Most Amazon advertising advice is a pile of tactics with no order and no goal. Sellers try a bit of everything, spend climbs, and profit does not follow.
I have sold on Amazon since 2015 and run ads on accounts spending from a few thousand dollars a month to over a million. The tips below are the ones that actually move profit, in the order that matters.
They cover what to advertise, which ad type fits your goal, how to bid for placement, and how to judge whether any of it is actually working.
TL;DR — the short version
The best Amazon advertising tips start before you spend a dollar: only advertise listings that are ready to convert, match the ad type to your goal, and set a profit target. Then bid for placement, harvest and negate search terms, and test instead of pausing too early. Judge results on profit and TACoS rather than raw sales or a low ACoS.
Advertise Products That Are Ready to Convert
The fastest way to waste ad spend is to advertise a listing that does not convert. Ads bring the click, but the page has to close the sale, so fix the page first.
Amazon’s own best-practice guidance is specific about what a ready listing looks like:
- ●Reviews: advertise products with five or more reviews and a rating of 3.5 stars or higher.
- ●Images: use four or more high-quality, zoomable images at least 1,000 pixels on a side.
- ●Copy: write a clear title around 60 characters and at least three useful bullet points.
- ●Price and stock: price competitively and stay in stock, since out-of-stock products lose the featured offer and ad eligibility.
Amazon also notes that suggested products are 321 times more likely to generate ad-attributed sales when advertised. Start there, and get the Prime badge with Fulfillment by Amazon before you scale spend.
Match the Ad Type to Your Goal
Amazon gives you three main Sponsored ad types, and each one has a job. Picking the wrong one wastes budget on the wrong objective.
Sponsored Products promote a single listing in search results and product pages, and they are where most sellers should start. Sponsored Brands showcase your logo and a range of products for shoppers higher in the funnel. Sponsored Display retargets shoppers who viewed your product but did not buy.
Our guide to Sponsored Products vs Sponsored Brands breaks down when each earns its place. For most catalogs, a strong Sponsored Products foundation comes first, then Brands and Display layer on once the base is profitable.
Sponsored Brands also lets you run video, which tends to earn attention in a crowded results page. Sponsored Display is worth adding to defend your own product pages and win back shoppers who browsed but did not buy. Layer them in deliberately, one goal at a time, so you can read what each is doing.
Set a Profit Target Before You Launch
Running ads without a target is the most common mistake we see. Decide what a profitable sale looks like before you spend, then build toward it.
Work out your break-even ACoS, which is your margin before ad costs, then set a target below it that keeps the profit you want. Every bid and budget decision answers to that number.
Amazon says a low ACoS is not the only measure of success, and that is the right instinct. A profit target keeps you from chasing cheap ads that do not grow the business.
Set the target per product rather than one number for the whole catalog. A high-margin item can carry more ad cost and still profit, while a thin-margin item needs a tighter target to stay in the black.
Bid for Top Placement Where It Converts
Placement is the lever most sellers ignore. The top of search usually converts better than the rest of the page, and Amazon lets you pay a premium to win it.
Start inside Amazon’s suggested-bid range, then add a 20 to 30% top of search placement premium where that spot earns it. Check your placement report first, because on some products the rest of search or product pages convert better and deserve the premium instead.
Move bids in small steps. Amazon reacts poorly to sudden swings, so gradual changes hold performance steady while you learn.
Set your bids against your target ACoS rather than Amazon’s suggested range alone. Suggested bids often run high, and matching them without a target is how accounts drift into overspending on keywords that never clear a profit.
Harvest Search Terms and Cut the Waste
Your search term report shows the exact queries shoppers typed before they clicked, which makes it the best source of both winners and waste.
Every week, move the terms that convert into their own exact-match campaigns where you control the bid. Then add negative keywords for the terms that spend without selling, so the budget flows to what works.
You can add negative targeting in both automatic and manual campaigns, so there is no reason to keep paying for searches that never convert. Negative phrase match usually works better than negative exact, since it blocks every query that contains a junk word rather than one exact string.
Test and Iterate Instead of Turning Ads Off
Sellers often pause campaigns the moment they do not see instant results. That reflex throws away the data that makes optimization possible.
Advertising takes time to gather enough clicks and orders to judge. Give a campaign room to collect data, read it on weekly trends, and adjust bids and keywords rather than killing the campaign. Scale gradually when something works, since doubling a budget overnight can destabilize a profitable campaign.
Treat every change as a test with a clear before and after, and keep what the numbers reward. Change one thing at a time where you can, so you know which move drove the result. Stacking five changes at once tells you the outcome but never the cause, which leaves you guessing on the next round.
Keep an Eye on New Placements
Amazon adds new ad placements and formats regularly, and spend quietly flows into them by default. Sellers who do not watch where their budget lands can pay for placements they never chose.
Isaac’s guidance is to check your placement and campaign settings often, so you know exactly where each dollar is going. New formats can be worth testing, but only with a small, deliberate budget and a close eye on the return.
Staying current here is an edge, because most sellers set a campaign once and never look at the newer options, which leaves easy performance on the table for anyone paying attention.
Measure Success by Profit and TACoS
A low ACoS or a big sales number can both hide a shrinking business. The metric that shows real growth is TACoS (Total Advertising Cost of Sales), which measures ad spend against your total revenue including organic.
When TACoS falls while sales rise, your ads are lifting organic rank and pulling free sales behind them. Judge your advertising on profit and TACoS, and you will make better calls than any single-campaign metric allows. Our guide to a healthy Amazon TACoS covers the target range.
Quick Amazon Advertising Tips
A few fast ones worth applying today:
- ●Name campaigns clearly so you can read performance at a glance, with the ASIN, match type, and goal in the name.
- ●Separate launches into their own campaigns so their aggressive spend does not distort your steady performers.
- ●Re-run your winners monthly, since the top products and keywords shift with season and competition.
- ●Do not bid blind on broad terms, which pull cheap, low-intent clicks that inflate cost.
- ●Check budget pacing, and raise the budget on any profitable campaign that runs dry before the day ends.
- ●Enrich your listings with A+ content if you are brand-registered, since richer detail pages tend to convert the paid traffic you are already buying.
- ●Watch your competitors’ pricing, because a shopper comparing two similar products will click the ad but buy the better deal.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Conclusion
Good Amazon advertising is not a longer list of tactics. The work is a clear order: advertise listings that convert, pick the right ad type, set a profit target, bid for placement, harvest and negate, test patiently, and measure on profit.
Do those in sequence and your spend starts working for the business instead of against it.
If you would rather have a team run your advertising for profit, get a free Amazon PPC audit and we will show you where your budget is leaking.
About the author: Isaac Gross is the founder and CEO of IG PPC, a hands-on Amazon and Walmart PPC agency for 7 to 9 figure brands. An Amazon seller since 2015, he founded IG PPC in 2019, and the firm now manages billions in annual Amazon sales.
