like Entrepreneur on Fire, Confessions of A Marketer, and regularly speaks at shows all over the world about marketing on Amazon including SMX Munich, Pubcon, Prosper, and more.

Robyn is the co-founder of Marketplace Blueprint, a digital agency that specializes in listing optimization and advertising on Amazon. She has over a decade of experience of selling online on Amazon, eBay, and other eCommerce venues.

This article is a reflection of the author’s experiences and opinions. Optmyzr believes that there are many ways to win in digital advertising, and is committed to presenting a diverse range of ideas and approaches.

8 Common Amazon Ads Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)

Amazon ads can be incredibly powerful, but not always predictable.

Sometimes your strategy is solid, but it’s the overlooked patterns that quietly drain performance: brand terms showing up where they shouldn’t, auto campaigns running on autopilot, or decisions made too quickly on partial data.

This blog lists common mistakes in Amazon ads and how to troubleshoot them, the kind of fixes that actually improve efficiency, visibility, and return, not just check a box.

8 Mistakes Amazon advertisers make and how to fix them

Mistake #1: Mixing match types and goals in one campaign

One of the most common and costly mistakes advertisers make on Amazon is combining different match types and campaign goals in a single campaign or ad group. Think broad match for discovery, exact match for conversions, and phrase match for consideration, all lumped together.

The result? A confused algorithm and inefficient ad spend.

Amazon optimizes at the campaign level. So if your campaign is juggling discovery and brand defense keywords, the algorithm doesn’t know whether to go wide or go deep. It might pour budget into broad terms, which get clicks but rarely convert.

Meanwhile, exact match keywords, which are primed to convert, get sidelined.

To fix this, structure campaigns by match type and intent. Create separate campaigns for exact, phrase, and broad match keywords and align each with a specific goal.

For discovery, use broad match with tight controls. For conversions, use exact match and bid accordingly. This segmentation gives you cleaner data, smarter bids, and far better performance.

Mistake #2: Graduating keywords from auto campaigns too soon

Seeing a few conversions from an auto campaign can feel like a green light to move that keyword into a manual campaign. But acting too soon can backfire. Auto campaigns don’t just convert, they discover.

They surface valuable long-tail variations and let Amazon’s algorithm optimize bids dynamically. Prematurely pulling a keyword disrupts that discovery and may inflate costs in a manual campaign.

To avoid this, follow a deliberate three-step approach:

Step 1: Mirror the keyword.
When a search term shows consistent conversions and a healthy ACoS over time, add it as an exact match in a manual campaign. Do not remove it from the auto campaign yet.

Step 2: Validate performance in parallel.
Let both campaigns run side by side and look for clear, consistent wins in the manual setup.

Step 3: Move only after proof.
Once the manual version outperforms, apply a negative exact match in the auto campaign to avoid bidding overlap. This ensures smooth graduation without sacrificing discovery.

A tool like Optmyzr’s Magic Quadrants is invaluable here. It can help you visually map keywords across performance metrics like conversion rate and cost to help you identify which ones are ready to scale.

Say a coffee brand sees “Ethiopian Yirgacheffe whole bean” convert a few times in auto. Before graduating it, they check the quadrant view: if it lands in “Potentials” or “Stars” (strong conversion rate, sustainable cost), that’s the signal it’s ready to scale.

If it’s in “Laggards,” it needs more refinement before moving.

This visual, data-backed validation ensures you’re not promoting premature performers and sets your Amazon campaigns up for long-term profitability.

Mistake #3: Blending branded and non-branded keywords

One of the most overlooked mistakes in Amazon Ads strategy is combining branded and non-branded keywords in the same campaign. While it might seem efficient, this blending distorts performance data and undermines your ability to scale.

Branded terms, like your product or company name, naturally convert better because users already know you. Non-branded terms are used by shoppers still in the discovery or consideration phase.

When these keywords are lumped together, high-performing brand terms inflate overall metrics, masking the true efficiency (or inefficiency) of your acquisition efforts.

Here’s how to fix it:

• Separate your campaigns: Create dedicated campaigns for brand and non-brand keywords.
• Negate brand terms in your new customer acquisition campaigns to ensure the budget goes toward attracting net-new shoppers.
• Automate the cleanup: Use Optmyzr Express to Add Negative Keywords and block branded queries. Run it regularly to catch emerging brand-related searches and keep your targeting clean.

Mistake #4: Letting auto campaigns run on autopilot

Auto campaigns are powerful, but only when used with purpose. A common mistake advertisers make is treating them as a permanent traffic source rather than what they truly are: a research and discovery tool.

Left unchecked, auto campaigns often pull in loosely related or irrelevant search queries.

Without regular oversight, this leads to wasted spend, inflated ACoS, and bloated search term reports filled with noise instead of insight.

On the flip side, relying too heavily on auto campaigns can stall your keyword strategy by keeping you reactive instead of proactive.

Here’s the fix:

• Use auto campaigns for discovery only: Their strength lies in identifying new, converting search terms you can promote to manual campaigns.
• Clean them regularly: Add low-performing queries as negative keywords to control spend and improve relevance.
• Harvest winners into manual campaigns: Build a high-performing keyword set based on validated search terms uncovered in auto.

Mistake #5: Advertising products that are out of stock

Running ads for products that are nearly or completely out of stock is one of the most expensive (but avoidable) mistakes in Amazon ads.

While Amazon does stop ads when a product is fully unavailable, it often happens too late.

Meanwhile, your budget bleeds into campaigns that can’t convert efficiently, and shoppers may encounter delayed shipping, leading to poor user experiences and higher ACoS.

Even worse, if inventory is running low but hasn’t hit zero yet, your ads may continue to serve aggressively, driving demand you can’t fulfill.

This disrupts campaign momentum and can damage organic ranking if stockouts occur.

With Optmyzr’s Rule Engine and a connected inventory spreadsheet, you can build a responsive system that automatically pauses ads for low-stock ASINs and re-enables them when inventory recovers.

Here’s how it works:

• The Rule Engine matches a unique product identifier (like ASIN or Ad ID) to key inventory metrics like Days of Supply using Key Value Pairs.
• You define the threshold (e.g., < 14 days), and Optmyzr acts in real time, pausing or restarting ads accordingly.

This goes beyond what native tools offer, adding automation and customization that adapts to your goals.

Mistake #6: Relying on ads to make up for weak listings

High-performing Amazon ads don’t work in isolation; they depend on strong, optimized product listings to convert. Even the most finely tuned campaign can fall flat if the landing page experience doesn’t match shopper expectations.

When listings are incomplete, poorly written, or missing visuals, Amazon’s algorithm penalizes them with low relevance scores and poor click-through rates. That means fewer impressions, higher costs, and underwhelming return on ad spend. Ads might drive traffic, but they can’t fix a broken listing.

Here’s how to fix it:

Make listing optimization part of your ad strategy, not an afterthought. Clear, keyword-rich titles, compelling bullet points, and high-quality images all play a direct role in improving ad delivery and conversions.

Here are a few listing optimization tips that directly impact ad performance:

• Lead with value in your titles: Place the most relevant, high-intent keywords at the front and avoid fluff, repetition, or filler terms.
• Use bullet points strategically: Highlight benefits first, then features. Format consistently to improve readability and keyword indexing.
• Invest in your main image: A clean, high-contrast image on a white background is key to driving clicks. Avoid clutter and ensure the product fills ~85% of the frame.
• Add lifestyle and comparison shots: Use gallery images to show real-life use cases and differentiate your product from competitors.
• Leverage A+ Content: Tell your brand story, reduce objections, and reinforce trust with visual modules, feature highlights, and comparison charts.
• Audit regularly: Small listing tweaks can create noticeable shifts in CTR and ROAS. Track changes and their impact on performance over time.
  

👉 For a full walkthrough on what to fix and why it matters, read How to Optimize Your Amazon Listings to Boost Ad Performance.

Mistake #7: Slashing bids to improve ACoS

A high ACoS can be alarming, but slashing bids across the board isn’t the solution.

In fact, lowering bids without context can make things worse. Lower bids often mean your ads show less frequently or in less competitive placements, which hurts CTR. And when fewer (and less qualified) shoppers click, your conversion rate suffers too.

That’s where you spend less per click but sell fewer products, pushing your ACoS even higher at times.

A better approach:

• Refine your targeting: Make sure your ads appear for relevant, high-intent searches. Irrelevant traffic is the real ACoS killer.
• Improve listings: Optimize product images, titles, and bullet points to boost conversion rates from existing traffic.
• Use data-led bid strategies: Don’t lower bids indiscriminately. Optmyzr’s Rule Engine comes with pre-built strategies for Amazon Ads like Change Bids Based on Target ACoS and Set Bids to Reach Target ROAS that can help you automatically adjust based on performance.

Mistake #8: Making decisions based on same-day data

Amazon Ads data doesn’t tell the full story right away, and acting on it too quickly can do more harm than good. Sales attribution on Amazon can take 3 to 5 days to fully settle. Conversions often appear with a delay, especially in categories with longer purchase cycles.

So, when advertisers make bid or campaign changes within hours of launch, they risk disrupting performance based on incomplete or misleading data.

Read more: Amazon Ads reporting delay is killing your conversions. Here’s the fix (lessons from studying 14,991 campaigns)

The better strategy:

• Wait at least 3–5 days before making optimization decisions
• Analyze trends over multi-day windows (7, 14, or 30 days)
• Use stable indicators like ACoS, ROAS, and conversion rate to guide strategy, not real-time snapshots

Fix what’s holding back your Amazon Ads with Optmyzr

The most common Amazon ads mistakes often aren’t dramatic; they’re subtle, recurring issues.

Bidding too soon, ignoring inventory signals, trusting same-day data, these are the habits that quietly drain performance over time.

But they’re fixable with the right structure, automation, and visibility.

Start by tightening campaign structure, reviewing data over time (not just today), and using tools that help catch what manual checks often miss.

Optmyzr’s pre-built strategies and intelligent automations are designed to help advertisers do exactly that!

Want to catch more of the small issues that lead to big wins? Sign up for a fully functional 14-day trial today.

Google Ads Gets You Seen. Amazon Ads Gets You Sold. Here's How To Use Them Together.

Brands selling across multiple channels are adapting to how people actually shop — blending performance with discovery, and tailoring touchpoints around real behavior. A journey might start with a Google search, continue through a YouTube ad, and end with a purchase on Amazon.

But here’s the problem: these campaigns are often run in silos. Separate budgets, separate teams, and disconnected strategies.

This creates friction.

A shopper might click a YouTube ad, read your blog, then buy on Amazon—yet your data shows three disconnected actions. Attribution breaks, messaging misaligns, and worse, you may end up bidding against yourself for the same customer.

This is why advertisers who run both shouldn’t just run them side-by-side. Instead, they should consider a dual platform strategy.

It’s not just about doubling your spend. Rather, it’s about aligning platforms to the right funnel stages, routing traffic based on intent, and retargeting users where they’re most likely to convert.

In this blog, we’ll show you how to leverage a cross-platform ad strategy for your business and turn it into a smart system for better ROI.

Why combine Google and Amazon ads?

As consumers, we rarely move neatly from search to purchase. Instead, we zigzag between discovery and research, backtrack, and switch between tabs like the digital window shoppers we are.

Both Google and Amazon represent two distinct stages in this journey.

🔎Google: Often, where the journey begins, customers type in questions, compare different options, read reviews, and scan prices. It’s the platform for intent-based discovery and top-to-mid funnel engagement. You catch them while they’re curious.

🛒Amazon: Here, the mindset shifts. Shoppers come here with a higher intent to purchase. This is the platform for transactional behavior where searches more often than not translate into purchases.

Mapping the funnel: Google + Amazon

An efficient ad strategy combines both Google and Amazon so that they complement each other. The goal is to align each platform with the stage of the customer journey it best supports.

Top of funnel

This is where discovery happens.

The goal is not to really convert but to spark interest and highlight your USP. A great place for your brand story to shine.

Use YouTube, Display, and broad-match Search ads to build awareness around your brand, especially for category-defining terms.

Mid-funnel

This is the consideration phase where shoppers are evaluating their options.

The objective is to reinforce the interest you’ve earned. That means reminding shoppers why they engaged with your brand in the first place. Serve ads that help customers make informed decisions. It could be through product comparison pages, customer reviews, or even a ‘why choose us’ page.

Retargeting through Google Display campaigns brings them back to your product or educational pages, while your Amazon Storefront acts as a trust-building touchpoint, offering social proof, pricing, and delivery clarity.

Bottom funnel

Here the goal is simple— conversion.

Once the shopper knows what they want, Amazon becomes the closer. Sponsored Product and Sponsored Display ads work well here—capturing high-intent searches like brand or product names and retargeting users who’ve already shown interest.

How to launch a dual-platform funnel

Step 1: Set up your Google ads for broad reach and high-intent targeting

• Top of Funnel (ToF): Use YouTube, Display, and broad-match Search to capture interest through category keywords or competitor terms. This stage is about discovery and brand introduction.
• Mid Funnel (MF): Focus on branded search terms and set up retargeting via Display for users who visited your site but didn’t convert.
• Also consider layering in custom intent and in-market audiences to identify users who are actively researching products in your category.
• Use Customer Match to re-engage CRM audiences by uploading email lists (e.g. newsletter subscribers or past customers).

Step 2: Optimize your Amazon storefront to function like a high-converting landing page

• Design a clean, mobile-optimized layout with clear product sections and benefits-first messaging.
• Highlight USPs, reviews, product comparisons, and FAQs to remove friction.
• Set up Amazon Attribution links to measure how your external Google Ads influence Amazon conversions.
• Build Sponsored Brand campaigns that drive traffic to your Storefront, not just product listings—especially during branded or competitive search phases.

Step 3: Route traffic smartly to get the best out of your ads

• Send top-of-the-funnel Google traffic (e.g. YouTube viewers or broad search clicks) to brand.com for education and lead capture.
• Send middle-of-the-funnel and bottom-of-the-funnel traffic, like branded searches or remarketing audiences, to your Amazon storefront, where they’re highly likely to convert.
• Avoid pushing high-intent users to bare product pages with no context or proof.

