ACoS Doesn't Tell You Everything | Amazon Ads Reality Check

Published on May 22, 2026

About this video

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If you are running Amazon PPC campaigns, you have probably stared at an ACoS of 50%, 100%, or even 354% and thought something was terribly wrong. But depending on your actual KPIs, those numbers might be exactly where they need to be. This video breaks down how to think about Amazon advertising performance the right way, using real campaign data from a real account.

What this video covers:

Why ACoS is not the only metric that matters in Amazon advertising ACoS is the metric everyone talks about in Amazon PPC, but obsessing over it alone means you are missing the full picture. In this video, I show real campaign data where ACoS ranges from 20% all the way to 354%, and explain why none of those numbers on their own tell you whether your Amazon ads are working.

How cost per acquisition changes the way you read your Amazon ads data For this particular account, the primary KPI is not ACoS but how much ad spend we are willing to invest to bring in a new customer. I show the custom Chrome extension we built at AmazoniaPPC that adds a conversion rate column and a custom acquisition cost column directly inside your Amazon campaign manager, so you can see the metric that actually aligns with your business goals.

Product targeting campaigns and competitor conquest strategy I walk through a product targeting campaign in this account where the agreed budget for targeting competitors and taking sales away from them is up to $30 per sale. When you see that context, a high ACoS stops looking like a problem and starts looking like a deliberate, well-structured Amazon advertising strategy.

Why click-through rate is one of the most neglected Amazon ads metrics CTR is something we talk about a lot when improving main images for Amazon listing optimization, but it is just as important inside your Amazon advertising campaigns. I explain why a 0.19% CTR in this account does not mean the keyword targeting is wrong, and how the product category, competition level, and shopper behavior all play a role in what a normal CTR looks like for your campaigns.

The truth about impressions in Amazon Sponsored Display campaigns One of the most misleading metrics in Amazon display advertising is raw impressions. I show a Sponsored Display campaign with over 800,000 impressions, but when you add the viewable impressions column, the real number drops to just 23,000. An impression is only counted as viewable when at least 50% of the ad appears on screen for at least one second for display ads, and two seconds for video ads. This is a critical distinction when evaluating your reach through Amazon display ads.

Awareness, consideration, and purchase as a full-funnel approach Rather than optimizing for a single metric, this account is structured around all three phases of the funnel: awareness, consideration, and purchase. That is the mindset shift that separates Amazon advertising that actually grows an account from Amazon PPC that just chases a lower ACoS number.

If you are managing Amazon PPC ads, running Amazon Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, or Sponsored Display campaigns, or working with an Amazon advertising agency to scale your account, this video will help you stop reacting to individual metrics and start reading your data the way it was meant to be read.

Contents: 0:00 Why Amazon advertising metrics can be misleading 0:12 ACoS breakdown across different campaign types 1:10 Custom acquisition cost metric and Chrome extension 1:50 Product targeting and competitor conquest strategy 2:13 Click-through rate and why it matters in Amazon PPC 3:42 Viewable impressions vs raw impressions in Sponsored Display 5:08 Holistic view: awareness, consideration, and purchase phases

