Amazon PPC glossary.
18 pay-per-click advertising terms defined for private-label brand operators. Cross-linked to related concepts.
See also: full glossary
ACoS— Advertising Cost of Sales
ACoS is ad spend divided by attributed sales, expressed as a percentage. An ACoS of 30% means $0.30 of ad cost was incurred for every $1.00 of sales attributed to ads. Used to benchmark advertising efficiency against product margin.
TACoS— Total Advertising Cost of Sales
TACoS is total ad spend divided by total sales (ads + organic) for the same seller and period, expressed as a percentage. It provides total-account context, but a change does not by itself prove that advertising caused an organic-sales change.
ROAS— Return on Ad Spend
ROAS is sales divided by ad spend — the inverse of ACoS expressed as a multiple. A ROAS of 4.0 equals an ACoS of 25%. Use ROAS when comparing Amazon ads to other channels in growth conversations; use ACoS when thinking in margin terms.
Sponsored Products— Amazon Sponsored Products ads
Sponsored Products is an Amazon Ads format for promoting eligible products. Current placement, account eligibility, and program requirements are controlled by Amazon and should be checked in the seller's authorized account and current Amazon documentation.
Related: sponsored-brands, sponsored-display, ppc, acos
Sponsored Brands— Amazon Sponsored Brands ads
Sponsored Brands is an Amazon Ads format for eligible advertisers. Available creative, placement, and product options are controlled by Amazon; performance must be evaluated from the seller's own campaign evidence rather than a universal conversion benchmark.
Related: sponsored-products, brand-registry, ppc
Sponsored Display— Amazon Sponsored Display ads
Display campaigns can use contextual and audience targeting across eligible Amazon and third-party placements. Pricing can be CPC or vCPM.
Related: sponsored-products, sponsored-brands, dsp
PPC— Pay-Per-Click advertising
PPC charges for clicks. Sponsored Products uses CPC pricing. Other Amazon ad products can offer different pricing models.
Related: acos, tacos, sponsored-products
Match Type— Keyword Match Type
Match types control how closely a shopper's search must match a bidded keyword. Broad match reaches related searches in any order and phrase match requires the phrase to appear. Exact match allows only the keyword and close variants, trading reach for control over relevance and CPC.
Related: negative-keyword, cpc, ppc
Negative Keyword— Negative Keyword Targeting
A search term the seller excludes from ad targeting so ads stop showing for it. Negative exact blocks the term itself and negative phrase blocks any search containing it. The primary tool for cutting wasted spend surfaced by search term reports.
Related: match-type, acos, ppc
Top of Search— Top of Search Placement
The first row of sponsored results at the top of page one. Amazon reports its performance separately and lets sellers apply placement-level bid adjustments. Compare click-through and attributed results with other placements in the same account and reporting period before changing bids.
Related: cpc, ctr, sponsored-products
CPC— Cost Per Click
CPC is the amount paid for an ad click. Campaign bidding strategies and placement or audience adjustments can raise the effective bid above the entered base bid.
Related: acos, ctr, match-type
CTR— Click-Through Rate
Clicks divided by impressions, usually expressed as a percentage. Use CTR to compare how often shoppers click after an impression, with placement and traffic mix held in view.
Related: main-image, cpc, unit-session-percentage
Dayparting— Ad Scheduling by Time of Day
Scheduling campaigns or bid changes by time of day or day of week. Native controls are limited, so most dayparting runs through bid rules or scripts. It only pays when intraday conversion patterns are stable enough to beat the added complexity.
Auto Campaign— Automatic Targeting Campaign
A Sponsored Products campaign where Amazon picks the targets from the listing content instead of a keyword list. Matches are grouped into close match, loose match, substitutes, and complements. Its search term report is the standard discovery layer that feeds the manual campaigns.
Related: sponsored-products, match-type, negative-keyword
Product Targeting— ASIN & Category Targeting
Ad targeting aimed at ASINs or categories instead of search terms, so the ad shows on competitor detail pages and category placements. Used to defend own listings and to reach shoppers who are already comparing alternatives.
Related: sponsored-products, sponsored-display, asin
New-to-Brand— New-to-Brand Metrics
Ad metrics that split attributed orders by whether the shopper bought from the brand within the trailing year. Available for Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and DSP. The closest Amazon gets to a customer-acquisition read for advertisers.
Related: sponsored-brands, sponsored-display, dsp
AMC— Amazon Marketing Cloud
AMC is Amazon’s environment for analyzing pseudonymized advertising signals and building audiences, with aggregate outputs. Eligible sponsored-ads advertisers can access it through the advertising console.
Related: dsp, new-to-brand
SB Video— Sponsored Brands Video
The video format of Sponsored Brands is an autoplaying muted clip inside search results that links to the product or the Store. Video inventory competes separately from static banners, with its own CPC and click-through profile.
Related: sponsored-brands, product-video, cpc
Need ppc help on your account?