Amazon PPC Terms, Acronyms, and Abbreviations Glossary

Rick Wong 29 June 2021

Amazon PPC advertising can be an intimating space for beginner and intermediate sellers. The ongoing changes and technical complexities mean lots of Terms, Acronyms, and Abbreviations in this specific niche. Below are SellerMetrics’ complete Amazon PPC Terms, Acronyms, and Abbreviations Glossary. Also check out our related readings on: Amazon PPC Optimization, Amazon PPC Software and Amazon PPC Automatic Campaign. Find out more about our Amazon PPC Services.

Amazon PPC or Amazon Advertising

It is a close advertising platform for Amazon sellers, vendors, KDP authors, and app developers to promote their product via paid advertising on Amazon retail website and related properties.

Amazon Advertising Console

It is the front end screen functions that allows Amazon sellers, vendors, and KDP authors to create/update/mange their Amazon advertising campaigns

Amazon OTT (over-the-top)

These are videos ads that are shown alongside the Amazon streaming services. OTT stands for “over-the-top” and represents any streaming service that provides video content over the internet without satellite or cable. OTT video ads are the video advertisements delivered to viewers within OTT content.

Amazon DSP (demand-side platform)

Amazon DSP is a demand-side platform that enables advertisers to programmatically buy display, video, and audio ads both on and off Amazon. It is Amazon’s display network, this program allows non-Amazon 3rd parties to advertise on this network

Sponsored Products

It is an Amazon PPC advertising type where you can promote your products to shoppers actively searching with related keywords or viewing similar products on Amazon. The promoted product will show up as tiles with the tag “sponsored” in the search results. Allows the advertiser to on a pay-per-click basis.

Sponsored Brands

Amazon Sponsored Brands, formerly known as Amazon Headline Search Ads, is an Amazon PPC advertising type displayed in the search results, product pages (through product attributed targeting), and other locations like the checkout page. These advertisements are typically displayed as long rectangular banners viewed in both horizontal and vertical orientations.

Sponsored Display

Sponsored Display, also called Amazon Display Ads, are banner ads that show up as a small rectangular or square banner of the product’s main image underneath the bullet points. It exclusive only shows up on the product detail page. Sponsored Display, is one of the 3 advertising campaign types that Amazon advertisers are allowed to create. The other two being Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products. For more info, please check our Sponsored Display guide.

Sponsored Brand Videos

Sponsored Brands Video is a sub ad category of Sponsored Brands. These ads are 45-sec clips displayed in the middle of the search result page on mobile and desktop. It is only displayed on the search result page. Hence this ad format only allows keyword targeting options.

Portfolio

Portfolios are a collection of campaigns that you can group together to fulfill your advertising requirements. To offer structure and organize your advertising activity. For example, you can create portfolios by brand, product category, or season.

Advertising Type/Advertising Product

These are references to the current 3 campaign product type supported by Amazon advertising. Sponsored Products/Sponsored Brands/Sponsored Display

Targeting Type

Targeting Type is on a campaign level and refers to the the two targeting types Amazon PPC support: Manual and Automatic

Manual Targeting

The manual targeting campaign type allows you to choose (and customize) which keywords to target on your ads. You can do this by using an the Amazon keyword suggestion tool or by evaluating and analyzing the performance of the keywords in your automatic ad campaign. You can target four match types: broad, broad+, phrase, and exact match keywords.

Automatic Targeting

It is a campaign targeting type that allows Amazon to automatically match your ad with keywords and products similar to the product in your ad. It allows you to set a bid on a higher level than specific keywords or products via Close match, Substitutes, Loose match, and Complements.

Keywords

Keyword targeting allows you to choose keywords to show your products in customer searches and detail pages. Use this strategy when you know the search terms that shoppers use to search products similar to yours.

For example, if your product is a phone case, you may choose the keyword “phone case.” When a shopper searches for a product with the search term “phone case,” your ad is eligible to show in search results and detail pages.

Match Type

The match type allow you to tell the platform how “tightly” to bid on a keyword/ad combination to match a customer search query. The 3 main match types are Broad, Phrase, and Exact. There is also a lesser used 4th match type – Broad Modifiers.

Broad

The broad match type allows your keyword/ad combination to have broad exposure. If the customer search term query is related to the keyword, the ad will be eligible for an impression. For example, if your keyword is “modern decors,” a potential broad match could be “new home decoration” or “new age decors.” As you can see, the match can potentially be really loose, so that is definitely something to keep in mind.

Phrase

With phrase match type, the keywords that the seller is bidding for must be within the customer search query in exact order. It is much tighter and restrictive than broad. The tighter control means more relevant placements for your ads, ensuring stronger keyword relevancy. For example, if your keyword is “modern home furniture,” the match phrases can be “modern home furniture for sale,” “discounted modern home furniture,” “buy modern home furniture,” and the like.

