Most sellers approach Amazon PPC the same way: throw money at it, hope for sales, and wonder why the numbers look rough at the end of the month. If your Advertising Cost of Sales is climbing and your margins feel tighter than they should, you are not alone. But here is the thing. The problem usually is not how much you are spending. It is where you are spending it.
These five Amazon PPC tips are not about running more ads. They are about running smarter ones. Every dollar you redirect away from wasted clicks is a dollar you can put behind traffic that actually converts.
What Is ACoS and Why Does It Tell You Everything?
Before you change a single bid or add a single keyword, you need to know your ACoS. It stands for Advertising Cost of Sale, and it is the most important number in your Amazon PPC account. The formula is simple: take what you spent on ads, divide it by the revenue those ads generated, and multiply by 100. If you spent $200 and made $1,000 in sales, your ACoS is 20%.
According to Ad Badger’s 2025 data, the average ACoS across Amazon hovers around 29%. That is a useful baseline, but the number that actually matters is your break-even ACoS. Figure that out first. If your product has a 35% profit margin, then spending more than 35% of your revenue on ads means you are losing money on every sale. Most sellers never calculate this.
The average cost per click on Amazon reached $1.12 in 2025, up about 15% from the year before. More sellers are advertising than ever, which means the cost of being lazy with your targeting keeps going up.
Once you know your break-even ACoS, you have a real target to work toward. New product launches can often tolerate a higher ACoS while you build reviews and momentum. Established products should operate well below break-even. Know where you are, set a realistic target, and use everything else in this article to close the gap.
Why Are Negative Keywords the Most Overlooked Amazon PPC Tip?
Negative keywords are the words and phrases that tell Amazon not to show your ad. If you sell premium leather wallets and someone searches for “cheap wallets,” you do not want that click. It costs you money and almost certainly will not convert. Adding “cheap” as a negative keyword means your ad never shows up for that search again.
This is where a massive amount of ad spend bleeds out without sellers even noticing. One account analyzed by Ad Badger racked up $10,625 in wasted spend over just 60 days because negative keywords were not being managed. That was 40% of their total ad budget going to clicks that would never buy. A 2025 study found that brands optimizing their negative keyword strategy saw a 28% reduction in wasted spend and a 22% increase in return on ad spend.
A practical rule of thumb: any search term that has generated more than $35 in ad spend without a single sale needs to go. Pull your Search Term Report from Amazon Ads at least once a week, sort by spend, look for terms with zero conversions, and add them to your negative keyword list. It is not complicated. It is just something most people skip.
The most effective campaigns tend to have three to five times more negative keywords than positive ones. That ratio tells you something important about how precision works on this platform.
How Do Automatic and Manual Campaigns Work Together?
If you are just starting out with Amazon PPC, or launching a new product, automatic campaigns are your best friend. You set a budget, Amazon uses its algorithm to find relevant search terms, and you collect data. Impressions, clicks, conversions, search terms that performed well and ones that did not. All of it. That data is gold.
Here is the thing though: automatic campaigns are a discovery tool, not a long-term strategy. Once you have two to four weeks of real performance data from an auto campaign, you start building manual campaigns around the search terms that are actually converting. You take what is working, move it into a manual campaign where you can control bids precisely, and add the underperformers as negative keywords in your auto campaign so it stops wasting budget on them.
This is the workflow most sellers either do not know about or never get around to doing. Running only automatic campaigns long-term means Amazon is always in the driver’s seat with your money. Running only manual campaigns from day one means you are guessing on keywords without real data to back you up. The combination is where the efficiency lives.
What Kinds of Keywords Actually Convert on Amazon?
Broad keywords feel powerful because they reach a lot of people. “Headphones” gets searched thousands of times a day. But the person searching “headphones” could want anything from a $15 earbud to a $400 studio monitor. That is not a buyer. That is a browser.
The search terms that convert are the specific ones. “Noise canceling headphones for air travel.” “Organic dog food for senior dogs with joint problems.” These long-tail phrases come from buyers who already know what they want. According to Headline Amazon Agency, Amazon’s average advertising conversion rate sits just under 10%, which is already seven to eight times higher than typical ecommerce platforms. Targeting high-intent, specific search terms pushes that number even higher for the right products.