Step 4: Stay visible and relevant after shoppers show interest

• Retarget customers who have visited your website but didn’t purchase with ads on the Google Display Network or YouTube to remind them of your product and bring them back to continue where they left off.
• Use Sponsored Display ads on Amazon to retarget people who viewed your product or added it to their cart but didn’t complete the purchase.
• Upload customer segments (like past buyers, newsletter subscribers, or high-LTV customers) into Google Ads using Customer Match for personalized follow-up across Search, YouTube, and Gmail ads.

Pitfalls to avoid

Launching a dual-platform strategy without proper guardrails can be a dangerous gamble and hurt your ROI before you can even catch it. Here are some things to keep in mind:

1. Overlapping audiences

Avoid targeting the same set of users in both brand and Amazon campaigns without segmentation.

For example, say you run a Google Ads campaign targeting “gut health granola” and direct users to brand.com. Simultaneously, you run a YouTube campaign using the same Custom Intent audience and drive that traffic to your Amazon Storefront.

Without exclusions, the same user could be shown both ads, driving up CPMs and CPCs across platforms. Plus, if they convert on Amazon, it’s unclear which campaign deserves credit, and your attribution gets muddled.

2. Poorly designed landing pages

When a user clicks on your ad, especially if it’s for a high-intent search, they’re definitely expecting a page that gives them all the information they need and makes it easy to convert.

A landing page with no clear explanation of benefits, reviews, trust signals, or product details can create doubt and may cause the user to bounce. You’re wasting a very valuable click and hurting your return on ad spend (ROAS).

3. Gaps in internal readiness

You run great ads and manage to attract several high-intent customers. But all of this amounts to nothing if your backend systems aren’t running properly. Even the best ads won’t convert effectively, and worse, you’ll end up creating a poor customer experience.

Measuring what matters across platforms

So you’ve set up a cross-platform ad strategy across the funnel. Now you want to measure how this adds value over time.

Here are a few different things you can do to measure and optimize your ad strategy.

1. Amazon Attribution

This is essentially a free, advertising and analytics measurement solution that gives you insights into how your marketing strategies across non-Amazon channels like search, social, display, video, email, and other campaigns helped customers discover and purchase your products on Amazon.

You can simply add Amazon Attribution tags to your Google ads to understand whether upper- or mid-funnel Google campaigns are assisting conversions that close on Amazon.

2. Google Analytics

Pair Amazon Attribution insights with Google Analytics to map user journeys and track how many touchpoints it takes before a user converts. You can also see whether your brand content plays a role in educating or nurturing a customer before a purchase.

3. Amazon’s New-to-Brand metrics

New-to-brand metrics allow you to measure orders, sales, and detail page views of your products generated from first-time customers of your brand on Amazon. They can help measure customer acquisition and tailor your campaign strategies.

Align your ad strategy to match shopper behavior and not just platforms

Instead of treating Amazon ads and Google ads as two separate platforms, sequence them according to your shopper’s mindset. This allows you to keep up with your customers with the right messaging as they move from discovery to consideration and finally, conversion. It lets you capture high-intent traffic, track them, and optimize better so you aren’t simply spending more but actually driving results from your ad campaigns.

Optmyzr comes with a comprehensive set of tools that can be used to automate your campaigns, segment audiences, and even run-rule based optimizations to keep your funnel efficient across platforms.

Try out Optmyzr’s free 14-day trial and explore how you can scale your campaigns the smart way.

Amazon Ads Reporting Delay Is Killing Your Conversions. Here’s the Fix (Lessons From Studying 14,991 Campaigns)

One of the first things you notice when managing Amazon Ads is that the data doesn’t settle right away. Clicks and costs show up fast, but conversions, sales, and impressions take longer to update. And those are the metrics that drive strategy.

That’s a problem.

Advertisers rely on timely data to make decisions. If you’re managing budgets or evaluating ROAS based on a snapshot that’s still shifting, you could be pausing profitable campaigns or under-crediting what’s actually working.

At Optmyzr, we decided to measure just how delayed Amazon Ads reporting really is. We looked at how much performance data changed over time, how often that change was significant, and what marketers can do to avoid making the wrong call too soon.

Here’s what we found.

What is Data Delay on Amazon ads?

Amazon Ads data delay refers to the lag between when an event (like an ad click or sale) occurs and when it gets fully reported in the Amazon Ads console or API. According to Amazon, it can take up to 14 days for conversion and sales data to settle, while metrics like impressions can also take time to complete.

Why is this important to understand?

Advertisers rely on timely data to:

• Optimize budgets
• Adjust bids
• Evaluate ROAS and profitability

If that data is still in flux, there’s a risk of making decisions based on a faulty snapshot, like turning off a high-performing campaign or under-crediting a successful tactic. For advertisers managing across platforms, Amazon’s delay creates a blind spot that’s easy to overlook but hard to ignore.

What we analyzed in our study

We ran a deep dive analysis using internal platform data from campaigns running on February 10, 2025. We pulled Amazon Ads performance data for that day repeatedly over the next 17 days, assuming the snapshot on February 27 was the most complete.

Our analysis included:

• 302 Amazon Ads accounts
• 14 global marketplaces
• 14,991 campaigns
• 79 unique users

Metrics tracked:

• Impressions
• Clicks
• Cost
• Attributed Conversions (14-day window)
• Attributed Sales (14-day window)

What we learned from the data

The results were eye-opening, especially when you zoom in on the campaigns most affected by Amazon’s reporting delays.

• In the top 5% of campaigns, impression counts changed by at least 36.67% from Day 1 to Day 17. That’s a significant swing in visibility data that could affect everything from pacing to optimization logic.
• For attributed sales, the top 5% of campaigns saw their revenue figures grow by at least 18.75% after the initial report. That’s enough to shift decisions about profitability and campaign continuation.

These aren’t fringe anomalies. These are real, measurable discrepancies that occurred in 1 out of every 20 campaigns in our dataset — a meaningful share for any large-scale advertiser.

Not all metrics are equally delayed

A key insight from the study: not every metric is equally delayed.

• Clicks and Cost data are reported relatively quickly and are much more stable.
• In contrast, Impressions, Conversions, and Sales take longer to finalize and are more susceptible to change.

For advertisers, this distinction matters:

• You can usually trust spend and click data right away.
• But metrics that reflect your business outcomes (like conversions or sales) require more patience.

Here’s a look at the delays for each of the analyzed metrics. Cells highlighted in yellow reflect delays between this day and the final data on day 17. I will explain below how to interpret the charts in more detail.

How should you interpret the “top X%” data?

You’ll notice we’ve included values like “Top 10%,” “Top 5%,” and “Top 1%” in our metrics. Here’s what those numbers mean:

Let’s take top 10% as an example:

• We measured how much each campaign’s data changed between Day 1 and Day 17.
• Then, we ranked all campaigns by that change.
• The Top 10% includes the campaigns with the biggest changes.
• The value we show is the smallest change within that group, so if your campaign is in the worst 10%, you’ll see at least that level of discrepancy.

This method helps quantify how bad things can get in edge cases, even if the average looks stable.

What can advertisers do based on our findings?

1. Be patient with conversion data. Avoid making ROAS decisions in the first 3 days after a campaign runs.
2. Educate clients or teams. Not everyone knows Amazon reporting is this delayed. Set expectations.
3. Align reporting windows. If you’re generating weekly reports, exclude recent days where data hasn’t stabilized.
4. Automate with caution. Don’t train bidding systems or make rules that act on unstable data.
5. Flag volatile campaigns. Watch for accounts or products that fall in the top 10% for delayed metrics.

The bottom line

Amazon Ads offers an enormous opportunity, but if you’re making decisions based on yesterday’s data, you could be misjudging performance by 100% or more.

Smart advertisers know that it’s not just about what the data says, but also when it says it. By understanding how long it takes for Amazon Ads data to settle, you’ll avoid premature decisions and unlock better optimization strategies.

Want to run better Amazon Ads with less manual effort? Try Optmyzr free for 14 days today.

Amazon Buy Box Basics: What It Is and Why It Matters to Your Ads

If you’re running Amazon ads without keeping an eye on the Buy Box, you’re flying blind.

Your campaigns are active. Your budget’s burning. And conversions? They’re going to whoever happens to own the Buy Box at that moment, which might not be you.

It’s not that your ads are broken. It’s that your strategy isn’t synced to the most important piece of the puzzle.

Optmyzr helps fix that. It gives you the automation and visibility you need to connect Buy Box status with ad performance, so you’re only spending when you’ve actually got a shot at the sale.

Let’s dig into what the Buy Box really controls and how to build smarter campaigns around it.

The Buy Box: Amazon’s shortcut to the sale

The Amazon Buy Box is the section on the product page where shoppers can choose to ‘Add to Cart’ or ‘Buy Now’. The box contains information about the price, when the item will be delivered, and the quantity you’re ordering.

What is the significance of the Buy Box?

Multiple sellers often offer the same product on Amazon, but only one can win the Buy Box at a time, which is the most prominent call-to-action on the page. This spot drives the majority of sales.

When you click “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now,” you’re buying from the seller currently holding the Buy Box. Check back later, and a different seller might be in that spot, based on real-time performance and pricing.

Other sellers can still be found under “Other Sellers on Amazon,” but the Buy Box winner gets prime placement, which is crucial for visibility and conversions.

How does Amazon select the Buy Box winner?

Only one seller at a time can “win” the Buy Box because Amazon wants to streamline the buying experience.

Instead of making the shopper compare multiple offers, Amazon automatically selects the seller it deems best based on factors like:

• Price (including shipping)
• Shipping speed and reliability
• Stock availability
• Seller performance metrics (e.g., feedback score, order defect rate)

Why the Buy Box deserves your attention

1. Ads can still show even without the Buy Box

Your ads will run even if you don’t currently occupy the Buy Box position. It can drive traffic, but not conversions.

2. Conversion rates can drop without the Buy Box

Amazon’s Buy Box streamlines the shopping experience for customers. In fact, 83% of all sales go to the seller occupying the Buy Box position.

3. Low Buy Box Win Rates = Higher Ad Costs, Lower Visibility

Amazon’s algorithm considers your Buy Box win rates when determining ad relevance and performance. A low win rate can lower your ad’s quality score since your offer may seem less competitive.

The 5 Buy Box factors that can make or break your ads

Winning the Buy Box is all about strategically balancing different factors so your offering is the most competitive and reliable option for Amazon shoppers.

1. The pricing strategy

Amazon looks at something called the landed price (item price + shipping cost) and checks if it is competitive enough to win or retain the Buy Box. Offering the cheapest pricing doesn’t guarantee you the Buy Box. In fact, if the price drops too low, your listing can be suppressed or the Buy Box may go to another seller.

2. Fulfillment

If you’ve outsourced shipping and logistics to Amazon (called FBA or Fulfillment By Amazon), you’re likely to get some preferential treatment over sellers who handle shipping in-house. They are also eligible to win the Buy Box but unlike FBA sellers, these sellers will also need to rely on other factors like shipping speed, order defect rate, seller ratings, and on-time delivery rates.

3. Inventory

If your inventory on Amazon runs out of stock frequently, Amazon can delist your products even if you offer the lowest price. This is because Amazon prioritizes sellers who can consistently fulfill orders quickly and reliably.

4. Account health

Amazon doesn’t just look at what you sell or how much—your day-to-day seller behavior matters as much. This makes it very important to closely monitor account health metrics like order defect rate, late shipment rate, cancellation rate, and on-time delivery.

When your account metrics stay within Amazon’s performance thresholds, you stay eligible more often, even against sellers with slightly lower prices.

5. Listing quality

Your Amazon product listing is the first thing shoppers see when they’re browsing for something. Poor images, weak titles, and low relevance can impact your conversions and ranking, both of which play a role in higher buy box win rates. Make sure you use richer visuals, detailed product storytelling, and highlight benefits to improve your listing score.

A strong listing creates a positive feedback loop by increasing conversions. This in turn tips the scale in your favor with stronger metrics, more visibility, and subsequently more Buy Box wins.

How to align your ads with the Buy Box

Running Amazon ads without owning the Buy Box means compromising your ad spend, conversions, and CPCs.

Here are a few tips on how you can adopt a smarter ad strategy around the Buy Box.

1. Understand the Buy Box status

Check your Buy Box status at the moment you plan to activate or scale your ads. If you’re not winning it, especially for high-competition or shared listings, you may want to consider delaying your ads or adjusting the ad investment. This ensures you’re only spending when you have a real shot at converting and owning the sale.

2. Monitor the Buy Box daily for active campaigns

When you’re actively advertising your products, it’s important to keep a daily check on your Buy Box status to see whether you’re winning or not.

This makes sure you don’t miss windows where your ads are burning the budget and helps in diagnosing sudden performance drops. More importantly, if you have a record of daily data, you can actually use automation to pause ads or lower bids based on the Buy Box share.

You can check your Buy Box share or percentage on Amazon’s Business Reports.

3. Let ad data guide pricing

Noticed your CPCs suddenly spiking but conversions staying flat? That’s often a sign you’ve lost the Buy Box or your price isn’t competitive anymore.

When that happens, Amazon sees your offer as less relevant, so CPCs go up, and shoppers start buying from someone else.

Keeping an eye on your ad data can help you spot this before it reflects in your Buy Box report.

Use Optmyzr’s Account Alerts to notify you whenever there is a spike in CPC, a decline in ROAS, or a rising ACoS.

Any changes in these metrics may mean you need to reassess your pricing strategy. It may also mean that Amazon sees your offer as less competitive, which can cause your relevance to drop.

4. Run Sponsored Product ads to protect visibility

Say you lose the Buy Box but still want to keep your listing in the game till you win it back to protect organic rankings, traffic, and sales.

Instead of disappearing completely, a good strategy is to run Sponsored Product ads so you still show up in searches and protect your brand presence. Even if conversion is lower, you stay top-of-mind and may still pick up sales from comparison shoppers.

5. Use brand defense strategies

If your competitor wins the Buy Box on your listing, you’re no longer the default seller. In such scenarios, you want to retain shopper attention, reduce sales to low-quality sellers, and protect your brand.

