Amazon Sponsored Brands Ads are ads that appear in the search results, on product pages, and checkout pages. They can target either specific keywords or Amazon product listing pages and can be created using static or video creatives. They are formerly known as “Amazon Headline Search Ads”. Sponsored Brands ads normally show up as long rectangular banners in both horizontal and vertical formats on desktop and mobile search results pages.

If you need support optimizing your ads, you can also enquire about our Amazon Sponsored Brands Ad Management Services.

Another thing to note is that these banners allow for up to 3 different product images under your brand. You can easily advertise different product variations, or complementary products all in the same ad. By clicking on these ads, shoppers are either taken directly to the product detail page (for 3 or more products), a custom landing page, or your brand storefront.

Why are Sponsored Brands Ads Important?

Sponsored brands ads are an important tool of successful Amazon Sellers because they offer a good balance between high relevance and creative differentiation. Compared to more tactical Sponsored Product ads, which only feature your default Amazon product listing, with Sponsored Brands ads you have more control over the creative. In contrast to Sponsored Display ads you have the option to target keywords – which is not possible with Sponsored Display ads. 

While most Sellers typically start out with Sponsored Products ads and many brands also spend the majority of their ad budgets on this ad format, we do encourage you to experiment with Sponsored Brands ads. 

We often see lower CPCs for Sponsored Brand Ads as compared to Sponsored Product ads (while conversion rates can be similar or even higher). 

There is one logical explanation for that: 

Only Sellers that are enrolled in Amazon brand registry can run Sponsored Brands ads – thus competition in the ad auction tends to be less intense and CPC can also be lower.

There are additional benefits of running Amazon Sponsored Brands ads:

• Enhanced Brand Visibility: Sponsored Brands ads take up “more real-estate” on the search results page. With this ad format you can prominently display your brand and products at the top of search results, increasing exposure and brand awareness while also driving sales!
• Increased Storefront Traffic: If you select your Storefront as your ad landing page, you can effectively drive more qualified traffic to your Amazon store. 
• Customizable Ad Formats: These ads allow for custom creatives including: custom headlines, logos, and multiple products
• Boosted Organic Rankings: Running ads in general can create a “halo” effect that also boosts organic sales: By driving more clicks and more conversions for specific target keywords, your organic ranking for a given keyword may also improve over time. This kicks off a virtuous cycle where ad sales boost non-ad supported sales.

What are the Eligibility Criteria for Sponsored Brands Ads?

As mentioned above, before you start on creating a Amazon Sponsored Brands Ad campaigns you must enroll in Amazon brand registry.

To enroll a brand, you need to provide:

1. Your brand name with an active or pending trademark visible on your products or packaging, along with images showing this.
2. The trademark registration number or application number from the Intellectual Property office.
3. A list of product categories (e.g., apparel, electronics) in which your brand should be listed.

For more information on this process, you can refer to the official Amazon Brand Registry Application Guide.

Amazon only accepts trademarks that have been issued by government trademark offices in the United States, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia, India, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Singapore, Spain, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Egypt, Sweden, Poland, Benelux, the European Union, and the United Arab Emirates.

Where can Amazon Sponsored Brands Ads Appear?

Sponsored Brands ads can appear on the search results page and on and on product detail pages. Note: When sponsored brands ads appear on top of Search Results Page they are displayed above organic search results and on top of Sponsored Products ads. This helps improve brand awareness and click-through-rate.

How to Create Sponsored Brands Ad Campaigns?

To setup a Sponsored Brands campaign sign in to Amazon Ads and click “Create Campaign”. On the next page select “Sponsored Brands”.

On the next screen you can define basic ad campaign parameters such as: Campaign name, daily ad budget, campaign duration (we suggest not setting an end date, you can simply pause a campaign if you want it to stop spending) and brand (if you operate multiple brands).

On the next page you can select the ad landing page. There are three options:

• Driving Traffic to your Amazon Storefront: If you have an Amazon Storefront you can select it as your ads’ landing page.
• Sending Shopper to a Store Spotlight: This is essentially a specified subpage within your Amazon Store.
• Creating a New Landing Page: If you do not operate a Storefront you can create custom landing page that will take shoppers to a page that lists 3 or more products from your brand (see example screenshot below).

The rule of thumb is that If you are to select a custom landing page (new landing) you are optimizing for conversion, and if you are selecting Amazon store you looking at more of a branding campaign.

Sponsored Brands Ad Format Types

Under the umbrella of Sponsored Brands there are 3 different type of ad formats. We will go over them in detail below.

1. Product Collection

These are the Amazon banner ads. They show up on the top banner of the search results or on the top of a product detail page (mobile only). The ads in the top banner show up due to keyword targeting.

You can either choose two types of targeting. Keywords targeting (Fig 1) or product targeting (Fig 2) on your product collection ad format. You can also customize the following:

• Headline 🡪 a custom 50 character headline shown above your banner
• The Landing Page 🡪 you can have the landing page pointed on your Amazon storefront or a custom landing page. The custom landing page performs better. The theory is that the custom landing page still looks like the search result page; hence customer purchase flow is not interrupted.
• Automated bidding 🡪 is a very confusing option. By selecting this option, they will only automatically optimize bids for non-top of search placements. I will only select this if I don’t have an ongoing process for bid management. If you are looking for automatic bid management at scale, our software SellerMetrics can handle that
• Custom Image 🡪 will appear on mobile only. A nice, large image takes up a large portion of the real estate on the Amazon shopping app (figure – 3). Using the custom image has been known to increase CTR and CVR dramatically. I highly recommend using it.

2. Stores Spotlight

The store spotlight is quite similar to product collection, the key difference in that you can only pick your storefront pages as the landing pages whereas in product collection you have a choice between custom landing pages and storefront pages.

Our experience with store spotlight SB (sponsored brands) ads has not been good, the impression is lower and ACoS is higher relative to product collection ads. But it would not hurt to experiment with these ads for your own products/category.

In terms of where these ads show up, they will appear on the top of the search result pages on desktop, mobile web, and mobile app. The side and bottom of the search result pages and product detail page placement are not available yet for store spotlight.

3. Video Ads

Sponsored Brands Video ads are 45-sec clips. These clips are displayed in the middle of the search result page on both mobile and desktop. Right now, it is only displayed on the search result page, hence this ad format only allows keyword targeting option. Going forward I do believe that the product attribute targeting (PAT) option will be available and the video ads will be shown on the product listing page itself.

Within the accounts managed by SellerMetrics, all the data points to the superior performance of the Amazon video ads compare to any other ad type. The probable reason is the relatively lower competition. Video asset creation can be costly, but any video is better than no video. A budget solution is to take clips of your product with your smartphone and have someone on Upwork or Fiverr, edit the clip together with some callouts. The video uploaded to Amazon Advertising just needs to be in the following criteria:

Video Specs

• 16:9 aspect ratio
• 1280 x 720px, 1920 x 1080px or 3840 x 2160px
• 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 29.98, or 30 fps
• 1 Mbps or higher bit rate
• H.264 or H.265 codec
• 6-45 sec long
• 500 MB or smaller
• MP4 or MOV file
• Main or baseline profile
• Progressive scan type
• 1 video stream only

Audio Specs

• 44.1 kHz or higher sample rate
• PCM, AAC or MP3 codec
• 96 kbps or higher bit rate
• Stereo or mono format
• Not more than 1 audio stream
• 44.1 kHz or higher sample rate
• PCM, AAC or MP3 codec
• 96 kbps or higher bit rate
• Stereo or mono format
• Not more than 1 audio stream

Make sure whoever edits your video follows the above specs! The video will be rejected by Amazon if it doesn’t strictly follow the above specs.

Amazon Sponsored Brands ads: Keyword Targeting

Much like in the Sponsored Products, in Sponsored Brands you can target specific keywords with your ad placement showing up on a customer keyword search results on the search bar, and like SP, you can add broad, phrase, and exact match types. Keep in mind though in Sponsored Brands there will be no ad groups, so you will possibly need to add multiple keyword match types into the campaign. There is also a 1000 keywords limit, hence in one campaign, you can only have 1000 unique keywords and match type combinations.

Keyword targeting option is available to all Sponsored Brands ad formats.

Amazon Sponsored Brands ads: Product Targeting (PAT)

Product Targeting, also called Product Attribution Targeting (PAT), allows you to target specific ASINs and have your ad show up on a product listing page. It is shown in the middle of the product listing page, just above the product description and A+ content shown in Figure 5.

How to Analyze the Performance of Sponsored Brand PPC Campaigns

Besides the other metrics you see on Amazon PPC, such as CPC, Impressions, Orders, and ACoS, the Sponsored Brands has a pretty cool metric call NTB (new to brand). It tells you the number of first-time orders and sales for Amazon products within the brand over a one-year lookback window.

By looking at this metric, you can make sure that you are consistently driving new customers into your funnel. As mentioned earlier, this is great if you have a product that could incur reoccurring purchases. A good example of this is supplements. You can have a much higher ACoS target for these Sponsored Brands campaigns in cases like that.

Amazon Advertising Reports for Sponsored Brands

There are 6 different types of Sponsored Brands report. If you are familiar with sponsored products reports, you should be familiar with most of them. You can request reports on your seller central dashboard 🡪 Reports 🡪 Advertising Reports.

1. Keyword Report

This is the report that shows the data on keywords/Product level and its corresponding metrics. This report is on the same granular level as the bulk operations file, so if you are consistently running the bulk operations file already, then you will probably won’t need to run this report.

2. Keyword Placement Report

It is further segmented by placements similar to the keyword report. The keywords placements can be on top of search (the first banner placement for SB) or other placements (side or bottom of the search results).

This report can be quite actionable, you can analyze how a particular keyword is performing by its placement type, if the keyword is within ACoS target and make a high relative amount of orders you can think about placing a higher bid to make sure you win the “Top of Search” placement.

3. Campaign Report

This reports shows the data by campaigns and its corresponding metrics.

4. Campaign Placement Report

Like the keyword campaign placement data, this report will show campaign performance based on campaign placement. By analyzing this report’s performance, you can adjust the “Adjust bid by placement” settings under campaign settings. You can see if the placement on Top of Search or Product Page is doing well and adjust accordingly in the report.

5. Search Term Report

In my opinion, this is probably the most important report in the Amazon advertising reports. It allows you to see customer search term data, as this is what the customer searched for in the search bar.

There can be quite a bit of confusion between keywords and search terms. The difference is keywords are what advertisers/sellers choose to target on their side. Search term is what the customer is searching for in the search bar. In other words, keywords are on the supply side, and search terms are on the demand side.

The keywords and search terms can be different due to the different match types afforded by the advertiser to use. For example, an advertiser using the “phrase” match type on keywords “skinny jeans” can get an impression. This happens when the customer uses the search term “skinny jeans juniors.”

Now that we know how the difference between search terms and keywords, we can use the search term report in two ways: 1) Find poor performing and irrelevant search terms and add them to Negative Exact match. 2) Add new customer search terms that had attributed to the order as a new keyword.

6. Search Term Impression Share Report

This is the newest report. It reports on all Sponsored Brands ads formats except for Sponsored brand video. This report’s value is that it will give you the rank and impression share of a particular customer search term for your sponsored brand ad placement.

For example, the customer search term is “baby Crib”. Your rank is 1, and search term impression share is 70%. This will mean that your placement is current rank one when “baby crib” is entered, and it appears 70% of the time out of all the time customers had to search for the term “Baby crib”.

Keep in mind, just because you are ranked number one, doesn’t mean you will win the placement all the time, it could be the next bidder for your placement is a close second, at this point you can consider up bidding the targeting keyword.

How to use Sponsored Brands Ads Strategically

First of all, you need to understand that Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands are two different ad products and you should not mindlessly port your Sponsored Products strategy to Sponsored Brands. Sponsored Brands if done right can expand your brand’s presence and can lower your Sponsored Products ACoS as your brand becomes more known in the niche as you scale your Sponsored Brands ads. Sponsored Brand, therefore at the very least should constitute at least 50% of your Sponsored Product campaign budget to start and adjusted up or down depending on performance.

If you are running Sponsored Brand ads for the first time, a good way to check its effectiveness is to how your Sponsored Products ads are doing after you have run your Sponsored Brands campaign for at least 30 days. If your Sponsored Brands seems to have caused an additional jump to your Sponsored Products sales, give room for your Sponsored Brands campaign for high ACoS. This concludes our Sponsored Brands tutorial we hope you find this guide useful to scale your Sponsored Brands ads.

The post What are Amazon Sponsored Brands Ads & How to use Them? appeared first on SellerMetrics.

One of the Amazon FBA barcodes requirements is placing the codes in the retail packaging of your product, or sometimes on the product itself, depending on the kind of products you are offering.

While having a barcode is is a general requirement for listing on Amazon, there are some exceptions. And there are situations when sellers may want to sell products without a GTIN or UPC. In this article we go through scenarios where this may be the case and explain how this it can be achieved.

Do You Really Need a GTIN or UPC to Sell on Amazon?

The short answer: usually yes, but sometimes the answer can be ‘no’. Knowing when you can get around the requirement can help sellers save money on barcodes that they don’t actually need.

As a basic fundamental, it’s important to understand that Amazon’s catalog is built around product identifiers like GTINs (Global Trade Item Numbers), UPCs, EANs, ISBNs, and JAN codes. This helps Amazon to ensure that the same product get listed only once and that competing sellers that offer the same product get grouped under the same Amazon ASIN. So really, unique product identifiers are the backbone of the Amazon product architecture.

In most categories, when you create a new listing, Amazon expects you to fill the Product ID field with one of these identifiers. If you’re selling a standard branded item that already has a barcode on the packaging, you’ll usually just enter that code and you are good to go. 

However, there are important exceptions where you can legitimately list an item on Amazon without buying your own GTIN or UPC:

So before you rush off to buy barcodes, be aware that there are scenarios where you can list a product on without a GTIN or UPC – by following Amazon’s exemption process.

If you don’t need to buy a UPC or GTIN, that obviously helps you save costs and also speeds up the process of listing on Amazon.

When You Can List Without a GTIN: Understanding Amazon’s GTIN Exemption

If your product doesn’t already have a barcode, or if you’re building a new private label brand, Amazon’s GTIN exemptions are the official way to list without a GTIN or UPC.

You’re typically eligible to apply for a GTIN exemption if:

• You manufacture or own a private label brand and your products don’t yet have GTINs on the packaging.
• You sell handmade products that wouldn’t normally carry a UPC: Think one-off or small-batch items. This could be handmade jewelry, or pieces of art.
• You sell parts or accessories (e.g., certain automotive or phone accessories) where manufacturers don’t provide GTINs.
• You sell generic products with no brand name printed on the packaging.
• You want to list bundles (e.g., a gift set combining multiple products) that don’t have a single pre-assigned barcode.

