Amazon PPC Management – Signal Over Noise

Amazon / PPC management

Your ACoS is fine. That is not the same as making money.

Most Amazon accounts we audit are hitting their advertising targets while losing margin somewhere the ad console does not report. We rebuild campaigns around contribution profit, not the metric the platform happens to show you.

From £1,000/month. Ad spend paid direct to Amazon, never marked up.
Three-month minimum, then rolling.

The whole account matters

Where the spend usually goes.

These are the leaks we find most often. None of them show up as a problem in Campaign Manager, because in each case the advertising is doing exactly what it was told to do.

We do not publish an average recovery figure. The number depends entirely on your category, margin and current structure, and any agency quoting one before seeing your search term report is guessing.

Common sources of wasted spend

Branded terms you would have won organicallyLeak

Search terms with no conversion in 60 days, still biddingLeak

Auto campaigns never harvested into exact matchLeak

Rest-of-search placements at default modifiersLeak

Spend on SKUs that are out of stock or price-uncompetitiveLeak

Broad match catching irrelevant long tailLeak

Quantified for your account in the auditFree

What we actually change.

Separate branded from non-branded

Branded search converts at rates that flatter the whole account. Run together, it hides how badly acquisition campaigns are performing. Split first, and the real numbers appear.

Rebuild the campaign architecture

Single-keyword ad groups where the data justifies it, clear separation between discovery and harvest, and a structure you can read without a spreadsheet. Most accounts we inherit have grown by accretion, not design.

Harvest and negate on a schedule

Converting search terms promoted to exact match, non-converters negated. Weekly, not when someone remembers. This is the least interesting work in Amazon advertising and the highest return.

Bid to margin, not to ACoS

A 40% ACoS on a high-margin SKU can be more profitable than 15% on a low-margin one. We need your COGS and fees to do this properly, and we will ask for them.

Defend the brand term

If competitors are bidding on your name and you are not, you are paying for their conquesting in lost sales at the point of highest intent.

Stop spending on what cannot convert

Out of stock, buy box lost, price above market, listing suppressed. Advertising continues regardless unless someone is watching. Usually nobody is.

How we are measured.

In week one we agree a baseline and the metric we are judged on. It is not ACoS, because ACoS improves the moment you stop spending, and it is not ROAS, because ROAS improves when you retreat to branded terms.

We report on contribution profit after ad spend, split by organic and paid, at SKU level. If that number does not move, the engagement is not working, regardless of what the advertising metrics say.

Primary metricContribution profit after ad spend

SecondaryOrganic vs paid revenue split

ReportedMonthly, at SKU level

Baseline agreedWeek one, before changes

A single client outcome under specific conditions. It is not a forecast for your account.

The measure that matters

Contribution profit. After ad spend.

Why this matters more than it sounds

Every agency reports the metric that makes it look best. Reporting ACoS alone lets an agency show improvement while your total profit falls, simply by shifting budget toward branded terms that would have converted anyway.

Agreeing the measure before any changes are made is the only reliable protection against that, and it is the question worth asking every agency you speak to.

Advertising rebuilt from nothing

A UK pharmacy brand came to us with the account deactivated. Once it was reinstated, the advertising had to be rebuilt from zero: no campaign history, no performance data, and restricted-category rules that ruled out most of the standard playbook.

Supplements and skincare carry advertising restrictions that block many keywords and claim types outright. Rebuilding inside those constraints meant working out what could be bid on before working out what should be, and accepting a slower ramp because there was no historical data for Amazon’s algorithm to draw on.

The account returned to £100k monthly revenue within six months of reinstatement. Advertising was part of that, not all of it. Listings, compliance and stock planning ran alongside.

One client outcome under specific conditions. It is not a forecast for your account.

Anonymised Amazon case study

£100k

Monthly revenue, rebuilt after reinstatement.

A UK pharmacy brand

Starting positionDeactivated, no ad history

CategorySupplements & skincare

ConstraintRestricted advertising category

Result£100k monthly revenue

Time from reinstatement6 months

Selected results across the agency

Different categories. Commercial results.

European Luggage Brand

Annual revenue

£ 0 m+

Return on ad spend

10x

UK Home & Garden Brand

Annual revenue

£ 0 m+

Return on ad spend

10x

Pan EU Watersport Brand

Annual revenue

£ 0 m+

Return on ad spend

10x

Client names withheld under confidentiality agreements. Selected individual outcomes; results vary by brand and engagement.

Selected agency clients

The brands behind the work.

Four channels, one job each: turn spend into signal. No bloated retainers, no service you don’t need.

The first 60 days.

Week 1

Audit and baseline

Full search term and structure review, COGS and fee data collected, profit baseline agreed in writing. Nothing is changed in the account until this is signed off.

Weeks 2–4

Restructure

Branded and non-branded separated, campaign architecture rebuilt, negatives applied, spend pulled off SKUs that cannot convert. Expect volatility here, because rebuilding a campaign resets its history, and the first fortnight rarely looks like progress.

Weeks 5–8

Optimise and scale

Harvest cycle running weekly, bids moved to margin-based targets, placement modifiers tuned. First profit review against baseline at day 60.

Pricing.

Advertising management only. If listings, inventory and account health also need owning, full management is the better value. See the note below the table.

Most brands who come to us for advertising alone move to full management within six months, usually after an audit shows the advertising was compensating for a listing or stock problem. If that is likely to be you, starting there is cheaper than doing it twice.

Amazon PPC Management

Single marketplace£1,000 / month

Additional marketplaceFrom £500 / month

Audit and onboardingNo charge

Percentage of ad spendNone

Minimum term3 months, then rolling

Full Amazon Management, everything includedFrom £2,500 / month

Whether this fits.

It works when

It does not when

Questions we get asked.

Do you charge a percentage of ad spend?

No. Percentage-of-spend pricing rewards an agency for spending more of your money, which is the opposite of what you are hiring one to do. Flat fee, and the recommendation to cut spend costs us nothing to make.

Why does performance drop in the first few weeks?

Because restructuring campaigns resets their performance history, and Amazon's algorithm relearns. It is a real cost and we would rather you heard it here than in week three. If an agency promises improvement from day one, they are either not restructuring or not telling you what they are doing.

Will you work with our existing campaign structure?

Sometimes. If the architecture is sound we optimise within it. If it has grown without design, which is most accounts, rebuilding is faster than untangling. We will tell you which after the audit, and we will show you why.

Do you need our COGS?

Yes, along with FBA fees and referral fees. Without them we can only optimise to ACoS, which is optimising to a proxy. If you would rather not share margin data, we can work to a target ACoS you set, but say so upfront, because it changes what we can promise.

Who runs the account day to day?

A named specialist you speak to directly, not a rotating pool. You will know who before you sign.

What is the difference between this and full management?

This covers advertising only. Full management adds listings and content, inventory and demand planning, and account health, which are the things advertising cannot fix and often ends up masking. If your audit shows the ad account is compensating for one of those, we will say so.

Agency credentials