This is where you can run brand defense strategies such as:

• Branded keyword ads: Bid on your own brand name and product keywords to ensure your listing stays at the top of search results
• Sponsored Display ads for retargeting: Remarket to shoppers who viewed your product but didn’t purchase to re-capture high-intent traffic that may have slipped away due to your Buy Box loss.
• Product targeting campaigns: Target your own ASINs so that your version of the listing shows up under “Sponsored Products related to this item.

6. Manage ad performance during inventory transitions

If you’re transitioning from FBM (Fulfilled By Merchant) to FBA or waiting for an FBA restock, your chances of winning the Buy Box decrease temporarily. This is because during this period, your fulfillment method is weaker or delayed.

During such periods, it’s best to scale back on your ads or switch tactics to protect campaign and budget performance. What you can do is:

• Reduce daily budgets or lower bids on SKUs undergoing fulfillment transition temporarily to minimize spend while the Buy Box win rate is unstable.
• Run branded or Sponsored Brand ads to keep visibility up without pressuring sales performance.

How to review Buy Box impact over time

Once your ad strategy is aligned with the Buy Box, the next step is to track performance consistently. It’s always best to establish a proper reporting cadence so you can continuously optimize your ad efficiency and spot issues before they escalate.

Here are a few tips on how you can structure your reporting frequency.

1. Weekly reviews

Buy Box winners can rotate daily, sometimes even hourly, based on different factors. Weekly reviews can help you identify patterns that may be affecting your ad performance.

During weekly reviews, look out for:

• Watch Buy Box shifts on top-spending ASINs: If conversions drop, the Buy Box may be the issue.
• Review SKUs triggering auto-pause or bid cuts: Frequent pauses may indicate underlying problems like price, inventory, or fulfillment gaps.
• Track how Buy Box status impacts key metrics: Finding a clear correlation helps you optimize ad spend

2. Monthly reviews

While weekly checks catch short-term fluctuations, monthly reviews reveal structural trends, like why you’re consistently losing the Buy Box on certain SKUs.

During monthly reviews, keep an eye out for:

• Price changes across your catalog vs. top competitors: Adjust pricing or match competitors where you’re losing share
• Fulfillment mode comparisons (FBM vs FBA impact on Buy Box share): Consider switching high-potential SKUs to FBA if FBM isn’t competitive
• Inventory lags or shipping performance dips: Optimize restocking cycles to maintain consistent eligibility

3. Quarterly reviews

Quarterly reviews help you zoom out and optimize ad spend at the portfolio level.

What to look for:

• Products with high Buy Box % + strong ROAS: These are your most reliable revenue drivers—scale spend confidently where your ads are actually closing the sale.
• Campaigns hurt by low Buy Box control: Reduce or pause investment to protect ROAS and clean up performance data.
• Budget split across stable and listings: Misallocated spend can drag overall efficiency. Shifting budget toward Buy Box-stable ASINs boosts returns and protects visibility.

Smarter Amazon ads start with Buy Box awareness

The Amazon Buy Box is a critical feature that can directly impact a seller’s sales and profitability. But winning the Buy Box depends on a combination of factors. The most important takeaway for sellers is that it’s absolutely essential to make sure that every part of your ad strategy is strategically aligned with your pricing, inventory, fulfillment, and real-time Buy Box status, so you’re only spending when you have the best shot at winning the sale.

Optmyzr offers several advanced capabilities that allow you to automate ad decisions, monitor key metrics, and stay ahead of costly surprises.

Sign up for Optmyzr’s 14-day free trial to see how you can easily turn your Amazon ads into a profit engine.

The 4-Part Amazon Ads Strategy to Drive Real Profit and Scale With Confidence

Amazon advertising can be complex, and success comes down to mastering a few critical elements. It begins with a product listing engineered to convert interest into decisive purchases.

From there, a focused keyword strategy ensures budgets are spent on terms that truly deliver results. A clear campaign structure then provides the control needed to scale efficiently.

Finally, disciplined optimization uncovers opportunities before they slip away.

This guide breaks down the four essential pillars of an Amazon Ads strategy that drives sustainable growth and profitability.

1. Make sure your listing can actually convert before you increase ad spend.

Before increasing ad spend, it’s worth stepping back to ask: Is the listing built to convert?

Ads can drive traffic, but it’s the product page that needs to close the deal. Without a compelling listing, those clicks often lead nowhere.

What to optimize first

These are the essentials to dial in before scaling ad efforts:

• High-quality images: Clear, professional visuals that show the product in use tend to build trust. Lifestyle shots, close-ups, and comparison charts can make a major difference.
• Keyword-rich, readable title: Titles that balance strong keywords with readability are more likely to catch attention and earn clicks.
• Benefit-focused bullet points: Rather than listing specs, top-performing listings highlight how the product solves a problem or adds value to everyday life.
• Trust-building description: This space often helps overcome objections and reinforce why the product stands out. A good description builds confidence and connection.
• A+ Content (for brand-registered sellers): Enhanced content with visuals and storytelling elements helps establish credibility and differentiate the brand.
• 20+ solid reviews: Social proof plays a major role in conversions. Building up review volume through compliant post-purchase strategies often pays off.

Why this matters

When conversion rates improve, Amazon takes notice. Strong listings can earn better ad placements and lower CPCs, creating a healthier feedback loop for growth.

Before scaling spend, a listing audit is often the first (and smartest) move.

2. Start broad with keywords, but refine quickly based on real performance.

Keyword strategy can make or break Amazon campaigns. It’s not about adding more keywords, it’s about focusing on the ones that drive results.

It can be helpful to start broad and then refine. Automatic campaigns can provide insights into how shoppers are searching, and some search terms might be different from expectations.

Once you have some data, get intentional with your targeting.

Keyword strategy tips

• Start broad, refine fast: Starting with 50–100 keywords and evaluating performance can help identify which keywords might be worth continuing and which could be adjusted.
• Promote proven performers: Monitoring keywords that generate sales with a reasonable ACoS (2+ sales at under 30% ACoS) may indicate areas that could warrant further investment.
• Know your terms: Keywords are what advertisers bid on. Search terms are what shoppers type. That distinction is key to optimizing effectively.
• Use match type with purpose: Choose keyword match type based on your goal—broad match types can uncover new opportunities, phrase match types can offer a bit more control, and exact match types can help with targeting specific queries.

Use negatives when needed

Cleaning up traffic is just as important, as not all visits may lead to the desired outcomes. It can be useful to evaluate spend efficiency, especially if certain terms consistently use a significant portion of a product’s price without generating conversions.

This could be a signal to reconsider those terms.

Negative keywords, when applied at the right level, whether campaign or ad group, can help curb unnecessary spend.

Regular audits are a good practice, as keywords that didn’t convert last month may still be affecting the budget, making it worth checking in on performance periodically.

To make this process easier, Optmyzr’s Rule Engine includes a pre-built strategy that flags non-converting search terms and ASINs, so you can quickly add them as negatives and keep your campaigns efficient.

{{< figure src="/forestry/optmyzr-amazon-ads-non-converting-keywords-and-asin-terms.webp" >}}

Similarly, missing out on converting search terms means leaving potential revenue on the table.

That’s where another pre-built strategy, “Add converting search terms as keywords,” helps you capture these valuable opportunities.

{{< figure src="/forestry/optmyzr-amazon-ads-add-new-keywords.webp" >}}

This way, you’re not just spending efficiently, but also driving real profit from terms that convert.

3. Structure your Amazon Ads account like a blueprint for scalable growth.

A messy campaign structure leads to wasted spend and missed opportunities. If you want to scale efficiently, your account needs to be clean, organized, and easy to optimize.

Think of structure as your growth blueprint. It’s what gives you visibility, control, and the ability to scale what’s working

Here’s a simple but effective framework:

1. Start with discovery through Automatic Campaigns.

Automatic campaigns in Amazon Ads are campaigns where Amazon decides which search terms and product pages your ads show up for, based on your product listing content (title, bullets, description, backend keywords, etc.).

These campaigns act as search engines. Use them to uncover real search terms your customers are using, often different from what you expect.

Let Amazon match your products to related queries and ASINs. Watch what gets clicks, what converts, and where your wasted spend is going. Then mine those insights for manual targeting and negatives.

2. Get specific with manual keyword targeting.

Once you’ve identified high-performing search terms, move them to manual campaigns where you can optimize bids, match types, and placements. This gives you full control over your strategy, enabling you to maximize ROI.

For example, let’s say a brand sells wireless smart speakers. After running automatic campaigns, it discovers that terms like “best wireless speaker for home,” “smart speaker with Alexa,” and “portable Bluetooth speaker” are generating solid clicks and conversions.

These high-performing keywords can now be transferred to a manual campaign, where the brand can adjust bids for each term.

3. Outsmart competitors with product targeting.

Product targeting offers a more direct approach than traditional keyword targeting.

While keyword targeting involves bidding on search terms that potential customers might use, product targeting lets you place your ads alongside specific products, categories, brands, or product features.

You can compete directly with other brands by showing your ads on their product pages. This strategy can help draw attention away from their listings and direct it toward yours.

For example, if a brand sells premium coffee makers, they could use product targeting to display ads on product pages for similar coffee makers or within categories like “coffee machines” or “home brewing equipment.”

Moreover, it’s not limited to Amazon’s platform. Sponsored Display ads extend your reach beyond Amazon, appearing on external websites or apps that your potential customers visit.

4. Double down on what works with winner campaigns.

Don’t let your best keywords or targets stay buried in broader campaigns. Once a product or term consistently hits your performance benchmarks, move it into a dedicated campaign.

This gives you tighter budget control, clearer reporting, and the ability to scale spend without interference from underperformers in the same campaign.

Best practices for a manageable and scalable structure

• One campaign, one ad group: Keep campaigns focused. This helps pinpoint what’s working and what’s not, allowing for better control over bidding, budgets, and scaling.
• Shift spend with intent: Regularly evaluate performance and reallocate budget to high-performing campaigns, based on metrics like ACoS, ROAS, or conversions.
• Use clear, consistent naming conventions: Make campaign names simple and descriptive. Include details like targeting type (auto/manual), product type, and performance tier for easy understanding and error reduction.

4. Use automation and alerts to respond faster to performance shifts.

Success on Amazon isn’t a one-time effort, it’s about ongoing analysis and action. Regular optimization ensures that you’re staying ahead of the competition and making the most out of your ad spend.

Track and act on these key metrics:

• ACOS, ROAS, TACoS: Keep a close watch on these key performance indicators to assess how efficiently you’re spending on ads versus the returns you’re getting.

• CTR, conversion rate: These metrics help gauge the effectiveness of your ad copy, targeting, and landing page experience.

• Search term performance: Regularly evaluate which search terms are driving the best results and ensure they’re incorporated into your manual campaigns.

• Sales (ad-attributed + organic): Track both ad-driven and organic sales to understand how your paid efforts are affecting long-term growth.

   

• Impression share: This metric tells you how much visibility your ads are getting compared to the competition. A low impression share might signal a need for higher bids or more targeted campaigns to capture more of the market.

   

What to do & when

• Weekly: Review your campaigns and add negative keywords. This prevents wasted spend on irrelevant or underperforming search terms, ensuring you’re only paying for traffic that’s likely to convert.
• Bi-weekly: Dive into your automatic campaigns to identify new high-performing keywords and search terms. These hidden gems should be moved to manual campaigns for better control and optimization.
• Monthly: Take a step back to assess your overall performance. Reallocate budgets to campaigns that are delivering the best results. Focus on profitability metrics and adjust bids where needed to maintain efficiency.
• Quarterly: Refine your entire strategy by restructuring your campaigns. Use performance data to make informed decisions about targeting, bidding strategies, and creative adjustments. A quarterly review helps ensure that your approach remains aligned with evolving market conditions and consumer behavior.

Take control of your Amazon Ads with Optmyzr.

Amazon Ads success largely depends on four things: listings that convert, keywords that work, campaigns built to scale, and constant optimization that protects your profit.

But managing all these components can quickly become complex and time-consuming.

That’s where Optmyzr makes a difference. Our tools simplify campaign management by uncovering high-impact keywords, organizing account structure for scalability, and automating routine optimizations, freeing you up to focus on strategy and growth.

Ready to take control of your Amazon advertising performance? Start your fully functional 14-day free trial today!

Why Most Amazon PPC Campaigns Fail (And How to Structure Yours Right)

Without the right campaign structure, your Amazon ads are flying blind. It becomes difficult to know what’s working well and how efficiently your budget is being spent. Whether it’s lumping too many keywords together or blending match types, small missteps can snowball into inefficiency.

In this blog, we’ll explore how to structure your campaigns for maximum ROI, common mistakes to avoid, and practical tips to control performance and spend.

Why a proper campaign structure is important to drive ROI

A proper campaign structure is key to profitably scaling your ads in a competitive marketplace. Segmenting your campaigns by product lines, match types, and keyword intent gives you complete visibility into what’s working and what’s not. It’s about setting your campaigns up for long-term success.

Having a good campaign structure also helps you:

• Identify top-performing segments easily and allocate budgets efficiently
• Track the performance of your Amazon ads with clear insights into ACoS, ROAS, and TACoS by group
• Adjust bids, scale winners, or pause underperforming campaigns
• Set smarter based on how likely a keyword or audience is to convert
• Optimize product listings more effectively for targeting and ad relevance, so your ads show up in the right searches and convert better

Common mistakes when structuring Amazon campaigns

• Mixing high/low performers (products or keywords) in one campaign: High performers can eat up the budget and mask low performers, giving limited visibility into what’s actually working.
• Overstuffing ad groups with too many SKUs: Grouping too many SKUs in one ad group can dilute impressions. With limited data per SKU, Amazon’s algorithm may struggle to identify and prioritize top-performing products.
• Blending match types in a single ad group: Each match type behaves differently, and blending them makes it harder to know which search terms are coming from which match type, making it tough to optimize bids or add negatives properly.
• Misusing single keyword campaigns (SKAGs) without reason: Although you get more precise control with SKAGs, overusing them without proper intent simply bloats your account structure and makes it difficult to scale.
• Vague naming: If your campaigns, ad groups, or products are not named correctly, reporting becomes very confusing because you lose track of what each campaign is supposed to do.

How to structure Sponsored Product campaigns

Here are a few things to keep in mind when structuring Sponsored Product campaigns.

