Amazon PPC audit checklist

Each check takes a few minutes with your Amazon Ads reports; SellerPilot runs most of them for you every day.

Account structure

• Every advertised product is in at least one campaign with manual targeting (keyword or product), not only automatic.
• Campaign names say the type, product and match type, so reports are readable.
• Branded searches are in their own campaigns with their own target ACOS.
• Each ad group advertises products with similar price and margin.
• No duplicate keywords with the same match type compete in the same marketplace.

Search terms and negatives

• Search terms with 10+ clicks and no orders in 30 days are negative exact in the campaigns that paid for them.
• Words that waste money across many searches (n-grams) are negative phrase.
• Searches that sell in automatic or broad campaigns have their own exact-match keyword.
• Those harvested searches are negative exact in the source campaign, so they don't compete with themselves.
• Competitor brand terms are tested on purpose, not by accident.

Bids

• Each keyword's bid is based on its own ACOS or conversion rate, not one bid for everything.
• Keywords with too few clicks are left alone until they have data.
• Bids respect a maximum per keyword and a maximum change per step.
• Keywords with high impressions and no clicks are checked for relevance, not only bid down.

Budgets

• No profitable campaign runs out of budget before the evening.
• Campaigns that spend without sales have their budget cut or are paused.
• The account has a total daily budget you are comfortable with.
• Budgets are raised before sale events (White Friday, Prime Day) and not cut during them.

Placements and timing

• Top-of-search and product-page placements are compared on ACOS, and adjusted from the numbers.
• Hours that never convert get lower bids; the best hours get more.
• Sponsored Brands and Display are measured on the same targets as Sponsored Products.

Listings

• Titles are within Amazon's length limit, lead with the brand, and contain the main search terms.
• Every product has five bullet points and a description.
• Backend search terms are filled, under the byte limit, without repeated words.
• Every product has at least six images, with a white-background main image.
• Amazon shows no listing issues or suppressed listings.

Stock and money

• Ads pause for products out of stock or without the Buy Box.
• Best sellers have more days of stock than your lead time.
• You know your break-even ACOS per product, after all Amazon fees and your product cost.
• TACOS (ad spend divided by total sales) is tracked monthly, not only ACOS.
• Returned, lost and damaged units are checked for reimbursements every month.

Measurement

• You compare periods of the same length, with the previous period and the same weeks last year.
• Every change you make is written down with its reason, so you can see what worked.

33 checks. Tick them as you go; nothing is saved or sent.