Auditing your Amazon Pay-Per-Click (PPC) account is a systematic, in-depth review of every element in your advertising campaigns to uncover strengths, weaknesses, and hidden opportunities.
An Amazon PPC audit examines metrics, structures, budgets, and targeting to ensure your ads are driving sales profitably. It helps you identify wasted spend, improve your Advertising Cost of Sale (ACoS) and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), and align campaigns with your business goals.
Think of it as “maintenance” for your advertising engine: regular audits keep campaigns optimized and competitive.
Conducting a thorough audit requires defining clear objectives and gathering data, then stepping through each campaign element from structure and keywords to bids and placements.
Define Objectives & Gather Data
Before analyzing performance, clearly define what the advertising effort is meant to achieve. Amazon ads can serve different purposes, driving sales volume, improving profitability, or supporting a new product launch and each goal requires different evaluation criteria. Without defined objectives, performance metrics lack context and optimizations become arbitrary.
For each campaign, identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with its goal. Common KPIs include ACoS, ROAS, click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate (CVR), impressions, and total ad-driven sales. Set explicit targets at the campaign or ad group level so results can be measured objectively rather than subjectively.
Once goals are defined, pull the correct data from Amazon’s Advertising Console (Seller Central or Vendor Central). An audit without complete data leads to incorrect conclusions. At a minimum, export the following reports:
1. Search Term Report
The search term report shows the actual customer queries that triggered ads. It includes spend, clicks, orders, and sales at the search-query level. This report is critical for identifying wasted spend, discovering high-converting terms, and informing negative keyword decisions.
2. Keyword Report
For manual campaigns, the keyword report breaks performance down by individual keyword. It shows impressions, clicks, spend, sales, and ACoS for each keyword and is essential for bid optimization and match-type evaluation.
3. Placement Report
This report segments performance by ad placement—Top of Search, Product Pages, and Rest of Search. Placement data helps identify whether higher CPCs are justified by stronger conversion rates and whether placement bid multipliers are being used effectively.
4. Advertised Product Report
This report shows performance at the ASIN level, including ad-driven sales and sessions. It is useful for comparing how much advertising support each product receives relative to its total sales contribution.
5. Supplement With Business Reports
Advertising data alone does not show the full picture. Use Amazon business reports, such as “Detail Page Sales and Traffic by Child Item,” to understand total ASIN-level performance. By combining advertising reports with business reports using tools like pivot tables or VLOOKUPs—you can map ad spend to total sales and identify products that are over-advertised or under-supported.
Audits should not be one-off exercises. Running them on a consistent schedule (monthly or quarterly) allows you to track trends over time. Recording baseline metrics during each audit makes it easier to measure the real impact of bid changes, structural adjustments, and listing optimizations rather than relying on isolated data points.
Analyzing Account Structure
A disorganized account structure is one of the fastest ways to burn through your ad spend and get unclear performance data. A proper Amazon PPC audit always begins by examining how your campaigns are built and what they are meant to achieve. This foundation impacts your entire advertising strategy.
A clean setup involves logical campaign segmentation. Your first check should be for clear separation based on key criteria. Mixing different strategies in one campaign makes it impossible to optimize bids effectively.
1. Campaign Segmentation
A common mistake is combining different strategies into a single campaign. For example, a brand defense campaign targeting your own branded keywords requires a different budget and bidding strategy than a high-spend launch campaign using broad match keywords. They have distinct objectives.
Your campaigns should be separated by:
- Product Line: Group similar products, but give unique ASINs their own campaigns if they have different performance metrics or margins. A low-margin product shouldn’t negatively affect a high-performer.
- Match Type: Never mix auto, broad, phrase, and exact match keywords in the same ad group. Each match type has a specific function, from discovery (auto/broad) to performance (exact), and needs its own bid management.
- Campaign Goal: Campaigns for new product launches, profitability maintenance, brand defense, or competitor targeting all need different KPIs and budget rules.
A well-structured account allows for precise budget control. You can allocate funds to campaigns hitting their targets and cut spending on those that aren’t without guesswork.
This structure also provides clean, actionable data, making it easy to see which match types drive profit or which product lines are draining your budget.
2. Naming Conventions
Next, review your campaign and ad group naming system. A confusing naming convention makes analysis difficult. Good names should be consistent and clearly state the campaign’s purpose.
A useful format is:
[Ad Type] - [Product] - [Match Type] - [Strategy]
For example: SP - RedWidget - Exact - Profitability
This simple change provides immediate clarity.
Every campaign must have a specific, measurable goal tied to a Key Performance Indicator (KPI). Without a defined objective, your optimization efforts are just guesswork. Are you aiming for maximum sales volume for a new launch, even with a high ACoS? Or are you focused on maintaining a target ACoS of 25% for a mature product?