1. Naming conventions

• Use consistent, easy-to-understand, and descriptive names. You should be able to easily identify the product, campaign type, and targeting strategy.
• Include product/ASIN, campaign type, match type, objectives, and bid adjustments if needed.
• Use delimiters to separate elements.

Your naming structure should look like:

[Product Name]_[ASIN]_[Campaign Type]_[Targeting Type]_[Objective]_[Bid Adjustment]

2. Match type segmentation

Create separate campaigns for different match types for better performance insights, bidding, and budget allocation.

How to implement match type segmentation for your campaigns:

• Pick your keyword or product category. Let’s take Running Shoes.
• Create three different campaigns for each match type
  • Campaign 1: “Running Shoes – Broad”
  • Campaign 2: “Running Shoes – Phrase”
  • Campaign 3: “Running Shoes – Exact”
• Add the same keyword to each campaign, but use the correct match type in each.
  • Broad match: running shoes
  • Phrase match: “running shoes”
  • Exact match: [running shoes]
• Set different bids as needed. For instance, since exact match type is more targeted, it can get a higher bid.

Why this helps:

• You can easily identify which match type works best.
• You get better budget control.
• No overlap between your own keywords.

3. Keyword grouping

Structure campaigns or ad groups so that similar types of keywords are grouped together. You can segment by:

Brand vs Non-brand:

• Separate your keywords that include your brand name (e.g. nike running shoes) from generic terms (e.g. men’s running shoes) since brand terms usually have higher conversion rates.
• Use negative keywords to clearly separate them. For example, you can add your brand as a negative keyword in non-brand campaigns.

High vs Mid intent:

• High-intent keywords signal strong purchase intent, while mid-intent terms come from shoppers still in the consideration phase.
• Compare high-intent vs mid-intent groups on metrics like spend, CTR, ACoS, and ROAS.
• If high-intent terms perform well, increase bids or budget, and expand with similar keywords.
• If mid-intent terms underperform, add negatives, refine copy, or use ASIN targeting to reach more relevant product pages.

Top keywords vs long-tail

• Top keywords are individual words, phrases, or product categories customers use to search for products.
• Long-tail keywords are specific, detailed, lower-volume terms, e.g., “trail running shoes for flat feet”.
• Top keywords give you reach and data, making it important for long-term growth and visibility. Group them into dedicated campaigns with sufficient daily budgets so your highest-impact terms stay active all day.
• Putting long-tail keywords in a separate campaign helps improve ad relevance and uncover ‘hidden gem’ search terms. Since these keywords are detailed but flexible, they trigger related searches. Reviewing your search term report then reveals specific, high-converting terms with low ACoS you might have otherwise missed.

4. ASIN grouping

• Putting too many SKUs in a single ad group may lead them to compete, and your top performers might not get enough visibility. Plus, it becomes harder to adjust bids based on margins or conversion rates of different SKUs.
• If you want to reduce wasted spend, get more actionable data, and set more accurate bids, it’s better to group your SKUs by:
  • Similar price points or margins
  • Product lifecycle (e.g., launch, mature)
  • Performance tier (e.g., hero products vs. support products)

5. Auto campaigns

Auto campaigns can be used as a keyword discovery tool. They allow Amazon’s algorithm to automatically target search queries that are likely to result in conversions.

• Run auto campaigns for a few weeks to get insights into high-performing, high-intent keywords that Amazon finds relevant for your products.
• Once you have a list of such terms, move the top 20% of terms with high conversion rates into manual campaigns for better bidding and targeting control.
• Don’t forget to add negative keywords to auto campaigns to prevent keyword cannibalization and wasted spend.

Also Read: How Optmyzr Users Automate Amazon PPC

Use portfolios for better control

Think of a portfolio as a folder that contains a specific set of campaigns with a shared objective. It brings order and control to your Amazon ads strategy, especially when campaigns scale. It helps you set shared budgets, create reports by portfolio, and track performance at a higher level.

When using portfolios, you can group campaigns by:

• Product line (e.g., skincare, supplements)
• Funnel stage (e.g., brand awareness vs. conversion)
• Ad type (Sponsored Products, Display, Brands)

How to structure other ad types

Here’s a quick overview of how you can structure other ad types in Amazon.

1. Sponsored Brands

• Use Case: Branded keyword coverage, top-of-search visibility
• Structure Tip: Segment campaigns by keyword themes (e.g., branded vs category), and tailor creative by product group or landing page type (Storefront vs Product Collection).

2. Sponsored Display

• Use Case: Retargeting, competitor conquesting, category targeting
• Structure Tip: Separate campaigns by audience type (views, interests, product targeting), and group ASINs by pricing tier or conversion data.

3. Sponsored TV

• Use Case: High-impact, upper-funnel brand awareness
• Structure Tip: Structure around audience personas or lifestyle segments; creative variations should match each segment’s interests and behaviors.

Bidding strategies for profitability

Using the right bidding strategies is key for profitability when advertising on Amazon.

You can start by setting your initial bids based on keyword intent and competition.

• High-intent keywords are likely to get higher conversions, so it makes sense to set higher bids for them.
• On the other hand, it’s better to be cautious when bidding for upper-funnel or broader terms because they are less likely to result in conversions.

Next, you can choose your bidding strategy based on the level of control you need and your goals.

• Fixed bids give you greater control and may be better for testing or when you have a limited budget.
• Dynamic (up/down) bidding allows Amazon’s algorithm to raise or lower bids based on the likelihood of conversions. It can be efficient when optimized correctly.

That’s where ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales) comes in. It tells you how much you’re spending on ads to generate each dollar of revenue. A lower ACoS means more profitable conversions, while a high ACoS may signal wasted spend. Simply put, it’s not just about whether a keyword converts. It’s about whether it converts efficiently.

To act on this, tools like Optmyzr’s Bid Adjustment Optimization let you automatically increase bids for keywords that are performing below your target ACoS (cost-effective), and decrease bids for those above it (inefficient). This removes the guesswork from bid management and ensures your budget is focused on the terms that actually contribute to profitability.

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Bid optimization tips

• For better ROI, make small, incremental changes to your bids (between 5-10%) to test performance over time
• Monitor key indicators like CTR, CPC, ROAS, and TACoS weekly to see whether your bids are delivering expected results. You can easily set up KPI and budget alerts to get notified these metrics shift—so you can act fast or roll back changes.
• Use search term reports to identify irrelevant keywords or high-converting search queries

Take control of your Amazon ads with better structure and smarter tools.

Implementing a proper campaign structure for your Amazon ads ensures you have clear control over your budgets, bids, and performance.

A key part of this is consistently auditing and refining your campaigns so you can accurately identify what’s working and what needs improvement. Optmyzr’s powerful tools streamline these processes by automating bid adjustments, running in-depth audits, and providing actionable insights.

Sign up for Optmyzr’s free 14-day trial and explore how you can optimize your Amazon PPC campaigns for better ROI.

How Optmyzr Users Automate Amazon PPC: Real Strategies from Real Advertisers

Analyzing, monitoring, optimizing, and then reporting - this sounds like four full-time jobs rolled into one when managing an Amazon Ads account. Multiply that effort across multiple accounts, and it becomes overwhelming fast.

Worse yet, most advertisers find themselves stuck in reactive mode, spotting issues only after wasting valuable dollars or missing optimization opportunities.

That’s where Optmyzr’s Rule Engine for Amazon PPC automation comes in. Our customers are using this powerful tool to automate repetitive tasks across campaigns, search terms, placements, keywords, ASINs, and more — saving time and boosting performance.

What you’ll learn in this blog

• Real strategies advertisers use to improve Amazon Ads performance with less effort
• How to automate keyword, ASIN, audience, and placement bid optimizations using rules
• Ways to reduce wasted spend and scale what works — without giving up control

Note: All thresholds and conditions mentioned in the strategies below are placeholders. They are not recommendations from Optmyzr but serve as starting points that you should customize based on your business goals and campaign performance.

What is the Rule Engine?

Rule Engine is a powerful feature within Optmyzr that lets you build optimization strategies using simple “If this, then that” logic. Think of it as your hands-free PPC assistant that identifies trends, optimizes bids, and flags anomalies so you can focus on strategy.

For example, you could tell it: “If a keyword has more than 20 conversions but sales have dropped in the past 14 days, increase its bid by 5%.” And just like that, it’ll do the work for you — either on a schedule or when you choose to apply it.

You can choose how often the rule runs — daily, weekly, or monthly. And you stay in control: you can preview the changes before they’re made or let the system run them automatically.

Amazon has its own built-in automation tools, but they can feel rigid, limited, and hard to trust. You don’t get much control, and customization is minimal.

With Optmyzr, it’s easier. You can build your own rules, use external data like spreadsheets or CRMs, and make changes across your accounts — all from one place.

You decide what happens and when.

With Rule Engine, you can:

• Get alerts for performance changes
• Build custom reports for Amazon Ads optimization
• Automatically increase or decrease bids
• Add high-performing search terms as keywords
• Pause underperforming ASINs or ads
• Work across scopes like campaign, ad group, placement, product target, and more
• Integrate external data to drive decisions

Growth-driven Amazon PPC automation: Boost what works

1. Report of trending search queries

Scope: Ad Group Search Term

This rule helps you find search terms that are gaining popularity week over week. For example, if a query had 100 impressions last week and now has 200, that’s a trend worth noticing.

You can also layer in performance filters like Orders > X, Ad Sales > Y, and ROAS > 200 to narrow it down to terms that are not only trending but also driving sales.

Why do this: Understanding which search terms are becoming more popular helps you know what your shoppers are searching for right now. You can then optimize your ads, keywords, and even product listings to match what they’re looking for.

2. Increase bids for high-converting keywords

Scope: Target → Keyword

Create a rule that looks for keywords that used to perform really well (say, more than 10 conversions in the last 90 days) but haven’t made many sales recently. Then, the rule increases the bid slightly to give that keyword a better chance to show again.

There’s also a reverse version of this strategy: decrease bids on keywords that have a high ACoS (they’re costing you more than they earn) and haven’t converted in a while.

Why do this: This strategy helps you give a gentle push to good keywords that might be losing visibility, and at the same time, avoid wasting money on poor performers.

3. Increase bids for high-converting audience targets

Scope: Target → Audience

Just like with keywords, you can apply the same logic to audience targeting, especially for Sponsored Display campaigns. If certain audiences are converting well, you can increase your bids to reach them more effectively.

Why do this: This ensures that your best-performing audience segments are getting the attention (and budget) they deserve. You don’t want to miss out on people who are most likely to buy.

4. Add converting ASIN search terms as product targets

Scope: Ad Group Search Term

Some search terms include ASINs, which means someone searched for a specific product. If your ad showed up and led to a conversion, you may want to target that ASIN directly.

Create a rule to find these ASIN search terms with good performance (maybe high ROAS or conversions), and add them as product targets.

Why do this: If a specific ASIN search is already converting, it’s smart to create a direct product targeting ad for it. You’re basically doubling down on what’s already working.

Waste-reducing Amazon PPC strategies: Pause what’s not performing

5. Pause non-converting ASINs

Scopes: Ad Group and ASIN

Let’s say you’ve structured your campaigns so that each ASIN has its own ad group. In that case, you can use the Ad Group scope to create a rule that directly pauses the entire ad group when the ASIN it represents isn’t performing well.

If your campaign structure is broader (where multiple ASINs exist within one ad group), use the ASIN scope to generate a report of individual ASINs that are underperforming. This lets you take action manually or explore restructuring if needed.

Why do this: If a product isn’t converting, there’s no point in continuing to spend on it, especially when budgets are limited. This helps you cut waste and focus on products that are bringing in sales.

6. Find incomplete or paused ads

Scope: Ads

Sometimes ads stop running due to issues like budget caps or Amazon policy review. This rule helps you spot those issues before they cost you days of lost visibility.

Set a condition like: If serving status is “Out of Budget”, “Incomplete”, “Paused”, etc. → Include in Report.

Why do this: You don’t want to miss out on traffic just because of a setup issue. This keeps your ads running smoothly.

Precision targeting: Smarter keyword lists & placement bidding

7. Add keywords based on text matches in search terms

Scope: Ad Group Search Term

Let’s say you want to add keywords that contain your brand name or competitor names. You can write a rule that checks for those words in customer search terms and adds them as keywords.

You can also link a spreadsheet with the list of words you want to match and reference it using “External List Data.”

Why do this: This makes your keyword strategy much more flexible and easy to update, especially if you work across multiple brands or categories.

8. Add high-performing search terms as keywords

Scope: Ad Group Search Term

Use this rule to convert successful search terms (those that brought in sales or had great ROAS) into actual keywords. You can use the pre-built strategy, “Add New Keywords“, to get started.

Why do this: High-performing search terms deserve to be tracked and optimized as exact-match keywords. It gives you more control over bidding and performance.

9. Increase bids for ‘Rest of Search’ placement

Scope: Campaign Placement

Not all ad placements are equal. While top-of-search is often seen as the premium spot, the “Rest of Search” can also bring great results at lower costs. You can set a rule to monitor its performance (in terms of sales, clicks, conversions, etc.) and increase bids if it’s doing well.

Why do this: This helps you make the most of every placement opportunity — even the ones other advertisers often ignore.

Start automating Amazon PPC with Optmyzr

You now have nine practical Amazon PPC automation strategies used by actual advertisers that you can try in your own accounts. From bid and keyword optimization to placement targeting, each strategy is designed to reduce manual effort while keeping your performance in check.

In fact, here’s what one customer, Matthieu Tran-Van, had to say:

“Rule Engine is certainly one of the amazing sections of Optmyzr because it’s really like your dedicated, highly flexible, and scalable optimization hub where you can automate a lot of very valuable optimizations for your clients with infinite customizations.”

And the best part? You don’t need to build them from scratch. You can start with our pre-built templates, like:

• Expensive Search Queries
• Bid to Target ACoS
• Find Campaigns Limited by Budget

Try them out, tweak the conditions, and set them on automation.

If you’re not an Optmyzr customer yet, start a 14-day free trial and test these strategies in your own account. If you need help, our support team is always available to walk you through the setup.

People also ask

1. What is Optmyzr’s Rule Engine, and how does it help with Amazon Ads?

It’s a tool that helps you build custom rules for managing your Amazon Ads, without needing to write any code. You tell it what to look for and what to do when those conditions are met.