There are also cases where Amazon will not entertain an exemption:

• Products in categories that always require GTINs (such as many media categories and specific sensitive niches).
• Major brands that Amazon explicitly lists as “GTIN required.” In those cases, you either list against the existing ASIN, or you acquire valid, GS1-recognized barcodes.

If you qualify, GTIN exemption is powerful because it removes the need to purchase barcodes for each SKU. Instead, Amazon relies on your brand/category combination and FNSKU barcodes (Amazon’s own inventory identifiers) to manage your stock.

Step-by-Step: How to Apply for a GTIN Exemption in Seller Central

The GTIN exemption process may seem intimidating, but if you follow our step-by-step guide it’s manageable”

To get started:

1. Navigate to the GTIN exemption form within Seller Central

• Log in to Seller Central.
• In the search bar at the top, type “Apply for GTIN exemption” and open the help page or direct application link.
• Click through to the application form.

2. Choose your marketplace, category, and brand

Amazon will ask you to specify:

• The marketplace (e.g., Amazon.com for US sellers).
• The product category you want to list under.
• The brand name that will appear on your listings.

If your product truly has no brand printed on the packaging, you can use “Generic”. Amazon explicitly allows this in appropriate cases to create an Amazon Product Listing without GTIN/UPC . If you sell a private label product, use your actual brand name as it appears on the packaging or product.

3. Check eligibility

Once you fill in category and brand, click “Check for eligibility.”

Three common outcomes:

• Your brand/category combination is not eligible for exemption (common for major brands). In that case, you’ll need valid GTINs to list new ASINs.
• You’re automatically approved when using Generic in certain categories.
• You’re conditionally eligible and must submit proof that your product has no GTIN on the packaging.

4. Submit proof for your products

If Amazon requests proof, they’ll ask you to provide:

• The product name(s) you want to list.
• Clear photos of the product and all sides of the packaging, showing there is no GTIN/UPC/EAN/ISBN printed anywhere.
• In some scenarios, a letter from the manufacturer or brand owner might be requested, especially if you’re not the brand owner yourself.

Treat this like a small product photoshoot. Make sure images are sharp and well-lit, with the surfaces where a barcode would normally appear clearly visible.

5. Wait for approval and track your case

After submitting, Amazon usually responds within a matter of hours to a couple of days. You’ll receive an email with the result, and you can also check the status in your Case Log inside Seller Central. 

If approved, the exemption is tied to that specific brand + category combination. That means:

• You can list multiple SKUs under the same brand and category without needing to re-apply every time.
• If you want to list in a different category or under a different brand, you’ll need to apply again.

The first application always takes the longest because you’re learning the system. After that, it becomes just another part of your listing workflow.

Creating and Labeling Listings After GTIN Exemption Approval

Getting the GTIN exemption is only half the story. The next question is: “Once I got approval, how do I actually create an Amazon listing and manage inventory without a UPC/GTIN?”

The good news: the listing flow in Seller Central barely changes when creating an Amazon Product Listing without GTIN/UPC compared to how you would normally list a new product.

1. Create the listing without entering a Product ID

When you create a new product listing in the approved category:

• Choose “I’m adding a product not sold on Amazon”.
• Fill in your brand name exactly as used in the exemption (or “Generic” if that’s what you used).
• When you reach the Product ID field, select the option reflecting that you’re using a GTIN exemption. In many cases, Amazon will auto-populate and skip the standard requirement, since your brand/category combo is already flagged as exempt. Jungle Scout+2zonguru.com+2

You still need to complete all the regular listing details: title, bullets, description, images, keywords, and so on. The only thing that changes is how Amazon identifies the product behind the scenes.

2. Use FNSKU as your operational barcode

Even if you don’t have a GTIN or UPC, Amazon still needs a scannable identifier to track your inventory. This is where FNSKU barcodes come in.

• The FNSKU is Amazon’s internal stock keeping unit that ties inventory directly to your seller account, even if the product is identical to another seller’s. SellerMetrics+2Jungle Scout+2
• When you create or convert a listing for FBA, Amazon generates an FNSKU for each SKU/ASIN combination.
• You can either print FNSKU labels yourself and apply them to each unit, or pay Amazon a per-unit fee to label products for you at the fulfillment center.

For GTIN-exempt products, the FNSKU label becomes the primary barcode for Amazon’s fulfillment network. You typically:

• Cover any rogue or incorrect barcodes on the packaging (if they exist).
• Ensure the FNSKU is clearly visible and scannable on every unit.

From a warehouse perspective, it doesn’t matter whether your product started life with a GS1 UPC or a GTIN exemption. Once it’s in FBA, the FNSKU is what tells Amazon “this belongs to your account.”

3. Remember that exemption doesn’t change customer-facing SEO

Listing without a GTIN or UPC doesn’t affect how customers discover your product. You still need:

• Strong keyword research
• Clear, benefit-driven titles and bullets
• High-quality images and A+ content
• Reviews and PPC traffic to generate momentum

GTIN exemption is a catalog and logistics tool, not a marketing shortcut. The same rules of Amazon SEO and PPC performance still apply.

Overview of Types of Barcodes Generally Needed for the Amazon FBA Seller

There are different types of FBA labels, but the two main kinds are universal product codes and organization codes. Nearly all products worldwide use universal product codes. These are not for a specific company. On the other hand, organization codes are specific to a certain company, such as Amazon.

Universal product codes have several subtypes. These include the UPC, ISBN, EAN, IAN, GTIN, and PZN. The different types of organization codes they use in Amazon are ASIN, GCID, and FNSKU. These product codes are the types you have to choose when you are setting up your Amazon listing.

UPC

The Universal Product Code, or UPC, has a 12-digit code unique for a specific product. A UPC is a unique sequence of black bars that can be detected by machines for easier processing. You use UPC most often in the United States and Canada. You can purchase UPC codes from GS1, an organization assigned to identify different retail products around the globe.

If you are selling your own product, whether manufactured or self-created, you can obtain a GS1 Company Prefix certificate. This makes the Amazon FBA GS1 barcode unique to your product. This means it automatically identifies that a product is your own. The price of each code varies depending on the number of UPC codes you need.

If you are reselling branded products, the code is already in Amazon’s listings. On the other hand, if you are a distributor of products from a wholesaler, you have to obtain the product code from the wholesaler.

EAN

The EAN, or European Article Number, is a particular type of Global Trade Item Number (or GTIN). It is either an 8-digit code or a 13-digit code. Most countries use this except the United States and Canada. The other term for EAN is IAN, which means International Article Number. Each section of the code identifies the country code, the company, and the article number for the specific product. Similar to UPC, an EAN code also need a GS1 prefix certificate.

GTIN

GTIN stands for Global Trade Item Number. This is a common term for most major kinds of a barcode. Nearly every country in the world recognizes GTIN. You can use the GTIN to identify the name of retailer or manufacturers of a product. This is an 100% mandatory Amazon FBA barcode, because if you are selling any product you require a GTIN for it.

ASIN

The ASIN or Amazon Standard Identification Number is an example of an organization code. ASINs are made specifically for a company. ASINs are automatically assigned a listing on Amazon, and you can’t change the ASIN. The code is alpha-numeric. This means that it contains both letters and numbers, and it consists of 10 characters. For book offerings, the counterpart for ASIN is the ISBN or the International Standard Book Number. Customers can also use the ASIN to find a specific product in the Amazon e-commerce platform.

GCID

GCID stands for Global Catalogue Identifier. Unlike other universal product identifiers, Amazon auto-generates the GCID once you put the other product information in your listing. The GCID has a 16-character alphanumeric code. The difference of GCID from other barcodes is that it is directly related to a product and not the listing.

FNSKU

FNSKU stands for Fulfillment Network Stock Keeping Unit. Amazon assigns when you ship your product to its fulfillment centers. Shipping your products to the Amazon fulfillment center means that Amazon will be in charge of the delivery of your products. Each product that goes through the company’s fulfillment center needs the FNSKU code. You can attach this code to your product on your own before shipping them to the fulfillment center, or you can also pay Amazon to do the job for you. The company usually charges $0.20 for each product.

These are FBA barcodes, which means Amazon fulfills the products. But merchants can still use FBM, which allows them to ship their own products. Using FBM, products are not processed in an Amazon Fulfillment Center, they go directly to the customer.

Other Barcodes

There are other types of barcodes that are less likely to be used in Amazon, but are still an option for Amazon sellers. These barcodes include:

PZN

PZN stands for Pharma-Zentral-Nummer, these codes are used to identify medicines in Germany.

JAN

JAN or Japanese Article Number is another term for EAN-13, but JAN is only used in Japan. The first two digits in the barcode are the country codes, and for Japan, it is either 45 or 49.

Why are Amazon FBA Barcodes Important?

As mentioned above, an Amazon FBA barcode can help you identify products and manage your inventory in a more organized way. Amazon handles a large volume of product listings, and to make the fulfillment process a lot more efficient, they have set Amazon FBA barcodes requirements for each item that their sellers offer. By assigning barcodes, Amazon will be able to identify which ones are your products, and which ones are from other merchants. These barcodes are most essential and beneficial to merchants who offer similar products.

Apart from making the fulfillment processes more efficient, Amazon FBA barcodes also help customers report if they have problems on the items they received. These codes could help customers identify the merchant, the manufacturer, and even the fulfillment center that handled the product they ordered. The barcode is like a history tab for your web browser. It contains almost every information about the product related to the supply chain.

Final Thoughts

Amazon FBA barcodes do not only help you make your inventory more organized, they also make the process a lot faster as these codes can be automatically scanned by machines. If you want to become a merchant on Amazon or any other e-commerce platform, it’s essential to be familiar with these codes and analyze which ones suit the type of products you have.

FAQ: Amazon Product Listing without GTIN/UPC

The post Guide to Listing a Product on Amazon without a GTIN/UPC appeared first on SellerMetrics.

8 min read By Rick Wong  Updated Nov 03, 2025

Amazon Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ad campaigns can be run in two ways: automatic and manual. In this article, we’ll explain how to set up Amazon PPC auto campaigns to help new Amazon PPC advertisers navigate this feature much easier. Also check out our related post on Automatic vs Manual Amazon Campaigns.

What are Amazon Automatic Campaigns?

Amazon PPC automatic campaign can help you show your products in front of shoppers who are most likely to buy what you offer by automatically targeting keywords relevant to your products. This means that Amazon controls which keywords to include in your campaign based on how the platform understands your product(s). Amazon may base this on the content of your product pages, images, and related customer searches. Ads targeting these automatically selected keywords then appear on search results pages and product pages related to the products included in your auto PPC ad campaign.

How Does Amazon Know Which Keywords to Target?

The first question you need to answer before setting up an Amazon PPC auto campaign is “does Amazon know your product(s)?” If you don’t have data from previous orders and SEO-optimized product listings, then Amazon wouldn’t know your products. If you you do not know how to set up effective listings, check out our Amazon Optimization Services.

For those who are starting auto campaigns, Amazon will help you cast a wide net. This means when you’re selling “shoes,” Amazon will more likely target the “fashion category” and will place your ad in random pages relevant to the set category until Amazon figures out what you actually offer. Amazon would know the types of products you offer based on the clicks and conversions on these somewhat randomly placed ads.

The downside of this approach is quite obvious: you are essentially paying for clicks, just so that Amazon’s ad algorithm can step-by-step figure out what’s working and what isn’t.

So, in general, if you have a low campaign budget and you think Amazon doesn’t know your products yet, we recommend that you go for manual bidding as you may need to spend a lot of money on the automatic campaign until Amazon figures out what you actually offer.

Pro tip: that can help you figure out whether Amazon knows your product well enough or not is by going to the “Create new campaign” page, and by ticking manual targeting. Then, scroll down to “Products,” upload your product, and take a look at the suggested keywords below. If the suggested keywords are highly relevant to your product listing, then it’s safe to assume that Amazon knows your products.

Setting Up Amazon PPC Auto Campaigns

Step 1: Create a New Amazon Advertising Campaign

Log on to the Amazon advertising platform and create a new ad campaign. When prompted what type of campaign to select (see screenshot below), select “Sponsored Products”.

Step 2: Input Auto Campaign Name, Budget and Start & End Dates (if Desired)

The next thing you need to do is to Input your campaign name, portfolio, start and end date, daily budget, and choose automatic targeting.

Campaign Name

When choosing a campaign name, we recommend that you put in the product you’re advertising, the campaign type (i.e. SP Manual Campaign), and then the main keyword you’re targeting.

Portfolio

Portfolios are an organization technique which allows you to create different portfolios based on the types of products you’d like to advertise. For example, if you’re planning to advertise different types of footwear, you can create portfolios for each kind of footwear (i.e. boots, heels, flats, etc.) to organize your campaign.

Start and End Dates

For the start date, you can put any date. On the other hand, we recommend that you don’t put any date on the end date field, so you can extend your campaign anytime. Keeping your end date open can also work towards your favor in case you run of out of stock. Your ad will automatically stop rather than continue to run until the set end date.

Daily Budget

For the daily budget, it would be best to start with a low budget so you can collect data, test and optimize for a more affordable cost, and just increase your budget over time. You may start with $20 per day, although it may still vary depending on your goals.

Targeting

For the targeting type, you have two options: automatic targeting and manual targeting.  As mentioned, auto campaigns are ideal for new PPC advertisers, while manual targeting is best for those who are already keen on keyword targeting, using match types, and manual bidding.

Step 3: Select a Bidding Strategies for your Auto PPC Campaign

There are three types of bidding strategy for Sponsored Products:

• Dynamic bids – down only (more for profitability)
• Dynamic bids – up and own (more for scalability)
• Fixed bids – ideal if you are knowledgeable in bid management

Amazon shows an “adjust bids by placement” option, but we don’t recommend this on an auto campaign because you are lacking the controls of manual and it can get extremely aggressive (and expensive) as you can adjust your bids by up to 900%.

Step 4: Set Up Ad Groups for your Automatic Keyword Targeting Sponsored Products Campaign

After setting your bidding strategy, you also need to set up your ad group. Start with one ad group. Choose an ad group name, and select the products that you want to include in this campaign. We recommend that you make your ad group more organized by just adding products that fall on the same type (i.e. lipsticks ad group separate from foundation ad group).

What Match Types are Available for Sponsored Product Auto Targeting?

Next, you need to create your sponsored product targeting groups. When you tick the “Set default bid” field, Amazon will ask you to turn on the match types you prefer, whether close match, loose match, substitutes, and/or complement match.

• Close match – ads will appear in front of shoppers who search for terms that are closely related to your product offerings.

• Loose match – ads will appear in front of shoppers who search for terms that are loosely related to your product offerings.

• Substitutes – ads will appear in front of shoppers who view the details of product pages that are similar to what you offer.