Amazon PPC tips that focus exclusively on volume are missing the point. A keyword with 500 monthly searches and a 15% conversion rate will outperform one with 50,000 monthly searches and a 0.5% rate every time. Go specific. Go deep. That is where the margin is.
Google Search Console and Amazon’s own Brand Analytics tool can both reveal the exact language your buyers use. Start there when building your keyword list.
How Often Should You Actually Review Your Amazon PPC Campaigns?
Amazon PPC is not a set-it-and-forget-it system. It never was. The sellers who treat it that way are the ones subsidizing the sellers who do not.
A weekly review cycle is the sweet spot for most sellers. Every Monday, pull your previous week’s performance data. Look at what spent, what converted, and what burned budget with nothing to show for it. Make your bid adjustments on Tuesday. Then monitor results through the week before drawing any conclusions. This rhythm gives you enough data to make smart decisions without letting waste pile up for too long.
Your Search Term Report is the most valuable document in your ad account. It shows you every search query that triggered your ad and exactly how each one performed. Sort it by spend. Find the terms costing you money without producing sales. Add them to your negative list. Look for terms that converted well but are not in your manual campaigns yet. Promote them. Do this every week and your campaigns will get measurably sharper every month.
If you want to speed the process up, Trellis and Ad Badger both offer tools built specifically for Amazon PPC optimization that can automate a lot of the repetitive bid work. They are not free, but neither is wasting 40% of your ad budget on clicks that never convert.
What Keywords Should You Actually Be Targeting by Product Type?
This is where a lot of sellers get stuck. They know they need better keywords but are not sure what “better” actually looks like for their specific product. The table below breaks it down. For each product type, it shows the broad keyword most sellers default to, the smarter long-tail version they should be targeting, and keywords they should be actively excluding as negatives.
| Product | Broad Keyword to Avoid | Smarter Long-Tail Target | Negative Keywords to Add |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stainless Steel Water Bottle | water bottle | insulated stainless steel water bottle 40oz | plastic, cheap, disposable, kids |
| Yoga Mat | yoga mat | extra thick non slip yoga mat for hot yoga | thin, foam, travel, kids |
| Coffee Grinder | coffee grinder | burr coffee grinder for espresso coarse grind | blade, manual, cheap, instant |
| Dog Supplement | dog vitamins | hip and joint supplement for large senior dogs | cat, puppy, treats, flea |
| Leather Wallet | wallet | slim bifold leather wallet RFID blocking men | women, velcro, cheap, canvas |
| Ring Light | ring light | 18 inch ring light with tripod stand for video | small, clip on, mini, selfie |
| Protein Powder | protein powder | whey isolate protein powder unflavored 5lb | plant based, vegan, meal replacement |
| Bamboo Cutting Board | cutting board | extra large bamboo cutting board with juice groove | plastic, small, glass, flexible |
| Resistance Bands | resistance bands | heavy duty fabric resistance bands for glutes women | latex, light, physical therapy |
| Air Fryer | air fryer | 6 quart digital air fryer with preset programs | small, mini, toaster oven combo |
| Beard Oil | beard oil | organic beard oil for dry itchy skin men | women, hair, cheap, synthetic |
| Desk Lamp | desk lamp | LED desk lamp with USB charging port and dimmer | floor lamp, outdoor, clip on, cheap |
The pattern here is consistent. Broad keywords attract browsers. Long-tail keywords attract buyers. The more specific your targeting, the less you spend on clicks that go nowhere. And the negative keywords column is just as important as the targeting column. If you sell premium leather wallets and someone is searching for “cheap wallets,” blocking that term before it costs you money is just good business.
Use this table as a starting point. Then pull your own Search Term Report and look at what people actually typed before they bought your product. That real purchase data will give you the most accurate version of this table for your specific listing.
So What Is the Real Difference Between Sellers Who Win on Amazon PPC and Sellers Who Just Spend?
It comes down to one thing: intent. The sellers who win are the ones who treat every dollar as a question. Did this click convert? Did this search term deserve another chance or does it need to go? Is my ACoS above or below my break-even point right now? They are not running ads and hoping. They are building a system that gets smarter every week.
Start with your break-even ACoS. Pull your Search Term Report. Find the waste. Cut it. Promote what is working into manual campaigns. Target buyers, not browsers. Do that consistently and your Amazon PPC stops being an expense that makes you nervous and starts being an engine you actually control.