Exact

The exact match type allows for the tightest control in your keyword bidding. In this match type, the search term must match the keyword phrase exactly in the same order for the keyword/ad combination for the ad to show. The exact match is the most restrictive of the 3 types but can be much more relevant to the search. The exact match type allows for the plural form of a keyword.

Broad Modifiers (Broad +)

Broad match modifiers can be added by adding the plus symbol “+” in front of the keyword. For example, if you use the keyword “+men shoes” with a broad match, then the ad will only match to searches that contain the word “men”. The ad may match to “men sneakers” or “running shoes for men” but not to any search term that does not contain the word “men,” such as just “sneakers” or just “running shoes.”

Product Attribution Target/PAT/Product Targeting

Product targeting lets you target specific products, categories or brands instead of keywords. One example of this is ASIN targeting – you can target any ASIN in your SP ad campaign instead of a keyword. In this case, you will be targeting specific products.

Campaign Status

The status column in the campaign manager displays information about the current state of your campaign. The status reflects changes made to the campaign, and whether or not the campaign’s ads have been approved based on Amazon Advertising’s policies

Stores builder

The Stores builder is a self-service tool that lets you easily create, customize, edit, and publish your Store.

Campaign Budget

Campaign budget is the amount you are willing to spend on a campaign each day. The daily budget amount is averaged over the course of a calendar month. On any given day you could spend less than your daily budget, or up to 10% more than your average daily budget. This system allows you to benefit from high traffic days.

Campaign bidding strategy

It is a function on the campaign level that allows Amazon to adjust your bids based on the likeliness of keyword/Product that can convert to a sale. There are 3 options 1) Dynamic bids – down only 2)Dynamic bids – up and down 3)Fixed bids

Dynamic bids – down only

One of the dynamic campaign biding strategies. Amazon will lower your bids in real time when your ad may be less likely to convert to a sale.

Dynamic bids – up and down

One of the dynamic campaign biding strategies. Amazon will raise your bids (by a maximum of 100%) in real time when your ad may be more likely to convert to a sale, and lower your bids when less likely to convert to a sale.

Fixed bids

Campaign bidding strategies option where it will use your exact bid and any manual adjustments you set, and won’t change your bids based on likelihood of a sale.

Adjust bids by placement

Placements are placed across Amazon, where your ads may appear. You can differentiate your bids and view the performance of your sponsored products ads by three placement groups: top of search (first page), rest of search, and product pages.

Choosing this option allows you to increase your bid for two placements: top of search (first page) and product pages. See our comprehensive guide on Campaign Biddings Strategy and Adjust bids by placement.

Top of search (first page)

Refers to the Sponsored Products ads at the top row on the first page of search results.

Rest of search

Refers to Sponsored Products ads shown in the middle or at the bottom of search results, and all Sponsored Products ads in the second page of search results and beyond.

Product pages

Refers to Sponsored Products placements on the product details page, and all non-search placements such as the add-to-cart page.

Amazon Advertising cost of sales (ACoS)

The ACoS Amazon meaning is Advertising Cost of Sale. It is a primary metric that all Amazon advertising use to see the health and effectiveness of their campaign.

It is expressed as a % of Spend/Sales. Lower the % means higher the ROI. For more of a strategic explanation of ACoS, you can check our Amazon ACoS guide. With ACoS, the denominator (Sales) are only sales driven directly from ad spend only.

TACoS

Total Advertising Cost of Sale also referred to as TACoS, measures advertising spend relative to the total sales generated by the sale. The key difference between TACoS and ACoS is that in the case of TACoS, it is sales that are driven by both organic and paid searches. It is expressed as a % of Spend/Sales. Lower the % means higher the ROI.

Return on ad spend (ROAS)

It is the opposite of ACoS. Dividing the total sales generated by the advertising spend invested on the campaign (ROAS = Sales / Ad Spend). It is a helpful measurement to evaluate the overall effectiveness of a specific sponsored ads campaign, ad group, product, or targeting strategy. It is expressed as X time of Sales/Spend. Higher the number means higher the ROI.

New-to-brand (NTB) orders

New-to-brand metrics enable you to measure orders and sales of your products generated from first-time customers of your brand on Amazon. With this metric, you can better measure and optimize in-flight campaigns and plan future marketing strategies to drive customer acquisition and brand loyalty.

New-to-brand (NTB) orders is the number of first-time orders for products within the brand over a one-year lookback window.

% of orders new-to-brand (NTB)

The percentage of total orders that are new-to-brand orders.

New-to-brand (NTB) sales

The total sales (in local currency) of new-to-brand orders.

% of sales new-to-brand (NTB)

The percentage of sales (in local currency) of new-to-brand sales.