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Transcript

Hi, so let's talk about misleading metrics on Amazon advertising and how some of these may look like catastrophic results, but actually it's completely aligned with KPIs that we have for this brand. So, starting off with the ACOS, the one that everybody loves. Now, I don't say that you shouldn't be looking at ACOS, but it's not the single metric that you have to look at and it doesn't make sense in majority of cases, but it's it's about the context and holistic view of advertising. Now, some of these campaigns are branded, some of are of them are product targeting, sponsored display, I'll go through that as well. So, take a look at this. When you take a look at the ACOS, you will see mind the red number for this moment. I'll talk about it shortly. So, take a look at this. 20% ACOS on brand campaigns, 51 then on on the general one, keyword targeting 66, 101, 354, this is sponsored display, again some of the keyword targeting campaigns and then again sponsored display. So, horrible horrible results, you would say. But, the thing is this account is mostly focused on how much ad spend we can afford to lose or to invest to bring a new customer. And then, that's where the red column comes. And by the way, this is just a short little um custom extension that we created. You can find it on our website over here. So, Amazonia PPC.com, then head over to resources and then uh conversion rate Chrome extension if you want to have that in your campaign manager. It's lightweight. It's very useful. So, that gives us uh the conversion rate in the green and let's say customer acquisition cost in in the red. So, what we have here, uh this clearly shows you that for example, this one, the ACOS is 51% and you would say this is not profitable, you're wasting money, but for this specific campaign, our target customer acquisition cost is absolutely on point. Even some of these, this is the product targeting where we agreed on that if we want to target our competitors and steal away sales from them, we are willing to spend up to $30 per sale. So, this is also pretty good one. Conversion rate not that good compared to the overall account average, but still KPIs are aligned. So, it's all about holistic view and I keep saying this in every video that I record. Also, what's worth noting is that there's there are huge discrepancies in click-through rate over here. Click-through rate is very important thing. It's very often neglected in advertising. We talk about click-through rate a lot when we want to improve our main images and that's very important, maybe even more important this one, but it's also a metric that shouldn't be neglected in in advertising at all. So, some of these are branded as I said, some of some of these are keyword targeting, sponsored display targeting, etc., but you also want to take a look at different actors that contribute to the low click-through rate. Having a click-through rate of 0.19% doesn't mean that we're completely off with our keyword selection, even though you could say that, but it for this particular account, uh the product is a mix of different things. I cannot say too many details. I don't want to reveal what is it all about and which products are we are advertising, but it's a mix of high competition category. There are a lot of similar products, but not the same products. There are multi multi variation of a similar product, but it's not it. So, people are clicking away a lot so they until they decide what they want to experience by trying this kind of product. Uh so, even though that we have 0.19% click-through rate with Again, it sounds awful. We still have pretty decent number of sales at a decent conversion rate and still our main KPI, which is how much we spend for a single order, is absolutely on point over here. Then we uh see as well that this one with 800 and nine impressions, this is sponsored display campaign. And I want to show you that you may think we are reaching 800,000 people with this campaign, which is completely not the case, because when you scroll to the right, you will see viewable impressions if you add the two columns over here, you will see that viewable impressions is is actually much much lower than that. So, out of 800,000, you would say, "Okay, I My my reach is magnificent." We only have 23,000 viewable impressions, meaning only 23 of them were displayed 50% of the ad was displayed for more than 1 second. That's the threshold for viewable impressions. So, an ad is counted as viewed when at least 50% of the ad shows on screen for at least 1 second for display ads and 2 seconds for longer or longer for video ads. So, bear that in mind when you think about your your impressions. 2 million 600 impressions in in a in a month, it's actually much lower than that. And when you think about it, by the way, we don't have viewable impressions by default in for sponsored products. That's available only for sponsored displays on the brands. So, when you want to think about how many people are actually seeing your ad, it's much lower than what you think it is. So, to wrap wrap it up, I don't want to just tell you that everything is wrong. Everything is absolutely perfect. This is the real click-through rate. This is the real cost per click, conversion rate, and ACoS. But, it's not like you cannot watch it in isolation. So, let's burn it. Let's pause it. Delete it. Forever archive it. It's about are we hitting our goals or not? Are we growing the account or not? It's not about ACoS only. It's not only about click-through rate. It's not only about so-called reach. It's it's all together. We need to work on awareness phase, consideration phase, and definitely on the purchase phase. So, each time I record something like this, I'm glad I'm putting it out there because we are obsessing too much over ACoS, click-through rate, or impressions and missing the point. Even I sometimes go into the account and I'm shocked by the brief look like of what's happening. The ACoS is too high. This is all wrong. But, then when we dive deeper and go into our projects tab internally and see what are the main KPIs again, then it feels much better and when we take a look at it holistically again. Thank you for watching and see you in the next video. Bye-bye.

Frequently asked questions

How does using cost per acquisition as the primary KPI change how you evaluate Amazon PPC campaign performance?

When your agreed target is how much you are willing to spend to acquire one customer rather than a specific ACoS percentage, campaigns that look terrible by ACoS can be perfectly on target. In the real account example from the video, a product targeting campaign with a 354% ACoS was completely acceptable because the agreed maximum spend per sale for competitor conquest was $30, and the campaign was hitting that number. Defining the right KPI for each campaign type and strategy first means you evaluate results against what actually matters for the business, not against a ratio that was never designed to capture the full picture.

What is the difference between raw impressions and viewable impressions in Amazon Sponsored Display campaigns, and why does it matter?

Raw impressions count every time an ad is served regardless of whether a shopper actually saw it. Viewable impressions apply a stricter standard: at least 50% of the ad must appear on screen for a minimum of 1 second for display ads (2 seconds for video ads). In the account example from the video, a Sponsored Display campaign showing 800,000 raw impressions had only 23,000 viewable impressions, meaning actual ad exposure was less than 3% of what the headline number suggested. Decisions about Sponsored Display reach and budget based on raw impressions will significantly overestimate how many people are actually seeing the ads.

What does a very low click-through rate in an Amazon PPC campaign always indicate, and when should you not panic about it?

A low CTR does not automatically mean your keyword selection is wrong. For products in high-competition categories where many similar but not identical products exist, shoppers click multiple listings before deciding, which naturally depresses CTR across all advertisers in that space. The more relevant question is whether the campaign is delivering sales at an acceptable cost per order or CPA against your actual KPI. A 0.19% CTR with a solid conversion rate and an on-target cost per acquisition is not a problem that needs fixing, even though the CTR figure looks alarming in isolation.