High ACOS During Launch? Check These 4 Things First

Published on February 11, 2026

About this video

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High ACOS during a product launch on Amazon is not automatically a sign that your strategy is working. If you are running Amazon advertising campaigns and watching your ACOS sit at 100% or 200% for weeks, assuming organic ranks will eventually catch up, you need to stop and evaluate what is actually going on. In this video, I break down the real reasons your Amazon ads are producing high ACOS during a product launch and what you should check before spending another dollar.

A lot of people running Amazon PPC assume that high ACOS during launch is just the cost of doing business. And while Amazon is very much a paid-to-play game today, high ACOS is not a guaranteed path to organic rank improvement. It depends entirely on whether your Amazon advertising setup is actually done right.

The first thing to check is whether you chose the right keywords. If you are bidding on keywords with low relevance to your product, your conversion rate is going to be low, and your Amazon PPC costs will climb without meaningful results. Choosing keywords that are too competitive for a new listing with few reviews is another common trap. You may be overbidding on the top five keywords in your niche when your listing simply cannot compete with established products that have tens of thousands of reviews.

The better approach when starting out is to begin with lower competition keywords and scale up gradually. You can also layer in product targeting and build from there. Using the right keyword strategy in your Amazon ads campaign is one of the most important factors in a successful product launch.

Placement optimization is another major factor that gets overlooked in Amazon advertising. I recently audited an account where placements were completely underutilized. After fixing the placements in just one week, sales increased by 46 to 47 percent. If the majority of your budget is going toward product display pages while rest of search is converting at twice the rate, you are wasting ad spend without realizing it.

Your Amazon ads campaign bidding strategy also matters significantly. Many accounts use the dynamic bids up and down strategy that Amazon recommends, but this can cause you to overpay significantly per click. For example, if you set a base bid of two dollars but have placement modifiers and audience modifiers applied, you could end up paying six dollars per click. Even if you lower the base bid to one dollar, you might still be paying seven dollars. For product launches, I recommend starting with fixed bids so you have full control over your Amazon PPC spending.

Finally, it is worth being honest about whether you have the knowledge and bandwidth to manage Amazon advertising campaigns effectively on your own. There are things a single person can handle well up to strong six figures, but at some point it makes sense to dedicate this to a team member, hire a freelancer, or work with an Amazon advertising agency.

All of the factors above can contribute to high ACOS. It is not simply normal. Check your keyword selection, evaluate your placement strategy, review your Amazon ads bidding settings, and optimize every few days while tracking your organic rank progress.

Contents: 0:00 High ACOS does not guarantee a successful product launch 0:41 Choosing the wrong keywords and the wrong competition level 1:29 How to choose better keywords and layer product targeting 1:44 Placement optimization and its impact on Amazon ads performance 2:28 Dynamic bids up and down and why fixed bids work better for launches 3:15 When to bring in help for Amazon advertising management 3:39 What to actually do to fix your high ACOS during a product launch