2. Will the Rule Engine make changes automatically without me knowing?

No. The Rule Engine will never make changes to your Amazon Ads account without your explicit approval. By default, all strategies show a preview of suggested changes before anything is applied. You can also configure it to only send notifications, even if automated. Automatic changes only happen if and when you turn it on deliberately.

3. How is this better than Amazon’s built-in automation?

Optmyzr offers more control, custom rules, and the ability to use external data sources. Plus, it works across accounts and has built-in reporting and alerting.

4. Do I need to be technical to set this up?

Not at all. If you know what you want to optimize, the tool helps you build the rule logic step-by-step. Pre-built templates are also available to get you started faster.

Amazon Ads Strategy 2025: How to Boost Visibility, Sales & Organic Rankings

Amazon is one of the largest product discovery and shopping platforms globally, with millions of high-intent shoppers searching every day.

For ecommerce sellers and advertisers, this offers real-time access to a vast, ready-to-buy audience. The key advantage? Most shoppers on Amazon are already deep in their purchase journey. Advertising here means reaching the right customers when they’re most likely to convert.

In this blog, we look at why Amazon advertising is a must-have strategy in 2025, how different ad types impact visibility, and the key tactics sellers can use to improve rankings, scale performance, and grow profitably on the world’s biggest ecommerce stage.

Why advertisers cannot ignore Amazon ads in 2025

Research shows that the average conversion rate for Amazon Ads is approximately 9.5 to 10%, significantly outperforming the average ecommerce conversion rate of around 1.33% on non-Amazon platforms.

This high conversion rate is attributed to Amazon’s ability to target users who are deep in the decision-making phase, increasing the likelihood of purchase and making it attractive to sellers.

Aside from this, Amazon’s algorithm is designed to promote:

• Products that are already selling well, and
• Clearly match what customers are looking for

So when you run ads, it directly influences both of these factors, which in turn influence your organic rankings.

Amazon’s unique edge lies in its first-party data. Advertisers get insights into shopping behavior from the data collected directly from customers who use Amazon and its services. You get to target specific customer groups, customize the data for advanced analytics, and even track off-Amazon conversions.

How to get seen: Winning visibility in competitive categories

The average customer probably sees dozens of listings for a single search. This is not surprising since it is common for thousands of brands to sell similar products on Amazon, sometimes even in the same price range.

To stand out, you would need a strong strategy that drives visibility for your products.

But before we dive into this, it is important to understand how different Amazon ad types impact visibility.

What are the different types of Amazon-sponsored ads, and how do they work

1. Sponsored Products

These are targeted ads that appear in search results and product detail pages. They are shown to shoppers actively searching for a product. Sponsored Products can be used to capture high-intent traffic and drive direct conversions.

For example, if a shopper searches “wireless earbuds,” your Sponsored Product ad can show up at the top of search results if you bid on that keyword.

2. Sponsored Brands

Sponsored Brands focus on brand awareness and allow businesses to customize ads by including their brand logo, a custom headline, and multiple products within product detail pages and shopping results.

They are great for increasing awareness across your product line and driving traffic to your Amazon store.

3. Sponsored Display

This is a type of display advertising where you can target specific audiences based on their browsing behavior on Amazon. Ads will be displayed on Amazon as well as on third-party websites and apps for a wider reach. You can reach customers who viewed your products but didn’t purchase, or even shoppers browsing competitor products.

Sponsored Display ads can be used to stay top-of-mind and bring shoppers back to your offerings.

4. Sponsored TV

Sponsored TV is Amazon’s premium video ad format that lets brands appear on streaming content via Amazon Freevee, Fire TV, and other connected TV (CTV) placements. These are non-skippable, full-screen ads that reach audiences watching shows, movies, and live sports.

Sellers can use Sponsored TV for building brand awareness at the top of the funnel, especially for launches or seasonal campaigns.

Key levers to boost visibility and sales on Amazon

1. Understand Amazon’s A9.

The Amazon A9 algorithm is the system that determines which products should rank within search results. Since Amazon’s goal is to sell products, the algorithm will prioritize products with high-performing ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Number).

The A9 algorithm also prioritizes listings based on:

• Keyword relevance: How relevant the keywords used in your listing match a search query
• Sales velocity: How often are your products being searched for, viewed, and purchased
• Conversion rate: How many views or impressions are converting into actual sales

When you understand these ranking signals, you can optimize your listing and advertising strategy to trigger them. For example:

• Identifying high-volume, relevant keywords and incorporating them into your product title, bullet points, description, and backend search terms enhances your Amazon SEO.
• Driving immediate traffic to your listings with high-intent, keyword-targeted ads. This helps generate initial sales, which signals popularity to Amazon’s algorithm.

Optimizing your listings for conversions by working on product images, title, bullet points, description, A+ content, and price, and growing your review count.

2. Study competitor pricing strategy.

Amazon shoppers often view multiple product listings to compare prices before making a purchase. If your pricing does not match your customers’ expectations or what your top competitors are offering, you risk losing clicks and sales.

To improve your pricing strategy:

• Benchmark against top sellers in your category
• Look for patterns in your competitor’s pricing strategy, like bundles, coupons, or other interesting strategies like psychological pricing ($1.99 vs $2.00)
• Adjust pricing strategically to reflect the product’s value relative to others in the same category

3. Use Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display strategically.

Sponsored Product ads are displayed to shoppers who are actively searching for a product, making them great for conversions. But if you’re in a crowded market, it’s very important to build brand recognition and trust.

A stronger strategy may look like this:

• Sponsored Brands include prominently placed ads that can improve brand awareness and engage shoppers
• Sponsored Display keeps your brand top-of-mind by retargeting shoppers who viewed your product or similar ones.

This allows you to cover every stage of the buyer journey, improving visibility and conversions, especially in competitive categories.

4. Maintain stock availability.

One of the most important principles when selling on Amazon is that you don’t run out of stock. However, unexpected spikes in sales or port delays can cause stockouts even for the most well-planned brands.

During such instances, it’s important to pause your ads before your stock runs out.

While Amazon automatically stops ads once a product is out of stock, proactively pausing them helps preserve margin and gives your incoming inventory time to be received and restocked, avoiding wasted ad spend and poor customer experience.

You can set up a strategy on Optmyzr’s Rule Engine to automatically turn off ads when your inventory levels are running low.

Define the threshold for low inventory using your preferred metric, such as days of supply, and link a Google Sheet that lists ASINs below that threshold. Campaigns associated with those ASINs can be paused until inventory recovers.

You can also create a complementary rule to re-enable ads once inventory levels rise above the defined threshold, ensuring your campaigns resume without manual effort.

Watch: Supercharge Your Amazon PPC Campaigns with This Toolkit

Using ads can boost organic growth on Amazon

Amazon’s algorithm, like we discussed before, ranks products based on their sales velocity, conversion rates, and customer experience.

There’s a catch, though. New listings will struggle to rank because they lack reviews, sales, and CTR data.

Without visibility, it would be harder to get the momentum needed to improve rankings.

In scenarios like this, using ads can help you kickstart the performance of your listings and help them rank higher. Here’s how you can use them strategically:

• Use Sponsored Products to show up for top-searched terms. Focus on keywords that drive both visibility and conversions.
• Bidding on high-visibility placements helps you win shopper attention even if your organic rank is low.
• Run Sponsored Product and Display ads on competitor listings to keep your brand top-of-mind for shoppers in the consideration stage.

How to amplify what’s working for you

Once you’ve identified what’s driving results, the next step is to double down on high-performing campaigns and product lines. Here’s how brands can scale smartly:

1. Use Amazon ads to amplify top-performing products.

• Scale Sponsored Products with high sales and strong ROI by increasing budgets.
• Use Sponsored Brands to highlight top performers and boost brand recall. Run Sponsored Display to retarget past viewers and reach in-market audiences with winning SKUs.

2. Cross-sell and upsell with Sponsored Brand and Display ads.

• Use Sponsored Brands to showcase products that go well. E.g., Coffee machine + compatible coffee pods.
• Use Display ads to show add-ons or upgrades to shoppers who have already bought a product.

3. Scale profitable campaigns.

• Use the Search Term Impression Share report to find high-converting terms with low impression share. indicate strong performance but limited visibility, which could be due to low bids or budget.
• Increase the budget or bids for campaigns targeting those terms.

4. Use Amazon Attribution to get the full funnel picture.

• Use Amazon Attribution to measure how external channels impact your Amazon sales.
• Scale the campaigns that drive meaningful traffic, conversions, and ranking boosts.

5. Use dynamic bidding and placement adjustments to scale.

• For campaigns that are performing well but struggle with impressions, consider using Dynamic - Up and Down Bids to capture more high-converting impressions.
• If your campaign performs well at the top of search, apply a bid adjustment (e.g., +10%) to win that placement more often. It’s a precise way to boost performance where it matters most.

Power up your Amazon PPC with data-driven automation.

Running Amazon ads in 2025 is a crucial growth lever for e-commerce businesses. Ads can boost organic rankings, improve visibility, and drive high-intent traffic that converts into sales.

However, running successful campaigns on Amazon means making sure you have the right data on what’s working and what’s not and then using those insights to optimize performance and scale your winning strategies.

With automation tools like Rule Engine, budget optimization, and custom reporting, Optmyzr makes it easy to identify high-performing campaigns, scale them intelligently, and eliminate wasted spend.

Sign up for Optmyzr’s free 14-day trial and explore how you can scale your Amazon PPC campaigns for success.

How to Optimize Your Amazon Listings to Boost Ad Performance

Many advertisers invest significant time and effort into setting up Amazon ads, refining targeting, and monitoring performance metrics. Despite this, conversions can remain frustratingly low.

Often, the missing piece isn’t the ad strategy itself, but the product listings. While it’s easy to focus on ad optimization, the quality of a product listing plays a critical role in turning ad clicks into actual sales.

Elements like titles, images, bullet points, and A+ content might seem like minor details, but they directly influence click-through rates, relevance scores, and ultimately, conversions.

This article explores why listing quality deserves as much attention as advertising strategy and how strengthening it can drive better performance and more sales.

What you’ll learn in this guide:

• The connection between product listing quality and Amazon Ads performance
• How to craft better product titles, bullet points, and descriptions
• Why keyword research matters (and how to do it effectively)
• How to use A+ Content and images to boost conversion rates
• Tips for syncing listing optimization with campaign structure
• Common pitfalls to avoid (and how to fix them)
• Tools that can help speed up and scale your optimization efforts

The connection between listing quality and ad performance

Amazon’s algorithm evaluates both organic and paid placements as part of the same system.

This means the quality of the product listing affects not just organic search rankings, but also ad placement, CPCs, and ROAS.

Amazon uses a Product Listing Quality Score (PLQS) to rate your listing’s clarity, completeness, and relevance. It’s based on two things:

1. How well listings are optimized
2. How often shoppers view them

Better scores correlate to better visibility of paid and organic results.

Source

How listing elements impact different advertising metrics

Main Image → Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Your main image drives clicks. If it’s blurry, cluttered, or doesn’t stand out, shoppers scroll past. That means you’re paying for impressions that don’t convert to visits.

Gallery Images, Bullets, A+ Content → Conversion Rate

Once shoppers land on your page, your gallery, bullet points, and A+ content need to close the sale. Weak visuals or vague info lead to hesitation and lost conversions (even if your ad targeting was perfect).

Keywords → Relevance Scores

Keywords in your title, bullets, and backend fields help Amazon match your product with the right searches. Stuffing keywords won’t help; relevance and intent alignment matter more.

Where bad listings drain your budget

The account might be bidding and targeting efficiently, but poor listings can still burn through ad spend. Here’s where most sellers lose money without realizing it:

• Paying for clicks that bounce: Even well-placed ads can fail if shoppers land on a confusing or underwhelming product page. Each bounce is a paid visit that goes nowhere
• Attracting the wrong audience: When listings lack precision, especially in keyword usage and messaging, you end up drawing clicks from people who were never a good fit
• Missing chances to build trust: If a brand is enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry but isn’t using Enhanced Brand Content (A+ Content), it’s missing out on the opportunity to add rich visuals, comparison charts, and detailed product storytelling to its listings. This extra content helps differentiate the brand, reduces purchase hesitation, and ultimately boosts conversions
• Lower future ad efficiency: Poor engagement metrics (like bounce rate and low conversion) signal to Amazon that listings underperform, which can increase CPCs over time

Start with competitor analysis

Even if your ads are already running, revisiting your competitors’ listings and ad strategies can highlight gaps in your own.

It’s especially useful if you’re seeing high click volume but poor conversions, signs that your competitors may be doing a better job aligning their listings with search intent.

1. Search top keywords on Amazon

Think like your customer. What exact phrases would they type to find your product? This is your opportunity to see who ranks organically and who’s actively paying for ads.

Note the brand names, keywords they used, and the overall presentation of their main images.

For example, a brand launching a 32L carry-on travel backpack would want to search for terms like ‘32L travel backpack’ or ‘carry-on travel backpack’ on Amazon.

Dive into both organic and sponsored listings to gather insights:

• Top organic results: Established brands like Nomatic, Samsonite, or Venture Pal may often be seen leading the way.

• Top ad results: The Sponsored Product spots may feature newer or lesser-known brands trying to secure the top positions.

2. Check “Customers also viewed” & “Compare with similar items”

Scroll down and check the “Customers Also Viewed” and “Compare with Similar Items” sections.

These sections show what else customers are seriously considering — they’re a shortcut to understanding their decision-making.

For the backpack, competitors like Osprey, Thule, or private-label sellers may appear.

Pay attention to highlighted features like expandable compartments, anti-theft zippers, or USB charging ports; these are likely important to the target audience.

3. See who’s bidding on your keywords

Pay attention to the sponsored ads for your keywords. These are the brands actively paying to get in front of your audience.

Are big brands defending their turf, or are new players trying to break in?

Also, observe how frequently brands appear. Daily visibility may mean solid budget backing. In-and-out appearances might suggest testing or limited spend.

4. Analyze their product listings

Now, dig into the nitty-gritty of competitors’ product pages. Start with their titles. Are they packing in high-ranking keywords like “airline-approved,” “water-resistant,” or “weekender”?

