Amazon PPC Insights
Honest takes on what actually works in Amazon advertising.
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PPC Strategy
Bid optimization, automation rules, keyword management, and campaign structure.
The Black Box Problem With AI Amazon PPC (and the Fences I Use) An AI changed my Amazon bids 36 times last month without asking. What it may change on its own, what always waits for me, and what to ask any AI tool. 7 min read 
Reviews and Profit First. Then Ads — and That's Where Your Evenings Go When to start Amazon ads: after reviews and profit are right. Once you do, the search term report becomes the real work. 4 min read 
I Ran My Amazon Search Term Reports Through ChatGPT. It Told Me to Do Foolish Things. I pasted my Amazon search term reports into ChatGPT to optimize PPC. Why raw AI gives confident, wrong advice without profit context, and what works. 4 min read 
Why Amazon PPC Campaign Optimization Requires Real Profit Data ACoS tells you ad efficiency. But it hides whether you're actually making money. Real PPC optimization starts with knowing your true profit per product. 3 min read 
Amazon Negative Keyword Automation Explained Every day you don't negate a bad search term, it keeps spending your budget. Here's how automated negative keyword management works and why it matters. 3 min read 
Rule-Based vs AI Amazon PPC: Why I Use Both on My Own Amazon Account Rule-based vs AI Amazon PPC on my own account: rules for the moves I decide on, AI for the keyword-by-keyword calls, and who presses the button. 3 min read 
The Keyword Research Myth: Why Campaign Harvesting Beats Every Tool Amazon keyword research tools guess what shoppers search. Harvesting found converting long-tail terms on my account I'd never have picked. 3 min read 
Amazon Search Term Audit: Find Wasted Spend in 5 Minutes How to audit your Amazon search term report in 5 minutes. Exact spreadsheet filters, the 3 negative match-types to add first, what most sellers leave behind. 5 min read 
How to Set Up Amazon PPC Automation Rules (Without Losing Control) Five Amazon PPC automation rules to start, then my full 14-rule set with every threshold. In June they proposed 32 changes and I approved 27. Here's why. 8 min read 
Amazon Keyword Harvesting: Auto to Exact Match (3-Step Workflow) Most sellers cannibalize their own ads when harvesting Amazon keywords from auto to exact. The 3-step funnel that avoids it: promote, negate, isolate. 6 min read 
How Much Should You Spend on Amazon PPC? Budget Is an Output, Not an Input How much to spend on Amazon PPC: I set a TACoS ceiling, not a budget, and let profitable campaigns spend. My break-even ACoS runs 44–50%, not 25%. 5 min read 
Free Amazon PPC Audit: How to Review Your Own Campaigns in 30 Minutes Find the leaks and spot the winners with a step-by-step Amazon PPC audit, plus a free waste calculator that flags burned ad spend in 60 seconds. 5 min read 
Amazon PPC Audit Checklist: 12 Numbers Before Touching Your Bids The 12 numbers I pull on my own seller account before touching a single bid. Cost, spend, return, and control — with the bid-correction formula I actually use. 5 min read 
When You Move a Keyword to Exact, Do You Negate It in the Auto Campaign? Harvested a search term into its own exact campaign? Whether to negate it in the auto campaign: two schools of thought, and why I lean toward control. 8 min read 
Which Negative Keywords Actually Save Money (I Run 69 on My Entire Account) Which negative keywords to add on Amazon, and which to never cut. My whole live account has just 69, all exact match, zero phrase. 5 min read 
Why I Separate Amazon Ad Campaigns Into Discovery and Performance My Amazon PPC campaign structure has four roles, and lowering ACoS isn't its job: ACoS sat within two points while conversion ran 11% to 27%. 6 min read 
I Tried to Rank Amazon's Four Auto Targeting Groups. Five Months of Data Made the Ranking Useless. Close match, loose match, substitutes, complements: 90 days said loose match wins, but over five months each group looked like both a kill and a winner. 6 min read 
