No public ranking of Amazon agencies by return on ad spend is trustworthy, because nobody audits the inputs. Rank them yourself on four things you can verify: their incrementality method, how they separate PPC from DSP attribution, what they measure before quoting, and what would make them tell you to stop spending.
Why the published rankings do not mean anything
- Return on ad spend is self-reported. No third party checks the denominator, the date range, or which accounts were left out.
- PPC and DSP double count each other. The same sale can appear in both reports unless somebody deliberately deduplicates it.
- Survivorship does the rest. Any agency can show a strong number by selecting the accounts that worked.
- Category mix decides the headline. A portfolio of high-margin, high-repeat products produces better numbers than a portfolio of commodities, whoever runs it.
- The verifiable signal is method, not outcome. How they measure is checkable in a one-hour call. Their claimed results are not.
The three shapes of provider, compared
Almost every candidate you meet falls into one of these. The right choice depends on what your account is missing, not on which one sounds most advanced.
| PPC specialist | DSP-led buyer | Full-account team | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What they optimize | Search placements, bids, keyword harvest | Audience reach, retargeting, upper funnel | Contribution margin across the whole account |
| Best when | Search is inefficient and the catalog is healthy | You already saturate search and need new demand | Listing, pricing, and ads are all in play |
| Attribution risk | Low, mostly last click inside search | High, needs a stated deduplication method | Medium, but one team owns the reconciliation |
| Typical failure | Optimizes to a target while total profit falls | Buys reach a small catalog cannot absorb | Spreads thin without enough operators per brand |
| Decision rule | Buy when search is the constrained channel | Buy only after search is maxed | Buy when more than two things need fixing |
The rule I would apply: DSP is a scaling tool, not a fixing tool. If your search campaigns still have unharvested converting terms, adding display spend on top just buys more traffic to the same problem.
Build your own ranking in four questions
Give every candidate the same four questions and score the answers out of five. The ranking that comes out is worth more than any list you can read online.
- How would you prove a campaign was incremental? A good answer describes a holdout, a geographic split, or a structured pause test with a stated duration. A weak answer describes a dashboard.
- How do you stop PPC and DSP claiming the same order? Look for a specific deduplication approach and a named report. Vagueness here means the combined number they quote you is inflated.
- What do you analyze before you quote? We work through more than 90 data points on a market before committing, and the one that gates everything is size. Below about $2 million a year, there is not enough revenue to capture profitably once acquisition cost is paid. If a quote arrives before anyone sized your category, you are being sold hours.
- What would make you tell me to cut spend? The only answer that protects you is a specific one with a threshold and a time window attached.
The arithmetic that ranks providers for you
Return on ad spend is the wrong scoreboard on its own, because it ignores everything between revenue and profit. Rank on contribution margin after advertising instead.
| Input | Where it comes from | Why it changes the ranking |
|---|---|---|
| Landed unit cost | Supplier invoice plus freight and duty | Sets the ceiling on what a click can be worth |
| Amazon fees | Referral plus fulfillment per unit | Often larger than the ad cost itself |
| Return rate | Your own reporting, by ASIN | A high-return product can post strong revenue and negative profit |
| Blended acquisition cost | Total ad spend divided by new customers | The only number that survives channel double counting |
| Repeat rate | Order history over 6 to 12 months | Decides how long a payback window may honestly be |
Run these five lines for each candidate's proposed plan. The provider whose plan produces the best contribution margin at your actual costs wins, regardless of whose case study looked better.
What most agencies will not tell you about ROI claims
Every agency in this market can produce a screenshot showing a strong return. I could produce one this afternoon. The screenshot proves that a good account exists, not that the agency created it, and not that the same thing would happen in your category with your margins.
The second omission is more expensive. Advertising efficiency improves fastest by cutting spend on terms that were never going to convert, which shrinks revenue in the short term. An agency paid a percentage of your ad spend has a reason not to do that, and an agency chasing a headline return number has a reason to do too much of it. Both distortions come from the pricing model, not from the people. Read the incentive before you read the case study.
Related answers
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- Questions to ask before hiring an Amazon agency
- Amazon agency pricing and economics: the complete guide
Ask us the same four questions at Flapen.