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Transcript

High A cost isn't a guarantee that your product launch is going to be successful. Now, we all keep hearing this story like during a product launch, you have to have your high a cost like 100, 200 for several weeks or several months until you hit the organic ranks and then your total a cost is going to start to go down because you know there will be more organic sales and less dependence on the ads. But that's actually not always the case. It doesn't mean like, hey, I'm going to start with my product launch. I'm doing everything by myself. I don't want to hire anybody. So I'm pushing with all my heart and all my budget all of the campaigns and everything. And because everything is on high high a cost, high spend, I just have to wait for a few weeks and everything is going to be fine. So I have to cover a few myths over here. So did you choose the right keywords? No. Maybe you're choosing the wrong keywords which have low conversion rate because of the low relevance and then therefore your a cost is pretty high simply because your keyword is not that relevant. You know then again is it the keyword relevant but too competitive. You're just starting out. You don't have any history. You have only few reviews and your competitor competitors have tens of thousands. So maybe you started too too aggressively know you selected keywords which are like top five in your niche but then again you don't have the ability to compete with them. So you are over bidding without any realistic expectation that you're going to convert as well. So you have to choose the right keywords. You have to decide and evaluate if the selected keywords are too competitive. I shared in the past BBC product launch calculator and how you can judge that. Also, data dive provides pretty amazing insights on which keywords to choose. Start with these midle or mid-level or lowlevel keywords and then increase gradually. You can also layer some product targeting and then also build from there. Then are your placements optimized? Just the other day I checked the account where placements were completely underutilized and it was really funny because after a week by just fixing the placements we increase the sales like 46 47% which is you know ridiculous after a week. So it may be the case that your high a cost is simply because you're uh you're not winning top of search. Maybe you're winning rest of search product display pages with with the lowest conversion rate. Maybe your majority of your budget is going toward product display pages while on the rest of search. You're converting twice as better than on on product display pages and you're just sitting there waiting for weeks to pass by until you hit those organic ranks. You know, it's not a guarantee that if you spend a lot of money, your organic ranks are going to increase. That's that's a myth. It could be that you selected what Amazon is recommending to select like campaign bidding strategy of up and down where the algorithm is dynamically increasing and decreasing your bids if they decide that you your offer is most likely to win or not, you know. So what you end up is overpaying for keywords. So, you set your budgets at $2, but you set your up and down strategy and you have maybe some additional placements, maybe you have additional audiences, modifiers there, maybe business placements modifiers, and then you end up paying $6 per click, you know, then even if you lower your base bit to one pound or taller, then still you're paying not $8, but paying $7, you know, so it's so it can be pretty tricky with that kind of strategy. So for product launches, I recommend starting with fixed bids and then you have the most control on what's happening or everything combined. You know, maybe you just overestimated your knowledge on advertising. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely things that single person can do pretty well up to six figures, you know, strong six figures. Uh but at some point, you know, that needs to be either in-house dedicated to one of your team members or hire a freelancer or an agency or whatever you prefer. But maybe all of what I mentioned is just contributing to your high a cost. Not just like that's normal. It shouldn't be normal but because Amazon is uh today paytoplay game. No high a cost at the beginning at product launch is perfectly normal thing. But you have to consider everything that I mentioned. So check everything and then make sure that your strategy is on point and then optimize every few days and wait for that organic ranks to increase by following and tracking what's happening. Are you really increasing in organic ranks if you're uh by what you're doing in the ads console? Uh let me know if you have any questions around this and see you tomorrow in the next video. Bye-bye.

Frequently asked questions

Why does high ACoS during a product launch not automatically mean your strategy is working?

High ACoS only leads to organic rank improvement if the ad spend is actually generating relevant sales and clicks on the right keywords. If you are bidding on keywords that are too broad, too competitive for a new listing with few reviews, or converting poorly due to mismatched targeting, you are spending heavily without the sales velocity needed to move organic rankings. High spend alone does not push rankings up; the quality and relevance of the sales generated by that spend determines whether rankings improve.

What four things should you check before assuming high launch ACoS is acceptable?

First, verify that your keywords are relevant and appropriately competitive for your listing's current review count and sales history. Starting with mid-level or lower-competition keywords and scaling up is safer than going straight for the top five keywords in your niche. Second, check your placement data to confirm that your budget is going to placements that actually convert, not primarily to product display pages that typically convert at a fraction of the rate of top of search or rest of search. Third, review your bidding strategy: dynamic up-and-down bidding combined with placement and audience multipliers can push your effective cost per click far above your base bid, sometimes three to four times higher. Fourth, honestly assess whether the campaigns are being managed with enough frequency and expertise to optimize properly every few days.

Why is fixed bidding recommended over dynamic up-and-down bidding for Amazon product launches?

Dynamic up-and-down bidding allows Amazon to increase your bids by up to 100% when its algorithm decides your ad is likely to convert. When that is combined with placement modifiers and audience multipliers, the actual cost per click can be several times your base bid, removing predictability from your spend. For a new product launch where you are still learning which keywords and placements perform, fixed bids give you full control over what you pay per click, making it easier to diagnose performance and avoid overspending before you have established data to justify aggressive bidding.