Amazon DSP Ads Optimization - Inventory Report - Step by Step Tutorial

Published on September 23, 2025

About this video

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In this video, we go deep into *Amazon DSP reporting* with a specific focus on *inventory reports*. Learn how to analyze *supply sources* and identify which ones are delivering the best *return on ad spend (ROAS)* for your campaigns. This tutorial will help you take actionable steps to increase profitability and efficiency in your DSP strategy.

Using a real example from a live DSP account that spent €1,000 in September, we walk through the process of analyzing campaign performance based on different supply sources. You'll see how to filter and sort *inventory data* within Amazon DSP to uncover underperforming exchanges, and how to make data-backed decisions to exclude sources with low ROAS, even when impression volume appears high.

By going through *Amazon DSP inventory reports*, you'll understand which supply sources are wasting budget and how to reallocate your ad spend toward better-performing channels. The goal here is simple: improve your *Amazon DSP ROAS* with just a few key changes to your campaign structure.

We also touch on the role of *viewability settings* in DSP and why it’s essential to track only meaningful, viewable impressions. You’ll learn how impressions can often be misleading and how setting the right filters can prevent wasted spend.

In the later part of the video, we demonstrate how to export DSP reports into Excel for better readability and how to apply conditional formatting to quickly spot high-cost, low-return sources. This manual filtering method gives you a clear view of which third-party exchanges to exclude in your *line item settings*. You'll see that even sources with average ROAS may not be worth the investment when compared to others offering far superior performance.

If you're serious about *optimizing Amazon DSP campaigns*, this video shows how just 10 minutes of analysis and exclusion of inefficient sources can create significant performance improvements—even for campaigns running at lower budgets. These optimization techniques can scale easily for those spending €10k, €20k, or even more per month.

This walkthrough is especially useful for Amazon sellers and advertisers using DSP who want to make the most out of their budget. Understanding how to analyze and exclude *low-performing inventory sources* can have a massive impact on the overall health and profitability of your campaigns.

*Contents*

00:00 - Introduction to Amazon DSP Inventory Reporting 00:17 - Why analyzing supply sources matters for ROAS 00:50 - Navigating the Amazon DSP console to access reports 01:17 - Campaign overview: Performance Plus campaign example 01:56 - Inventory report setup and metrics to look for 02:40 - Key performance indicators: CPM, CTR, purchases, ROAS 03:04 - Identifying poor-performing sources like InMobi 03:30 - Exporting data and Excel formatting tips 04:10 - Filtering and flagging low-ROAS supply sources 04:52 - The importance of viewability rates in DSP campaigns 05:30 - Why impressions alone are not enough 06:00 - Advanced optimization decisions: Excluding even moderate performers 06:48 - Final steps to exclude sources in DSP line item settings 07:45 - Wrapping up and what’s coming next (placement size exclusions)

