Amazon Ads Deep Analysis

Amazon owns ~80% of US retail media (~$56B in 2025). This sub-skill audits the three Sponsored ad types plus basic DSP visibility for sellers and vendors. Detailed Amazon DSP audit (programmatic / Twitch / Fire TV / Freevee / Prime Video) is queued for Wave 3 in ads-retail-media.

Note: This is a leaf sub-skill. The thresholds and rules below live inline. In Wave 3, once ads-walmart ships and the ads-retail-media orchestrator extracts the shared retail-media logic, a dedicated retail-media-specs.md reference file will replace these inline rules (planned, not yet created — do not link to it from other files).

Process

1. Collect Amazon Advertising export: Search Term Report (last 60 days),

Campaign Performance Report, Targeting Report, Placement Report, Bulk Operations file

1. Collect Brand Analytics if available (Brand-Registered sellers / vendors):

Search Terms, Repeat Purchase Behavior, Item Comparison

1. Verify Seller / Vendor Central context (vendor strategy differs from

seller strategy on portfolio, coupons, and Sponsored Brands video)

1. Read ads/references/benchmarks.md for Amazon-specific benchmarks
2. Read ads/references/scoring-system.md for weighted scoring
3. Evaluate checks per category
4. Calculate Amazon Ads Health Score (0-100)
5. Generate findings report with action plan

What to Analyze

Campaign Structure & Portfolios (15% weight)

• Portfolio organization — campaigns grouped by funnel stage (Awareness /

Consideration / Conversion) or by product line, not ad-hoc

• Campaign naming convention consistent (e.g.,

SP_Brand_Exact_USD_Conv / SB_NonBrand_HSA_Video_USD_Cons)

• Auto vs Manual mix: Sponsored Products has ≥1 Auto campaign per ASIN

cluster for search-term harvesting (auto-mining workflow)

• ASIN-level coverage: every priority ASIN appears in ≥1 SP campaign

(Exact, Phrase, or Broad) AND ≥1 Auto campaign

• Targeting type mix in SP: Manual Keyword + Manual Product (ASIN

targeting) + Auto (for harvesting). Pure Auto is a learning-only state

• Sponsored Brands: at least one HSA (Headline Search Ad) campaign per

brand storefront; SB Video tested for high-AOV products

• Sponsored Display: separate Audience (retargeting + lookalike) and

Contextual (product / category targeting) campaigns — don't mix in one

Search-Term Harvesting & Negatives (25% weight)

• Auto → Manual harvest cadence weekly or bi-weekly: pull converting

search terms from Auto, promote winners to Manual Exact in their target campaign, add as negatives to the Auto so spend redirects

• Negative keyword coverage: every Auto campaign has Manual campaign

ASINs as negatives (prevents Auto cannibalizing Manual placements)

• Negative product targeting: irrelevant ASINs added at campaign level

(prevents Sponsored Display contextual targeting from showing your ad next to incompatible products)

• Search Term Report harvested last 7 days — any high-spend, zero-

conversion terms above $10 / 30 days should be negatives

• Brand defense: branded search terms are isolated in a separate

campaign with exact-match brand keywords and competitor-name negatives

• Top-of-search visibility — branded search auction CPC vs default; flag

if competitor bid is above your brand-defense bid

ACOS / TACOS Discipline (20% weight)

• ACOS targets set per portfolio based on contribution margin (target

ACOS = (1 - contribution_margin) × buffer). Sloppy "30% across the board" ACOS targets cap performance

• TACOS (Total ACOS) trending down quarter-over-quarter — TACOS measures

total ad spend / total revenue including organic; downward trend means paid is lifting organic, not replacing it

• ROAS reported alongside ACOS for the team that thinks in ROAS
• Coupon + Lightning Deal stacking — when on, ACOS targets relaxed to

capture lift; auto-flag campaigns that need temporary ACOS uplift

• Day-parting: bid adjustments by hour for ASINs where add-to-cart

hours differ from purchase hours (frequent for high-AOV electronics)

Bid & Budget Management (15% weight)

• Dynamic bidding strategy: Up and Down for Manual Exact converting

campaigns; Down Only for Auto campaigns or Sponsored Display contextual (avoid bid escalation in learning campaigns)

• Placement bid multipliers: Top-of-search placement adjusted based on

ROAS by placement (Placement Report); often +50-100% for top-of-search, -30% for product page placements

• Budget caps appropriate — no campaigns capped at <2x current daily

spend (caps strangle algorithm learning)

• Bulk bid adjustments — bid optimization runs weekly via Bulk

Operations not ad-hoc in the UI

Sponsored Brands (10% weight)

• HSA (Headline Search Ad): brand logo + 3-product showcase + landing

page (Store, custom URL, or product list)

• SB Video: 6-45s; 15-30s sweet spot. Hook within 2s. Captions on.

Required for high-AOV products

• Brand Store linked as landing destination where available (higher

CVR than product detail page)

• Negative keywords on SB include competitor brand names if you don't

want top-of-funnel competitor traffic; remove if you do

Sponsored Display (10% weight)

• Audience targeting: Views Remarketing, Purchase Remarketing, Cross-

Sell, and Lookalike audiences each scaled with appropriate bids

• Contextual targeting: relevant categories AND specific ASIN targeting

(your own complementary products + competitor ASINs you can win)

• Display creative quality: at minimum, the default product creative;

custom creative tested for top SKUs

• Off-Amazon Sponsored Display (Twitch, IMDb, third-party sites) audited

separately — different CPC dynamics, different attribution windows

Brand Analytics & Reporting (5% weight)

• Brand Analytics accessed (Brand-Registered only): Top Search Terms,

Item Comparison, Repeat Purchase Behavior

• Top Search Terms report used to identify share-of-voice gaps vs

competitors on category keywords

• Repeat Purchase Behavior informs subscription / replenishment ad

strategy

• Amazon Attribution (off-Amazon traffic) tracked if running external

ads driving to Amazon listings

Key Thresholds

Output

Amazon Ads Health Score

Amazon Ads Health Score: XX/100 (Grade: X)

Campaign Structure:     XX/100  ████████░░  (15%)
Search-Term Harvesting: XX/100  ██████████  (25%)
ACOS / TACOS Discipline:XX/100  █████████░  (20%)
Bid & Budget Mgmt:      XX/100  ████████░░  (15%)
Sponsored Brands:       XX/100  ███████░░░  (10%)
Sponsored Display:      XX/100  ███████░░░  (10%)
Brand Analytics:        XX/100  █████░░░░░  (5%)

Deliverables

• AMAZON-ADS-REPORT.md: Full per-category findings
• Search-term harvest plan: keywords to promote to Manual + keywords to

add as negatives, ranked by spend recovery $

• ACOS-by-ASIN matrix highlighting unprofitable SKUs
• Sponsored Brands video opportunity list (top 10 ASINs without SB Video)
• Pre-launch checklist when entering a new product category
• Amazon DSP entry recommendation (yes / no based on total monthly spend

and audience size)