Black Friday is about four weeks away, and most Amazon accounts we open still have the same problem: too much money going to terms that never sell, and too little going to the ones that do. One client who joined us after leaving an inattentive agency told us we’d found exactly that, underfunded winners and a budget leaking in all the wrong places. It happens more often than it should.
If your Amazon PPC strategy hasn’t been touched since summer, this is the month to change it. Here’s what’s different this year and what we’d do about it.
Clicks cost more, and Q4 makes it worse
Several industry reports put CPC growth at roughly 15 to 25 percent year over year across most categories, and Q4 can push costs another 20 to 30 percent higher. You can’t out-bid that forever. If your conversion rate stays flat, the same budget buys fewer orders and your margin takes the hit.
The fix usually isn’t a bigger budget. It’s a better listing, tighter targeting, and a clear view of where profit comes from.
Rufus is deciding who gets seen
Amazon’s AI shopping assistant is a real traffic source now. More than 300 million customers used Rufus in 2025, and one analysis found it shrinks a page of about 50 results down to roughly five named products. Five.
Shoppers talk to it the way they’d talk to a store clerk: “what’s a good cooler bag for a day at the beach?” A listing stuffed with keywords doesn’t answer that. A listing that says who the product is for, what it’s made of, and when to use it does. That’s good for Rufus, and it also lifts conversion on the normal search page, which lowers your effective cost per sale.
Paid placement is catching up too. Sponsored Prompts left beta and became billable on March 25, 2026. Our advice: test them on one or two products you already know convert well, and watch the numbers closely before spreading budget around.
Judge your ads by TACoS, not just ACoS
ACoS tells you whether a campaign is efficient on its own. TACoS tells you what ads cost against your total revenue, organic included. If you spend more every month and TACoS doesn’t fall, you’re renting sales rather than building rank. Our clients’ reviews keep coming back to this point, and it’s the number we manage toward, so we’d start there when we audit any account.
The five things we’d fix first
Wasted spend. Pull your search term report and sort by spend with zero orders. Add negatives. In most accounts this alone frees up real money, and it’s a ten-minute job you can do today.
Winners that are starved. If an exact-match campaign is hitting its daily budget before noon and converting well, raise the budget now, before CPCs climb. Waiting until the week of Black Friday means paying the peak price.
Out-of-stock products. Check inventory against active ads. Advertising a product that can’t ship burns budget and hurts your ranking. This is why we offer supply chain forecasting alongside PPC.
Thin listings. Main image, price, coupon, A+ content. Auction results are decided by conversion rate, and a stronger page beats a higher bid.
No plan for after the rush. January is when many sellers slash budgets, drop rank, and spend spring recovering. Decide now what you’ll hold.
If one of your products is in a crowded category, it’s worth reading how we took an ice pack brand from $0.9M to $3.7M in sales. The approach there was a product-by-product plan, not a bigger budget everywhere. For a second example, here’s how a supplements brand grew sales 205% and profit 159%. You can also browse all our case studies.
If you want more on what burns budget, we covered the most common mistakes in 7 Amazon PPC Mistakes That Are Wasting Your Budget.
Doing it yourself versus hiring an Amazon PPC agency
Plenty of sellers manage their own ads well. It takes time, though, and Q4 is when time runs out. If you’re spending your evenings in Campaign Manager instead of working on the product, or your TACoS keeps creeping up with no clear reason, an outside team is worth considering.
When you compare agencies, ask three things. Do they report on profit, or only on clicks and ACoS? Does a person actually look at your account each week, or is it all automation? And do you understand their pricing and terms before you sign? We’re an Amazon PPC management team that has handled more than $80M in ad spend, and we also run Walmart PPC for sellers who want to grow beyond Amazon.
Quick answers
What is a good Amazon PPC strategy right now?
Keep auto campaigns for discovery, exact match for proven terms, and product targeting to take share from competitors. Add Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display where they pay off, review waste weekly, and manage to TACoS.
How much should I spend on Amazon ads?
It depends on your margin, category, and stage. Launches usually need more, mature products less. That’s the main thing we work out in an audit.
What’s a good TACoS?
There’s no single number. A TACoS that falls over time as organic sales grow is the sign that your ads are doing their job.
Are Sponsored Prompts worth it?
Maybe, for products that already convert. Test small and compare against your baseline before putting more budget behind them.
How quickly can an agency improve things?
Cutting waste can show up within a few weeks. Rank and TACoS take longer, usually a couple of months.
Want a second pair of eyes on your account?
Our Listing and PPC Audit looks at where your budget is leaking, which campaigns deserve more, and what we’d change first. It’s free and there’s no obligation.
Request your free audit, or just get in touch and tell us what you’re seeing.