• Complement match – ads will appear in front of shoppers who view the details of product pages that complement the products you offer.

Step 5: What are Different Structures for Sponsored Product Auto Targeting Ad Campaigns?

Amazon will also ask you to set your targeting type. You can choose from:

• Type One – using one auto campaign per product or product grouping, and having all four types of targeting I one campaign. This type is a deal for easier ad management.

• Type Two – using two auto campaigns per product or product grouping, and having one campaign for loose or close match, and one campaign for substitute and complement match. This type is ideal for scalability.

• Type Three – using four auto campaigns per product or product grouping, and having one individual per type of targeting. This type is best for profitability.

Step 6: How to Select Appropriate Bids for Sponsored Products Auto Campaigns

Once you’re done setting up the targeting type, the next thing you have to consider is your starting bid. You can take a look at Amazon’s suggested start bid to know how competitive an ad space is. You can also adjust your bid relative to the pricing of your products, but we usually make bid adjustments after 10 clicks.

For example, if you’re selling an umbrella that costs $25 and your bid price is $2.5, that means when you reach 10 clicks (and hit $25), you’ll be on the losing side because your product also costs $25. Simply put, you can bid more aggressively for more expensive products, and bid lower for more affordable products.

Increasing and Decreasing Bids

Also, it’s ideal to test and optimize your campaign so you would know what works and what doesn’t. If you’re not gaining any impression in the first three days, that may mean that you need to increase your bid as your competitor may be bidding more on your chosen keywords. Meanwhile, if you’re getting a lot of impressions and clicks, but you’re not getting any conversions, that may mean that you need to decrease your bid.

Step 7: Adding Negative Keywords to your Auto Campaign

Amazon has a negative keyword targeting option that allows you list all the keywords and products you want to exclude from your ad campaign to narrow down your targeting. This can help you increase your conversion rates as you aim to reach more shoppers who are interested in and are searching for terms that are highly relevant to your products.

If you’re new to Amazon PPC, you may skip this part and just let Amazon determine which keywords to include and not to include in your campaign.

When (and When not) to Run an Automatic Campaigns

Deciding when to go for a manual approach is more suitable can be a tricky questions. While we go into this topic in more details in our dedicated article on Automatic vs Manual Amazon Campaigns, here are some key pointers to answer the question: “Should I launch an automatic campaign or skip straight to manual?” 

When an automatic campaign makes sense:

• New listing / product launches: Picking the right keywords when launching new products can be difficult. You don’t have any reliable historic campaign data to lean on and manual discovery can take time. Automatic campaigns are a much faster way to get up to speed. Amazon’s algorithm automatically draws on your product title, description, and category to match your ad to a wide range of keywords, which gets you broad exposure fast.
• Keyword discovery phase: Even for established products you may hit a wall and find it hard to discover new long-tail or niche search terms. Again, automatic campaigns are a quick way to cast a much wider net and to uncovering hidden search terms gems that you might have never discovered with manual targeting.
• Testing multiple SKUs at once: If you have a catalog of 20-30 SKUs and want to activate exposure across all these SKUs fast without doing all the hard work and building individual keyword lists then auto campaigns are a way to go. We are saying “a way to go”, because taking shortcuts like this is not usually very cost effective, but in situations where speed is key (i.e. ahead of important sales events), then this approach may be permisible.
• Low-risk, broad reach strategy: If your goal right now is traffic or visibility (rather than tight profit margins), automatic campaigns let you scale impressions and clicks at minimal setup overhead. Again.. we are just really putting all the options on the table here – not saying that this is what most sellers may want.

When an automatic campaign may not be ideal:

• Tight margin products / high ACoS sensitivity: If your product has a low margin or you need to tightly control ACoS, then the more free-floating nature of automatic Amazon campaigns is risky as it likely leads to more budget wastage than a tightly controlled manual campaign that targets converting keywords only.
• Highly mature listing with known keywords: If you have already harvested thousands of (hopefully mostly) converting keywords and built strong manual campaigns, the incremental value of an auto campaign may be low.
• Competitive category with frequent optimization needs: If you compete in a crowded niche and need constantly refine bids, placements, and add more negative keywords, then auto campaigns can be very risky and start blasting ad budget into areas that have proven to not perform.

Bottom-line: There are situations when auto campaigns can make sense. Mostly when speed is of the essence, when data is rare or when efficiency is not as important as scaling fast. Think of them as the exploration phase of your Amazon PPC strategy: they enable you to gather data fast, to cast wide nets, and unearth valuable keyword insights quick. However, if you are already running a well-oiled machine, than automatic campaigns are likely not the way to go.

How Can You Optimize Your Amazon Auto Campaigns?

Optimizing your auto campaign can help you reach the right audience based on the products you’d like to advertise. Here are some ways that can help you optimize your Amazon campaign:

• Look at your placement data. Start with opening all your campaigns on ad groups, and then go “Placements” tab where you can see the data on your top of search conversions and product detail page conversions. Then, you can adjust your bids based on the data. For example, if you notice that you’re earning more from the top of the search, you can increase your bid on this type.

• Focus on optimizing your bid by looking at your cost-per-click (CPC), bid price and advertising cost of sale (ACoS). Remember that the goal is to have a low ACoS.

• Run any type of negatives. With an auto campaign, you can’t optimize bids on a search term level, so you must click on the “Search terms” tab, and take a look if you’re paying for any keyword that’s not relevant to your product. If you found some irrelevant keywords, you can tag them as negative keywords, so they won’t be part of your ad campaign.

Final Thoughts

We hope this guide has given you a more thorough perspective about Amazon PPC automatic campaign. If you’re having a hard time navigating Amazon PPC, we offer an Amazon advertising software that can help you achieve your revenue goals. Our software can also do bid automation, manual bidding, benchmarking, keyword searching, variance reporting, and more on your behalf.

If you found this post interesting also read our Amazon PPC Tutorial and our posts on Amazon PPC Broad Vs Phrase Match, Amazon PPC Campaign Strategy and Amazon PPC Campaign Structure. If you need more help running Amazon PPC campaigns, check out our Amazon PPC Services.

If you are an Amazon Seller and you want to ask additional questions about the article or any Amazon FBA related questions. Please consider joining our Facebook Group, where I answer any questions you may have personally.

We are SellerMetrics, our software tool helps Amazon sellers, brands and agencies navigate Amazon Advertising PPC via bid automation, manual bid changes, and analytics.

FAQ: How to Set Up Amazon Auto Campaigns

The post How to Set Up Amazon Auto Campaigns: Complete Guide appeared first on SellerMetrics.

Keyword research is the starting point for Amazon SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Amazon PPC (more about our Amazon PPC Services). It describes the process of identifying search terms that potential buyers of your products likely use on Amazon. Once you have selected relevant keywords, you can use them to enhance the relevance of your Amazon product listings, add them as keywords to the backend of your Amazon product listing and target them via Amazon PPC advertising. Effective keyword research driven optimization will increase product visibility, traffic, and ultimately sales.

This article will help you understand how your keyword strategies for Amazon SEO (more about our Amazon SEO Services) should differ from keywords you target with Amazon PPC ads, such as Amazon Sponsored Products, or Amazon Sponsored Brands ads.

How to Conduct Amazon Keyword Research

Amazon keywords research can be conducted in several ways. You can use paid keyword research tools, such as Helium 10 or Jungle Scout, or even use Amazon’s search bar to discover frequent search queries via the auto-complete suggestions provided by Amazon. If you are already running Amazon ads, you can also identify high potential keywords in the search terms reports of your existing ad campaigns. Keep in mind that keyword research is not something to “set and forget”. According to Google, 15 percent of all daily searches on Google are new searches. Expect the percentage to be similar for Amazon and also take into consideration that many other factors, such as seasonality (i.e. search around holidays and gifting periods) will sway search behavior.

For these reasons your keyword targeting needs to be constantly refined and adjusted. For more details check out our blog post on How to Conduct Amazon Keyword Research.

Identify Competitors’ Keywords using Reverse ASIN Keyword Lookup

A very effective way to conduct keyword research is to check which keywords competing product listings are ranking for. In the video below we describe how to use Zonguru to conduct so-called “reverse ASIN” keyword research.

Differences between keyword research for SEO purposes vs. PPC advertising on Amazon

Keyword Research for Amazon SEO

The primary goal of keyword research for Amazon SEO is to enhance the organic visibility of your product listings. The objective is to surface your listings in high positions on the search results page when Amazon shoppers search for relevant keywords.

The challenge with this approach is that highly commercially viable keywords with large search volumes will be extremely competitive and difficult to rank for.

To increase the likelihood of ranking for these keywords, include them in your listing titles, listing bullet points, or the backend keywords of a listing.

Keyword Research for PPC Ads

In principle, keyword research for PPC campaigns works exactly the same as keyword research for Amazon SEO. Once you have identified relevant terms, you target them with ads. Include keywords in product titles to increase the chances that users click on your ads.

Key Differences Between Keyword Targeting Strategies for SEO and PPC

The main difference between keyword targeting for PPC and SEO purposes is that organic clicks are free, but ad clicks are paid clicks. This has strategic implementations. To maximize efficiency you need to determine which keywords present the biggest commercial opportunity.

The Keyword Prioritization Framework

Think of your target keywords in terms of potential reach (Search Volume) and business potential (Commercial Intent).

• Low Search Volume AND Low Commercial Intent: Clearly these keywords are neither critical for SEO, nor PPC. But still evaluate them from a qualitative point of view: Are these seasonal keywords that may become more relevant at a later stage? Or are these keywords that are just starting to trend and may grow in search volume? Examples are keywords related to product characteristics that indicate that a shopper is still in an information gathering mindset (i.e. “35L vs 45L Backpack”).
  
• Low Search Volume AND High Commercial Intent: You wouldn’t want to waste limited title or bullet point copy on keywords that only trigger a very small number of searches. However, if you cannot realistically break into top spots for higher search volume keywords, then these might still be your best shot at gaining sales traction.
  
  In practice, most Amazon sellers aim to identify target keywords that are not as competitive, highly relevant for their products and yet have a sufficient search volume to be worth the effort. To stick with the backpack example, if you sell ultra-light water resistant hiking backpacks, then so-called long-tail search queries such as “ultra-light water resistant 35L backpack” will likely work well for your products.
  
  Key here is to identify true gems, to target them with your PPC ads and in parallel to also optimize your listing for these keywords. The definition of “true gem” is: a cost per click that does commercially make sense for you. 
  
  So why focus both SEO and PPC efforts on these keywords? The reason is that by breaking into a top spot for a great keyword offsets a virtuous cycle on Amazon: Amazon is optimizing its search results for products that sell well. Clearly consumers like these products and by doing so Amazon also maximizes its own revenue. So by using your PPC ads to accelerate the sale velocity of a product listing for a particular keyword, your organic ranking for this keyword will improve as well.
  
• High Search Volume AND Low Commercial Intent: These are often category-type of keywords (think “hiking backpacks”). While search volume for these keywords is high, shoppers who search for these terms are likely still in the “navigational” phase of their shopping journey. If you can rank organically for these keywords that’s definitely highly beneficial, but despite their navigational characteristics these keywords are typically competitive. In most cases bidding on them with your PPC campaigns is something you want to avoid as low conversion rates will often result in poor ACoS. Things are different if you are a very well established brand in your specific niche and many shoppers likely know your brand and are in fact looking for it. 
  
• High Search Volume AND High Commercial Intent: While these keywords are clearly commercially the most appealing ones, they will likely also be expensive in terms of cost-per-click. A high CPC may in the end still mean that you can not run profitable ads targeting these keywords. So running effective campaigns and fine-tuning your bids is critical to win. To help our clients scale PPC campaigns in this highly competitive territory is why we have developed our own proprietary Amazon bid management software. Its advanced algorithms automate bidding to ensure your bids are fully optimized according to your ACoS goals.
  
  Besides Amazon PPC, you should also try to target these keywords with Amazon SEO. Be realistic when making this decision. Do you have a realistic chance of breaking into the top 1-10 search results? Consider how your listing compares with competitors listings that currently take the top spots. Can you compare with them in terms of number of user reviews? Can you compete on price? Does your product alleviate major weaknesses of competing ASINs?
  
  In other words, is there a compelling reason for shoppers to purchase your item instead of the current top search result? If the answer to these questions is “yes”, then target these keywords via Amazon SEO, but if the answer is “no”, then settle for slightly less competitive keywords.
  
  Keep in mind that ranking in top positions is absolutely key in order to get clicks. The reason therefore is that on Amazon “the first three items displayed in search results account for 64 percent of clicks” (Source: Search Engine Journal).
  

How to Run Low ACoS Campaigns for Highly Competitive Keywords

How to Implement Amazon SEO and Amazon PPC Strategies

Understanding the distinct approaches and goals of keyword research for SEO and PPC on Amazon can help you develop a comprehensive strategy that enhances both organic visibility and targeted ad performance that ultimately drives more traffic and sales.

How Many Keywords Should you Add to an Amazon PPC Campaign?

When you first create a campaign for Amazon PPC, you inevitably get to the steps to add your keywords. The question then becomes, “how many keywords/targets should you be adding to your ad group?” Many inexperienced sellers will add as many keywords as possible and sometimes hit the 1000 allowable keywords limit in the ad group.

The experienced sellers on the other hand will limit the number of keywords because they are thinking about the following:

• Manageability
• Scalability
• Campaign Budget
• Campaign Objective

To Succeed on Amazon Utilize a Holistic Approach to Search Optimization

For a comprehensive Amazon marketing strategy, it’s crucial to balance keyword optimization for both SEO and PPC purposes. While in some cases both go hand in hand, Amazon SEO gives the option to optimize your listings for keywords that would be prohibitively expensive to target with PPC campaigns. Your Amazon PPC search ads on the other hand allow you to ensure maximum exposure for highly converting search terms.

By integrating well-researched keywords into your product listings and running targeted PPC campaigns, you can maximize your product’s visibility and sales potential by aligning your organic and paid search efforts. Start with thorough keyword research, use a combination of primary and long-tail keywords, and continuously optimize your listings. To gain a competitive edge chat with us to learn how our advanced bid optimization software can help you scale your Amazon business.

Related readings: Our tipps for Amazon retargeting ads and our guide on Amazon Ad creative best-practices.

The post Advanced Keyword Strategies for Amazon SEO vs Amazon PPC appeared first on SellerMetrics.

Explainer: How Amazon PPC Advertising works

Before you can begin optiziming your Amazon advertising campaigns we provide you with a primer on what Amazon ads are and how they work. First of all, when we refer to Amazon ads, we are talking about Amazon Sponsored Products, Amazon Sponsored Brands and Amazon Sponsored Display ads.

