Amazon ACoS Optimization: 15 Proven Strategies
Reduce your advertising costs by 30-50% while maintaining sales performance with these battle-tested ACoS optimization strategies.
Understanding ACoS: The Foundation
ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales) measures how much you spend on advertising relative to the revenue generated from those ads. Formula: ACoS = Ad Spend ÷ Ad Revenue × 100
Excellent ACoS
Highly profitable campaigns
Good ACoS
Profitable with room for improvement
Poor ACoS
Needs immediate optimization
15 Proven ACoS Optimization Strategies
1-5: Foundation Optimization
1. Negative Keyword Mining
Review search terms weekly and add irrelevant terms as negative keywords. This alone can reduce ACoS by 20-30%.
2. Bid Optimization
Lower bids on high-ACoS keywords, increase bids on profitable ones. Adjust by 10-20% increments weekly.
3. Match Type Strategy
Move high-performing broad match keywords to phrase/exact match for better control and lower costs.
4. Campaign Structure
Separate high-performing keywords into dedicated campaigns for better budget control and optimization.
5. Dayparting
Reduce bids during low-conversion hours (typically 12am-6am) to optimize spend timing.
6-10: Advanced Targeting
6. Long-tail Keywords
Target specific, lower-competition keywords with higher conversion rates and lower CPCs.
7. Product Targeting
Target competitor ASINs with lower bids than keyword campaigns for cost-effective traffic.
8. Auto Campaign Harvesting
Extract profitable keywords from auto campaigns and add them to manual campaigns with optimized bids.
9. Placement Optimization
Adjust placement bids - often product pages convert better than search results at lower costs.
10. Seasonal Adjustments
Lower bids during off-peak seasons when competition decreases to maintain profitability.
11-15: Advanced Optimization
11. Listing Optimization
Improve conversion rates through better images, titles, and bullet points to reduce ACoS indirectly.
12. Portfolio Bidding
Use portfolio-level budgets and bid strategies to optimize across multiple campaigns simultaneously.
13. Brand Defense
Bid on your own brand terms at low bids to prevent competitors from driving up costs.
14. Custom Audiences
Use Sponsored Display to retarget previous customers at lower costs than acquisition campaigns.
15. Attribution Analysis
Analyze the full customer journey to properly attribute conversions and optimize true ACoS.
Quick Wins: Implement This Week
Add Negative Keywords
Review last 30 days of search terms
Lower High-ACoS Bids
Reduce bids by 20% on keywords >30% ACoS
Pause Poor Performers
Pause keywords with >50% ACoS and no sales
Expected Results Timeline
Week 1
5-10% ACoS improvement from negative keywords
Week 2
10-20% improvement from bid optimization
Week 4
20-30% improvement from complete optimization
Week 8
30-50% improvement with advanced strategies
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