Bid

The maximum amount you will pay for a click when this target triggers your ad.

Default bid

The bid that you place in the ad group level to be used when there is no custom bid for your target.

Spend

The total Amazon PPC click charges for a campaign ad group or target

Clicks

The number of times your ads were clicked. Note: Once identified, it may take up to 3 days to remove invalid clicks.

Clickthrough rate (CTR)

The amazon click through rate (CTR) ratio of how often shoppers click on your product ad when displayed. This is calculated as clicks divided by impressions.

Orders

Cost-per-click (CPC)

Amazon cpc (cost-per-click bid is the cost per click you are willing to pay when shoppers click your ad. It calculated by spend/clicks. Your cost per click may actually be higher or lower than your bid because of the Dynamic bids – up and down bidding strategy.

Sales

Sales is the total value of products sold to shoppers within the specified timeframe for a type of campaign due to clicks on your ads.

Sponsored Products: Sales from advertised products as well as other products from your inventory purchased within 7 days.

Sponsored Brands: Sales from advertised products and all products within your brand sold by Amazon and third-party sellers within 14 days.

Sponsored Display: Sales from advertised products as well as other products from your inventory purchased within 14 days.

It can take up to 12 hours for your sales data to update. As a result, sales data may be delayed in the Today date range.

Impressions

The number of times ads were displayed

Amazon Attribution

Amazon Attribution is an analytics and measurement console that helps brands track their advertising performance across multiple channels and discover how their non-Amazon digital marketing tactics are helping drive sales on Amazon. For example, if you set up a pixel with Amazon attribution, you can measure sales on Amazon driven by Google AdWords or Facebook Ads.

Conversion Rate (CVR%)

Amazon conversion rate is the number of orders achieved based on the number of clicks. In Amazon PPC it is the percentage of orders/clicks

KENP read

The number of pages read by Kindle Unlimited customers attributed to your ads. This a KDP Advertising metric that helps you understand the volume of pages read after customers click your ads.

Amazon track clicks associated with your advertised titles, and attribute them to the reading events for the same titles up to 14 days after customers click the ad.

Estimated KENP royalties

It’s royalties from KENP read, multiplying KENP read by the KENP rate at the time the pages were read

Sponsored Lockscreens

This Advertising type is specifically for KDP author/publishers. Lockscreen Ads are cost-per-click display ads that enable publishers to promote eBooks and engage readers with interest-targeted ads on the locked screens of Kindle E-readers and Fire tablets.

Amazon A9 Algorithm

The Amazon A9 algorithm is the algorithm that powers Amazon’s search engine. It allows Amazon to best match the customer searches to the customer’s desire product. Amazon PPC sales are one of the many factors that drives the Amazon A9 algorithm.

Amazon A10 Algorithm

Like the Amazon A9 algorithm, the Amazon A10 Algorithm is the algorithm that powers Amazon’s search engine. The key noted difference is that Amazon PPC sales are given lower weight versus the A9 algorithm.

KDP Advertising

Amazon kindle advertising is KDP specific, which sits on the Amazon Advertising Platform. It allows you to run paid advertising on your self-published book. The book you wish to advertise for will appear on either the Amazon search results, eBook detail pages, and on the lock screen on the Kindle devices. 

Amazon AMS

Amazon AMS (Amazon Marketing Service) . Used to be an Amazon PPC platform for Amazon vendors, it has now merged into Amazon Advertising.

Campaigns

Campaigns group your ads by their advertising budgets and dates. To run an ad with Amazon, you must create a campaign.

You can create a campaign for a specific line of products, for a specific timeframe, or for any other theme that helps you manage your ads. Each campaign contains one ad type and aligns with the main goal you want to achieve, such as sales or brand awareness.

Ad Group

Ad groups are a way to organize and manage ads within a campaign. You can use ad groups to group your ads by brand, product, category, price range, or other classifications like theme or targeting strategy.

Ad groups are available for Sponsored Products campaigns only as of June 2021. Each campaign consists of one or more ad groups. The first ad group is created when you create a campaign. You can add more ad groups to the campaign after you’ve saved it.

Targets

Is the granular level of Amazon PPC data levels. There are two types of targeting 1) Keywords and 2) Product. There a one to one relationship between bids and targets

Ads

Are the product being promoted in this campaign. It is in the ad group level where the advertiser will select the specific product listing page to advertise for. You can select by SKU/ASIN/ISBN.

Suggested bid and bid range

Suggested bid and bid range are calculated from a group of recent winning bids for ads that are similar to yours. The bid range is a range of winning bids for most ads in your product category.

The suggested bid provides you with an estimate of bids that other advertisers have used for similar products such as yours. The purpose of this range and suggested bid is to help you get an idea of what bid is competitive enough to win the bid auction.