While for Amazon display ads audience based targeting options are available, for the most part Amazon ads are what is referred to as “PPC Ads”: You select certain target keywords that you want to bid on. As Amazon shoppers search for products on Amazon.com, your ads are triggered and served to potential customers based on these keywords (more on this topic: Keyword Research for Amazon Products).

Why Should You Invest in Amazon PPC Optimization?

While the use of PPC may be easy and convenient, finding the right keywords and formulating the best strategy can be challenging. You need to consider different Amazon bidding strategies, your Amazon PPC campaign structure, whether to go for Amazon automatic vs manual campaigns and so on.

Also, before you begin optimizing your Amazon PPC campaigns make sure that your listing perform well. There is no point sending ad traffic a product listing that does not convert because it doesn’t have any user reviews, or because listing titles and bullet point copy are not optimized (More about our Amazon Listing Optimization Services).

Once all this is done optimize your PPC campaigns to scale and grow your Amazon sales in the most cost-efficient way. This will help you generate sales faster, acquire more reviews and thereby offset a perpetuous virtuous cycle that also leads to more organic sales as your Amazon Listings’ search performance improves (a process referred to as the Amazon flywheel).

As a result you will be collecting dividends on your hard earned Amazon PPC success.

6 Steps to optimize your Amazon PPC Campaigns

As promised below are 6 actionable steps to optimize your Amazon PPC, if you follow these step regularly, at least on a weekly basis I will close to guarantee that there will be ACoS improvement within one month timeframe.

Step 1 Block out the Bleeder

These are keywords/category/PAT that is bleeding you dry because click/spend is going into it and no orders has been attributed, you have given them a chance now its time to cut your loses.

Criteria:

• Last 60 days – 3 (Amazon PPC sales attributions)
• Clicks ≥ 8
• Orders = 0

Action:

• Decrease Bid to Min Bid ($0.02 in US marketplace)

Step 2 Down Bid High ACoS (>100%)

Criteria:

• Last 60 days – 3 (Amazon PPC sales attributions)
• Clicks ≥ 8
• Orders > 0
• ACoS > 100%

Action:

• Decrease Bid to CPC * 50%

Step 3 Down bid Above Target ACoS (40%)

Let just say my target ACoS% is 40%, you can replace this number to whatever your target ACoS% is.

Criteria:

• Last 60 days – 3 (Amazon PPC sales attributions)
• Clicks ≥ 8
• Orders > 0
• ACoS ≥ 40% and ≤ 100%

Action:

• Decrease Bid to CPC * 75%

Step 4 Up bid Over Optimized Keywords

The idea for this is to make sure the keywords that are really driving sales at a low cost gets a bid that closer to the market. This will ensure that you are winning the keyword bid auction.

Criteria:

• Last 60 days – 3 (Amazon PPC sales attributions)
• Clicks ≥ 8
• Orders > 0
• ACoS ≤ 20% (half of target ACoS of 40%)

Action:

• Decrease Bid to CPC * 125%

Step 5 Add Negatives Keywords

Now we are going to explore adding negative keywords in your campaign. You go to the “Search Term” function inside your Amazon ad console inside your ad group. Please note this feature is only available for Sponsored Products

Criteria (In your Search Term Screen):

• Last 60 days – 3 (Amazon PPC sales attributions)
• Clicks ≥ 8
• Orders = 0

Action:

• Add as negative exact

Step 6 Add High Performers (Search Harvest)

Staying the search term console, you will now do the opposite and add these search term that has done well and attributed to at least 2 orders. There a different terms for this process in the Amazon PPC community such as Search Term Harvesting, Positive Keyword, Adding Keywords, Search Term Isolation etc

Criteria (In your Search Term Screen):

• Last 60 days – 3 (Amazon PPC sales attributions)
• Clicks ≥ 8
• Orders ≥ 2

Action:

• Add as Keyword

Amazon PPC Optimization on Steroids’ (ft SellerMetrics)

You probably can figure out by now from the above optimization process that scaling and implementing it across multiple campaigns and marketplace will be very time consuming. We at SellerMetrics can take the guess work (and actual work) out of Amazon PPC Optimization by automating above 6 steps optimization process.

Imagine if all your campaigns/keywords/search terms are completely streamlined across all of your marketplace/accounts, that how much time you can save for more criterial business decision such as launching new product or writing new books. Lets see how this is done on SellerMetrics.

Step 1 to 4 Using SellerMetrics keywords console

Using SellerMetrics’ console you can make keywords level bid changes across all your Amazon advertising marketplaces/accounts. So you don’t need to go in and out of campaigns, then into another account like seen in the previous. Your bid change also be done using CPC as your baseline whereas this is something supported on your Amazon advertising console.

Step 5 Add Negative Keywords

SellerMetrics negative keyword function make adding negatives so easy, just set up a rule.

For example, I want “X” keywords from “Campaign A” to be inserted into “Campaign B/Ad Group B” as negative keyword (exact) when keywords “X” hit “Y” Clicks with Orders = 0.

Step 6 Add High Performers (Search Harvest)

Same with search term isolation, SellerMetrics makes this super easy with the rule set up.

For example, I want “X” keywords from “Campaign A” to be inserted into “Campaign B/Ad Group B” as a new keyword (can pick exact, phrase or broad) when keywords “X” hit “Y” Orders/or ACoS%.

Check us out, we have a 14 days (no credit card required) trial.

Other Amazon PPC Tips for Campaign Optimization

Here are other Amazon PPC keyword optimization tips to consider when optimizing your ad campaign:

Optimize for Amazon PPC Match Types

This helps potential buyers search for relevant sponsored products. For manual campaigns, it can be classified into broad, phrase, and exact matches. Broad match types contain all components of keywords in any order. Phrase match types contain all components of keywords in the same order. Exact match types contain word-for-word keywords.

There’s also a negative keyword setting that can help you eliminate targeted searches not related to the product you are selling and words that are not converting into actual sales.

In-Depth Keyword Research & Negative Keywords

A robust Amazon PPC campaign begins with thorough keyword research. Unlike traditional search engines, Amazon shoppers arrive with high purchase intent, and the keywords they use reflect a desire to find specific products. Because of this direct commercial mindset, selecting the right keywords—and equally important, excluding the wrong ones—can significantly affect your ad performance.

Identifying High-Intent Keywords

Effective research starts by brainstorming terms that relate closely to your product’s core features and benefits. You can start with Amazon’s own auto-suggestions; when you begin typing in the Amazon search bar, the platform will populate related search phrases used by real customers. These search suggestions often include long-tail phrases that reveal more specific consumer needs. While short, generic keywords might bring broader visibility, longer phrases like “organic cotton baby swaddle for newborns” attract buyers who already know what they want.

You can supplement this approach by using keyword research tools, or by conducting reverse keyword search on Amazon. Here is a very detailed review of popular Amazon PPC Tools that you can use for keyword research.

Analyzing the Amazon Search Term Report

Once your ads have been running for a few weeks, dive into your Search Term Reports. These reports show the actual searches that triggered your ads, along with clicks and conversion data. Analyzing these insights helps you identify which terms have delivered profitable conversions and which phrases are wasting budget. If a particular phrase consistently drives sales at a reasonable Advertising Cost of Sale (ACoS), consider transferring it to an exact match campaign with a higher bid to capture more of that lucrative traffic.

Similarly, keep an eye on phrases that result in clicks but no conversions. Those may indicate either a mismatch between your product and the shopper’s intent or a poorly optimized product listing that fails to convert. If your listing is well-optimized yet you still see repeated non-converting terms, it’s time to add them as negative keywords.

Implementing Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are a critical but often overlooked element of Amazon PPC optimization. By marking a keyword as negative, you instruct Amazon not to show your ad for searches containing that term. This helps you prevent wasted ad spend on irrelevant clicks. Negative keywords can be broad-match or phrase-match, depending on how strictly you want to exclude the term.

Optimize for Dayparting and Seasonality

Online shopping activity on Amazon isn’t static—user behavior shifts over the course of a day, a week, and throughout the year. Understanding these fluctuations allows you to allocate your ad budget when consumers are most likely to purchase, which can lead to higher efficiency and better ACoS.

What is Dayparting?

Dayparting, also known as ad scheduling, is a tactic used to run ads during specific hours or days of the week. While Amazon doesn’t currently offer a native dayparting feature for Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands. The concept is simple: if you notice that your target audience tends to purchase in the evenings or during work breaks, you can focus your ad spend during those windows and minimize wasteful impressions at other times.

However, before implementing dayparting, make sure to gather data on your audience’s peak shopping hours. This can come from your Amazon sales reports or Google Analytics data if you correlate time-of-day patterns in traffic to your product’s overall purchase trends. Keep in mind that dayparting should be approached carefully. Cutting off ads during certain periods might cause you to miss unexpected spurts of sales, so test gradually and monitor results closely.

Seasonal Opportunities and Challenges
Amazon experiences significant seasonal peaks—such as Prime Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the broader holiday season—where traffic and competition skyrocket. Leading up to these events, advertisers often raise bids and budgets to remain visible during surges in shopper activity. The potential for increased conversions can offset higher costs, as shoppers are more likely to be in a buying mood.

Once the peak passes, reevaluate your bids and budgets to prevent over-spending in slower periods. Some products experience “evergreen” demand year-round, while others are highly cyclical (such as a product that sells best during summer). If your product is seasonal, plan your PPC strategy accordingly. Ramp up ad spend a few weeks before the season starts to build momentum, and scale back when demand tapers off to maintain profitability.

Track and Control Your Ad Campaign Budget

For proper budgeting, first, you must compute for the break-even ACoS before setting your ad spend. This way, you’ll be able to determine the maximum amount that you can spend on your PPC campaigns to reach break-even. Next, if you want a profitable campaign, you can compute your target ACoS. Do this by determining your profit margin and the break-even ACoS. It is good to note that your hall not spend your target ACoS to assure a profit.

The Importance of Monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

The one metrics on Amazon PPC you MUST monitor: CPC

There are a lot of metrics in your Amazon advertising dashboard, if there is one metric that you really want to just keep an eye on and monitor, that would be the CPC (Cost per Click) stat. The reason why this is a very important metric is because:

• It is direct proxy to competitiveness of the market, increase in CPC means increase in marketplace competitiveness. If that is the case you need be in high alert

• Manipulating your CPC will directly lower your ACoS%/increase ROI (Bid Optimization)

• Your CPC can be used to work out your CPA (cost per acquisition) and in turn your realistic target ACoS %
  • CPA = CPC/Conversion Rate realistic target ACoS % = CPA/AOV

Below Example:

AOV = [Sales/Orders] = 840.44/55 = $15.28

CPA = 1.56/0.1698 = $9.10

Realistic Target ACoS% = $9.10/$15.28 = 59.55%

In the above example, is what your ACoS % you can expect if your CPC is $1.56 with an AOV of $15.28. Whether this ACoS is acceptable to you that will be based on your break even ACoS which will be discuss later. In the meantime calculate your realistic target ACoS % and have this figure in your back pocket.

Understanding and Calculating Yout Breakeven ACOS

Determining your breakeven ACoS % is quite simple, it is basically your profit margin on a per unit level.

ie your profit margin is 22%, therefore your breakeven ACoS is 22%. If you break down your individual product P&L it should looking something like the below:

If your Amazon PPC campaign is over the breakeven ACoS % of 22% than the campaign is in the red, on the other hand if the campaign is under the breakeven ACoS % than your campaign is profitable. Another important note is that your Breakeven ACoS does not have to be equal to your Target ACoS, but target ACoS should be close to your realistic Target ACoS based on your CPC.

Final Thoughts: How to Optimize Amazon PPC Campaigns

We hope this article has given you more insights about Amazon PPC optimization for sponsored products. In case you need more assistance in setting up your ad campaigns and navigating Amazon PPC… We offer an easy-to-use Amazon PPC software that helps you rank higher on Amazon’s search results pages. This way you can easily achieve your sales goals.

Related Readings: Amazon PPC Software Review, Amazon PPC Software and Amazon PPC Automatic Campaign. Find out more about our Amazon PPC Services.

The post Advanced Amazon PPC Optimization: 6 Actionable Tactics to Decrease your ACoS and Grow Sales 🚀 appeared first on SellerMetrics.

How can Amazon PPC help increase your sales?

Amazon PPC helps increase your sales by allowing you to create ad campaigns. These ad campaigns target top-performing keywords relevant to your products. These keywords are what shoppers usually search on Amazon. You can be rest assured that they’ll work for your benefit! Amazon PPC helps your brand and your products gain visibility on Amazon search results, product pages, and more.

Amazon Ads: Automatic vs Manual Keyword Targeting: Scale vs Control

Both automatic and manual campaigns are sub-types of Amazon Sponsored Products Campaigns and serve ads based on target keywords (more about Amazon product ads management). Both types are cost-per-click ads, so you only pay for your ads when customers actually click on them.

For Manual Campaigns you can control how much you spend by setting a maximum ad budget. In addition to that you can also set a maximum bid per click for each target keyword.

With Auto Campaigns things are slightly different: You cannot set target keywords. As the name implies, the Amazon ad algorithm automatically selects target keywords for your ad campaign. For this reason you can also not define maximum bids at keyword level. You however define a campaign budget to control costs.

For automatic campaigns our ads will show up for relevant search results and product pages related to what you offer (as determined by the Amazon ad algorithm). Your ads will also appear in front of customers who are searching for any keywords that you have mentioned in your product listing.

For example, if you offer running shoes, Amazon may automatically choose the keyword “running shoes” for your campaign. Therefore, when someone searches for the phrase “running shoes for women,” there’s a huge chance that your ad may appear on the search results for this query.

Amazon PPC Automatic vs Manual Campaign Overview

Advantages of Amazon Automatic Campaigns

Amazon Auto campaigns campaigns have number of advantages:

• They are Suitable for PPC Starters (with sufficient ad budgets): With the automatic campaign, Amazon automatically chooses the target keywords for you. This facilitates the entire campaign creation process as you do not have to conduct your own keyword research, or figure out how much to bid.
• They Provide Broad Coverage: Auto campaigns are sort of “catch-all” campaigns. If you are worried about missing important keywords (and potential sales), auto campaigns can serve as an insurance policy that will increase the chances that your ads show.
• They can Help you Spot New Search Trends: User search behavior is not static and shoppers come up with new ways to search for the same products all the time. With manual bidding there is a risk that you miss out on these new search queries.
• They Help Cover Seasonal Searches: One challenge with manual targeting is seasonality. While some product categories are more affected by this than others (those suitable for gifting are usually impacted more), seasonality affects many products to some degree. Automatic campaigns are able to quickly pick up on seasonal searches and target them right away.

