What ACOS should I target?

Below your contribution margin after marketplace fees if you want profit on the marginal sale; deliberately above it during a launch if you are buying rank and reviews. There is no universal target and any agency quoting one has not seen your numbers.

Should I advertise a product with no reviews?

Usually yes, as a planned launch cost, that is largely how you get the first reviews. But fix the listing first, and accept that conversion rate will be poor until social proof accumulates.

Do I need Brand Registry?

For Sponsored Brands, A+ content and meaningful brand protection, yes. It also gives you tools against listing hijacking. If you have a registered trademark it is worth doing before you scale spend.

Can you manage Amazon and our own store together?

Yes, and it is usually better handled together. The two channels interact. Marketplace visibility drives branded search that your own store can capture, and pricing has to be coordinated across both.

Part of Marketplace Marketing

Amazon Advertising, Run to ACOS That Matches Your Margin

Organic visibility for a new Amazon listing is close to zero. Advertising is how you buy the first sales velocity and reviews that eventually make organic work, which means launch ACOS and steady-state ACOS are different targets.

Talk to us about this All Marketplace Marketing

What is Amazon advertising?

Amazon advertising is the paid placement system inside Amazon, principally Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display. Because it sits at the point of purchase, intent is higher than almost any other channel. Performance is measured in ACOS, advertising cost of sale, the percentage of ad-attributed revenue consumed by the advertising, and your break-even ACOS equals your contribution margin after all marketplace fees.

The mistake we correct most often is optimising toward the lowest possible ACOS. You can always lower ACOS by cutting spend on anything less than perfectly efficient, and you end up with a small, tidy campaign making very little money. The target is total profit, not the tidiest percentage.

The second is treating launch and steady state as the same. During a launch, a deliberately high ACOS buys sales velocity, reviews and organic rank, all of which lower ACOS later. Judging a launch campaign on ACOS alone means killing the thing that was working.

Scope

What the work covers

Not a feature list. These are the areas where the work actually changes the outcome.

Break-even ACOS calculation

Worked from your actual numbers: selling price, cost of goods, referral fee, closing fee, weight handling, storage and returns. That figure is the target, not a benchmark from a blog post. Two sellers in the same category can have very different break-even points.

Campaign structure

Separating automatic and manual campaigns, branded and non-branded terms, and top performers from discovery. Structure is what makes the account diagnosable rather than a single blended number.

Search term harvesting

Mining automatic campaigns for converting terms, promoting them to exact match, and adding negatives for terms that spend without converting. This is the routine work that compounds, and it is the work most sellers stop doing after month two.

Listing optimisation

Advertising sends traffic; the listing converts it. Title, bullets, backend search terms, images and A+ content. Paying for clicks to a weak listing is the most reliable way to make advertising look like it does not work.

Launch strategy

Deliberate high-ACOS spending to build velocity and reviews, with a stated exit point. Budgeted as a launch cost with an expected payback rather than treated as underperformance.

Total ACOS versus ad-attributed ACOS

Amazon reports against ad-attributed sales only, but advertising also lifts organic rank. We report both, because total ACOS (ad spend over all sales) is the honest measure of what advertising costs the business.

Inventory and account health

Campaigns paused against stock-outs, and monitoring of the account health metrics that can suspend selling privileges entirely.

How it runs

The sequence

In this order, because each step depends on what the previous one found.

01
Model the economics

Break-even ACOS from your real cost structure before any campaign is built. Without this the account has no target.
02
Fix the listings

Title, bullets, images, backend terms and A+ where Brand Registry allows. Conversion rate on the listing determines what ACOS is achievable.
03
Structure and launch

Automatic campaigns for discovery, manual for control, with budgets sized to the launch or steady-state phase you are actually in.
04
Harvest and refine weekly

Search term review, negative additions, bid adjustments and promotion of proven terms. This is ongoing work, not a setup task.

What you receive

Deliverables

Break-even ACOS model

Calculated from your actual fees and margin, per SKU or category.

Optimised listings

Title, bullets, backend terms, images and A+ content where available.

Structured campaigns

Automatic, manual and brand-defence separated so performance is diagnosable.

Reporting on total and attributed ACOS

Both figures, with organic rank movement alongside.

How this is scoped and charged

Managed on a monthly retainer priced against ad spend and SKU count. Listing optimisation is usually a front-loaded project in the first month, because advertising to unoptimised listings wastes budget. We will tell you if your margin cannot support Amazon advertising at all in your category, for some price points it genuinely cannot, and that is worth knowing before you spend.

See indicative pricing

FAQ

Questions we get asked about this

Below your contribution margin after marketplace fees if you want profit on the marginal sale; deliberately above it during a launch if you are buying rank and reviews. There is no universal target and any agency quoting one has not seen your numbers.
Usually yes, as a planned launch cost, that is largely how you get the first reviews. But fix the listing first, and accept that conversion rate will be poor until social proof accumulates.
For Sponsored Brands, A+ content and meaningful brand protection, yes. It also gives you tools against listing hijacking. If you have a registered trademark it is worth doing before you scale spend.
Yes, and it is usually better handled together. The two channels interact. Marketplace visibility drives branded search that your own store can capture, and pricing has to be coordinated across both.

Back up a level

Marketplace Marketing

Your Brand Could Be Next

Your brand could be next

Send a few details and we will reply on WhatsApp with a first read on what we would do, before any talk of fees.

Message us on WhatsApp Use the form instead

No cold calls and no email sequences, so you set the pace.

Services

Industries

Our Work

Resources

Company

Services

Industries

Work