Amazon PPC for Manufacturers: What's Different When You Make the Product Amazon PPC for manufacturers: lower COGS, longer lead times and the ability to change the product itself set it apart from reseller advice. 5 min read 
Did You Over-Optimize Your Amazon Bids? Why You Can't Tune Your Way to Certainty Changed your Amazon bids a lot and watched sales drop? You probably over-optimized, and a bid ceiling, not the undo button, is what stops runaway spend. 5 min read 
How to Throttle Your Amazon Ads Before a Stockout (and Why Running Dry Costs You Rank) An Amazon stockout costs you the rank you paid to build, not just sales. How I throttle ads by days of supply, with the threshold matched to lead time. 5 min read 
How I Bid for Top of Search Without Raising Every Keyword Top of Search converts 2.5x better than product pages on my account. How to bid up that slot without overpaying for every other placement. 6 min read 
Amazon Ads Not Profitable? Here's What Actually Happened on My Account My US sales dropped 22% in early November and the ads weren't the cause: my best seller lost the Buy Box. What to check before you blame your ads. 3 min read 
Amazon Ads Too Expensive? Here's Where My Ad Money Actually Goes My Sponsored Products clicks cost 31% more in October than in July. What a click is worth, where 30% of my spend went, and what I do about it. 4 min read 
Amazon Product Targeting: How to Harvest Converting ASINs (Not Just Keywords) Amazon product targeting: your auto and category campaigns show which competitor ASINs convert. Harvest them with a promote-negate-isolate funnel. 5 min read 
Reviews and Profit First. Then Ads — and That's Where Your Evenings Go When to start Amazon ads: after reviews and profit are right. Once you do, the search term report becomes the real work. 4 min read I Ran My Amazon Search Term Reports Through ChatGPT. It Told Me to Do Foolish Things. I pasted my Amazon search term reports into ChatGPT to optimize PPC. Why raw AI gives confident, wrong advice without profit context, and what works. 4 min read Why Amazon PPC Campaign Optimization Requires Real Profit Data ACoS tells you ad efficiency. But it hides whether you're actually making money. Real PPC optimization starts with knowing your true profit per product. 3 min read Amazon Negative Keyword Automation Explained Every day you don't negate a bad search term, it keeps spending your budget. Here's how automated negative keyword management works and why it matters. 3 min read Rule-Based vs AI Amazon PPC: Why I Use Both on My Own Amazon Account Rule-based vs AI Amazon PPC on my own account: rules for the moves I decide on, AI for the keyword-by-keyword calls, and who presses the button. 3 min read The Keyword Research Myth: Why Campaign Harvesting Beats Every Tool Amazon keyword research tools guess what shoppers search. Harvesting found converting long-tail terms on my account I'd never have picked. 3 min read Amazon Search Term Audit: Find Wasted Spend in 5 Minutes How to audit your Amazon search term report in 5 minutes. Exact spreadsheet filters, the 3 negative match-types to add first, what most sellers leave behind. 5 min read How to Set Up Amazon PPC Automation Rules (Without Losing Control) Five Amazon PPC automation rules to start, then my full 14-rule set with every threshold. In June they proposed 32 changes and I approved 27. Here's why. 8 min read Amazon Keyword Harvesting: Auto to Exact Match (3-Step Workflow) Most sellers cannibalize their own ads when harvesting Amazon keywords from auto to exact. The 3-step funnel that avoids it: promote, negate, isolate. 6 min read How Much Should You Spend on Amazon PPC? Budget Is an Output, Not an Input How much to spend on Amazon PPC: I set a TACoS ceiling, not a budget, and let profitable campaigns spend. My break-even ACoS runs 44–50%, not 25%. 5 min read Free Amazon PPC Audit: How to Review Your Own Campaigns in 30 Minutes Find the leaks and spot the winners with a step-by-step Amazon PPC audit, plus a free waste calculator that flags burned ad spend in 60 seconds. 