How Advanced Amazon Advertisers Use Auto Campaigns to Harvest Profitable Long-Tail Keywords

Pro Tip: Many sophisticated Amazon Advertisers use automatic campaigns with strict guardrails in place (aka negative keywords) to harvest new, high-potential long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords consist of multiple search terms and have a lower search volume, but high commercial intent. To give an example: The search volume for “nike running shoes” is higher than the search volume for “nike running shoes for men size 9 red”. The latter is a so-called long-tail keyword. You can instantly notice that the person searching for such a specific shoe is ready to pull the trigger. While there may not be that many searches that are this specific, targeting them with a suitable product is clearly a good idea.

Automatic campaigns are one way to identify these high-potential long-tail keywords. In the next step these “golden nugget” keywords are then added to a manual targeting campaign for better bid control. This means that you can bid more competitively on top-performing keywords to help you meet your sales goals fast.

Disadvantages of Amazon Automatic Campaigns

Running automatic campaigns Amazon PPC campaigns has one major disadvantage: loss of control. While these campaigns are great in terms of delivering broad keyword coverage and scale, they will also create situations where your product(s) show up for search queries that are not at all a good fit. Disadvantages associated with Amazon auto campaigns are:

• No Control over Target Keywords: Products will show up for searches that a human would deem unsuitable for your products.
• No Control over Bids: Bid efficiency is a critical component of Amazon PPC optimization. With automatic campaigns however, you cannot control bids at keyword level. That is also the reason why you want to move converting keywords from an automatic campaign to a manual targeting campaign.

In combination, these two disadvantages introduce the risk of ad budget waste and are the reason why many Amazon FBA businesses prefer manual campaigns over automatic campaigns.

Advantages of Amazon Manual Campaigns

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

Advantages of manual PPC campaigns are:

• Bid Control at Keyword Level: You can set maximum bids for every keyword. Based on your sales price, profit margin and expected conversion rate (or historic conversion rate) you can calculate maximum bids that make commercial sense for you. This means that you can bid more competitively on top-performing keywords to help you meet your sales goals fast.
• Optimum Coverage for Important Keywords: You can segment important keywords, such as your brand name, into separate ad campaigns to ensure that they have sufficient budget and that bids are high enough. This ensures that your ads will constantly feature in top positions on the Amazon search results page (and that you don’t miss out on any sales).
• Match Type Control: By setting keywords to either broad, phrase or exact match you have good control over the granularity of your keyword targeting. You can set higher bids for exact match keywords for search terms that have proven to deliver sales and select phrase or broad match for keywords where you want to cover a wider range of closely related search queries.
• The Ability to Target Competitors’ Brand Names: Competitor bidding is a popular Amazon advertising tactic. In case you identify other Amazon Sellers that sell products very similar to your own, it can be a promising approach to simply bid on their brand name. Chances are your ad will show up in a high enough position and you can manage to divert some of their sales right into your own pocket.
• The Ability to Protect Your Own Brand Name: On the flipside, the same may happen to you. That’s why it is critical that you run a so-called Brand Campaign. While this campaign will not drive incremental sales and you may end up paying for some clicks that might have otherwise been for free, we generally advise all our clients to always run ads targeting their own brand names. Otherwise the risk of getting targeted by competitors’ is too high and ultimately sales will be lost to peers.

For these reasons, the most Amazon PPC experts prefer manual campaigns over automatic campaigns. But this is also one of their downsides: things can be complicated for Amazon Sellers who are new to Amazon ads and lack either the expertise to fully optimize their ads, or do not have sufficient historic click data to draw statistically significant conclusions.

Disadvantages of Amazon Manual Campaigns

Manual Amazon PPC campaigns come with a set of disadvantages:

• Expert Knowledge is Required: Running manual campaigns well is not easy. While anyone can target their own brand name and generate sales things get more tricky when figuring out which so-called “generic keywords” to target and how much to bid for them. Generic keywords are all keywords that do not include your brand name (or product series names).
• Making Data Driven Decisions is Expensive (and make take time): In practice, figuring out which keywords convert and which ones don’t is often expensive. For many keywords many (expensive) ad clicks are required to reach a statistically significant threshold to determine whether a keyword is worth bidding on or not. That is one of the advantages of working with a professional Amazon Ad Agency: An Agency has a bird’s-eye view across the accumulated click data of many Amazon ad accounts and can make better decisions in a much shorter amount of time and at a lower individual spend than any single Amazon advertiser can. While each account is slightly different, general patterns as to what keywords work and which ones do not emerge quickly and are homogenous for brands with similar value propositions.
• Important Keywords may be Missed: With manual campaigns, even when broad match keywords are utilized, there is always the chance that either emerging new search queries, or seasonal search queries are overlooked. The same is true for high-potential long-tail keywords.

You may start noticing that many of the disadvantages of manual Amazon PPC Campaigns are the inverted advantages of automatic campaigns. In other words, both campaign types are really just two sides of the same coin.

The Benefits of Running Both Automatic and Manual Ad Campaigns

If you’re wondering whether manual or automatic are better, our answer is: running both in parallel is often ideal. This binary approach allows you to do two important things: stay on top of search trends of automatic campaigns, and find the most effective keywords for your manual campaign. Here’s the step by step process on how you can leverage both automatic and manual ad campaigns.

Phase One: Launch an Automatic Campaign

1. Create a sponsored products campaign using automatic targeting.
2. Let the automatic campaign run for at least two weeks.
3. Once you’ve completed the campaign period, download the “Search Term” report from the “Advertising reports” tab. Open it on Google Spreadsheet or Excel.
4. Generate a list of keywords that perform better than others using the data under “Impressions,” “Clicks,” average “Cost Per Click” (CPC) and/or advertising cost of sale (What is a good ACoS on Amazon?).

Keywords with high impressions and clicks or conversions are considered good keywords, as long as the average cost per click suits your strategy (and you budget, of course.) After you’ve identified the best keywords, you’re ready to start your campaign with manual targeting.

Phase Two: Layer in a Manual Campaign

1. Create an additional sponsored products campaign using manual targeting.
2. Choose at least 30 keywords for a start, not more than 100. To be able to determine the right keywords, export the data or results of the automatic campaign and Identify the keywords that generated the most clicks and sales. Then, add them to your manual campaign. You may also use an Amazon keyword research tool for more keyword options.
3. For first-time manual campaign advertisers, we recommend using the broad match type. This can help you expand your potential reach by targeting the widest set of shopper searches. But you may also narrow your match types to “phrase” or “exact” to also reach more specific keyword searches.
4. To help increase your sales on the keywords you’ve chosen, set your bids a little higher on your manual targeting campaign than the amount you set on the automatic campaign. Over time, you can increase your bids on the top-performing keywords.
5. Keep the campaign up for a week or two to collect a more reliable performance data.
6. Just like what you did on the automatic campaign, once you’ve completed the campaign period, download the “Search Term” report from the “Advertising reports” tab.
7. Generate a list of keywords that perform better than others using the data under “Impressions,” “Clicks,” average “Cost Per Click” (CPC) and/or advertising cost of sale (ACos) for another round of the campaign.

Phase Three: Use Both Campaigns Simultaneously

1. Based on the top-performing keywords on the manual campaign, set up new automatic and manual campaigns.
2. Keep both campaigns up and running. Tag them as “always-on” campaigns.
3. Check your search term campaign reports whenever you want to use new keywords, or when you think you’ve already exhausted the earning potential of your previous keywords.

Note: If you will bid on the same keyword in both manual and automatic campaigns using the same account, you won’t be competing against yourself.

Amazon Automatic Campaigns vs Google’s Performance Max and Meta’s Advantage Plus

There is another interesting angle to consider: Both Google and Meta have had great success rolling out “automatic targeting” campaigns. Adoption rates for Google’s and Meta’s “auto targeting” campaign types Performance Max (PMAX) and Advantage Plus are high and many DTC brands have been able to utilize them with great success.

So why is it that in comparison to that adoption rates for Amazon’s auto campaigns have been sluggish and many Amazon Sellers report that results have been mixed at best?

The answer lies in the complexity of the Google and Meta advertising ecosystems. Google’s PMAX campaigns serve ads across search, shopping, display and YouTube placements and creative assets include everything from standard text ads to static ads and videos. Meta Advantage Plus ads offer a similar number of variables that impact ad delivery.

As a result it is basically impossible for any human to beat an advanced optimization algorithm that can instantly weight a complex set of factors including user past behavior, search history, device type, location, demographics and so on to serve them a well composed ad across a wide range of channels and placements.

With Amazon Sponsored Products PPC ads, things are less complicated: Your product listing is your ad creative and the search term input by a shopper into the Amazon search bar is an incredibly strong intent signal by itself.

For this reason the benefit of ensuring that your ads do serve for relevant target keywords by adding them to manual campaigns with a precisely fine-tuned bid is often the more effective approach.

How SellerMetrics can help optimize your Amazon Automatic and Manual Advertising Campaigns

As mentioned, one of the key reports is the Search Term reports in your Amazon Advertising account. Using SellerMetrics you can easily gather these search terms and further optimize via adding negatives and new search terms.

Final Thoughts: Choosing Amazon Auto or Manual Campaigns?

Using both automatic and manual ad campaigns can help you achieve your Amazon sales goals, as long as you would follow the strategy outlined in this article. Meanwhile, if you need help in navigating Amazon PPC, our Amazon advertising software can help. SellerMetrics can help you with bid automation, keyword whitelisting, manual bidding, keyword navigation, search term generation, and benchmarking to develop successful ad campaigns. To learn how we can help you learn more about our Amazon PPC Services.

Related readings: Amazon PPC automatic campaign deep-dive). Also check out our Amazon PPC Tutorial and our posts on Amazon PPC Broad Vs Phrase Match and Amazon PPC Campaign Strategy.

FAQ: Amazon PPC Automatic vs. Manual Campaigns

The post Amazon PPC Automatic vs. Manual Campaigns appeared first on SellerMetrics.

The experienced sellers on the other hand will limit the number of keywords because they are thinking about the following:

• Manageability
• Scalability
• Campaign Budget
• Campaign Objective

Structure of your Amazon PPC Campaigns

To ensure that your Amazon PPC account is set up for manageability and scalability, you have to make sure to name each of your PPC campaigns. The campaign names should indicate the following:

• Advertising Type (Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, or Sponsored Display)
• Targeting Type (Auto or Manual)
• Keywords or Product Targeting (KW and PAT for short)
• Product (Using ASIN, SKU, or Short Description)
• Strategy (Launch, Mature, by Match Type etc)

We name our Amazon PPC campaign to the following naming convention. This is what we do, and you don’t need to follow exactly.

{Advertising Type} – {Targeting Type} – {Keywords or Product Targeting}- {Product} – {Strategy}

For example, if the campaign is a sponsored product, manual, ASIN: B07PY7GLKV, and the product just launched. Then the campaign name should be:

SP – Manual – KW – B07PY7GLKV(Moon Lamp) – Launch

By naming your campaign like the above, you can stay organized and pinpoint the exact type of campaigns you want to optimize.

What is your Campaign Budget?

Another aspect in determining the number of keywords in your campaign budget. You want to set a campaign budget that allows all your keyword to get a chance at an impression. If you add many keywords, you might be spreading your budget across too many keywords, where >60% of the keywords will not get any impressions

In order to give all your keywords a chance, your campaign budget should be set to the below formula:

Daily Budget (Campaign) = Number of Keywords or Product Target x Est. CPC

So if you have a campaign budget limit on your Amazon advertising, this would be a constraint on the number of keywords you can use. In other words, you can determine the number of keywords base on your campaign budget if you reverse the above formula:

Number of Keywords or Product Target = Daily Budget (Campaign)/Est. CPC

Avoid Keyword Dumping

As mentioned above, you can add up to 1000 keywords per ad group. If you add many keywords indiscriminately from keyword research tools, you are probably keyword dumping. Keyword dumping can lead you into what I call a “Whack a Mole” situation.

What is the “What a Mole” situation?

When you are caught up in a cycle of constantly optimizing for keywords because your ad group/campaign has too small of a budget for the number of keywords in it, if your ad group has over 100 keywords, you are a good chance probably keyword dumping.

For example, the seller has 1000 keywords in his ad group, but there is not enough budget to win an impression on all 1000 keywords, so what Amazon will do is to allocate impression to only 100 of the 1000 keywords. As you optimize the first set of 100 keywords, the campaign budget will then move on to the next set of 100 keywords, and then you would need to optimize for that set. If it takes you one full month to fully optimize your 100 keywords, it will take a full 10 months to optimize this campaign completely.

So what’s the solution to this Amazon PPC mistake?

Limit the number of keywords or product targets in an ad group to 100 at most

As a well-informed Amazon seller, you will limit yourself to 100 keywords and ensure your campaign will get optimized within a reasonable timeframe.

What is the Optimal Number of Keywords for your Campaign?

You should look to add around 50-60 keywords per ad group and 100 keywords in a campaign level.

How SellerMetrics can make sure you recover from Keyword Dumping mistakes

Proper Amazon PPC campaign setup requires experience. The first few campaigns created by sellers, in most cases, are not the most optimally structured. This includes not properly naming your campaign, budgeted or adding too many keywords.

At the same time, these “grandfathered” campaigns drive a lot of the PPC sales; shutting them down and creating a new campaign could potentially be a very risky proposition. If your campaigns are not properly named, take the time to dig through your campaigns to the naming conventions mentioned above.

If your campaign/ad group is too tough to manage from having too many keywords via keyword dumping, SellerMetrics can help. Our automation bidding function has 3 types of bid settings, they are:

1. Growth
2. Moderate
3. Optimize

In a situation where you have too many keywords to manage, you can use our “Optimize” bid settings, this setting do the following:

• Will down bid lesser relevant keywords compress bidding on less relevant keywords, while leaving more budget to high performing keywords
• Change bid according to user-specified ACoS goals
• Make bid change to all keywords daily

By using the SellerMetrics bid automation feature, you easily manage and optimize these large campaigns without any interruptions.

The post How Many Keywords for Amazon PPC Should You Be Bidding For? appeared first on SellerMetrics.

Remember, there are two roads that Amazon sellers will venture into if they are looking to grow their business: 1) Start selling on other Amazon marketplaces, and 2) Set your online store. In this article, we will talk about the former. 

In setting up an online store, Shopify is a prevalent option due to the simplicity of use, integration with payments, and the number of nicely designed responsive themes. 

This article will assume that you have a Shopify store set up already.

Why Shopify for Amazon Sellers?

Collection of Customer and Behavioral Data

One of the main cons of selling on Amazon is the lack of data. In Amazon, you cannot collect any customer-related data. So that means you won’t get certain customer information such as their email address and phone numbers. On Shopify, you will see the customer’s email address and which channel they found your product (Google/Facebook).

Shopify also allows for third-party pixels, which will enable you to track the customer journey and behavior on your website. Using these 3rd party pixels enables you to retarget your potential customers in a very customizable fashion. This will not be possible in the Amazon marketplace.

