Ask what ACoS they would target for your product at launch and what they would target twelve months in. Two different numbers with a reason attached to each is the answer you want. One number for both stages means they are maintaining your ads rather than managing them, and it is the fastest disqualifier in this process.
The short version
- Two ACoS numbers, not one. Launch needs aggressive ACoS for velocity and ranking. Maturity needs efficient ACoS to protect margin.
- Ask which ad types they run. Text, image, and video have different economics. Most agencies run text only.
- Ask for cost of customer acquisition, not ACoS alone. ACoS is an ad metric. Cost of customer acquisition is a business metric.
- Ask what they would do if conversion rate is the problem. If they answer with a bid change, they cannot diagnose.
- Ask how many accounts one specialist runs. We run about 1.4 brands per operator.
The ACoS by stage test
Paid traffic on Amazon is not one thing. It is text ads, image ads, and video ads, each with different economics, and the right target changes with the product's stage.
I set different ACoS targets at every stage for a simple reason. A new product has no ranking and no velocity, so it needs aggressive spend to buy both. A mature product has ranking, and the job shifts to protecting margin. Most sellers set one target and wonder why their ads stop working.
Here is the test. Give a candidate a real product of yours and ask for two numbers.
| Product stage | What the target is doing | What a good answer sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| Launch | Buying velocity and rank | An aggressive target, accepted as a known cost, with a defined window |
| Post-validation | Holding rank while margin recovers | A tightening target with a stated trigger for the change |
| Mature | Protecting margin | An efficient target, with a floor below which they would reduce spend |
You are not grading the numbers. You are grading whether the numbers move and whether the candidate can say why.
How to evaluate amazon ppc agencies beyond the ads
The most expensive mistake in PPC hiring is buying ad management when the problem is not ads.
If your conversion rate is low, no amount of ad spend fixes it. Ad performance connects directly to organic ranking, which is why listing quality and primary image click-through rate belong in the same conversation as bids. An agency that only touches campaigns will optimize around a broken listing indefinitely, and the reporting will look busy the entire time.
Give the candidate a product that is underperforming and ask what they would check first. A strong answer walks through listing quality, primary image click-through rate, conversion rate, ad performance, traffic channel activation, pricing, and return rate before it arrives at bids. A weak answer starts at bids.
What to include in an amazon ppc agency sla
Ask what they will commit to in writing. The useful commitments are specific and measurable:
- Reporting cadence and contents, including cost of customer acquisition, not just spend and sales.
- Response time for account issues and for suppressed or inactive listings.
- Named personnel, with a stated number of accounts per specialist.
- A defined review point where targets are reset by product stage.
- What happens on exit, specifically whether campaign history and keyword research stay with you.
That last one matters more than sellers expect. Campaign history is an asset. It is months of learning about which keywords convert for your product, and it does not transfer cleanly if the agency built everything inside their own tooling or their own account structure.
For reference, here is what we commit to at Flapen. A written update posted in Slack every
week, a live review with your team every two weeks, and 24/7 Slack access in between. The
free growth audit comes back as a written report with prioritized fixes inside 48 hours. Ask
any candidate for their equivalent in writing, and be suspicious of an agency that will only
describe its cadence verbally.
KPI benchmarks for amazon ppc agencies
Be careful with benchmark shopping. Published ACoS benchmarks are averages across categories, price points, and product stages that have nothing to do with your product, and an agency that quotes an industry average at you is telling you they will manage to the average.
The benchmarks worth tracking are internal and relative:
- Cost of customer acquisition by channel, across all 5 traffic channels, not just paid.
- ACoS trend against the product's stage, so the target moves as the product matures.
- Conversion rate, because it caps everything paid can achieve.
- Return rate, because it silently destroys the economics of an otherwise profitable product.
- Share of revenue from paid, which tells you whether organic is actually being built.
That last metric catches a common failure. An account can look healthy on ACoS while paid quietly becomes the only thing holding revenue up. If share of revenue from paid rises every month, the agency is renting you sales rather than building an asset.
What most agencies will not tell you
Most agencies run two of the 5 traffic channels: organic and text ads. Image and video ads, promotions, the influencer and creator program, and off-channel traffic are the other three, and that is where the highest return on ad spend currently sits.
A PPC agency is, by definition, selling you a portion of one channel. That is fine when ad efficiency is your bottleneck. It is expensive when it is not, because the retainer is priced as though ads were the whole growth strategy.
The honest framing nobody offers during a sales call: hire a PPC specialist when your listing converts, your margin is known, and ads are the constraint. If you cannot say which of those is true, you have a diagnosis problem, not an advertising problem.
Related answers
- How to evaluate Amazon PPC agencies
- What to include in an Amazon PPC agency SLA
- KPI benchmarks for Amazon PPC agencies
- Compare Amazon PPC vs full-service agencies
- Hiring an Amazon agency: the complete guide
If ads are not actually your bottleneck and you want the diagnosis first, that is where we start at Flapen.
