Amazon Sponsored Ads for D2C: Structure That Survives a Fee Increase

The three jobs of Amazon ads

• Sponsored Products — exact/close match is your conversion engine: it captures shoppers already searching your product. This is where margin-positive sales are won, and where the bulk of budget belongs once you have traction.
• Advertised-on-competitor pages (ASIN targeting) is your conquest channel: you appear on rival listings to steal the compare-window shopper. Higher intent, slower payback — test small, scale what converts.
• Discovery (broad match, auto, brand defense) feeds the algorithm with data and protects your own brand term. It’s a research budget first, a revenue budget second.

Structure rules that hold

1. One campaign per job, per product group. Mixing exact and broad in one campaign means the report can’t tell you which job worked. Separate them; review weekly; move budget toward the job whose ACOS clears your margin-adjusted target.
2. Set targets from margin, not the default. After this year’s fee increases, your target ACOS should come from the Amazon margin calculator — what ACOS makes the unit profitable after referral, closing and fulfilment. Default targets are guesses; margin-derived targets are math.
3. Defend the brand term. Never let a competitor own your branded search. A brand-defense campaign at a deliberately low ACOS (you’d buy that click anyway) protects the term other sellers will target.
4. Re-tune after every cost change. Fees moved this season — your bid structure built on old margins is now pricing in a profit you don’t have. Recompute the breakeven, then rebalance.

Amazon ads don’t reward spend. They reward structure that survives cost changes.

For D2C brands new to marketplace

If you’re launching on Amazon for the first time, run the margin calculator before a single bid — marketplace fees decide whether the channel is even profitable for your category. The brands that treat Amazon PPC as a structured, margin-aware system (not a ‘turn it on’ button) are the ones that keep listing when the fees rise.