Building a Brand

If you want to market your product off Amazon, you need a custom website to convey your brand or your product message. These include any videos, photos, messaging, or customer support. None of which can be added to create a much more structured Amazon product listing page.

A more practical example is, let’s say you are promoting your line of products for your pop-up store, the most brand-friendly way to do this is to advertise your own online store URL address than displaying an Amazon.com listing.

Cashflow is Better on Shopify

Another reason to use Shopify for your Amazon store is cashflow. One big issue for Amazon sellers is that Amazon withholds payment for 14 days, and if you are a high-growth business, you will run into a cash crunch very quickly. That is why there has been a proliferation of Amazon-specific lenders catering to this space. 

On the other hand, Shopify allows for payment gateways such as Stripe and Paypal. These payment gateways settle payments in 4 days or less. In the case of Paypal, you will get the payment almost immediately. By getting cash in your bank account quicker, you can meet any inventory or operational needs that require money instead of looking for external financing.

Cheaper Transaction Fees

Shopify transaction fee is 2.9%, while the Amazon transaction fee is 15%. Enough said there.

Why Should You Integrate your Amazon and Shopify Stores?

To run your online business as lean and as efficiently as possible, you need to look for ways to automate and leverage technology as much as possible. One such example is leveraging Amazon advertising software to optimize and automate the time-consuming Amazon PPC optimization processes.

In running both Amazon and Shopify stores, you want to avoid as much as possible to be doing duo work where you don’t need to. A prime example of this would be product listing creation and fulfillment. If you were to add a new product, you don’t want to be, first, listing on your Amazon seller central, and second, manually creating the same listing on Shopify.

What are You Integrating?

Between Amazon and Shopify, Shopify already has a feature where you can automate the fulfillment between your Shopify store and Amazon FBA. That means you can automatically fulfill your Shopify order via Amazon FBA without having to go to Amazon seller central, then go to multi-channel fulfillment, and finally having to enter the customer’s address manually and click ship. This doesn’t seem like much, but imagine having to do this for 20+ orders daily; then it will quickly become a much-needed time saver!

Requirements to Integrate Shopify with Amazon for Fulfillment

1. You have a seller account with Amazon using Amazon FBA.
2. You have, at a minimum, a basic subscription tier on your Shopify Store.
3. Selling on Amazon US or Canada marketplaces only.

• Please note* →  Before integrating you need to make sure your Shopify store currency matches the location of your Amazon marketplace/FBA country. For example, if your store currency is CAD, then the integration will only fulfill from the Amazon FBA CA warehouse and only to a Canadian address. If your Amazon marketplace account is for another region, then you need to use a third-party app for fulfillment integrations.

Step by Step Integration

1. Activate Fulfillment by Amazon

You will need to first integrate your Shopify account with your Amazon account by doing the following steps:

A. Use this link to sign in to your Amazon Seller Central account.

B. On the Marketplace Web Services or MWS page (above), read the terms and conditions, click “next.”

C. Continue the process by clicking “Continue” and you will be brought back to the Shopify shipping settings page.

2. Match shipping rates and settings between Shopify and Amazon FBA

Since you are at the end of the day using Amazon FBA to make the final last-mile delivery, your service levels and rates need to match exactly that of Amazon FBA. 

Amazon FBA offers 3 tiers of shipping service, and they are:

• Standard Shipping
• Two-Day Shipping
• One-Day Shipping

Back to the Shopify settings screen, go to the “Shipping” section and then click “Manage Rates.”

Since we need to match shipping information based on your Amazon FBA settings and country, you will delete all the default shipping rate and shipping zones info that not the country where your Amazon FBA is based.

Once all the above is cleared, you will add back the shipping tiers that Amazon FBA supports (Standard Shipping, Two-Day Shipping, or One-Day Shipping), by clicking on “Add Rate” (see above). 

When adding the rates, make sure the rate name is exactly as they appear on Amazon FBA.

• Standard Shipping
• Two-Day Shipping
• One-Day Shipping

To find your price for the above tier, you can find the cost to fulfill via Amazon for your products tier here. 

An example, my product size tier is “Small standard: 10 to 16 oz.” The price I would input would be:

• Standard Shipping → $5.79
• Two-Day Shipping → $5.89
• One-Day Shipping → $12.80

Once you are done adding your 3 shipping rate names and their corresponding prices, click “save” at the bottom of the page.

3. Add a New Product on Shopify

Now you will add a new product listing on Shopify, which will also match your listing on Amazon, the primary field used to link the listing between platforms will be the “SKU” field. More on that later.

To add a new product, go to the “Product” on the left nav bar and click “Add product.”

Once on the product listing edit screen, scroll down to the “Inventory” section, and under the “Inventory managed by” select “Amazon Marketplace Web” in the dropdown. In this section, make sure to enter the SKU field, which exactly matches the corresponding Seller SKU in Amazon. 

Also, don’t forget to add and match the correct values for the weight, title, price, and other product listing information on this page.

4. Fulfill Your Shopify Order via Amazon FBA

Now for the final step, once you get an order, click on the “All Orders,” then click on an order # that is unfulfilled.

On the next screen, you will click “Request Fulfillment.”

Choose the shipping method under the drop-down menu that matches the customer selection (arrow #1), then click on the button “Fulfil Items.”

You will now see that this order number’s status has changed to “Pending Fulfillment” and its corresponding order on Amazon Seller Central.

You can also see an audit of the exact flow of fulfillment on the order page’s bottom portion. If the order has been successfully requested, there will be a line that will say “You requested fulfillment of x items from amazon_marketplace_web”.

Once Amazon FBA actually ships and fulfills this order, this integration will automatically update the fulfillment status to “Fulfilled,” and add the tracking number to the order page as well.

Conclusion

That concludes how to integrate the fulfillment process between Shopify and Amazon stores. In the ever more competitive E-Commerce space, multi-channel selling is as essential as ever. Therefore Shopify stores, with its supported apps and integration, have been very popular amongst Amazon sellers.

It can be time-consuming running a Shopify store co-currently with your Amazon FBA business, but integrations and tools such as the above make running both platforms much easier and less time-consuming. Continue and find ways to automate your platform’s operations and your E-Commerce brand will be ready to scale to new heights!

The post Shopify and Amazon FBA: A Guide to Automating Fulfillment Between Your Amazon and Shopify Stores appeared first on SellerMetrics.

What a better way to fully understand Amazon systems, services, and functions than by knowing the terms, acronyms and abbreviations. For this reason, we have created this list to help researchers and sellers to better understand the concepts that are behind Amazon.

Acronyms vs Abbreviations

Acronyms and abbreviations are shortened forms of words or phrases. These two terms are often interchanged but have different meanings.

An abbreviation is a shortened form of words used to represent the whole (e.g., Q1, AMZ, FBA). On the other hand, an acronym typically contains a set of the initial letter or letters to form another word (e.g., BOGO, BOLO, COG). The main point of reference is that an abbreviation is only a series of letters. Thus, you read abbreviations letter by letter.

An acronym forms a new word or word(s) which you read as the new word (we read BOGO like that instead of B-O-G-O).

Amazon Related Acronyms & Abbreviations

[Updated July 29,2024] Here’s a list of 213 acronyms related to Amazon. This list is constantly growing, and we’ll update it with new terms whenever needed!

#

1P – 1st Party Seller

The marketplace acts as the retailer and the brand is the wholesale supplier.

3P – 3rd Party Seller

Also referred to as retailer. A company that sells products that are not in their own brand.

3PL – 3rd Party Logistics

Also referred to as 3rd Party Fulfillment. 3PL is a fulfillment option where you move fulfillment to an operating partner. A 3PL company is one that assembles, prepares, and/or ships products on behalf of a seller.

A

A/B Testing

Also referred to as split testing. A method of trying or testing two different websites (website A vs website B) or product listings (product listing A vs product listing B) to compare and contrast sales metrics.

A+ Content

Sometimes referred to as enhanced content. An extended version of the product detail page where the product description has enhanced content and branding. This includes graphics, images, and videos embedded into the page.

A-Z – A-Z Claim

Sometimes referred to as AZ Claim or A to Z Claim. Amazon’s guarantee in products sold on Amazon.com when customers decide to purchase directly from a seller. A-Z claim is guarantee of timely delivery of products and that said products are delivered in good shape. Customers can file an A-Z claim provided they first contact the seller and wait two days to give the seller an opportunity to resolve the problem. This gives the customer and the seller a bit of time to resolve the issue on their own before Amazon steps in.

A10 – Amazon A10 Algorithm

Amazon’s most recent SEO algorithm and successor to the Amazon A9 algorithm. A10 algorithm aims to increase visibility for listing with legitimate reviews and sales. The focus is to eliminate fake profiles while addressing the major problem of counterfeits and fake reviews.

Another view in A10 is that a buyer’s search inquiry holds more relevance than it did before. It guides shoppers more directly to what they’re really looking for. Internal sponsored links no longer hold as much importance as they used to after the introduction of the A10 algorithm.

A9 – Amazon A9 Algorithm

The system by which ranking on Amazon search pages work. A9 holds the key difference between Google and Amazon’s SEO ranking (How to rank organically on Amazon), with the latter having more emphasis on sales conversion, causing listings with stronger sales history and higher conversion rates to rank higher (more about our Amazon SEO services).

AA – Amazon Associate

Also referred to as the Amazon Affiliate program. An affiliate marketing program free for website owners and bloggers to advertise products from Amazon.com on their sites by creating links. When customers click the link and buy products from Amazon, they earn referral fees.

AAP – Amazon Advertising Platform

Now known as Amazon DPS. AAP is the program that advertisers use to buy and create display and video ads. AAP is also an advertising platform allowing advertisers to drive traffic from other websites or mobile apps to Amazon.

ACoS – Advertising Cost of Sale

Sometimes, ACoS (it’s easier to type in all upper case). Also sometimes referred to as TACOS or Total Advertising Cost of Sale. ACoS is related to Amazon sponsored product ads and its metrics of how well your products are performing relative to their cost. In general, percentage of attributed sales spend on advertising is ACoS. For more insights on ACoS check blog posts on What is a good ACOS on Amazon, Amazon listing optimization and How to Structure Amazon PPC Campaigns.

ACS – Amazon Creative Services

Refers to Amazon’s creative tools and features that sellers and brands can use to establish their brand equity and promote shopper loyalty.

AGS – Amazon Global Selling

A program which allows sellers to list and sell products on Amazon’s global marketplaces. There are currently 13 Amazon online marketplaces (or websites) globally, enabling sellers to scale their business throughout the world, irrespective of where they are physically in the globe.

AL – Allocated

A replenishment term used for Amazon Private label.

AM – Area Manager

A role in Amazon fulfillment centers with the operational and financial responsibility for a defined region or territory. Duties include defining sales targets, setting financial goals, and working with senior department or location managers.

AMG – Amazon Media Group

A program that runs ads outside of Amazon and on Amazon devices like Kindle to drive traffic to the site. Also, a premium advertising offer within Amazon’s vendor services accessible via Amazon Marketing Services.

AMS – Amazon Marketing Services

Now known as Advertising Console within Amazon Advertising. AMS is Amazon’s PPC advertising platform for vendors, which allows the creation of Sponsored Products, Headline Search Ads, Product Display Ads, and Lock Screen Ads.

AMZ – Amazon

Also abbreviated as AZ. An American multinational technology company based in Seattle, Washington, which focuses on ecommerce, digital marketing, and cloud computing.

AMZL – Amazon Logistics

Also referred to as Amazon Shipping or Amazon Delivery. Refers to any deliveries that Amazon makes in the United States using its delivery service and its own logistical arrangements.

AOV – Average Order Value

Average sales price for an ASIN for a specific period of time. AOV is the average sales by the number of orders. Generally, AOV = Sales / Orders.

API – Application Programming Interface

A code which allows two platforms or software programs to talk to one another.

APR – Annual Percentage Rate

Refers to the interest rate for a whole year, rather than just a monthly fee/rate, as applied on a loan, mortgage loan, credit card, etc.

AR – Amazon Robotics

Formerly Kiva Systems and a subsidiary of Amazon.com. A Massachusetts-based company that manufactures mobile robot fulfillment systems.

ARA – Amazon Retail Analytics

ARA provides sellers with basic information about their products’ performance. Performance metrics include statistics based on trends, operations, customer behavior, and overall sales. A selection of basic reports for vendors.

ARAP – Amazon Retail Analytics Premium

An add-on option with varied and more detailed reports that look at vendor’s traffic and customer behaviors. An analytics tool available on Amazon Vendor Central sold through an Amazon Vendor Manager.

ASIN – Amazon Standard Information Number

Amazon’s internal tracking identifier for each listing in their catalog. A 10-digit alphanumeric code identifying items for sale on Amazon. Simply put, ASIN is a product identifier unique to Amazon. You can search for ASINs on Amazon to find product pages.

ASN – Advanced Shipment Notification

A system of notification used to communicate shipment’s tracking number and other logistics information to Amazon in advance of delivery. Calculated by Net Sales / Number of Products Sold within the same time period.

ASP – Average Selling Price

Refers to the average price that a seller on Amazon sells their products for.

ATOP – At the Time of Posting

ATOP is the price of an item at the time the post was made. You are likely to see this on Amazon related Facebook groups selling products and goods.

AVS – Amazon Vendor Services

A vendor-funded support service which provides Brand Specialists on Amazon to support a Wholesale business on Amazon.

AWS – Amazon Web Services

A comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, with over 200 fully featured services from data centers globally. A subsidiary of Amazon providing on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on metered pay-as-you-go basis.

AZ – Amazon

Also abbreviated as AMZ. An American multinational company on ecommerce, cloud computing, and digital marketing.

B

B2B – Business to Business

Refers to the relationship of two businesses, rather than a business and a consumer.

B2C – Business to Consumer

Refers to the relationship between a business, a firm, or a company and an individual or a consumer.

BB – Buy Box

Also refers to Amazon Buy Box. A button on an Amazon detail page that buyers use to purchase a product.

BISS – Business Industrial and Scientific Supplies

A specific selling category on Amazon.

BL – Big Lots

An American retail company headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, with over 1,400 stores in 47 states. The significance of Big Lots is that several Amazon FBA sellers frequent their stores.

BM – Brick & Mortar

Refers to the traditional street-side, customer-facing businesses that offer products and services to its customers face-to-face in an office or a store that the business owns or rents. The opposite of an online store.

BOGO – Buy One Get One

A type of promotion for sellers where buyers get one additional item free for the price of one.

BOGOF – Buy One Get One Free

Same as BOGO.

BOL – Bill of Landing

A type of proof of delivery. BOL is required by a carrier at the time of pickup.

BOLO – Be On the Lookout

Used to refer to an item that is profitable that you might be able to find in nearby stores. To be alert or attentive when watching or searching for something or someone.

