What is Amazon PPC?
Amazon PPC is the cost-per-click side of Amazon's sponsored ads, above all Sponsored Products. Sponsored Brands and Display can bid per click too. An ad reaches shoppers in two ways:
- Keyword targeting matches the ad to the search terms shoppers use.
- Product targeting ties the ad to specific products, categories or brands relevant to yours, so it can show where shoppers browse rather than search.
With automatic targeting, Amazon matches the ad through four groups: close match and loose match on search terms, and substitutes and complements, which show it on the detail pages of similar and complementary products. With manual targeting, you choose the keywords or products and set a bid for each.
For every ad type, what it is for and what it needs, see Amazon advertising services.
What does Amazon PPC cost?
You pay only when a shopper clicks. The bid is the most you are willing to pay for that click, and each click comes out of your daily budget. Sponsored Products offers three bidding strategies:
- Dynamic bids, down only. Amazon lowers your bid when a click is less likely to convert to a sale.
- Dynamic bids, up and down. Amazon raises your bid by up to 100% when a click is more likely to convert, and lowers it when less likely.
- Fixed bids. Amazon uses your exact bid and any adjustments you set.
How do you target Amazon PPC ads?
Manual keyword targeting has three match types, and all of them account for plurals, misspellings and translations:
- Broad. The keyword terms in any order, plus related terms.
- Phrase. The exact phrase or sequence of words.
- Exact. The keyword or close variations, in the same order.
When one keyword carries several match types with different bids, the highest bid is used for a matching search.
How do you know Amazon PPC is working?
ACoS, advertising cost of sales, is total ad spend divided by attributed sales, as a percentage. Calculate ACoS from the right data explains why the formula needs verified ad data, and TACoS vs ACoS covers what each one measures. ROAS is the inverse view: sales divided by ad spend.
Run Amazon PPC from your AI
The Amazon Ads MCP lets your AI read campaigns, search terms and reports and draft changes, which go through your workspace policy before anything reaches Amazon. The Amazon Ads Skills package the weekly work: the Sponsored Products audit, search-term mining and budget pacing. Amazon PPC management shows the audit a paid ads team runs before its standup.