5 min read Amazon PPC Audit Checklist: 12 Numbers Before Touching Your Bids The 12 numbers I pull on my own seller account before touching a single bid. Cost, spend, return, and control — with the bid-correction formula I actually use. 5 min read When You Move a Keyword to Exact, Do You Negate It in the Auto Campaign? Harvested a search term into its own exact campaign? Whether to negate it in the auto campaign: two schools of thought, and why I lean toward control. 8 min read Which Negative Keywords Actually Save Money (I Run 69 on My Entire Account) Which negative keywords to add on Amazon, and which to never cut. My whole live account has just 69, all exact match, zero phrase. 5 min read Why I Separate Amazon Ad Campaigns Into Discovery and Performance My Amazon PPC campaign structure has four roles, and lowering ACoS isn't its job: ACoS sat within two points while conversion ran 11% to 27%. 6 min read I Tried to Rank Amazon's Four Auto Targeting Groups. Five Months of Data Made the Ranking Useless. Close match, loose match, substitutes, complements: 90 days said loose match wins, but over five months each group looked like both a kill and a winner. 6 min read Amazon PPC for Manufacturers: What's Different When You Make the Product Amazon PPC for manufacturers: lower COGS, longer lead times and the ability to change the product itself set it apart from reseller advice. 5 min read Did You Over-Optimize Your Amazon Bids? Why You Can't Tune Your Way to Certainty Changed your Amazon bids a lot and watched sales drop? You probably over-optimized, and a bid ceiling, not the undo button, is what stops runaway spend. 5 min read How to Throttle Your Amazon Ads Before a Stockout (and Why Running Dry Costs You Rank) An Amazon stockout costs you the rank you paid to build, not just sales. How I throttle ads by days of supply, with the threshold matched to lead time. 5 min read How I Bid for Top of Search Without Raising Every Keyword Top of Search converts 2.5x better than product pages on my account. How to bid up that slot without overpaying for every other placement. 6 min read Amazon Ads Not Profitable? Here's What Actually Happened on My Account My US sales dropped 22% in early November and the ads weren't the cause: my best seller lost the Buy Box. What to check before you blame your ads. 3 min read Amazon Ads Too Expensive? Here's Where My Ad Money Actually Goes My Sponsored Products clicks cost 31% more in October than in July. What a click is worth, where 30% of my spend went, and what I do about it. 4 min read Amazon Product Targeting: How to Harvest Converting ASINs (Not Just Keywords) Amazon product targeting: your auto and category campaigns show which competitor ASINs convert. Harvest them with a promote-negate-isolate funnel. 5 min read Metrics & KPIs
ACoS, TACoS, profit tracking, and the numbers that actually matter.
Know Your Real Profit on Every Product Before You Spend a Dollar on Ads Calculate real profit per product on Amazon: sale price minus COGS, inbound freight, referral and FBA fees. Do it before you advertise. 4 min read 
Amazon TACoS Tracking Software vs Basic ACoS Tracking My ACoS moved 0.7 points in four months while TACoS fell from 25.4% to 22.8%. Why Amazon TACoS tracking needs a second data source, and how to read it. 3 min read 
TACoS vs ACoS: The KPI That Actually Reflects Your Bottom Line ACoS only measures ad efficiency. TACoS measures business health. Learn why TACoS is the better north-star metric for Amazon sellers. 4 min read 
Amazon PPC Profit Tracking: Why I Read TACoS Product by Product I like TACoS, but most of my ad decisions depend on where each product is in its life. Five months of my own numbers, product by product. 3 min read 
Break-Even ACoS Is Different for Every SKU (Mine Run 27–49%, Not 25%) Break-even ACoS is a per-SKU number, not 25%. The exact formula, my 27–49% spread across nine products, and why break-even is a ceiling, not a target. 5 min read 
What Should TACoS Be on a New Product? Mine Launch Near 20–29% and Settle Under 18% New product TACoS is inherited: with no organic sales, ads buy nearly every order. Across twelve of my products, age separates TACoS almost perfectly. 5 min read 
