A Practical Amazon PPC Guide for New Sellers

New sellers often either avoid PPC entirely (leaving a new listing with no visibility) or launch a dozen campaigns at once with no way to tell which spend is doing anything. Both mistakes come from skipping the same first step: a clean, simple structure.

Start with one automatic campaign

An automatic campaign lets Amazon match your ad to relevant searches based on your listing content — which, for a new listing with no keyword performance history, is the fastest way to discover which search terms actually convert for your product.

Mine the search term report

After a week or two of data, the search term report shows exactly which queries led to clicks and sales. This is where your real keyword list comes from — not guesswork, but terms that have already proven they convert for your specific listing.

Move winners into a manual campaign

Once you have proven search terms, a manual campaign lets you bid on them directly with more control, while your automatic campaign keeps discovering new terms in the background. This two-campaign structure — one for discovery, one for precision — covers most of what a new seller needs before things get more sophisticated.

Set a real ACOS target, not a universal one

A "good" ACOS depends entirely on your margin after product cost and fees. Calculate your breakeven ACOS first — the point where ad spend stops being profitable — and use that as your ceiling, not a number you saw in a forum.

Don't ignore negative keywords

Every irrelevant search term that got a click and no sale is a candidate for a negative keyword. Reviewing the search term report weekly and adding negatives is one of the highest-leverage five-minute habits in PPC management.

Sources and further reading

Marketplace rules change; these are the official pages to check against before you act on anything here.

• Sponsored Products
• Amazon Ads
• Amazon advertising policies
• Amazon PPC & Advertising Management (our service page)