An agency that runs Amazon PPC manages your Sponsored campaigns for a fee. Hire one only after you know which symptom you have, because bids, listings, and price fail differently. One question separates the candidates faster than any proposal does, so ask for the ACoS target at launch and the ACoS target at maturity, and why the two differ.
The short version
- Two ACoS numbers, or the shortlist is done. One target held for a product's whole life is the common reason advertising quietly stops working.
- Much of what looks like an ad problem is not one. Conversion rate, price, return rate, and inventory depth sit outside the ad console.
- A fee that moves with your spend pays somebody to spend. Ours is flat, $800 a month for one product to $2,400 for five.
- Media budget sets the learning speed. We publish no hard minimum, and under about $1,000 a month there are too few weekly clicks to manage.
- Exit terms outrank case studies. Month to month, 30 days of notice, and you keep the account, the campaigns, and the creative.
Start with the symptom, then decide who fixes it
Most sellers hire advertising help against a symptom they have never named. That buys a year of bid work on a problem living in the listing, the price, or the return rate. Run the three columns below before you take a sales call.
| Symptom | Likely cause | Who fixes it |
|---|---|---|
| ACoS rising while unit sales stay flat | The target never moved off the launch number | A PPC team, inside targets and bids |
| Clicks arrive and orders do not | Conversion rate, so listing, price, or review count | A listing and creative team, before any bid moves |
| Impressions are high and clicks are not | The primary image and price beside competing offers | A creative team, then a pricing call you own |
| ACoS looks healthy and profit still falls | Return rate or landed cost, which advertising never reaches | You, your supplier, and your quality control |
| Every order arrives on your brand name | The traffic mix, not the campaign structure | A team running channels beyond Sponsored Products |
Three of those five rows resolve outside the ad console. An agency hired against one of them bills you monthly to tune the wrong variable. So the first decision is not who to hire but which column your problem sits in.
The two ACoS numbers that sort a shortlist
ACoS is advertising cost of sale, the ad spend divided by the sales those ads produced. Break-even sits at the margin a unit carries before advertising is charged against it. Every working target sits below that line, and the product's stage sets how far.
Early on you overpay for position deliberately, because the spend buys rank, velocity, and the first reviews. Once the product is established the target tightens, since the money now defends a margin you already earn. One number quoted for both stages describes a report rather than a plan.
So hand every candidate the same product, ask for both numbers, and listen for whether they request your landed cost per unit. A target set without your cost of goods points at nothing in your profit.
The symptom is a target that has not moved in a year. The cause is that one number is easier to report against than two. The owner of the fix is whoever writes your targets.
We run about 70 brands by hand with 50 operators out of Abu Dhabi, and none of that work is subcontracted. Our onboarding runs an audit, then a named brand manager, then the blockers, then execution. Measurable ACoS improvement typically shows inside the first 30 days, and any candidate should put that in writing.
How to choose between a PPC agency and a full management agency
An Amazon PPC agency owns the console and little else. A management agency owns the account, which means listings, creative, catalog, pricing input, and the channels beyond Sponsored Products.
The diagnosis decides which of the two you should buy. If your symptom was the first row, buy advertising help, and a specialist will read a bulk file faster than a generalist. If it was any of the other four, an advertising contract never reaches the cause.
Fee structure predicts behavior more reliably than a case study does, because a percentage of ad spend pays an agency to grow the spend. Our fee is flat, with all 50+ services at every tier and no commission on your media.
Then ask for these four things in writing before you sign:
- The two ACoS targets for your product, with the trigger that moves one to the other.
- The name on your account and how many accounts that person carries this month.
- The order of checks run before anyone touches a bid, written as a list.
- The exit terms. Ours are month to month on 30 days of notice, you keep the account, the campaigns, and the creative, and access runs through user permissions you can revoke.
What a PPC agency will not tell you
Four things stay out of almost every pitch, ours included.
- Your ACoS improves in any month you spend less. The cause is a metric that measures advertising rather than the business. The fix belongs to you, by asking for cost of customer acquisition and profit per product beside it.
- A flat target is easier to defend than a staged one. The cause is that two numbers invite questions and one number closes them. The fix belongs to the account manager who resets the target when the stage changes.
- Free audits, ours included, open sales conversations. The cause is that diagnosis is cheap and implementation is where the money sits. Judge the document, since an audit a freelancer could execute without its author was written honestly.
- Almost nobody volunteers that a product should stop. The cause is that a kill recommendation ends the fee. The fix belongs to a window you write down, and 60 to 90 days without movement in rating trend, return rate, conversion rate, and cost of customer acquisition trajectory is where we stop.
Hold us to all four, the same as anyone else you interview. If our first written report cannot name the symptom, the cause, and the owner, do not hire us.
Related answers
- ACoS meaning
- PPC on Amazon
- Amazon brand registry support in Dubai
- Amazon suspension appeal help in the UAE
- Amazon account measurement and audits: the complete guide
Here is one thing to do this week at no cost. For your busiest product, write three figures on one line: the launch date, last month's ACoS, and the margin the unit carries before advertising. If the product is over a year old and the ACoS still sits at its launch number, you have the symptom already.
Ask for the free written audit, seven areas ranked into fixes, back inside 48 hours from Flapen.
