Advertising that compounds, not just spends.

There is no universal good ACOS: the only number that matters is the one your product's contribution margin can afford. A 30% ACOS is healthy on a high-margin supplement and ruinous on a low-margin grocery line. Set the target per SKU from margin, then judge it against your category rather than a benchmark pulled from a different one.

ACOS (advertising cost of sale) measures ad spend against the revenue those ads are credited with. TACOS (total advertising cost of sale) measures the same spend against your total Amazon revenue, organic included. TACOS is the more honest number: if advertising is genuinely building demand, ACOS can hold steady while TACOS falls, because organic sales are growing underneath it.

Sponsored Products are keyword- and ASIN-targeted ads for a single product in search results and on product pages. Sponsored Brands are banner and video placements carrying your logo and a range, used for discovery. Sponsored Display targets and retargets shoppers on and off Amazon based on browsing and purchase behaviour. Sponsored TV puts streaming placements on Prime Video, Twitch and Fire TV from the same console, with no spend minimum. They do different jobs in the funnel and should be budgeted as one sequence, not four.

Sponsored Ads are the self-service formats inside Amazon, bought on an auction and aimed largely at shoppers who have already searched. Amazon DSP is the programmatic platform: display, video, streaming TV and audio across Amazon's own inventory and the open internet, targeted on shopping behaviour rather than a search term. Sponsored Ads capture demand, DSP creates it, and most accounts should get the first working before adding the second.

Work backwards from margin and stock rather than from a percentage rule. Before adding budget, check how much current spend sits on branded terms that would convert anyway: in most accounts we audit, 20-40% of spend is concentrated there. Reallocating that into genuine incremental demand usually buys more growth than a bigger budget does.

Usually yes, but at a controlled budget. Defending your branded terms keeps competitors out of the placement above your listing, and it's cheap. It also flatters your ACOS, so it should be reported separately: if branded search is a large share of ad-attributed revenue, the account can look efficient while doing very little to grow the brand.

Not for long. Amazon prices clicks partly on how well a listing converts, so a weak listing pays more per click and earns worse organic rank at the same time. Advertising into it raises spend without compounding. Fixing images, bullets and A+ Content first makes the same budget go measurably further.