2026-06-09 · 7 min
Amazon PPC Advertising Basics for New Sellers 2026
Amazon PPC gets your new listing in front of buyers before you have organic ranking. Learn how Sponsored Products work, how to set bids, and what ACoS means for your margins.
What Amazon PPC Is and Why It Matters
Pay-per-click advertising on Amazon puts your products in front of shoppers who are already searching to buy. Unlike social media advertising where you interrupt someone, Amazon PPC reaches people actively looking for what you sell. A new listing with no sales history needs PPC to generate initial velocity, which then feeds organic ranking.
The Three Main Campaign Types
Sponsored Products are the most common format: individual product ads that appear in search results and on product detail pages. Sponsored Brands show your logo and a custom headline above search results. Sponsored Display targets shoppers based on browsing behavior, on and off Amazon. Start with Sponsored Products before exploring the others.
Automatic vs Manual Campaigns
Automatic campaigns let Amazon choose which keywords to target based on your listing content. They are good for discovery: you will find keywords you would not have thought of. Manual campaigns give you control over specific keywords and bids. The standard approach is to run both: use auto campaigns to discover keywords, harvest high-performers into manual campaigns, and add negatives to prevent wasted spend.
Setting Initial Bids
Amazon's suggested bid ranges are a reasonable starting point but often too conservative for competitive categories. Start at the high end of the suggested range, let campaigns run for two weeks, then optimize based on actual performance data. Bidding too low means you never get impressions and learn nothing. Bidding too high and then pulling back is easier to manage than trying to scale a campaign that never spent anything.
The ACoS Metric
Advertising Cost of Sales (ACoS) is your ad spend divided by ad revenue. A 30% ACoS means you spent to generate in sales. Your target ACoS depends on your product margin. If your profit margin is 40%, you need ACoS below 40% to stay profitable. New launches often run at higher ACoS deliberately, sacrificing short-term profitability for ranking momentum.