BOPIS – Buy Online Pick Up In Store

An ecommerce term that refers to the shopping model where consumers buy the items online to be picked up at a retail location, rather than getting delivered.

BSR – Best Seller Rank

Also referred to as sales rank. A ranking score which gives an idea of how well an item is selling in relation to others. Order and ranking of a product in its listed category. Rank updates hourly and considers recent and past sales history. For new products, the rank will be “None.”

BTS – Back To School

A calendar period used by merchants to promote and boost product sales related to school items and services.

C

CA – Canadian or Canada

An abbreviation for the Canadian marketplace.

CAGR – Compound Annual Growth Rate

CAGER is the rate of return required for an investment to grow from its starting balance to its ending balance, assuming the profits were reinvested at the end of each year of the investment’s lifespan.

CCC – CamelCamelCamel

A free online tool for Amazon sellers which allows user to track Amazon price history charts, ranks, price watches, and price drop alerts.

CCR – Counterfeit Complaint Rate

The rate by which sellers get complaints about their products being fake or counterfeit. Some wholesalers or distributors require low CCR for their resellers.

CD – Continuous Deployment

In AWS, Continuous Deployment is a software development practice where code changes are automatically prepared for a release to production without explicit approval. In contrast, Continuous Delivery is where manual approval is needed to update to production.

CM – Change Management

In cloud computing, CM is one of the processes responsible for controlling the life cycle of IT infrastructure. CM’s main objectiveis to enable changes to be made while ensuring minimum disruption in IT services.

CoGS – Cost of Goods Sold

Sometimes COGS. The value of goods sold during a certain period of time. COGS is an accumulated total of all costs used to create or provide products or service sold.

CPC – Cost Per Click

Refers to the sponsored ads and the amount Amazon charges the seller or vendor when a customer clicks on their ads. CPC is the amount of money you spend every time someone clicks on your ad. ​ CPC = Spend / Clicks.

CPI – Consumer Price Index

A measure of the average change overtime in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services.

CPI – Cost Per Impression

Sometimes referred to as CPM. An advertising practice that refers to the price you pay each time people view your ad.

CPM – Cost Per Mil

Similar to CPI, but CPM refers to the price for an ad for every thousand (or mil) views.

CPT – Critical Pull Time

The time in which an order is in danger of not shipping in time for customer delivery cut-offs. When an order is in danger of being shipped out late to a customer, CPT occurs. Amazon really doesn’t want this to happen! Amazon will send out PAs or PGs to pull them and take them to be shipped out ASAP.

CRaP – Can’t Realize a Profit

Refers to products that Amazon identifies as having low profit values, being unprofitable or items are at risk of being unprofitable. Amazon’s finance team created the term to describe items that are structurally unprofitable for the company to sell on its marketplace.

CS – Customer Service

The service or support companies provide to their customers for inquiries, service requests, complaints, returns, etc.

CTI – Category, Type, Item

The hierarchical structure for categorization with multiple levels or layers of classification. Typical hierarchical structure stems from creating a category list first, then different types per category, then different items per type.

CTR – Click Through Rate

A metric that measures the number of clicks per impression of an advertisement. The percent of shoppers who see your ad and click on it, calculated as # of clicks / impressions (relate blog post: What is a good CTR on Amazon).

CVR – Conversion Rate

The percentage of shoppers who have clicked on your ad and purchased. ​ Ordered units divided by glance views​.

CX – Customer Experience

Also referred to as User Experience. A term encompassing the multiple interactions that factor into the customer’s experience with a vendor or a brand. The totality of customer’s feelings, impressions, and insights towards the company upon buying goods or receiving services. CX is a very important factor for sellers aiming for positive reviews.

D

D2C – Direct-to-Customers

Also DTC. An ecommerce practice and strategy where traditional B2B businesses start selling directly to end-consumers. D2C differs from B2C since the latter usually relies on a retailer or distributor to provide the products to end-users.

DDP – Delivery Duty Paid

A shipping method where the supplier is responsible for arranging carriage and delivering the goods at the named place, cleared for import and all applicable tariffs and duties paid.

DEA – Dynamic Ecommerce Ads

A component of Amazon DSP where ads will have Ecommerce features built within the display ad, such as retail price and review ratings.

DOTD – Deal of the Day

On Amazon’s Gold Box or Deals page, a single item or small set of closely related items discounted for a period of 24 hours.

DP – Detail page

DP is the listing page where an ASIN is sold on Amazon.com. It’s also known as Product Detail Page and may contain a single ASIN or a parent ASIN with variations, such as child ASINs. This displays important info such as price, title, bullets, description, customer reviews, etc.

DPMO – Defects Per Million Opportunities

Also referred to as Nonconformities Per Million Opportunities. The ratio of the number of defects in a sample to the total number of defect opportunities multiplied by 1 million. DPMO is a long-term measure of process performance, and may require you to think reversely. It is a measure of the error rate of a process indicating how good your process is towards committing mistakes.

DPV – Details Page View

A metric showing the number of impressions of a single detail page. This occurs when a shopper visits one of your brand’s product detail pages after clicking on your ad.

DPVR – Details Page View Rate

Refers to the total number of promoted products on Amazon Detail page views, divided by number of ad impressions, presented as a rate (Related blog post: Amazon page views vs sessions).

DS – Drop Shipping

Refers to shipping a product directly from a supplier to the end customer. Dropshopping is a fulfillment method where products are not kept in-house and shipped directly to the customer.

DSP – Demand Side Platform

Amazon’s display advertising program. Amazon’s targeted advertising programs that drive and retarget consumers based upon demographics and shopping behavior.

DTC – Direct to Consumer

See D2C.

E

EAN – European Article Number

A particular type of Global Trade Item Number (or GTIN). It is either an 8-digit code or a 13-digit code. Used in most countries except the United States and Canada. For other barcodes and item numbering or identifying systems, see post on Different Amazon FBA Barcodes.

EBC – Enhanced Brand Content

Predecessor of A+ Content. A detail page where the product description has enhanced content and branding, which includes graphics and images embedded into the page. As of 2020, EBC has been obsolete and replaced by A+ Content.

EFN – European Fulfillment Network

An option provided to Amazon’s European sellers, allowing them to sell in other Amazon marketplaces while fulfilling their orders from local fulfillment centers.

EOD – End of Day

Refers to the close of a particular working day.

ExSD – Expected Ship Date

The system’s estimate of when an item will leave the FC and corresponds to a truck’s critical pull time.

EXW – Ex Works

Refers to a state where the seller is responsible and liable for the entire shipment from door to door. This means you’re responsible for everything from the door of the supplier to the final destination. Your supplier finishes the products, sets them in their warehouse for pickup, and the ownership of the goods becomes yours upon full payment.

F

FBA – Fulfillment by Amazon

Amazon’s fulfillment service where third party sellers are allowed to store their products in Amazon Fulfillment Centers. Upon sale, Amazon will pick, pack, ship, and handle customer service on behalf of the seller (related blog post: FBA inventory reimbursement).

FBM – Fulfillment by Merchant

Also referred to as MF or Merchant Fulfilled, or MFN or Merchant Fulfillment Network. MF is a fulfillment type where merchants handle shipping, packing, and inventory instead of being handled by Amazon.

FC – Fulfillment Center/s

FC are Amazon’s fulfillment warehouses or centers where products are stored, prepped, and shipped.

FCA – Free Carrier

Sometimes referred to as Free to Carrier. A trade term indicating that the seller of goods is responsible for delivery of those goods to a destination specified by the buyer. The seller is responsible and liable once the shipment is handed over to the carrier, typically near the port in the country of origin. It means that the supplier has the responsibility to just get your products out of their gates and at the gate of the port. They do not handle the supplier’s country custom and loading it onto the ship.

FFP – Frustration-Free Packing

An Amazon sustainability program that eliminates excessive packing and overboxing.

FinTech – Financial Technology Lenders

FinTech companies give ecommerce businesses financial assistance, among other things. They are mostly online financial institutions which offers almost paperless loan application and approval.

FNSKU – Fulfillment Network Stock Keeping Unit

Assigned by Amazon when you ship your product to its fulfillment center. Shipping your products to the Amazon fulfillment center means that Amazon will be in charge of the delivery of your products. Each product that goes through the company’s fulfillment center needs the FNSKU code. You can attach this code to your product on your own before shipping them to the fulfillment center, or you can also pay Amazon to do the job for you. The company usually charges $0.20 for each product. For other barcodes and item numbering or identifying systems, see post on Different Amazon FBA Barcodes.

FOB – Free on Board

A trade arrangement where the supplier is responsible for getting your goods from the factory to the port. FOB cost will be added to the manufacturing cost.

FPY – First Pass Yield

A measure of quality in a process that reflects the percentage of product made correctly without any rework or corrective activity.

FS – Financial Statement

Refers to the records of a company’s business activities and financial performance.

FT – Fast Track

A glance view weighted in stock metric for Amazon.  In order to get a Fast Track offer, the ASIN must be in stock, win the buy box and be prime eligible. ASINs with Fast Track generally have higher conversion. ​

FTL – Full-Truckload

An Amazon freight shipping service where the shipment combines individual boxes on pallets for delivery. The truck might contain shipments to other destinations.

G

GIR – Growth Incentive Rebate

Also referred to as Volume Incentive Rebate (VIR). A type of discount or rebate linked to higher volume and growth. Higher volume sales result in a greater discount, making this a beneficial scenario for both the seller and the supplier.

GLN – Global Location Number

Unique identification code of a physical location that is used to identify locations and legal entities. Comprised of a GS1 Company Prefix, Location Reference, and Check Digit.

GS1 – Global Standards 1

An international standards organization with member bodies in more than 100 countries worldwide. The global authority for the unique identification of products and companies, which serve as the building blocks for barcodes. For other barcodes and item numbering or identifying systems, see post on Different Amazon FBA Barcodes.

GST – Goods and Service Tax

A destination-based tax on consumption of goods and services, levied at all stages right from manufacturer up to the retailer who sells the goods for final consumption. Some of the countries implementing GST are: France, India, Canada, Vietnam, Australia, Singapore, United Kingdom, Monaco, Spain, Italy, Nigeria, Brazil, and South Korea.

GTIN – Global Trade Item Number

GTIN is a type of barcode. It is recognized almost everywhere in the world. GTIN is used to identify different product information such as the name of the retailer or the manufacturer of the product. For other barcodes and item numbering or identifying systems, see post on Different Amazon FBA Barcodes.

GV – Glance View

Glance views are the number of times an ASIN is viewed. GV is calculated on a child ASIN level. Parent ASINs do not generate glance views.

H

Hazmat – Hazardous Materials

These items may be flammable, dangerous, corrosive, pressurized, etc. and require special precautions and regulations when transporting or storing.

HTF – Hard to Find

HTFs are often associated with a BOLO post. It comes into play when an item is rarely seen in stores anymore.  

I

IDQ – Item Data Quality

Refers to the condition of an item’s information, for example, if the product has bullet points and images.

IL – InventoryLab

A service used to assist in accounting and analysis related to Amazon business.

IP – Intellectual Property

Refers to creations of the mind, such as inventions; literary and artistic works; designs; and symbols, names, and images used in commerce. For Amazon’s IP Policy, check this post from Amazon Seller Central.

IPI – Inventory Performance Indicator

An Amazon IPI score combines the past three months of sales, inventory levels, and costs into a single rolling metric. When an IPI gets below a certain threshold, sellers will be subject to storage limits which might hinder their ability to add new inventory or create new items.

IRDR – Inventory Record Defect Rate

IRDR is a random inventory count, where the virtual is matched with the physical in a bin. If IRDR is high, then a picker could be sent to a bin to pick a unit, but it won’t be there. Downstream implication is that the shipping cut off could be missed because Amazon has to chase that unit from elsewhere.

ISBN – International Standard Book Number

A 13-digit number assigned by standard book numbering agencies to identify individual books, editions of a book, or book-like products like e-books or audiobooks. ISBNs used to be 10 digits until the end of 2006. For other barcodes and item numbering or identifying systems, see post on Different Amazon FBA Barcodes.

ITK – Item Type Keyword

A set of search keywords chosen by a vendor, from a list Amazon maintains, that show an ASIN in search when a customer searches for any word(s) in the ITK string.

K

KB – Knowledge Base

A repository of resources such as articles, guides, and video tutorials, intended to educate customers about the products, processes, claims, etc.

KDP – Kindle Direct Publishing

Amazon’s self-publishing platform for authors. Related blog posts on to maximize Amazon KDP Earnings, KDP Advertising, Amazon KDP Keywords and KDP metadata guidelines.

KPI – Key Performance Indicators

Also referred to as metrics. A measurable value that determines how well your business or organization is performing against set objectives.

L

LBB – Lost Buy Box

When a product loses the Buy Box button, the brand is losing it to another seller that has better offer as determined by Amazon’s algorithm. If a product is out of stock, naturally it’s a lost buy box.

LD – Lightning Deal

Lightning deal is a type of promotion on Amazon. LDs are offered in a limited quantity for a short period of time. These are available one per customer until either the deal’s promotion period ends or all the available inventory is claimed.

LSA – Latent Semantics Analysis

An information retrieval method which works by decomposing the original matrix of words to maintain key topics. This is a useful topic modeling algorithm in that it can rank topics by itself.

LTH – Long Term Hold

LTH is storing stocks of products to be sold at a later date. For example, storing unsold Christmas lights in late December to be sold starting in October or November the following year.

LTL – Less-Than-Truckload

An Amazon freight shipping service where you essentially combine partial loads to create full multi-stop truckloads, which can be very efficient. LTL shipment combines individual boxes on pallets for delivery. The truck might contain shipments to other destinations.

M

MAP – Minimum Advertised Price

A price that you agree not to list with a lower value when you purchase a product from a wholesaler or distributor. This term often comes into play with wholesale sourcing.

MCA – Merchant Cash Advance

MCA is a financing option available to Amazon sellers through third party providers, which allows a business to grow against its future sales. Loan application approvals by MCA are relatively fast but may be of high interest since this industry is still unregulated.

MCF – Multi-channel Fulfillment

Also multichannel fulfillment. A fulfillment type where storage is not limited to one company. Some inventory may be fulfilled by Amazon through FBA and other inventory by other sales channels or by the seller themselves.

MCI – Multi-Country Inventory

An Amazon fulfillment option which allows FBA sellers to choose the countries where they want to send their inventory and have orders for that Amazon store fulfilled by local fulfillment centers.

MF – Merchant Fulfilled

See FBM.

MFN – Merchant/Manufacturer Fulfillment Network

See FBM.

MoM Growth – Month-Over-Month Growth

Shows the change in the value of a specific metric as a percentage of the previous month’s value. Often used to measure the growth rate of monthly revenue, active users, number of subscriptions, or other key metrics.