What Is a Good ACoS on Amazon? (Mine Runs 37% — and That's Fine) A good ACoS on Amazon is below your break-even, justified by TACoS and aligned with your goal, not a benchmark. Mine runs 37%, and here's why that's fine. 5 min read 
Amazon PPC Benchmarks From One Real Account: 80% of Search Terms Never Produced an Order Amazon PPC benchmarks from 4,088 search terms and 120 days on one working account: how much spend goes nowhere and how concentrated sales really are. 7 min read 
Amazon FBA Profit Calculator: Why My Spreadsheet Wasn't Enough I kept my Amazon profit in a spreadsheet, and it was not pleasant. What a calculator gets right, what it can't see, and what moved on my account this year. 3 min read 
Your 25% ACoS Rule Is Lying — In Both Directions Everyone says keep ACoS under 25%. On my wood-finishing catalog, break-even ACoS runs 41-50%, and for a thin-margin commodity, 25% can lose money. 6 min read 
Why Seller Central Looks Profitable While Your Bank Account Doesn't Amazon keeps ad cost and profit on separate screens. The per-unit gap on my own account and what Seller Central's profit estimate leaves out. 5 min read 
Amazon TACoS Tracking Software vs Basic ACoS Tracking My ACoS moved 0.7 points in four months while TACoS fell from 25.4% to 22.8%. Why Amazon TACoS tracking needs a second data source, and how to read it. 3 min read TACoS vs ACoS: The KPI That Actually Reflects Your Bottom Line ACoS only measures ad efficiency. TACoS measures business health. Learn why TACoS is the better north-star metric for Amazon sellers. 4 min read Amazon PPC Profit Tracking: Why I Read TACoS Product by Product I like TACoS, but most of my ad decisions depend on where each product is in its life. Five months of my own numbers, product by product. 3 min read Break-Even ACoS Is Different for Every SKU (Mine Run 27–49%, Not 25%) Break-even ACoS is a per-SKU number, not 25%. The exact formula, my 27–49% spread across nine products, and why break-even is a ceiling, not a target. 5 min read What Should TACoS Be on a New Product? Mine Launch Near 20–29% and Settle Under 18% New product TACoS is inherited: with no organic sales, ads buy nearly every order. Across twelve of my products, age separates TACoS almost perfectly. 5 min read What Is a Good ACoS on Amazon? (Mine Runs 37% — and That's Fine) A good ACoS on Amazon is below your break-even, justified by TACoS and aligned with your goal, not a benchmark. Mine runs 37%, and here's why that's fine. 5 min read Amazon PPC Benchmarks From One Real Account: 80% of Search Terms Never Produced an Order Amazon PPC benchmarks from 4,088 search terms and 120 days on one working account: how much spend goes nowhere and how concentrated sales really are. 7 min read Amazon FBA Profit Calculator: Why My Spreadsheet Wasn't Enough I kept my Amazon profit in a spreadsheet, and it was not pleasant. What a calculator gets right, what it can't see, and what moved on my account this year. 3 min read Your 25% ACoS Rule Is Lying — In Both Directions Everyone says keep ACoS under 25%. On my wood-finishing catalog, break-even ACoS runs 41-50%, and for a thin-margin commodity, 25% can lose money. 6 min read Why Seller Central Looks Profitable While Your Bank Account Doesn't Amazon keeps ad cost and profit on separate screens. The per-unit gap on my own account and what Seller Central's profit estimate leaves out. 5 min read Amazon Advertising
How the Amazon ads platform actually works — reading reports, campaign types, and mechanics.
How to Read Your Amazon Advertising Report (Without Getting Lost) What I read in my own Amazon search term, campaign and targeting reports, with last month's numbers, and what a single row won't tell you. 5 min read 
Amazon Sponsored Products vs Sponsored Brands: Where to Spend First Most guides say Sponsored Products first, Sponsored Brands later. I spend more on SB, at a lower reported ACoS, but you can't read its numbers like SP's. 5 min read 
Amazon Sponsored Products vs Sponsored Brands: Where to Spend First Most guides say Sponsored Products first, Sponsored Brands later. I spend more on SB, at a lower reported ACoS, but you can't read its numbers like SP's. 5 min read Business Strategy
Agencies, pricing models, and when to bring PPC management in-house.