Titles are prime real estate. Make sure yours is packed with the right high-intent terms.

Next, check out their bullet points and descriptions. How do they position the benefits of their products? Are they focusing on comfort, durability, or something else?

This gives you a sense of what their audience values. Additionally, see if they are using A+ content for better visibility.

Check the type of visuals they are using as well. Are they using lifestyle shots (someone at an airport, packing for a trip) or sticking to white-background product photos?

Lastly, don’t skip the reviews. They give you a window into customer priorities, praise, and complaints

5. Monitor their ad activity over time

One search isn’t enough. Revisit your top competitors’ listings regularly (e.g., every few days for 2–3 weeks).

Track how frequently their ads show up and how their placements change. This helps you spot trends:

• Are brands investing long-term?
• Are they testing new creatives?
• Is seasonality playing a role?

Tracking this over time will help you get a sense of who’s really investing and who’s just dipping their toes in the water.

6. Study their video ads (if any)

If your competitors are running video ads, take a close look at them.

Video is a huge opportunity to connect with your audience, so pay attention to the style and pacing. Are they showcasing the product’s features, or are they telling a story?

Clear calls-to-action and real-life visuals usually do the heavy lifting. Think about how you could use these elements to position your product in a way that resonates.

7. Estimate their budget and ACoS

You can’t see your competitors’ exact ad spend, but you can make some pretty solid guesses based on how often their ads show up and what keywords they’re bidding on.

Start by checking the price point of their product. If they’re running lots of ads for a $30 item, their ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale) needs to stay fairly low to stay profitable, which might mean they’re optimizing hard or have strong conversion rates.

If a brand keeps appearing for expensive keywords like “carry-on travel backpack” every time you search, chances are they’ve got a healthy budget or they’re laser-focused on dominating that niche.

Over time, tracking how often they show up can give you a decent estimate of who’s really investing in ads (and who might be easier to outbid).

8. Organize your findings in a spreadsheet

All these insights are only helpful if you can keep track of them. Create a simple spreadsheet to compare competitors side-by-side. Here’s what to include:

• Competitor names and ASINs: So you can quickly revisit their listings and track changes over time
• Key products and price points: What are their best-selling or most visible items? How are they priced compared to yours?
• Primary keywords they target: Which search terms consistently trigger their ads or organic placements?
• Unique selling propositions (USPs): What do they emphasize: durability, style, features, eco-friendliness?
• Ad types they use most: Are they relying on Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, or video ads?
• Estimated ad spend: Based on frequency of ads and keyword competition (You won’t get exact numbers, but rough guesses help.)
• Strengths and weaknesses: Where do they shine, and where could you do better? Maybe they have great lifestyle images, but weak bullet points

9. Tips for putting your research into action

Now that you’ve done the research, here’s how to turn it into action:

1. Test before you go all-in: If you spot something clever in a competitor’s ad strategy, don’t blindly copy it. Run a small campaign to see if it actually works for your product and audience.
2. Look for gaps they’re missing: Sometimes the best opportunities are where others aren’t looking. Find keywords that still get searches but don’t have a lot of competition and claim that space.
3. Lean into what makes your product better: Don’t just blend in. If you offer something competitors don’t (better warranty, more durable material, simpler design), make it loud and clear in your ads and listings.
4. Be strategic with your bids: You don’t need to outspend everyone. Just make sure you’re bidding smart on the keywords that matter most for your conversions.
5. Use their weak spots to your advantage: If other listings are vague or missing reviews, make your copy sharp and specific. Highlight trust signals like customer testimonials, guarantees, or certifications.
6. Stay flexible with your budget: If big brands are flooding the space, you may need to invest more to compete or get creative and focus on angles they’re ignoring.

Optimizing titles

Your product title is one of the most important elements Amazon uses to rank and display your listing. It’s also one of the first things shoppers see, so it needs to be both keyword-rich and customer-friendly.

Each category has specific title length limits (typically around 200 characters including spaces, but some are lower). Yet, it’s recommended to keep your title under 80 characters.

Here are some more guidelines to optimize your titles:

• Place your primary and most relevant keywords at the beginning of the title
• Avoid creating keyword fluff by repeating primary keywords or their synonyms
• Use numerals instead of spelling out numbers (e.g., pack of 2)
• Avoid adding subjective commentary like bestseller, customer favorite, hot selling, etc.
• Add information related to size and color variants in the child ASIN (not the product ASIN)

For example, here’s a title that breaks all of these rules:

• It repeats similar phrases like “Food Storage Container,” “Food Keeper,” and “Storage Solution”
• It includes hype words like “Bestselling,” “Hot Selling,” and “Must-Have”
• It spells out the number “Three” instead of using “3”
• It mentions “Clear Color,” which should only appear in the child ASIN
• The primary keyword isn’t placed at the front

A better version that follows all the guidelines would be:

• The keyword is placed at the beginning
• No repetition or unnecessary synonyms
• Numerals are used
• No subjective terms
• Variant info, like color, is left for the child ASIN

How to find the right keywords for your titles

Before you even write your title, you need to know which keywords your customers are actually using and, just as importantly, which ones to avoid.

A good starting point is to:

• Look at top-ranking listings for your main product terms and note the keyword patterns they use
• Use tools like Amazon’s Search Term Report (via Sponsored Products) to see what queries are already bringing traffic
• Explore autocomplete suggestions in the Amazon search bar to see real-time popular phrases
• Pay attention to reviews and competitor A+ content to catch recurring language customers use organically

Using bullet points

Bullet points do more than just list out features; they work in two key ways.

First, they help shoppers quickly see what your product offers, which can lead to more sales.

Second, bullet points give you a natural place to work in relevant keywords. When written well, they improve your visibility without feeling forced.

So they’re not just helpful for people, they’re helpful for algorithms too.

To make the most of your bullet points, follow this structure for high-converting results:

• Keep formatting and length consistent: When your bullets are roughly the same length and follow a consistent format, shoppers are more likely to read through them instead of skipping.
• Use all available bullet points: Amazon gives sellers 5 and vendors 10 bullets. Each bullet is an opportunity to add value, address concerns, or highlight use cases that resonate with different types of buyers.
• Lead with benefits, follow with features: Think like a shopper. Instead of saying, “Made with stainless steel,” say, “Rust-resistant and built to last- made with durable stainless steel.” The benefit captures attention; the feature supports it.
• Avoid keyword repetition: Repeating the same phrases wastes space and doesn’t help with ranking. Instead, spread out your keyword targeting by using related terms and phrases across different bullets.

Image optimization

Your product images aren’t just decorative, they directly impact how many people click on your listing in search results and ads.

The critical role of the main image in ad CTR

The main image is the first thing shoppers see when your product appears in search results or Sponsored Product ads. It’s what gets them to slow down, take notice, and click.

A compelling, high-quality main image can significantly improve your click-through rate (CTR), which in turn feeds into your ad performance and organic rankings.

If your image is unclear, too zoomed out, or doesn’t stand out visually, your listing is more likely to be ignored (even if your product is great).

What makes an effective main image?

If you’re wondering whether your main image is doing its job, ask yourself these questions:

👉Is the background pure white?
Amazon requires a true white background (#FFFFFF) to keep listings clean and consistent. This also helps your product stand out in search results.

👉Does the product fill the frame correctly?
Aim for about 85% of the frame; big enough to show detail, but not so large that it gets cropped or looks awkward. Is your product too small or too zoomed in?

👉Are the colors and contrast accurate?
Good lighting should bring out the product’s true color and texture. Is the product clearly visible, or do shadows and low contrast make it look dull?

👉Is there anything extra in the image?
The main image should be clean; no text, logos, badges, or extra props. Those elements can go in your secondary images, where you have more creative flexibility.

Gallery images best practices

Your main image grabs attention, but gallery images help seal the deal. They give shoppers a deeper look at what your product can do and how it fits into their lives.

Here are some simple tips to make your gallery images work harder👇

• Lifestyle images showing use cases: People want to see how your product fits into their daily life. Instead of just showing the product on its own, show it being used in real situations.

  For example, say someone searches for “waterproof earbuds for swimming.” To resonate deeply with the researcher, here’s an image that will work:

Source

• Infographics for key features: Sometimes, words can’t do the product justice. Infographics are great for highlighting standout features quickly and clearly. You can use them to explain things like durability, functionality, or what makes your product unique.
• Size/dimension references: Size is one of the biggest questions shoppers have. A simple image showing your product next to a common item (like a coffee cup or a piece of furniture) or with clear dimensions helps them understand exactly what they’re buying.
• Before/after demonstrations: If your product promises results, like a cleaning product or a beauty tool, before-and-after shots are incredibly powerful. It’s one of the best ways to prove your product works and build trust with potential buyers.
• Text overlays with consistent branding: Gallery images are a great place to add text overlays, but keep them minimal and consistent. Whether it’s highlighting a special feature or reinforcing your brand, make sure your text style and tone match the rest of your listing.

A+ Content

A+ Content goes beyond the basics to tell your product or brand story in a more engaging, visual way.

High-quality visuals and clean layouts grab attention faster than plain text.

You can proactively address common customer concerns and questions through dedicated modules within your A+ content.

Why A+ content sells

Here’s how A+ Content helps you sell more:

• It grabs attention: Bold visuals and clean design stand out more than plain text and keep shoppers engaged.
• It explains your product better: Highlight key features and help shoppers understand how your product solves a problem or fits into their lives.
• It builds trust: Professional, polished content gives your brand credibility and shoppers the confidence to make a purchase.
• It answers common questions: Use your A+ modules to proactively address common hesitations and reduce drop-off.
• It looks great on mobile: A+ Content is built to work on small screens, too, which is important for shoppers browsing and buying through mobile devices
• It tells your story: Don’t just list features; tell people why your brand exists, what makes you different, and why they should choose you.

What makes A+ content really work?

If you want your A+ Content to truly drive conversions, keep these pointers in mind:

👉Stick to a clean, consistent look. Match your brand’s colors, fonts, and tone. Keep the design simple and easy to follow. You don’t want a cluttered layout getting in the way of your message.

👉Use comparison charts. If you have similar products or different models, a side-by-side chart helps shoppers quickly spot the differences. It makes decisions easier and quicker.

👉Add lifestyle photos. Show your product in action. Whether it’s a kitchen gadget in a real kitchen or a beauty product in a daily routine, these images help people picture themselves using it.

👉Highlight real problems (and how you solve them). Think about what pain points your product solves. Show the “before and after.” Make it obvious how your product makes life easier or better.

👉Include subtle social proof. While you can’t repost customer reviews, you can mention awards, recognition, or even use callouts like “trusted by thousands” (as long as it’s true and within Amazon’s guidelines). It helps reassure new buyers that they’re making a smart choice.

Monitoring and optimization

Listings need consistent oversight to maintain strong performance. Here’s how to build a reliable system for monitoring and improving them:

Track changes and their impact

Document all listing updates, including titles, images, descriptions, keywords, and monitor the effect on performance metrics like impressions, clicks, CTR, and conversions.

Run regular audits

You don’t want to wait until something’s broken to look for issues. Set aside time every couple of weeks to run a full audit of your account.

This will help you catch underperforming campaigns or missed opportunities before they add up.

Optmyzr offers a solid set of Amazon audits you can use to dig deep. These audits cover everything from:

• Campaign performance: Are any of your campaigns running below target ROAS, or not spending their full daily budget?
• Ad groups: Check for ad groups that have too many keywords or not enough, so you can optimize targeting.
• Keywords: Identify expensive keywords that aren’t converting, or low-CTR terms that might need tweaking.
• Products: Get visibility into ASINs that aren’t showing up in campaigns or performing poorly.
• Placements and audiences: See which placements and audience targeting are driving the most engagement and conversions.

Running these audits regularly helps you make sure everything’s working together to drive results.

Stay on top of seasonal shifts

Seasonality can have a huge impact on keyword performance. Things like Black Friday, Prime Day, or back-to-school sales can shift how consumers search for products.

Track keyword trends and be ready to adjust your bidding and targeting strategies accordingly.

Keep an eye on competitors

Competitors are constantly adjusting their strategies, too. Take note of their listing updates, like new images or updated keywords, and see how it impacts their performance.

If they’re gaining traction, maybe it’s time to tweak your listings or adjust your ad strategy to stay competitive.

Better listings power better ads

Optimizing your Amazon ads goes far beyond adjusting bids. More often than not, the real issue is what happens after the click. Weak images, vague bullet points, or unclear value props quietly chip away at your conversions and your budget.

That’s why it pays to keep a close eye on your listings, not just your campaign settings.

Optmyzr helps you spot where things are falling through the cracks, like which products are eating up spend without selling, or which keywords bring in traffic but not results.

Want to see how it can help? Sign up for a fully functional 14-day trial today!

Amazon PPC Audit: A Step-by-Step Guide to Cut Wasted Ad Spend

Wasted ad spend doesn’t just hurt campaign performance, it slows growth.

When ACoS rises and sales stall, scaling becomes harder. Even experienced Amazon advertisers often struggle to trace where the budget is leaking or which campaigns are pulling their weight.

That’s why audits matter. They’re not just a fix — they’re PPC insurance. Regular audits safeguard your budget, protect performance, and catch issues early. It’s part of Optmyzr’s approach to campaign management: keeping your account resilient with layered automation that flags inefficiencies before they snowball.

This guide walks through what to check, how often, and why, so you can reduce waste, align with your TACoS goals, and keep your Amazon ad strategy as efficient as it is scalable.

What wasted spend looks like in Amazon PPC

If your ACoS is climbing and your ROAS is dipping, something’s off. Here’s how wasted spend typically shows up:

• High-traffic keywords are getting clicks, but no orders
• ASINs are eating budget but not converting
• Campaigns are going out of budget mid-month
• Performance has flatlined, even after several tweaks

Often, the problem isn’t what you’re doing — it’s what you’re missing, like overlooked negative keywords or campaign structures that don’t match buyer intent because of poor audience targeting.

Let’s fix that.