MOQ – Minimum Order Quantity

The minimum amount of items consumers can order. This typically applies to orders from wholesalers or distributors.

MSRP – Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price

Also referred to as the list price, SRP (Suggested Retail Price), or RRP (Recommended Retail Price). The price at which the manufacturer recommends that the retailer sell the product.

MTD – Month-to-Date

From the beginning of the month until this time of the month. Referring to the period in a month with respect to the month as a whole. Often seen when sharing sales or a certain metric since the beginning of the month. 

MWS – Marketplace Web Services

Refers to Amazon’s Marketplace Web Services and is where you get access to your API or MWS keys. While AWS refers to the cloud computing platform, MWS is the specific service that Amazon provides for sellers.

N

NAFN – North American Fulfillment Network

Vendors in North America (US, Canada and Mexico) may find their products shipped to any of these countries using Amazon’s fulfillment channels.

NDA – Nondisclosure Agreement

Covers items such as what is confidential, who the information can be shared with, breach of contract, amendments, and other important parts of every non-disclosure agreement.

NIS – New Item Setup

Refers to the initial creation of an item from accepting the terms and agreements, to developing an ASIN, and filling out the detail page info.

NP – New Product

A newly listed item on Amazon.

NPMO – Nonconformities Per Million Opportunities

See DPMO.

NR – Non-Replenishable

Also Non-replenishment. An item that is not available and could be deleted from the catalog.

NTB – New to Brand

Amazon’s advertising metric that determines whether an ad-attributed purchase was made by an existing customer or one buying a brand’s product on Amazon for the first time over the prior year. NTB advertisers receive campaign performance metrics such as total new-to-brand purchases and sales, new-to-brand purchase rate, and cost per new-to-brand customer. This was launched in 2019.

O

OA – Online Arbitrage

Also referred to as Retail Arbitrage. Purchasing items from online retailers to resell on Amazon.

OB – Obsolete

The abbreviation OB is typically used when referring to stocks.

OB – Outbound

Used when referring to FC scheduling.

ODR – Order Defect Rate

The percentage of orders that have received negative feedback or significant issue on, an A-to-Z Guarantee claim or a service credit card chargeback.

OEM – Original Equipment Manufacturer

A company that produces parts and equipment that may be sold by other companies. This term is normally used when discussing warranty.

OOS – Out of Stock

A replenishment term referring to items being out of stock in retail store or Amazon themselves being out of stock.

Ops – Operations

Mostly used to refer to the operations department.

OS – Off-Season

A replenishment term referring to an item that is not currently in season. Can be used to temporarily unpublish an item that will be back in stock during a relevant season or a specific time of the year.

OTC – Over the Counter

Also referred to as off-exchange trading. A trading practice that is done directly between two parties, without the supervision of an exchange. It is contrasted with exchange trading, which occurs via exchanges.

P

P2P – Peer-to-Peer

Also referred to as “crowd lending,” or “social lending.” A type of lending which enables individuals to obtain loans directly from other individuals, cutting out the financial institution as the middleman. Make sure to understand the risks before entering this type of lending.

P&L – Profit and Loss

Generally referring to Profit and Loss Statement; also referred to as income statement. A financial statement that summarizes the revenues, costs, and expenses incurred during a specified period, usually a fiscal quarter or year. These records provide information about a company’s ability or inability to generate profit by increasing revenue, reducing costs, or both.

PA – Process Assistant

A position in an Amazon warehouse who works as a supervisor under the Area Manager.

PAN EU – Pan European

Refers to the European marketplace. Also refers to the state where a seller is actively selling on Amazon’s European marketplaces. PAN EU is an option that allows sellers to send their products to one fulfillment center. Then Amazon ships the items to their fulfillment centers around the continent.

PCOGS – Product Cost of Goods Sold

Also Projected Cost of Goods Sold, and sometimes written as PCoGS. The amount needed to procure an item or a product.

PDA – Product Display Ads

A type of display advertising where a product’s ad appears throughout Amazon on category and product pages.

PDP – Product Display Page

See DP.

PED – Prime Exclusive Discount

A limited-time del available to Amazon FBA sellers for Prime-eligible items. This can be in the form of an amount or a percentage off.

PG – Process Guide

A role in Amazon fulfillment centers supporting a Process Assistant and an Area Manager.

PL – Private Label

An item manufactured or packaged for sale under the name of the retailer rather than of the manufacturer. For a better understanding of PLs, see this post on Cost to Sell on Amazon FBA via Private Label.

PM – Price Match

Refers to matching the price of other retailers. You will typically see this for retailers claiming they have the lowest prices for their products and offers consumers a price match if they find other vendors with lower prices.

PNOV – Preliminary Notice of Violation

A notification from Amazon informing sellers of their probable violation. Sometimes the initial notice gets skipped especially if there are multiple violations.

POD – Proof of Delivery

A customer-signed document from the shipping company indicating that the item was delivered. This term normally comes up when a customer claims that he has not received the package but the shipping company says otherwise. Note that a tracking number from the delivery company may not suffice as a POD. Seller Central suggests that an actual signature of the customer is needed.

PPC – Pay Per Click

In Amazon, PPC is an advertising feature that can help sellers reach buyers, boost sales, promote brand awareness, and measure success in Amazon. It allows vendors, sellers, agencies, and Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) authors to advertise their products at the top of Amazon’s product detail pages and SERPs. Just like any other PPC ad, you will only pay for your Amazon PPC ads whenever users click them. For more information, see blog posts on Amazon PPC: A Complete Beginner’s Guide and How to Optimize Amazon PPC AND Retain High Organic Rank.

PPE – Personal Protective Equipment

Often required for working in certain job roles at an Amazon financial center.

PPM – Pure Product Margin

Calculated by the following formula (Revenue – P-COGS) / Revenue.

PPV – Product Price Variance

Happens when a vendor raises an invoice and the item price on the invoice differs from what Amazon has in the system.

PQV – Product Quality Variance

Happens when a vendor sends inventory to Amazon and the amount they shipped differs from the amount Amazon received.

PR – Planned Replenishment

A replenishment term referring to items that are automatically reordered.

ProbRec – Problem Received

Percentage of units received in Amazon warehouse with a problem which needs to be solved, such as missing barcode, wrong warehouse, overage quantity, etc.

PVR – Provisions for Receivables

Temporary credit memos or credit holds that Amazon places on a warehouse account related to forcasted payables due to Amazon.

Q

Q1 – Quarter 1

Refers to the first quarter of the year from January to March. For some businesses, this is the most challenging quarter as it follows Q4, where sales are expected to go up.

Q2 – Quarter 2

Refers to the second quarter of the year from April to June.

Q3 – Quarter 3

Refers to the third quarter of the year from July to September.

Q4 – Quarter 4

Q4 – Refers to the fourth quarter of the year from October to December. For most businesses, this quarter is the most important due to the holidays within this period.

QA – Quality Assurance

A process or method of preventing mistakes and defects in manufactured products and avoiding problems when delivering products or services to customers. Quality Assurance for Amazon sellers play an important role in the supply chain for it ensures that your goods are pre-inspected before shipment.

QB – QuickBooks

An online tool which helps Amazon sellers manage their accounting.

R

RA – Retail Arbitrage

See OA.

Replen – Replenishable Product

An item that a seller is able to replenish from a supplier and sell continuously.  This term is normally used in relation to sourcing products.

Rep OOS – Replenishable Out of Stock

Clicks on a detail page where retail items are not available in percentage of all clicks. The percentage of sales that were missed out due to the item being out of stock.

RoAS – Return on Ad Spend

An indication of the amount spent on PPC ads in relation to the revenue generated from ads. RoAS a factor that is used to determine the effectiveness of an ad campaign.

ROI – Return on Investment

A performance metric used to determine success of an investment relative to the costs. The loss or gain an investment generates relative to the amount of money invested.

RRP – Recommended Retail Price

See MSRP.

S

SB – Sponsored Brands

Formerly known as Headline Search Ads. Ads that appear both in the search results, product pages (via product attributed targeting), and other places such as the checkout page. These ads normally show up as long rectangular banners in both horizontal and vertical formats. For more detailed on SB, check this post on Amazon Sponsored Brands Tutorial.

SBA – Small Business Administration

Established in 1953, SBA is an autonomous US government agency which aims to promote the economy in general by providing assistance to small businesses.

SBC – Simple Bin Count

The total number of items in a bin after items are stowed. If the number is different than what it should be, the pod is referred to Cycle Count, where they scan every item in the bind and surrounding bins.

SC – Seller Central

The online interface certain Amazon marketplace sellers use to manage their Amazon Pro or Individual seller accounts. The web platform used by Amazon marketplace sellers.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

The process of maximizing or optimizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring the website appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine. Optimizing online content such that a search engine will likely show your website as a top result for searches based on certain keywords. For a better understanding of SEO, check this post on Boosting Your Amazon SEO.

SFP – Seller Fulfilled Prime

A program for Amazon Prime sellers which allows them to ship from their own warehouses and control their own fulfillment. By displaying the Prime badge, you are committing to fulfill orders with two-day delivery at no additional charge for Prime customers.

SIOC – Ships in Own Container

An Amazon container packaging option where the product can be shipped in its own box and no over boxing is required in the fulfillment center to ship to a customer.

SKU – Stock Keeping Unit

An alphanumeric code used to identify items in a seller’s inventory. These are machine-readable codes used to identify a specific product and vary from company to company, for inventory purposes.

SLA – Service Level Agreement

An agreement between two parties detailing how a service can be accomplished. SLA is usually referred to the time frame a service needs to be delivered, but also includes the quality of the service.

SLAM – Scan, Label, Apply, Manifest

Refers to the step at which a shipment is weighed, the shipping method is calculated, and a shipping label applied.

SnS – Subscribe and Save

Amazon’s service that allows customers to periodically auto-order delivery on certain products at a discounted price. Bundling more of these products increases the discount level.

SP – Sponsored Products

Keyword-targeted ads that promote an individual product and are on a cost-per-click basis. For more insights, read this blog post on Amazon PPC Optimization for Sponsored Products.

SP00 – Shipping Package #

Sometimes referred to as SPOO (two letter O’s, instead of two number 0’s). A barcode label applied to a box after an item has been packed. After packing and before auto-SLAM, the sp00 contains all order details for a particular shipment.

SPN – Service Provider Network

Launched in 2014 with the goal of enabling sellers to launch, manage and grow their business on Amazon.in. SPN is a network of over 300 professional service providers who are trained and certified by Amazon.

SPOO – Shipping Package #

See SP00.

SRP – Suggested Retail Price.

See MSRP.

SS – Seller Support

The customer service for sellers in different Amazon marketplaces.

T

T&C – Terms and Conditions

See TOS.

TACOS – Total Advertising Cost of Sale

See ACoS.

TIA – Thanks in Advance

You will most likely see this term used in Amazon selling group pages requesting for information.

TOS – Terms of Service

Also known as Terms of Use (TOU) or Terms and Conditions (T&C). Refers to the legal agreements between a service provider and a person who wants to use that service. The person must agree to abide by the terms of service in order to use the service or services offered. For Amazon service, TOC is found here.

TOT – Time Off Task

A fulfillment center term used to determine the amount of time needed to complete a certain task.

TOU – Terms of Use

See TOS.

U

UPC – Universal Product Code

A 12-digit unique code identifying a specific product. It also has a unique sequence of black bars that are then detected by machines for easier processing. This type of barcode is often used in the United States and Canada. The UPC is purchased from GS1, an organization assigned to identify different retail products around the globe. For a better understanding of different barcodes, see post on Different Amazon FBA Barcodes.

UPH – Units Per Hour

The number of units produced or sold per hour, depending on the context of use.

UX – User Experience

See CX.

V

VA – Virtual Assistant

Someone who provides administrative help while working remotely. VAs can be contract workers and can provide assistance in bookkeeping, data entry, research, and much more.

VAT – Value Added Tax

A consumption tax placed on a product whenever value is added at each stage of the supply chain, from production to the point of sale. Known in some countries as Goods and Service Tax. As of 2018, 166 of the 193 countries with full UN membership employ a VAT.

VC – Vendor Central

An invite-only platform for businesses that want to sell their products to Amazon itself. When you sell to Amazon in this capacity, you are their supplier. Amazon sends you a purchase order listing of what they want to buy.

The web interface used by manufacturers and distributors. If you sell via Vendor Central, you’re a first-party seller. You’re acting as a supplier.

VIR – Volume Incentive Rebate

See GIR.

VIS – Video in Search

Offers advertisers a content-rich medium in which to make a direct connection with Amazon customers through videos in mobile search results.

VLT – Vendor Lead Time

The amount of time a vendor takes for an order to be picked, packed, and received by Amazon.

VM – Vendor Manager

The owner of a category or categories at Amazon for Wholesale programs, responsible for managing full category scope, including P&L performance and end-to-end vendor management, which requires development of new strategic vendor relationships, driving negotiations, managing growth levers and ensuring paramount operational and logistical performance.

VNHO – Virtual New Hire Orientation

An onboarding program for new hires done online. We’ve seen more VNHOs when companies started shifting to sourcing services and employees (see VA) who could accomplish work remotely at lower rates.  The use of VNHO has also increased significantly due to measures of social distancing because of COVID-19.

VPC – Vendor Powered Coupons

Amazon coupons that are available to both Amazon vendors and sellers. The offers appear on the Product Detail Page in the form of a digital coupon. Offers include percentage off, dollars off, BOGOs, free shipping, social media promo codes, or giveaways.  For Amazon marketplace sellers, the account must be a Professional Seller Account, in good standing, and must have at least a 3.5 Seller Feedback Rating. Discounts are funded by the vendor/seller.

VPN – Virtual Private Network

Provides privacy, anonymity and security to users by creating a private network connection across a public network connection. VPNs can be used in combination with proxy servers, and overlay networks.

W

WOS – Weeks of Supply

A metric showing how long the current inventory will last based on the current demand. An inventory measure calculated by dividing current inventory by average sales. WOS helps to educate a planner to think of inventory in terms of forecasting. For Wholesale merchants, the Amazon Replenishment Team will determine WOS. For Marketplace sellers, they are responsible for managing their own inventory.

WS – Wholesale

The process of selling products in large quantities and at lower prices to others who then resell them either in brick and mortar stores or online, on sites like Amazon and eBay. Refers to sourcing products direct from the manufacturer or from a distributor.

Y

YMMV – Your Mileage May Vary

A chat lingo that you may often see in Amazon-related Facebook groups which means that the post may not apply to everyone. It can also mean that a user’s product experience may be different from another’s.

YTD – Year to Date

From the beginning of the year until this time of the year. Referring to the period in a year with respect to the year as a whole. Often seen when sharing sales or a certain metric since the beginning of the year. 

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