How to Get More Reviews on Amazon (What Actually Works, and What Gets You Suspended) How to get more Amazon reviews: the methods I use on my own brand, automated Request a Review and Vine for launches, and what gets accounts suspended. 5 min read 
How to Automate Amazon Review Requests (I Used to Click Them by Hand) I clicked Amazon's Request a Review button by hand until it got too much. Now it goes out automatically, 10 days after each order ships. How it works. 2 min read 
Is Automating Amazon Review Requests Against Amazon's TOS? I've never had a warning from Amazon about reviews, and I've turned down every review-card and review-selling pitch. Where the line is, from a seller. 2 min read 
Buyer-Seller Messaging vs Request a Review: Which Should You Use? I ask every buyer for a review with Request a Review and message buyers only to fix a problem. You can ask for a review; you can't ask for a good one. 2 min read 
Why Most Amazon PPC Advice Starts in the Wrong Place Most Amazon PPC advice teaches keywords, bids and automation first. The order a healthy business follows: reviews, profit, advertising, then automation. 4 min read 
Where to Start as a Small Amazon Seller: Reviews and Real Profit Before Ads Where to start as a small Amazon seller: build reviews with Vine and Request a Review, learn your real profit per product, then run ads. 5 min read 
How to Get Your First Reviews on a New Amazon Product (Without Breaking the Rules) How to get your first reviews on a new Amazon product: Vine for the launch, Request a Review for the rest, and why paid reviews aren't worth the risk. 4 min read 
When to Fire Your Amazon PPC Agency (I Almost Hired Two Instead) When to fire an Amazon PPC agency: judge its fee against the gap between break-even and real ACoS, not revenue. My gap: 9.6 cents per dollar of ad sales. 6 min read 
Amazon PPC Tool Pricing 2026: Flat Fees vs % of Spend Amazon PPC tool pricing in 2026, side by side: a flat monthly fee vs a percentage of ad spend, the hidden fees, and what each does to your margin. 5 min read 
Flat-Fee Amazon PPC Software (And the Point Where You Should Hire an Agency Instead) Why I pay a flat fee for Amazon PPC software, what a percentage of ad spend really costs as you scale, and the revenue where an agency beats software. 6 min read 
The Real Cost of Amazon PPC Agencies (And When to Go In-House) Two agencies quoted me to run my Amazon PPC: a $2,000/mo base, or a base plus 5% of ad-attributed sales. The math, and when an agency makes sense. 4 min read 
Why I'm Expanding to Amazon Canada — 40 Million People and a Brand to Protect Is Amazon Canada worth it? After finding my products sold there by an unauthorized seller, I'm going north: cheaper clicks and about 40 million people. 5 min read 
How to Automate Amazon Review Requests (I Used to Click Them by Hand) I clicked Amazon's Request a Review button by hand until it got too much. Now it goes out automatically, 10 days after each order ships. How it works. 2 min read Is Automating Amazon Review Requests Against Amazon's TOS? I've never had a warning from Amazon about reviews, and I've turned down every review-card and review-selling pitch. Where the line is, from a seller. 2 min read Buyer-Seller Messaging vs Request a Review: Which Should You Use? I ask every buyer for a review with Request a Review and message buyers only to fix a problem. You can ask for a review; you can't ask for a good one. 2 min read Why Most Amazon PPC Advice Starts in the Wrong Place Most Amazon PPC advice teaches keywords, bids and automation first. The order a healthy business follows: reviews, profit, advertising, then automation. 4 min read Where to Start as a Small Amazon Seller: Reviews and Real Profit Before Ads Where to start as a small Amazon seller: build reviews with Vine and Request a Review, learn your real profit per product, then run ads. 5 min read How to Get Your First Reviews on a New Amazon Product (Without Breaking the Rules) How to get your first reviews on a new Amazon product: Vine for the launch, Request a Review for the rest, and why paid reviews aren't worth the risk. 4 min read When to Fire Your Amazon PPC Agency (I Almost Hired Two Instead) When to fire an Amazon PPC agency: judge its fee against the gap between break-even and real ACoS, not revenue. My gap: 9.6 cents per dollar of ad sales. 6 min read Amazon PPC Tool Pricing 2026: Flat Fees vs % of Spend Amazon PPC tool pricing in 2026, side by side: a flat monthly fee vs a percentage of ad spend, the hidden fees, and what each does to your margin. 5 min read Flat-Fee Amazon PPC Software (And the Point Where You Should Hire an Agency Instead) Why I pay a flat fee for Amazon PPC software, what a percentage of ad spend really costs as you scale, and the revenue where an agency beats software. 6 min read The Real Cost of Amazon PPC Agencies (And When to Go In-House) Two agencies quoted me to run my Amazon PPC: a $2,000/mo base, or a base plus 5% of ad-attributed sales. The math, and when an agency makes sense. 4 min read Why I'm Expanding to Amazon Canada — 40 Million People and a Brand to Protect Is Amazon Canada worth it? After finding my products sold there by an unauthorized seller, I'm going north: cheaper clicks and about 40 million people. 5 min read Industry
The tools and advice sold to Amazon sellers — what they cost, and who pays.