Amazon PPC audit framework: a step-by-step guide

Step 1: Monitor key performance metrics regularly

Start by tracking the basics:

• TACoS (Total Advertising Cost of Sales)
• ROAS
• Conversion Rate (CVR)
• Click Share
• Impressions
• Add-to-Cart Rate
• Detail Page Views
• New-to-Brand Metrics
• Brand Halo Sales

It’s not just about watching them — it’s about understanding how these metrics are trending and what they mean for your profitability.

💡 Pro tip: Set up automated alerts to catch changes early. You don’t want to discover a runaway ACoS after you’ve already blown through half your monthly budget.

If you’re looking for a platform to help you with this, Optmyzr’s Alerts Management System is a great place to start. You set the threshold, and the system flags metrics that are off-track.

Step 2: Identify expensive keywords and search queries - and add negatives

Few things bleed budget more quietly than irrelevant traffic.

Pull your Amazon Search Term Report regularly. Flag:

• Search terms with high spend and zero conversions
• Keywords driving tons of clicks but no orders
• Terms loosely related to your product that aren’t converting

Regularly adding negatives based on this data prevents repeat waste — this is where implementing a strong harvesting strategy and search term isolation comes in.

Want to speed this up? Optmyzr generates automated reports for:

• Expensive Search Queries
• Top Traffic-Driving Keywords

The best part? These are pre-built strategies available in Optmyzr’s Rule Engine. You can customize them to match your goals and automate the report delivery with just a few clicks — no manual setup required.

Step 3: Audit non-converting products

Some ASINs just don’t perform well in ads — and that’s okay. But they shouldn’t drain your budget.

Review ASIN performance to identify products that:

• Get clicks but no sales
• Are live in multiple campaigns with little return

Note: This isn’t always a “pause it” situation. Sometimes, it’s a signal to:

• Switch campaign types
• Test different placements
• Modify ad copy and image quality
• Improve product page retail readiness (images, A+ content, reviews, pricing)

You can use Amazon’s Advertised Product reports for this, or audit faster with Optmyzr’s Audit tool, which flags inefficiencies like poor ASIN performance, low-converting placements, and missed opportunities tied to weak retail readiness.

Step 4: Review budget pacing and bid strategy

Budget pacing often gets overlooked, but it’s one of the fastest ways to either waste money or miss growth opportunities.

Ask yourself:

• Are campaigns running out of budget too early in the day or month?
• Are high-performing campaigns getting the funding they deserve?
• Are your bids aligned with your target ACoS or profitability goals?

It’s worth setting alerts to monitor budget burn and checking spend projections mid-month. Even better, build automation safeguards that continuously monitor pacing and flag bid inconsistencies early.

If you manage bids manually, keeping everything aligned can get tedious fast, especially across multiple campaigns. That’s where automated budget pacing and smart bid rules can save time and protect spend.

As Inés Martín, Head of Performance at Línea Gráfica, puts it:

“My favorite aspect of managing Amazon Ads with Optmyzr is how easy it is to manage manual bidding compared to how tedious it is to do it directly on Amazon Ads.

With Optmyzr, in just a glance it’s easy to understand which bids I’m interested in modifying and how, without requiring cumbersome and time-consuming analysis.”

Step 5: Check campaign structure for hidden inefficiencies

Your campaign structure directly affects ad delivery, budget allocation, and ROI.

Watch for:

• Campaigns with zero or low impressions — often due to low Buy Box ownership or suppressed listings
• ASINs grouped too broadly
• Products that are advertised in multiple campaigns
• Missing segmentation by brand, funnel stage, or product type

Structure issues can swing both ways — either you’re overspending on poor matches or starving your top performers. Both cost you.

Beyond that, strong Amazon campaign structures often align with product lifecycle stages (launch vs. scale) or repeat-purchase behavior, ensuring ads are matched to how people actually buy.

Use Amazon’s Campaign Reporting or Ads Console to regularly spot these inconsistencies, especially around suppressed listings or Buy Box loss.

Metrics that reveal wasted spend

Track these Amazon PPC performance metrics closely:

• CTR: Low = poor ad copy or targeting
• Impressions vs Orders: High views, no buys = wasted visibility
• ACoS: Anything over your margin threshold = inefficient
• ASIN-level ROAS: Segment by ASIN to find underperformers
• Orders per Click: A proxy for targeting quality

As a baseline, CTRs below 0.3% often indicate targeting issues, while ROAS under 2x typically signals poor campaign efficiency.

Mistakes advertisers make during manual audits

You’re not alone — we’ve seen these over and over:

1. Overlooking Amazon’s auto-suggestions

These reflect what customers actually type in. Reviewing them can validate your keyword strategy (or reveal what needs to be negated).

2. Reacting too slowly to KPI changes

Catching the issue is one thing. Fixing it quickly is another. Build workflows to take action fast — like adjusting bids on overvalued placements that aren’t converting.

3. Only auditing before client reviews

Audits should be monthly or even weekly. If you’re only doing them before a stakeholder check-in, you’re missing growth opportunities — and probably bleeding budget in the meantime.

4. Over-relying on Amazon’s default recommendations

While helpful, Amazon’s default suggestions often prioritize visibility over profitability. Blindly applying these can lead to inflated ACoS and wasted spend.

How to automate and scale Amazon PPC audits

Running manual audits across multiple accounts? Painful. That’s where audit automation makes a huge difference — and not just in time savings.

Platforms like Optmyzr help automate:

• Budget pacing and KPI anomaly alerts
• Keyword and product performance reports
• Campaign structure insights
• Optimizations like negating irrelevant terms, pausing non-converting keywords, etc.

Watch this quick video to see how Optmyzr helps you audit and optimize during peak seasons.

And here’s what that looks like in practice: Morefire was able to cut 15% of their account management hours per week using Optmyzr, with audit automation playing a key role in that time savings. That’s not just time saved — it’s bandwidth reallocated toward growth-driving tasks.

The ROI of eliminating wasted spend

Cutting waste improves profitability across the board:

• Lower ACoS
• Higher ROAS
• More sales on high-margin SKUs
• Improved organic rankings due to better conversion velocity

Final thoughts: Get audit-ready, gain efficiency

Audits aren’t just a maintenance routine — they’re your PPC insurance. Regularly checking for spend leaks, structural inefficiencies, and underperforming ASINs helps you safeguard your budget and performance. That’s the idea behind automation layering: setting up proactive systems to catch issues early, before they snowball.

Here’s what you should consistently track:

• Rising ACoS or dropping ROAS
• ASINs or search terms with spend but no conversions
• Budget pacing issues or misaligned bids
• Campaigns with poor structure or segmentation

Whether you’re managing one account or a portfolio, structured audits are how you stay competitive and profitable.

And if you’re ready to scale without the manual slog, start your free Optmyzr trial and run a smart, automated Amazon Ads audit — covering 25+ performance and structure checks in minutes.

People Also Ask

1. How do I identify wasted ad spend on Amazon?

Start by reviewing key performance metrics like ACoS, ROAS, CTR, and Orders. Look for keywords, search terms, or ASINs that are spending budget but not driving conversions. Regularly audit your campaigns to catch issues like irrelevant queries, underperforming SKUs, or poor budget pacing. Use tools like the Amazon Search Term Report and Advertised Products Report — or automate the process with audit platforms that flag inefficiencies across keywords, products, and structure.

2. What are the most common causes of poor ROAS in Amazon Ads?

Poor ROAS is often caused by irrelevant keywords, weak negative keyword management, poor product targeting, and underperforming ASINs receiving too much budget. Other common issues include campaigns running out of budget too early, misaligned bids, and weak campaign structure. Regular audits help catch these problems before they impact profitability.

3. What does out-of-budget mean in Amazon Ads?

In Amazon Ads, “out-of-budget” means a campaign has exhausted its daily budget and is no longer eligible to show ads for the rest of the day. When this happens, Amazon may stop ad delivery entirely or significantly throttle impressions for the rest of the day. Either way, you risk missing out on valuable traffic, especially during high-converting hours. Monitoring budget pacing helps you avoid these drops and make sure your best campaigns stay live when it matters most.

Amazon TACoS 101: Reduce Ad Dependency and Sustain Growth

Success in advertising isn’t just about driving immediate sales; it’s about building long-term growth and sustainability. While most advertisers rely on metrics like ROAS and ACoS to measure campaign performance on Amazon, these metrics don’t speak to how your overall sales have grown due to your advertising activities.

You need to look beyond short-term wins and focus on strategies that improve your overall paid and organic business growth.

For Amazon advertisers, TACoS is a more robust metric that can provide you with a more complete picture of your campaign’s performance.

In this article, I’ll walk you through everything you need to know to get started with TACoS and how to manage it for greater product visibility and less reliance on ads.

What is Amazon TACoS?

Amazon TACoS, or Total Advertising Cost of Sale, is a metric that measures ad spend against total sales (both ad-driven and organic). Monitoring TACoS enables you to gauge the efficiency and impact of your Amazon ads on a more macro level, as I’ll discuss in the following sections.

Unlike ACoS (Amazon Advertising Cost of Sales; which only accounts for revenue generated through ad-driven sales), TACoS helps you see how your ad efforts contribute to your total sales growth, including organic sales (which might be influenced by advertising).

Why you should consider organic sales when evaluating ad performance

Organic sales (i.e., sales generated through non-paid sources) increase with greater brand awareness or organic rankings, both of which your ads might influence (either directly or indirectly). When you evaluate ad performance with only ACoS, you overlook the long-term impact ads can have on organic sales—whereas TACoS captures the full picture.

Declining TACoS over time shows that your business is becoming less reliant on ads to drive revenue and more on organic growth.

The difference between TACoS, ACoS, and ROAS

Every metric offers a different perspective on advertising efficiency, and understanding each of their distinct roles and the specific insights they provide helps you know which metric(s) to track.

Here’s a quick overview of the metrics:

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

ROAS, or Return on Ad Spend, measures ad efficiency in terms of revenue generated relative to ad spend.

When to track ROAS: Use ROAS to measure campaign-level profitability, especially in paid search and display advertising. Since ROAS only accounts for ad spend and revenue, it omits the impact on organic sales and thus doesn’t provide a complete picture of how your ads affect total sales.

Advertising Cost of Sale (ACoS)

ACoS, or Advertising Cost of Sale, measures the cost of advertising relative to the revenue generated solely from ad-driven sales. You can use it to assess the immediate efficiency of your ad spend (a lower ACoS is more efficient).

When to track ACoS: Use ACoS to answer the question, “How much did I spend to make this sale through ads?” You can also use it to measure campaign performance over the short term (i.e., when the goal is direct sales through ads).

Total Advertising Cost of Sale (TACoS)

TACoS, or Total Advertising Cost of Sale, includes both ad-driven and organic sales to give a fuller picture of the impact of ads on total revenue. It can indicate how your ads contribute to both immediate sales and brand growth over the long run.

When to track TACoS: TACoS is invaluable for guiding long-term strategy. It helps you track organic growth alongside ad spend, making it a key metric for brand-building campaigns where you want to see a reduction in TACoS over time (as organic sales increase). TACoS that declines over time suggests a healthy balance between ad-driven and organic sales, and signals reduced dependency on paid ads.

Why TACoS is north star metric for Amazon advertisers

While ACoS has been the traditional metric Amazon advertisers use to measure ad spend efficiency, we’ve seen (in the previous sections) that it has a very narrow focus.

You need to track TACoS for a more comprehensive picture of your company’s performance. It is important to note again that the goal of investing in advertising is not just to get more ad-driven sales, but also to build awareness, improve rankings, and ultimately lower your reliance on paid ads—all of which you can track by monitoring TACoS.

While ACoS may remain stable or even increase during certain periods, if your TACoS goes down, it’s a sign that your ads are working as planned, creating more organic interest and sales.

So, a lower TACoS means you’re getting more value out of your ad bucks and becoming less dependent on ads to keep sales steady.

In a way, TACoS is like a long-term health check for your ad strategy. If your TACoS is dropping, it’s telling you that your brand is gaining strength organically, which is what every business wants.

Manage TACoS in Amazon Ads: Best practices

Now that you know when to track TACoS, follow the best practices below to ensure that you’re getting actionable insights from this data:

1. Include all product variations to avoid skewed data
2. Balance between product and brand campaigns
3. Track TACoS by product or product group
4. Set different KPIs for TACoS at various stages of the product’s lifecycle

1. Include all product variations to avoid skewed data.

Make sure you include all variations of your products (i.e., different sizes, colors, flavors, etc.) when tracking TACoS. This helps you get an accurate view of how your whole product line is performing. With all variations included, you can easily spot which products are naturally gaining organic traction and which ones might still need a little extra ad support.

This will prevent you from overspending on ads for products that are doing well on their own, and enable you to allocate budget where it will make a bigger difference.

2. Balance between product and brand campaigns.

Amazon offers different types of ads to help you reach your goals: Sponsored Brand Ads to build brand awareness and Sponsored Product Ads to drive sales of specific products. Knowing when to use each type can make a big difference in managing your TACoS.

Brand campaigns can have a powerful, long-term impact on TACoS. They work by boosting brand awareness, which translates into more organic sales over time, gradually lowering your TACoS. On the other hand, product-specific campaigns tend to generate quicker sales but often rely more on ad spend, which can keep TACoS higher initially.

A smart approach is to balance your ad spend between these objectives:

• Use brand campaigns for steady, long-term TACoS improvement
• Use product campaigns to drive immediate sales when needed

This way, you’re setting yourself up for both immediate results and lasting growth.

3. Track TACoS by product or product group.

While tracking ACoS at the campaign level can give you some insight into ad performance, it doesn’t tell the whole story—especially since each product behaves differently depending on where it is in its lifecycle.

When you track TACoS at the product level, you get a clearer view of which items are thriving from your ad spend in terms of both paid and organic growth. Products that perform well typically have a lower TACoS because they’re gaining strong organic sales, while newer products may have a higher TACoS as they rely more heavily on ads to get noticed.

If you’re only looking at ACoS, high numbers might seem concerning. But TACoS paints a fuller picture by factoring in organic sales generated by your advertising. In the early stages, you might see a higher TACoS, but as the product gains traction and starts pulling in organic sales, TACoS should naturally decrease.

Tracking TACoS at the product level helps you stay focused on both short-term and long-term goals. It allows you to see where ad spend is working to boost organic growth, so you’re not just chasing immediate results but building a more sustainable business.