If you can’t answer that for every campaign, you’ve found your first major action item. Define what success looks like and measure everything against that standard.
Evaluating Targeting Performance
Now it’s time to examine the search terms, keywords, and ASINs consuming your ad spend. An inefficient targeting strategy can silently drain your profits, and this part of the audit is designed to find and fix it.
Start by pulling a Search Term Report for the last 30-60 days. This report reveals the exact queries customers use that trigger your ads and is the most valuable data source for this stage.
1. Eliminate Wasted Spend
Your first task is to find the budget drains. Filter your Search Term Report to identify terms with clicks and spend but zero conversions. These are wasting your money. Add them as negative exact match keywords immediately.
Next, look for search terms with a high number of clicks but an unprofitable ACoS or a low conversion rate. This often indicates a mismatch between the shopper’s search intent and your product page’s offer. Ask yourself: does my listing fail to meet the expectation set by the keyword?
An Amazon PPC audit isn’t just about finding what’s broken; it’s about understanding why it’s broken. A low conversion rate on a high-click term signals that either the traffic is irrelevant or your product page isn’t persuasive enough for that audience.
2. Keyword Harvesting
Keyword harvesting involves finding high-performing customer search terms in your automatic or broad match campaigns and moving them to manual campaigns for better control. Are you doing this consistently?
If not, you’re missing a significant opportunity. Search terms that convert well should be moved to their own phrase or exact match campaigns. This allows you to set more aggressive bids and manage their performance precisely. For more details, our guide on how to find keywords for Amazon PPC is a useful resource.
This process works both ways. Any irrelevant search terms in your discovery campaigns should be added as negative keywords to prevent future wasted spend.
3. Analyze ASIN Targeting
Keywords are not the only targeting method. Your ASIN and category targeting performance also needs a thorough review. Consider your strategy: are you targeting direct competitors, complementary products, or your own ASINs for defense or cross-selling?
Analyze each targeted ASIN’s performance just as you would a keyword. Look for these common scenarios:
- Targeting High-Priced Competitors: Showing up on product pages of competitors with a much higher price can be effective if your product offers similar value.
- Targeting Low-Rated Competitors: Placing your ad on the detail page of a competitor with poor reviews (under 4 stars) is a classic and often effective tactic.
- Targeting Unrelated Products: If you’re spending money targeting ASINs with no logical connection to your product, cut them. It’s wasted spend.
4. Benchmark Conversion Rates
Context is important. To know if your conversion rate is “good,” you need to understand current benchmarks. As of 2026, average Amazon PPC conversion rates are between 9.96% and 11.1% across most categories.
However, price point affects these averages. Products under $25 convert at an average of 12.50%, while those over $100 are closer to 6.40%. If your campaigns are converting below 3%, it’s a major red flag indicating that your targeting, listing, or pricing requires immediate attention.
Optimizing Bids and Budgets
An excellent keyword strategy will fail if it’s undermined by poor bidding and budget management. This part of your Amazon PPC audit ensures your ad dollars are working efficiently. Your bids must be directly linked to your profitability targets.
A simple formula to calculate your target Cost-Per-Click (CPC) is: (Average Order Value) x (Target ACoS) x (Conversion Rate) = Target CPC. Run this calculation for your key products. If your actual CPC is much higher than this target, you’re eroding your margins.
1. Bidding Strategy
Review your campaign bidding strategy settings. This is an area where a “set it and forget it” approach can be costly. The setting you choose must match the campaign’s goal.
- ‘Dynamic bids – down only’: Ideal for mature, profitable campaigns. Amazon lowers your bids on clicks less likely to convert, protecting your ACoS.
- ‘Dynamic bids – up and down’: Use this for aggressive growth phases or new product launches. Amazon can increase your bid up to 100% for top-of-search placements, maximizing visibility.
- ‘Fixed bids’: This offers predictability but is often inefficient. Use it only in specific situations where you must maintain a certain ad rank regardless of conversion odds.
Using the wrong setting can lead to overspending or missed sales. For more detail, a guide to Amazon PPC bid optimization can provide more granular strategies.
2. Budget Allocation
Next, focus on campaign budgets. A common red flag is seeing top-performing campaigns run out of budget before the day ends. An “Out of Budget” status means you’re turning off your ads and losing sales, often during peak hours.
Use the Budget dashboard in your Advertising Console to find these campaigns. The solution is to reallocate funds. Move money from low-conversion campaigns to your proven winners. Fund what is working, not what you think should be working.