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Transcript

Hi guys, another day, another DSP video. In this video, I'll be covering DSP reporting. More specific, I'm going to go into inventory reports and check which of the supply sources are giving us the best return on ad spend. So, by the end of the video, you will know how to exclude certain certain supply sources uh and increase your return on ad spend on DSP. Now once you in you're inside your TSP console on the left you will select your orders and in the list of orders you will see your usual metrics. Now there is an option to go straight on into inventory report but that will give you the report on the all the order orders which are currently active. If you want to do that then head on to inventory report. But if you want to see the inventory report for a specific orders, you need to go into the target orders you want to inspect. For this occasion, I've selected this one. And in my one of my previous videos, I've covered that we're launching performance plus campaigns to see how they perform. So, and here's like like a breakdown of so far how does it look like. So, this is yeah, only September through 23rd that is today. You can see that there's a pretty good cost. This campaign types, sorry, this campaign type is aimed towards return on ad spend as a goal. I think I've input five as a target um rorowass and we are currently hitting 5.31, which is pretty cool. You know, it's not a huge spend. Um so far in the month, only €1,000 and there's the return. So there you go. DSP can be profitable. It's not like you need to invest a ton of money. Uh now back to the point when once inside your order go to the inventory report and you will see a screen like this. Now by default it's selected that you want to see supply sources on inventory type and the delivery type of view and you can select your date range. I'm currently interested in this month. Uh here you can see how each one of these supply sources um and you can see the definition by of the supply sources the inventory of the campaign ran on. For example, real-time bidding exchanges or Amazon owned sites. So you can see what each of these supply sources what's the what are the detailed metrics. So effective cost per mele or clickthrough rate or total purchases. I know some some say cost per mile but here actually is cost per mele but anyway that's a side thing and the total ros which we are mostly interested in to get some mean more clarity on this let's sort it by cost and there you go you will see that some of these are pretty profitable but some of these are not for example in moi is spending €143 and selling only 5 uh 54 4. Um what I like to do just for the sake of visibility and um like a I like to do some breakdown with the data. I like to download report and then you will be presented like the Excel file that we all um used to look at. So here you can easily see also sorted by total cost that we can maybe paint this up a little bit to conditional formatting call ranges. Yeah, highest to lowest. So here I immediately spot that I would like to limit this one like the in moi. Let's mark that one. Then also these and You can eas some of these you would like to keep for whatever the reason is. Maybe you like the number of impressions that you're getting even though that return on ad spend is low and that's completely fine. But I'm here showing you how would I optimize based on return on ad spend. So we want money not the impressions at least for this campaign. Um so I'm going to go ahead and select all of these. I'm going to pause the video and return once I uh select all that I want to exclude. Okay, so I've selected a few of the yellow ones that I want to exclude exclude based only on Ross. But a important thing to note here that it's the viewability rate. You can see that all of these are 70% and up. That's simply because as I showed in the video where when um you need to create your line item the viewability setting is the crucial. So by default it said that every possible impression should be counted as impression even though it's only viewable 20 or 30%. You know, as I keep saying, impressions are completely validity metric. They don't mean anything. But if it's a view viewable impression, that's something that's meaningful. And for this campaign type, I've se I've selected that I want to have viewability over 70%. That's the impression that I consider viewable impressions. That is if your product is peing over 70% of the of the whole dimensions more than one second on the screen that's counted as one impression and that's where you get build because in DSP you get build by impressions. So you don't want to get build uh for the impressions that nobody saw your ad or just less than 5% of of your ad. So you don't want to do that if you care about common sense anyway. That's also important to know that all of these impressions are actually valid. Now, uh you can see that I even selected Magnite DV Plus to exclude even though it has 3 point something return on ad spend. That's simply because I know that I can get at least seven or six or even 10 uh combined uh for this product because it's really good. Now, I'm even considering to exclude the index one even though it has 15 sales, 670 of total product sales simply because um I know I'm I know I can get more out of the budget that I have if I don't spend there. Now, why would I spend on this which is currently the top spending one uh on this placement when I can just select on Amazon publisher services and then I can get eight almost eight out of the advertising spend. So, um I think I'm going to pass this this way this month, but I'm going to keep watching how the index behaves. Now, once you have this, now it's time to go ahead and exclude everything that we mentioned. go into your line item uh settings over here. Then scroll down to the inventory section and you will see the third party exchanges. Hit exchange there and then locate each one of these. Here's the index. You know, next time we'll see how you're going to go. Um and then just exclude all of these that you filtered on the left and hit save changes. And there you go. you will now have more optimized DSP campaigns based on supply sources. Uh next up, I'm going to also cover some something similar and it's going to be uh how to exclude placement sizes. So that's going to be the next video. So head on, I think I will publish it tomorrow. So if you're interested in that, stay tuned. If you're not subscribed, shame on you. You should be subscribed because I I will be keep sharing these valuable resources for you. Uh, so for this video, that's it. This is the quick way how to save a ton of money on your DSP account. And by the way, this is the account that that's only spending $1,000 per per in September for this line one line item. So imagine how much you would spend if you invest 10K, 20K, 50K. So that's a meaningful change with just several clicks and um uh like 10 minutes of your time. So, let me know if you have any further questions and stay tuned for for more videos.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Amazon DSP Inventory Report and what does it show?

The DSP Inventory Report shows how your ad budget was distributed across different supply sources, meaning the specific ad exchanges, Amazon-owned properties, and publisher networks where your DSP ads were served. For each supply source, the report displays cost, impressions, click-through rate, total purchases, total product sales, and ROAS. You can access it either at the account level to see all active orders at once, or inside a specific order to see the breakdown for that campaign only. The report is the primary tool for identifying which inventory sources are generating profitable returns and which are consuming budget with little or no sales to show for it.

How do you use the Inventory Report to identify and exclude underperforming supply sources?

Sort the inventory report by total cost to surface the sources consuming the most budget, then compare each one's ROAS against your overall campaign target. Sources with high spend and low ROAS are the primary candidates for exclusion. Exporting the data to Excel and applying conditional formatting with a color scale from highest to lowest ROAS makes it immediately visual: poorly performing sources appear in red or yellow while strong performers appear in green. Select the sources you want to exclude, then navigate to the line item settings within DSP, open the inventory section, find the third-party exchanges list, and exclude each flagged source individually. Changes take effect quickly and the impact on ROAS is typically visible within days.

Should you only exclude supply sources with zero sales, or is it worth excluding moderate performers too?

Excluding only zero-sale sources leaves money on the table. The more important benchmark is whether a source's ROAS is below what you know you can achieve elsewhere in the same campaign. In the example from the video, a supply source with a 3.5 ROAS and 15 sales was excluded because the same budget allocated to the top-performing source was generating a ROAS of nearly 8. When the gap between a moderate performer and the best performer is significant, the opportunity cost of keeping the moderate source active is real. The budget freed by exclusion gets reallocated by the DSP system toward the remaining sources, which concentrates spend on the inventory where returns are highest.

Why does viewability rate matter when evaluating supply source performance in the Inventory Report?

The viewability rate column shows what percentage of impressions on each supply source met the viewability threshold you set in the line item settings. Because DSP charges per impression and a low viewability threshold can result in the system counting ad exposures where almost none of the creative was visible on screen, reviewing this column confirms that the impressions you are being billed for are genuine. In the example from the video, all supply sources showed 70% or above viewability because the line item had been configured with a minimum 70% viewability requirement. This means the performance data for each source reflects real ad exposure rather than impressions that were technically served but practically invisible, making the ROAS comparison between sources meaningfully accurate.