Building a Brand on Amazon: What the Courses Leave Out Amazon's fees take 33% to 48% of the price on my products. What the courses leave out about building a brand on Amazon, and what I'd do instead. 3 min read 
Amazon Product Research: Why Everyone Lands in the Same Niche Product research tools show the same niche to everyone. What the waves of new sellers look like from inside my niche, and what I do while they pass. 4 min read 
Wholesale and Arbitrage on Amazon, From the Brand Owner's Side A seller who bought my gel won the Buy Box on my own Amazon listing. What wholesale and arbitrage do to a brand owner, and what you can control. 4 min read 
Are Amazon Seller Courses Worth It? Why I Never Bought One I've sold my own products on Amazon for years and never bought a course. Where I'd put that money instead, and how I filter the guru advice. 4 min read 
Can Claude or ChatGPT Run Your Amazon Ads? Why We're Still Not Building an MCP A few sellers asked us for a Claude or ChatGPT connector. Why we're not building one, and what a month of AI decisions on our own brand showed. 6 min read 
Should You Pay for an Amazon Ads MCP? Amazon's Own Costs Nothing Extra Amazon runs its own Ads MCP server at no extra fee. What $39–$100-a-month MCP services add, and two checks before giving an AI your ad account. 4 min read 
The Amazon Seller Pays Twice: Once for the Tool, Once for the Advice That Sold It Behind Amazon PPC tool reviews: affiliate payouts up to 125% of a first payment and podcast appearances sold for $249 to $649. The seller funds it all. 10 min read 
Amazon Product Research: Why Everyone Lands in the Same Niche Product research tools show the same niche to everyone. What the waves of new sellers look like from inside my niche, and what I do while they pass. 4 min read Wholesale and Arbitrage on Amazon, From the Brand Owner's Side A seller who bought my gel won the Buy Box on my own Amazon listing. What wholesale and arbitrage do to a brand owner, and what you can control. 4 min read Are Amazon Seller Courses Worth It? Why I Never Bought One I've sold my own products on Amazon for years and never bought a course. Where I'd put that money instead, and how I filter the guru advice. 4 min read Can Claude or ChatGPT Run Your Amazon Ads? Why We're Still Not Building an MCP A few sellers asked us for a Claude or ChatGPT connector. Why we're not building one, and what a month of AI decisions on our own brand showed. 6 min read Should You Pay for an Amazon Ads MCP? Amazon's Own Costs Nothing Extra Amazon runs its own Ads MCP server at no extra fee. What $39–$100-a-month MCP services add, and two checks before giving an AI your ad account. 4 min read The Amazon Seller Pays Twice: Once for the Tool, Once for the Advice That Sold It Behind Amazon PPC tool reviews: affiliate payouts up to 125% of a first payment and podcast appearances sold for $249 to $649. The seller funds it all. 10 min read Founder Story
Why RedHen Labs exists and how it was built.