3. Placement Performance
Finally, analyze your placement performance. Not all ad placements are equal, and your bids should reflect their value. Pull a placement report and review the performance of these three key areas:
- Top of Search: This is prime real estate, often with the highest conversion rate but also the highest cost. If it’s delivering a good ACoS, use bid adjustments to appear there more often.
- Product Pages: These can be great for capturing sales from competitor listings but can also waste ad spend if targeting is poor.
- Rest of Search: This placement usually has lower CTR and conversion rates but can offer cheaper clicks.
If ‘Top of Search’ placements achieve a 20% ACoS while ‘Product Pages’ are at 50%, the path is clear. Use a positive bid adjustment (e.g., +25%) for ‘Top of Search’ and a negative one (e.g., -30%) for ‘Product Pages’ to direct your spend effectively.
It’s also important to understand market context. The average CPC on Amazon rose to $1.12 in 2025 from $0.97 the previous year, a 15.5% increase. Seasonal trends, like the Q4 spike that can increase CPCs by 20-30%, are critical for setting realistic bid targets.
Checking Listing Readiness
Your PPC campaigns are only as effective as the product pages they direct traffic to. A crucial part of any PPC audit is ensuring your listings are prepared to convert the traffic you pay for. Driving paid clicks to a weak or unoptimized page is like pouring water into a leaky bucket.
The link between ad performance and listing quality is direct. A high click-through rate (CTR) with a low conversion rate almost always indicates a problem with the listing, not the ad. The ad succeeded in getting the click, but the page failed to convert it into a sale.
1. Listing Health
Your main image needs to do more than just display the product; it must grab attention on a crowded results page and communicate value instantly. Your titles, bullet points, and A+ Content should be optimized with relevant keywords and benefit-focused copy.
A thorough review should cover these core elements:
- Main Image: Is it visually appealing and compliant with Amazon’s rules, yet distinct from competitors?
- Title and Bullets: Are they clear, concise, and focused on solving a customer’s problem? Your most important keywords should appear naturally within the first 80 characters of the title.
- A+ Content: Is it visually engaging and does it tell a brand story? Use it to answer common questions proactively.
- Customer Reviews: What is your star rating? If you’re below 4 stars, consider pausing aggressive ad spend until you can improve customer sentiment. Advertising a poorly-rated product is a losing battle.
For a more detailed look at these areas, see our complete guide on Amazon listing optimization.
2. Ad Creative
Beyond the listing, your Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display ads have their own creative elements that need review. Stale or uninspired ad creative is a common reason for performance decline.
Are you using high-quality images and videos that capture attention? To ensure your visuals are effective, explore guides on creating impactful product videos that showcase your product’s features. A good video can significantly increase engagement and conversions, especially in Sponsored Brands Video placements.
A classic mistake is to “set and forget” ad creative. You should actively A/B test different headlines, images, and calls-to-action to see what resonates with your audience. Small adjustments can lead to significant improvements in CTR and return on ad spend.
This part of the audit ensures your ad spend has the best possible chance to convert. It confirms that when a customer clicks, they land on a page that is compelling, trustworthy, and designed to turn interest into a sale.
Creating an Action Plan
You’ve analyzed the data. Now, you need to turn those insights into a clear, prioritized action plan. It’s easy to get stuck in “analysis paralysis,” looking at data without knowing where to start. A structured plan helps you avoid this and focus on changes that will make a difference.
Don’t try to fix everything at once. This is a common mistake that leads to inaction. Instead, group your tasks by their potential impact and the effort required. This framework helps you identify what will deliver results fastest.
1. Prioritize Actions
The impact vs. effort matrix is a simple but effective way to clarify your path forward. It helps you find quick wins for an immediate boost while scheduling larger projects for the coming weeks.
Most of your action items will fall into one of these four categories:
- High-Impact, Low-Effort: These are your top priorities. An example is adding a high-spend, zero-conversion search term as a negative keyword. This takes minutes and can save hundreds of dollars.
- High-Impact, High-Effort: These are major strategic initiatives that can transform your account but require planning. Examples include a complete account restructure or producing new video creatives.
- Low-Impact, Low-Effort: These are “nice-to-have” tasks. Make these small tweaks, like updating campaign naming conventions, when you have spare time.
- Low-Impact, High-Effort: Ignore these. They consume time and resources for minimal gain. Put them on a “maybe later” list, but don’t let them distract you.
Once you’ve sorted your tasks, put them into a spreadsheet or project management tool. Assign an owner and a deadline to each task to ensure accountability.
2. Implement Improvements
An effective post-audit plan combines immediate fixes with long-term projects. You want quick wins that improve efficiency right away, but you also need to build a foundation for sustained growth. For example, your plan might include immediately pausing underperforming ASIN targets while starting a 30-day project to A/B test new ad headlines.
