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Amazon PPC - Search terms report, RoAS and Conversion Rates

Published on November 28, 2019

About this video

In this video, we cover some of the latest changes and updates that Amazon recently introduced in its advertising platform. We share our insights into the new Search terms report that is built-in, so you no longer have to download it to Excel in order to analyze it. We also explain why Amazon added two new metrics: return on ad spend, and conversion rates. We also share with you, our educated guess to where all of this is going and what can we expect from Amazon next year.

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Transcript

hi everyone this is Jelena from Amazonia PPC and today I'm going to share with you a couple of updates from last week that Amazon has introduced now before the holiday season first of all being with search terms report inside of the seller central platform this is new we were able to download these search terms before and then manually manage them in Excel and analyze them in Excel and now Amazon sexually made our lives easier by translating by creating this search term report inside of the platform built in side you don't have to go anymore and download advertising reports unless you want to do some bulk files and upload a lot of search there's a lot of keywords manually to your campaigns if you just want to go through this report for analysis purposes then this is super useful within the search terms report they have also built in and introduced two new metrics advertising metrics one of them being return on adspend the other one is conversion rates so my guess my educated guess is that with the search terms report Amazon is going to make available in the future for advertisers to select a certain customer search term and then manually choose whether they want to add it to negatives and whether they want to add it to manual targeted keywords directly from the search terms report likewise for example Google is also doing it like that so they're probably copying this kind of user experience coming from Google which is definitely a good good user experience and we're looking forward to seeing that happen in the future when it comes to these two metrics it's interesting today that they also introduced all of these three changes along with the history which is now in beta they will serve a purpose to make advertisers lives easier you could have done it all manual derive for example return on adspend and provision we would calculate them manually whenever needed we needed a certain information so I guess that they're trying to make advertisers lives easier because they want more advertising dollars from us like recently we've analyzed search results and especially before the holidays when the competition is fierce and there is an increased volume that we don't usually see then they they start to introduce these all new features that in their interface that will make advertisers lives easier but at the same time we've analyzed the search results and we noticed that there's like you know one row sponsor print ads and there's like two rolls of sponsor products and there's like one tiny little organic result somewhere in the middle and then all the way through the end you have all kinds of sponsored results so the competition is growing stronger and Amazon is providing us with more and more features that will make our strategy a lot more richer and like the best advertiser win I guess so back to the conversion rate and return on adspend return on adspend is a metric that calculates the relationship between your ad spend and the money that came through sales so basically sales divided by ad spend you will get return on ad spend you can see that it varies from one search term to another and also when it comes to conversion rates conversion rate is a metric that explains to you exactly how many percentage-wise how many of your clicks to your listing visits to your listing that you paid for actually ended up in a sale so if you see like this when there's like a hundred percent conversion rate then it's usually small numbers there's like you know one click that ended up in the sale and that's not very relevant in order for you to use this information correctly you need a lot of clicks to understand how they contribute to your sailes how these advertising clicks are actually attributed either you're ranking you know like for example conversion rate metric here's a metric that will really help you understand which search terms are really good for your ranking not only for advertising spend versus effectiveness but they also are very good for ranking because conversion rates one of the main metrics that Amazon's taking into account when they are raising organic ranking of certain listings they take into account sales velocity and also sales in general so they're calculating what's the user experience on your product detail page and all these other things that fall under product listing optimization but when it comes to return on adspend this metric is only geared towards measuring the performance strictly of your PPC sales so a lot of sellers are moving towards just watching PPC cells through PPC sales like not understanding how the PPC actually contributes to organic ranking in general the reason why they've introduced this additional metric I think maybe they're trying to divert PPC from organic ranking in general meaning that PPC will not be as relevant for again cranking as it is now probably won't be in the future so they're kind of like separating these two things very distinguish distinctively so you will have a better understanding exactly which keyword which search term is worth your money and which one isn't so this is very interesting for us to see how this whole platform develops and what are the things that we could use for better understanding of your where each dollar is spent at how and how could we best optimize this performance to understand what's really going on so that being said these are the latest updates and also in history you will be able now to see are now able to see exactly what is going what has gone on in this specific campaign the specific ad group and then you will see exactly when it was changed at how and probably in the future they will enable us to revert these changes and directly from the search history directly from the sorry the change history so these are four new updates we're definitely excited to see more and we'll share them with you as soon as we are become aware of them so thank you for watching and comment below if you have any questions bye bye

Frequently asked questions

Q: What is the Amazon Search Terms Report and how should I use it?

A: The Search Terms Report shows you the actual phrases shoppers typed into Amazon that triggered your ads and resulted in a click. It is one of the most valuable reports in Seller Central because it reveals real customer language: terms that are converting well and should be moved to manual campaigns with dedicated bids, and terms that are irrelevant or unprofitable and should be added as negative keywords. Reviewing this report regularly is the core of ongoing PPC optimization.

Q: What is the difference between RoAS and ACoS in Amazon PPC?

A: ACoS, Advertising Cost of Sale, is calculated by dividing your ad spend by your ad revenue and expressing it as a percentage. RoAS, Return on Ad Spend, is the inverse: it divides your ad revenue by your ad spend and tells you how many dollars in sales you generate for every dollar spent. A 25% ACoS equals a RoAS of 4, meaning four dollars returned for every dollar invested. Neither is more accurate than the other; they describe the same relationship from opposite directions. ACoS maps more directly onto profit margins, while RoAS is the standard metric used across most other digital advertising platforms.

Q: What does conversion rate tell me in the Search Terms Report?

A: Conversion rate in the Search Terms Report shows you what percentage of the paid clicks on a specific search term actually resulted in a sale. A term with many clicks but a low conversion rate is either attracting the wrong audience or landing on a listing that is not doing its job. A term with a high conversion rate and solid volume is a strong candidate for promotion to a manual exact match campaign with an aggressive bid. Conversion rate is also one of the signals Amazon uses when calculating organic ranking, which means improving it has value beyond just advertising efficiency.

Q: Should I optimize PPC campaigns purely based on RoAS or ACoS?

A: Not entirely. Both metrics measure advertising performance in isolation, meaning they only account for sales that are directly attributed to a paid click. They do not capture the organic ranking lift that comes from the sales velocity your PPC campaigns generate. A campaign with a high ACoS that is ranking your product higher in organic search results may be delivering far more total value than its advertising metrics alone suggest. For ranking campaigns targeting your most important keywords, the better question is whether your total sales are growing, not just whether the campaign itself is profitable.

Q: What is the change history feature in Amazon Campaign Manager and why is it useful?

A: The change history log shows you a record of every modification made to a campaign or ad group, including bid adjustments, budget changes, and targeting updates, along with the date and time each change was made. This matters for optimization because PPC performance rarely changes without a reason. When you see a shift in spend, ACoS, or impressions, the change history lets you trace it back to a specific action rather than guessing. Over time it also helps teams and agencies maintain accountability and avoid making conflicting changes to the same campaigns.