ACoS may remain stable or increase, but if a product performs well, tracking TACoS will reveal a decline over time as organic sales grow and reliance on ad spend decreases.

4. Set different KPIs for TACoS at various stages of the product’s lifecycle.

Now that you know that TACoS can vary across product groups and lifecycle stages, it’s good practice to also set different expectations for each group or stage:

How to improve TACoS and overall ad strategy

The bottom line is that lower TACoS means less reliance on ad spend to drive product sales. Follow these tactics to position your product listings for organic growth so that you can divert ad budget to where it’ll make the greatest impact:

1. Optimize product listings for organic visibility
2. Focus on long-tail keywords in ads
3. Leverage seasonal and promotional campaigns
4. Use bid adjustments to optimize spend
5. Analyze and pause non-performing ads

1. Optimize product listings for organic visibility.

If a product’s TACoS remains high despite consistent ad spend, the listing may need better content. Improve your product titles and descriptions with relevant, high-traffic keywords to increase organic searchability.

High-quality visuals and Enhanced Brand Content (EBC or A+ content) help improve conversion rates, which can drive organic ranking. When your listings are optimized and appealing, you’ll rely less on ads to maintain visibility, which helps bring down TACoS.

2. Focus on long-tail keywords in ads.

Long-tail keywords are usually less competitive and can yield higher conversion rates than more generic head terms. These keywords help drive initial sales without significant ad spend, increasing organic ranking over time and reducing TACoS.

Keep an eye on which keywords perform well and refine your targeting to make sure your product appears in the right searches. Also, be aware that optimizing product listings for long-tail keywords likely means fewer impressions relative to head terms (but, again, these terms should convert more frequently as well).

3. Leverage seasonal and promotional campaigns

Increase ad spend during high-demand seasons like holidays and festivals to maximize sales and organic ranking. Even if TACoS goes up a bit during these periods, the boost to organic sales afterward can be well worth it.

If you run a promotion, monitor TACoS afterward to see if those extra organic sales persist. If so, your strategy has likely helped build a stronger organic presence.

4. Use bid adjustments to optimize spend

Regularly review and pause or lower bids on keywords that don’t convert as well. Direct more budget to high-conversion keywords that support both ad-driven and organic sales to improve TACoS.

Adjust and increase your bids during high-demand times, like holiday seasons, to capture more conversions when shoppers are most active. This can increase ad-driven conversions and reduce the need for ad visibility throughout the year, helping you improve your TACoS over time.

Products with lower TACoS benefit from high organic sales, so you can gradually reduce ad spend and adjust your bids to focus on cost-effective keywords. This frees up budget to support newer or underperforming products. Allocate more budget here and increase your bids to improve visibility and drive early growth.

5. Analyze and pause non-performing ads

Make it a habit to review your ads at regular intervals, pausing any that aren’t bringing in conversions or have a high ACoS. By reallocating budget to ads that consistently perform well, you not only improve immediate results but also increase the chance of these ads positively impacting organic rankings.

Build a sustainable growth strategy with TACoS

Using TACoS effectively means thinking beyond the immediate results of your ads and recognizing the broader role they play in building sustainable, organic growth. By tracking TACoS, you’re able to see not only how your ads perform but also how they help your products gain traction over time.

If you have your TACoS data, Optmyzr can make all actionable steps, like bid adjustments and keyword optimizations, simpler by enabling bulk changes. You can use the Rule Engine to integrate TACoS data directly into your ad strategy and automate your ad spend optimization based on that data.

When tracked efficiently, TACoS can reveal your business’s growing independence from ad spend. It can be your strategic tool for building a stronger, more self-sustaining brand on Amazon.

5 Optimizations to Boost Amazon PPC Profitability

$15.73 billion – that’s billion with a big ol’ B – is how much Amazon made from PPC advertising through its online marketplace in 2020. With that, it is currently the third-largest ad platform in the US. So if you’re advertising for retail goods, digital content, or some other line of work that sells on Amazon, ignore it at your own financial peril.

Setting Amazon Advertising’s growth aside, there’s another reason you should consider advertising on the platform: transactional search intent. Users searching for a product on Amazon are more likely to be close to a purchase, while searches on engines like Google are more likely to be informational.

Understanding user intent on Amazon is more straightforward than Google or Microsoft; people are there to buy products. There may be customers who go straight to Amazon for product-related queries, and you don’t want to miss out on those potential conversions.

Despite many advertisers relying on Amazon Advertising, resources to help with optimization can be hard to come by. So we’ve put together a list of five optimizations that can power up your Amazon ad campaigns.

1. Optimize Bids for Placements

Optimizing for placements gives you more control over where your ads appear and how much you’re willing to pay for them. Placements for which you can set bids include Top of Search, Rest of Search, and Product Pages.

After setting your base bid on Amazon Advertising, you can improve your products’ visibility by setting bid adjustments for Top of Search and Product Pages. There is no bid adjustment for Rest of Search, so this placement will operate with the base bid you set.

You can view the product placement report for every campaign you run on Amazon. You can see which placements worked best for you, and based on these insights, set the appropriate placement bid multiplier between 0-900% to improve your odds of increasing conversions and improving awareness.

Here’s an example of the placement report you can download from the Reporting Center on the Amazon Ads Console:

Identify which placements worked best for you based on your advertising goals and bid higher for those positions.

You can find the performance-by-placement data by opening a campaign and clicking on the “Placements” tab. You’ll be taken to a page that looks like this, where you can adjust your bids.

2. Increase Budgets for Special Events Using Budget Rules

The newly launched Budget Rules feature allows you to set schedule-based rules. You can increase daily budgets for your campaigns for special events recommended by Amazon (like Prime Day or Black Friday) or for custom periods (like the Christmas holiday season). For recommended events, Amazon also suggests a suitable percentage increase to your daily campaign budgets.

It also allows you to set performance-based rules to increase your Sponsored Product campaign budget based on performance metrics such as ACoS, CTR, and CVR.

The tool helps reduce the manual effort that goes into adjusting your campaign budgets for special events or custom periods. Budget Rules are still relatively new and are being rolled out gradually, so they might not be available to advertisers in all marketplaces at the moment.

3. Use Product Targeting to Show Off Your Product Next to Competitors

Product Targeting lets you refine the placement of your ads. It allows you to identify products similar to yours, and to display your Sponsored Product ads on those ASIN pages and in category search results.

Positive product targeting boosts your visibility by putting your product in line with related items in the marketplace. Negative product targeting can be used in cases where you do not want your product to appear along with other products, ASIN pages, or category search results. It’s like adding negative keywords to your search campaign.

To see a quick way to implement this strategy, check out how to do it in Optmyzr further below.

4. Optimizing your ACoS

As far as Amazon Advertising is concerned, your Advertising Cost of Sales (ACoS) is the measure of your success. It is a measure of campaign effectiveness based on sales generated and amount spent on advertising.

If you’re familiar with Google Ads and the concept of ROAS, ACoS is easy to understand as the inverse of ROAS.

ACOS = Total Ad Spend / Total Sales

ACoS lets you know how much you can spend on your ads and helps you plan your campaign budgets. If you have great ACoS, you don’t want to budget too little and miss out on the exposure required to push the product, or if your ACoS is bad, it can tell you to lower bids so you don’t spend too much and lower your profit margin.

If a product that costs you $75 to make (manufacturing costs, shipping costs, Amazon fees, etc.) is sold at a price of $100, the profit margin is $25 or 25% in this case. This is your profit margin before ad spend and therefore also your breakeven ACoS. If you spend all of the $25 on ads you’re left with no profits, and if you end up spending more than that, then you’re running a loss.

Target ACoS (TACoS) is a portion of ACoS that you would actually spend on advertising. In the example above, if your target profit is $10 or 10% in this case, then you’re left with $15 or 15% to spend on ads. TACoS tells you how much you should be spending on your ads to stay profitable. What you consider a good TACoS depends on your goal: increasing profits or visibility.

Several tools allow you to automate bidding calculations based on TACoS. We even have some prebuilt Rule Engine strategies in Optmyzr if you’re looking for an easy way to get started with this optimization technique.

5. Harvest Keywords

According to a 2019 report, almost 45% of shoppers only scroll through the first two pages of search results while searching for a product on Amazon. Getting visibility on those first few pages requires strong and high-performing campaigns made of the right keywords.

Having keywords that are closely related to search queries is more important on Amazon than it is on Google. Google has evolved beyond keywords to intent and topic and is better at matching keywords with relevant queries. Amazon still lays a lot of emphasis on keywords. They are still a key factor in determining product ranking on the platform.

Another reason you want to spend more time choosing and monitoring keywords on Amazon is that although Amazon also uses close variants for exact match keywords, Google’s linguistic AI is far more developed. Google’s clear definition of a close variant also makes matching query intent to a keyword more accurate. So, you want to be more thorough with picking out relevant keywords and adding negative ones on Amazon.

Keyword Harvesting involves transferring search terms, keywords, or ASIN targets from one ad group or campaign to another. The end goal of harvesting keywords is to identify converting search terms and bid more on those keywords that will improve your performance.

You can harvest keywords manually by looking at your Search Terms Report, which gives you actual customer data. It tells you exactly what customers have been typing in to find your products.

Manually identifying profitable keywords can be tough and time-consuming. By using automated keyword harvesting tools you no longer need to spend time looking for keywords by manually combing through search terms.

Optmyzr Express helps you manage search terms and keywords on Amazon through three optimizations - Add Negative Keywords, Add New Keywords and Pause Non-Converting Keywords.

Optmyzr Solutions For Your Amazon PPC

Optimizing your Amazon campaigns keeps them fresh and relevant, and also gives you a clear picture of their performance over time.

Implementing these optimizations can help you create and maintain a successful Amazon business. And Optmyzr capabilities can be helpful building blocks to get you started.

1. Product Targeting Using Optmyzr Rule Engine

At Optmyzr, we support optimizations and automation based on product targeting using Rule Engine.

2. Bid to Target ACoS

Optmyzr’s prebuilt Rule Engine strategy, ‘Bid to Target ACoS’, allows you to use your target ACoS to set the CPC bid using historical sales data for a keyword.

Using Bid to Target ACoS, you can increase or decrease your bid based on the TACoS you put in.

Retail e-commerce is PPC's new frontier & Why Amazon SHOULD matter to you

I had an illuminating conversation about Amazon Ads and PPC with an industry colleague recently, not long after we announced Optmyzr’s new Amazon Ads functionality. Our discussion shined a spotlight on a potential emerging threat for PPC pros – channel complacency. 

Understandably, a lot of people in our space are deeply rooted in Google and Bing. It makes sense. Agencies have achieved greatness by making it possible for clients to dominate in the highly lucrative paid search engine results. Google and Bing are, without question, the primary search engines – and we are search marketers by trade. By a wide margin, standard Internet searches happen on these two platforms, with Google still the runaway leader – and its SERPs providing highly valuable paid (and organic) information.

Product Search – PPC’s hottest battleground

While Google maintains its overall Internet search dominance, actual product search has seen a quiet revolution in the background. Somewhere between 2015 and 2018, Amazon swiped the top spot for product searches, according to a study done by Jumpshot. 

What? Did we hear that correctly? Amazon is the search king? But they’re eCommerce, not search!

Yes. For product-specific searches, Amazon seems to have hip-checked Google off the mountaintop. At the time of the Jumpshot study, Amazon held 54% of that type of search activity, compared to 46% for Google. Those figures were inverted just three years earlier. In the months since the study, Amazon has invested massively to deepen and further refine its search capabilities. 

Google has fought back, of course, significantly enhancing its pay-for-play product search results, while deepening the experiences with Shopping Ads and Showcase Shopping Ads. Expect the battle to wage intensely for market dominance in product search. 

Why? As we all know from years gauging searcher intent, product-specific search is a strong indicator that someone is stampeding down the funnel toward conversion. After all, a person typically doesn’t search [brand] [product] [size] [color] if they are trying to get general ideas for fashion trends for the upcoming season. Many of those searchers are seeking best price, convenience, and shipping options to purchase NOW. 

So, PPC pros who dismiss Amazon search as not being “search marketing” are likely missing a huge opportunity not considering queries on Amazon as “search.”

Millions upon millions of searches are happening in the Amazon search box each day. Semantics and intent may be different than how many searches happen in the Google box, but make no mistake about it – Amazon is a search platform and there’s gold in them thar’ searches.

It’s been interesting observing reactions after we launched Amazon Ads functionality as part of the Optmyzr PPC Management Suite. PPC rockstars were all over it. They received the news with an almost “about time!” mindset, expanding their capabilities virtually overnight. Visionary PPC pros are looking beyond Google and Bing in their expanding definition of “search.” 

Many other very talented pros in our space, however, are still connecting the dots of how search is morphing and seeing the broader landscape beyond the king (Google) and the queen (Bing) of search. The emergence of Amazon (and Facebook) as actual search platforms creates a big new opportunity for PPC pros looking to own a bigger piece of the overall digital marketing mix. 

And since most agencies get paid based on how much spend they manage, any opportunity to significantly move the needle on spend under management should be seen as a tremendous opportunity, especially when the new platform isn’t all that difficult to manage with the right tools like Optmyzr.

Expanding the PPC universe – Simplified

Here’s the great news: It’s not difficult to expand PPC programs beyond Google and Bing. Again, the intent and behaviors in the various search boxes may be different, but the underlying mechanics are remarkably similar.

Think about it…Search > Algorithms > SERPs. Just as with Google and Bing, the Amazon machine churns out results against searches while allowing retailers and brands alike to buy their way to dominance for the keywords they want.

Optmyzr Rule Engine is the core of our Amazon offering. You can read more in our blog post announcing the Amazon capability, but here it is in a nutshell: Optmyzr makes it really easy for PPC pros to manage paid search across Google, Bing, and Amazon from a single interface. Manage critical aspects of paid search in Amazon, including the ability to set bids for a range or to meet a target ACOS goal. We allow the PPC pro to include negative keywords to reduce poor performing search terms and identify the positive keywords that convert in the Amazon universe. 

Holiday shopping is ramping up as we speak. Hundreds of millions of searches for specific products will happen in the Amazon search box. You really don’t want to miss out on that lucrative search traffic. Your clients REALLY don’t want to miss out on it either!