Here is a sample advertising dashboard before any changes. This is your baseline.
This dashboard serves as a starting point. Every change you make should be measured against these initial numbers to see if your plan is working.
An audit isn’t a one-time task; it’s the start of a continuous improvement cycle. Schedule your next full audit for 30 to 60 days after implementing your changes. This follow-up is critical. It’s where you’ll measure the impact of your work, refine your strategy, and establish a habit of continuous optimization.
Use the Right Tools
While much of an audit can be done manually via Amazon’s reports, specialized tools can save time and reveal insights.
1. Amazon’s built-in analytics
Seller Central or Vendor Central business reports and the Advertising Reports section (Performance Over Time, Advertised Product, Search Term, Placement) are the primary data sources. These reports provide visibility into spend, sales, impressions, clicks, ACoS, and placement-level performance, forming the backbone of any PPC audit.
2. Bulk files & spreadsheets
Downloading bulk operations campaign data and analyzing it in spreadsheets using pivot tables allows systematic review of large accounts. This method helps isolate inefficiencies across keywords, targets, campaigns, and placements, and is especially useful when managing high-SKU or high-spend accounts.
3. Third-party software
Tools such as Helium 10, Jungle Scout, Sellics, PPC Entourage, Ad Badger, and Karooya provide dashboards and automation to highlight wasted spend and missed opportunities. These platforms can surface inefficient keywords, automate negative keyword mining, and assist with bid recommendations, significantly reducing manual effort during audits.
4. Custom dashboards
Advanced advertisers often build custom reports in Google Sheets or BI tools by combining Amazon Ads data with business and sales reports. This enables catalog-level performance tracking and clearer visibility into how advertising budget is distributed across ASINs and categories.
5. Regular checklists
Use repeatable audit checklists or templates to ensure consistency. Structured checklists help ensure that critical areas such as sales performance, placements, bids, and keyword efficiency are reviewed every time. Tools accelerate detection of issues, but strategic judgment remains essential. Even basic spreadsheet analysis can reveal overspending keywords or budget imbalances quickly when used correctly.
Audit Frequency and Best Practices
Finally, consider the cadence of auditing. Amazon recommends checking a new campaign after a couple of weeks, while established accounts benefit from a full audit every quarter. Smaller optimizations such as bid adjustments or negative keyword additions should occur more frequently.
1. Regular reviews
Setting fixed monthly or quarterly audit intervals ensures trends and inefficiencies are identified before they become costly. Consistent reviews create a performance baseline that makes changes measurable over time.
2. Timeframes
When analyzing data, use consistent time windows of at least two to four weeks to smooth out short-term volatility. Seasonality must also be considered by comparing similar periods, such as year-over-year quarters, rather than unrelated date ranges.
3. Pair with listing optimization
If repeated audits show weak conversion rates, the issue may lie with the product listing rather than advertising structure. In such cases, listing optimization or external promotional efforts may be required before further PPC scaling.
By making audits a repeatable habit and aligning them with product and listing improvements, Amazon PPC becomes a controlled, iterative system rather than a reactive expense.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How often should I do an Amazon PPC audit?
For an established brand, a full amazon ppc audit every quarter is recommended. This frequency is enough to catch performance trends and react to market changes without making constant, reactive adjustments.
However, you should perform smaller, targeted check-ins weekly or bi-weekly. At a minimum, review your search term reports to eliminate wasted spend and ensure your top campaigns are properly budgeted.
2. What is the biggest PPC mistake sellers make?
The most common and costly mistake is failing to manage search terms properly. Many sellers launch automatic and broad match campaigns and let them run without oversight. They don’t consistently move converting search terms into manual campaigns or add irrelevant ones as negatives.
This oversight leads to a significant amount of wasted ad spend, as you pay for clicks that have no chance of converting.
A “set it and forget it” approach to search terms is a fast way to unprofitable advertising. Continuous refinement is the only way to stay efficient, especially as customer search behavior changes.
3. What is a good ACoS for Amazon PPC?
There is no single “good” ACoS. It depends entirely on your product’s profit margin and your campaign goals. The most important thing is that your ACoS is below your break-even point.
For example, a high ACoS, even 50% or more, might be acceptable during a product launch to build sales velocity. For a mature product, you’ll want a lower ACoS, perhaps in the 15-25% range, to maximize profit. Calculate your break-even ACoS to set a realistic target based on your business’s finances.
Sometimes a high ACoS can signal a deeper issue. If your campaigns suddenly perform poorly, it’s time to investigate. To learn more about troubleshooting, see our guide on when Amazon PPC stops working and how to fix it.