Negative Targeting

Allow you to exclude shoppers’ search terms, brands or products from displaying ads in shopping results or detail pages.

Negative Keywords

Negative keywords prevent your ads from displaying when a shoppers’ search terms match your negative keywords. You can use negative keywords to exclude poorly performing searches, reducing your advertising cost and increasing your return on ad spend (ROAS). It can also be used to fine-tune each campaigns’ keyword targeting to understand individual performance.

Negative Products

Negative product targeting prevents your ads from displaying on an ASIN’s product page. You can include a negative list of brands and products that you would like to exclude from your targeting choices. Excluding irrelevant brands and products can help increase your return on ad spend (ROAS).

Amazon Audience

Amazon Audiences offers thousands of pre-built audience segments to help advertisers reach new prospective customers through awareness and consideration campaigns. Amazon Audiences is comprised of four targeting strategies—each informed by a variety of first-party shopping & streaming signals:

  • In-market: In-market audiences allow advertisers to engage audiences who are “in-the-aisle” and have been recently shopping for products in a given category. To capture share-of-mind, advertisers can reach audiences in the same category as their advertised products to drive consideration, as well as try out entirely new segments to help drive product awareness.
  • Lifestyle: Positioned for awareness campaigns, these audiences reflect a variety of aggregated shopping and viewing behaviors, including shopping on Amazon, browsing on IMDb, streaming on Prime Video, or streaming on Twitch. These behaviors reflect shared preferences and map to lifestyle segments such as “Foodies,” “Sports Enthusiasts,” “Tech Enthusiasts,” and more.
  • Interests: Interest-based audiences allow advertisers to help raise awareness with prospective customers based on what they frequently browse and buy. Examples of these audiences include “Interested in Canadian History” and “Interested in Interior Design.”
  • Life events: Life Events audiences give brands the opportunity to drive awareness and consideration for relevant products based around life moments, such as “Traveling Soon” for shoppers going on vacation.

View Remarketing

Views remarketing is a subset of Sponsored Display audiences. The views remarketing strategy enables you to engage audiences of Amazon shoppers who have viewed specific product detail pages in the past 30 days.

You can engage shoppers in 3 ways:

  1. Shoppers who have viewed your advertised products on Amazon in the past 30 days.
  2. Shoppers who have viewed products similar to your advertised products on Amazon in the past 30 days.
  3. Shoppers who have viewed products within a specific category or browse node on Amazon in the past 30 days (for example, men’s running shoes).

Potential Reach

Estimated size range of unique devices that are eligible to see your ad. on the related audience.

Amazon Advertising Reports

Are the downloadable spreadsheet reports under the report section of the Amazon advertising console. These reports show your Amazon advertising campaign performance for up to 60 days previous.

Amazon Search Term Reports

Search term reports give visibility into the search terms entered by customer searching on Amazon. It allows for the most granular advertising data. There is a one to many relationship between keywords and search term for none exact match types

It contains data about search terms or competitor ASINs that lead customers to your products, including metrics for 7 Day sales, AcoS, RoAS, Orders, Units, CVR, advertised SKU units, and advertised sales. Use this report to identify high-performing searches from shoppers and create negative keyword or product targets for search terms that don’t meet your goals.

Search terms information is available in the campaign manager for Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaigns

Advertised Product

Is the ASIN/SKU product that you can advertising in your campaign/ad group.

Amazon Post

Posts is a free browse and discovery experience for shoppers on Amazon that helps you increase discoverability for your brand and products. Posts enable you to showcase curated images in feeds on the Amazon shopping app and on mobile web that link directly to product detail pages. You can post in the Amazon post publisher in the Amazon advertising console

Amazon PPC optimization

Is a set of work flows with the aim to bring the performance of your Amazon PPC campaign to your objectives. These workflows include adjusting keyword bids on a regular basis, adding negative targets and structuring the campaigns.

Amazon Bulk Operations

Bulk operations allows advertisers to create, manage, and optimize multiple campaigns at scale, saving time and minimizing manual effort. Bulksheets is a spreadsheet-based tool that enables bulk operations sponsored ads campaigns. Advertisers can download their sponsored ads metrics in a bulksheet, make edits, and upload.

Amazon PPC Agency

It is a marketing agency, that specialize in managing Amazon PPC advertising.

Amazon PPC Software

It is software that sits on top of the Amazon advertising platform. It can make automatic updates to your Amazon PPC account via Amazon advertising API. It can automate the workflows involved in Amazon PPC optimization.

We are SellerMetrics, our Amazon PPC Software helps Amazon sellers, brands, KDP Authors and agencies navigate Amazon Advertising PPC via bid automation, bulk manual bid changes, and analytics.

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