What is a good ACoS on Amazon?

It depends on your margin. A good ACoS is one below your break even ACoS, which equals your margin before ad spend. At a 35% margin, anything under 35% is profitable on the first sale, and launch periods may run higher on purpose.

How much should I spend on Amazon PPC per day?

Start with enough to collect clicks across your main keywords, then adjust. A common approach is a daily budget that gives roughly 10 to 20 clicks per campaign, then raise it on campaigns that stay under break even ACoS.

Should I use automatic or manual campaigns?

Use both. Automatic campaigns discover search terms, and manual campaigns let you control bids on the terms that convert. Review the search term report weekly and move winners from automatic into manual exact match.

How long does Amazon PPC take to work?

You can see clicks within hours, but meaningful data takes two to four weeks. Judge a campaign on cost of sale and orders over that period rather than on the first few days.

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Amazon PPC Management: How It Works, What to Track and What It Costs

Amazon PPC is the fastest way to get a new listing in front of buyers, and one of the easiest ways to burn money without noticing. This guide explains how the system works, which numbers matter and what good management looks like.

By M. Saleem Khan 3 November 2026 6 min read

How Amazon PPC works

Amazon PPC means you bid for your product to appear in search results and on competing product pages, and you pay only when a shopper clicks. The ads appear in the same results as organic listings, labelled "Sponsored". Because most Amazon purchases begin with a search, ranking in those results is worth a lot, and a new listing with no reviews or sales history has almost no organic visibility. Ads buy that visibility while the listing builds its track record.

Amazon runs this as an auction. Your bid, the relevance of your listing and how well it converts decide where you appear. A listing that converts well can win placements at a lower bid than a weaker competitor, which is why fixing the listing often does more for ads than raising bids.

The three ad types

Sponsored Products. Single product ads in search results and on product pages. They produce most of the sales for most sellers and are where every account should start
Sponsored Brands. Banner style ads with your logo and several products, shown above search results. They need a registered brand and suit sellers with a range
Sponsored Display. Ads that follow shoppers around Amazon and, in some cases, off it. They are mainly used for retargeting and for defending your own product pages

New accounts should ignore the other two until Sponsored Products is profitable. Spreading a small budget across three formats weakens all of them.

Know your break even ACoS before you bid

ACoS is advertising cost of sale: ad spend divided by ad sales. If you spend $20 and the ads produce $100 in sales, ACoS is 20%. The number that matters is your break even ACoS, which equals your margin before ad spend. If you keep 35% of the price after Amazon fees, product cost and shipping, then any ACoS above 35% loses money on the first sale.

This is the same idea as break even ROAS, just expressed the other way up. ACoS is the inverse of ROAS, so a 35% ACoS is a ROAS of about 2.86. Our ROAS calculator works out both from your own prices.

A launch period is the exception. Many sellers deliberately run above break even for a few weeks to collect sales and reviews, then bring ACoS down. That is a legitimate strategy only if you have a limit on how much you will spend and a date by which you expect to be profitable.

Also watch TACoS, total advertising cost of sale. It divides ad spend by all sales, organic included. A falling TACoS while sales grow means ads are building organic rank, which is the real goal.

A simple campaign structure for a new listing

You do not need dozens of campaigns. A workable structure:

One automatic campaign. Amazon chooses the search terms. Its job is discovery: it shows you which queries produce sales
One manual campaign with exact match for terms you already know convert, with higher bids
One manual campaign with phrase and broad match to test related terms at lower bids
Negative keywords added to every campaign, so irrelevant searches stop costing money

Each week, open the search term report. Move terms that produced orders into the exact match campaign. Add terms that produced many clicks and no orders as negatives. This loop, harvesting winners and cutting losers, is most of what good management actually is.

What to check every week

Search terms with clicks and no sales. If a term has taken enough clicks to expect a sale at your conversion rate and has none, make it a negative
Bids against position. Raise bids on terms that convert but sit low, lower them where ACoS runs above break even
Listing health. Main image, title, price, reviews and stock level. Ads send traffic; the listing converts it. A stockout or a price jump can wreck a good campaign overnight
Budget caps. Campaigns that run out of budget by midday miss afternoon and evening shoppers. Move budget to the campaigns that earn it
Placement reports. Compare top of search against product pages. Many accounts find one converts far better than the other

What Amazon PPC management costs

Agencies usually charge in one of two ways. A percentage of ad spend, often in the range of 10% to 20%, or a flat monthly fee. Some add a setup fee. Each has a trade off. A percentage model grows with your budget, so the manager earns more when you spend more, which is not always when you should. A flat fee does not carry that conflict but needs a clear scope.

Ask any provider for three things before signing: whether you keep ownership of the advertising account, how often you receive reports and what is in them, and what happens if results are poor. Avoid anyone who guarantees a specific ACoS. Results depend on your product, price, reviews and competition, and nobody controls those.

Our own Amazon PPC agency service is built around this weekly loop, with reports tied to your break even rather than to vanity metrics. For the wider picture of how paid channels fit together, see performance marketing.