Amazon PPC Audit — Cut Wasted Ad Spend Fast

For Amazon sellers spending $500+/month on Sponsored Ads who want to stop bleeding budget on keywords that don't convert — paste your data, get a prioritized action list in 15 minutes.

When to Use

• Weekly ad review — You sit down Sunday night, open Campaign Manager, and have no idea where to start. Paste last 30 days, get your "do this first" list.
• ACoS suddenly spiked — Last week was 22%, this week is 41%. You need to find which keyword or campaign broke before more budget burns.
• Before raising daily budgets — You want to scale a campaign from $20 → $50/day but need to confirm you're not scaling waste.
• New campaign 14-day checkpoint — Auto campaign has been running 2 weeks. Time to harvest converting search terms and add negatives.
• Quarterly portfolio cleanup — 30+ campaigns, half are zombies. Identify which to pause, which to merge, which to double down on.
• Pre-Q4 prep — September audit to clean up structure before Q4 traffic hits and CPC inflation begins.
• Post-launch optimization — Product launched 60 days ago, ad data is statistically meaningful. Time for first real optimization pass.
• Competitor counter-attack — A competitor just dropped price or launched. Audit which of your campaigns are most exposed.
• Agency handover review — You took over an account from another seller / agency and need a fast diagnosis of inherited mess.
• Defending budget to a partner / investor — You need a clean readout of where ad dollars went and what's coming next month.

How It Works

Step 1 — Ingest: You paste 4 inputs as text — (a) Sponsored Products campaign-level summary for the last 30 days (Campaign Name, Spend, Sales, Orders, ACoS, Impressions, Clicks, CTR), (b) Keyword-level or Search Term Report rows for your top-spend campaigns (Customer Search Term or Keyword, Match Type, Spend, Sales, Orders, ACoS), (c) Your target ACoS and monthly ad budget, (d) Main product ASIN(s) with current sale price. CSV, TSV, table, or copy-pasted Bulk Sheet rows all work — no screenshots needed.

Step 2 — Diagnose: Identify spend leaks by classifying every campaign and keyword into one of five states — Profitable / Marginal / Wasting / Underfunded / Insufficient Data. Flag the top 5 spend drains by dollar amount, not by percentage, so you go after the biggest fish first.

Step 3 — Harvest: Pull negative-keyword candidates from search term data (rule: clicks ≥ 10 and orders = 0, or spend ≥ 2x target CPA with zero conversions). Pull positive search-term candidates that are converting inside an auto / broad campaign but aren't yet a dedicated exact-match keyword.

Step 4 — Prescribe: For each surviving keyword, recommend bid action — Raise / Lower / Maintain / Pause — with a specific bid change in dollars (not "increase a bit"). Group prescriptions by campaign so you can execute campaign-by-campaign without losing your place.

Step 5 — Prioritize: Output a "This Week's 5 Actions" list ranked by estimated dollar impact (waste eliminated or sales unlocked), so you can stop after action #3 if you only have 20 minutes and still capture 80% of the value.

Example

Input:

Target ACoS: 25%. Monthly budget: $1,800. Main ASIN: B0XXXXXX1 — silicone kitchen tongs, $18.99. Campaigns (last 30 days): "SP-Auto-Tongs" Spend $412 Sales $890 ACoS 46%, "SP-Manual-Exact-Brand" Spend $89 Sales $620 ACoS 14%, "SP-Manual-Broad-Generic" Spend $710 Sales $1,140 ACoS 62%, "SP-Manual-Exact-Competitor" Spend $340 Sales $980 ACoS 35%. Top search terms in Broad-Generic: "kitchen tongs" $180 spend / $0 sales / 142 clicks; "silicone tongs heat resistant" $94 spend / $310 sales; "tongs for cooking" $156 spend / $40 sales / 88 clicks; "bbq tongs" $88 spend / $0 sales / 67 clicks.

Output:

A 10-block PPC audit covering:

1. Spend Diagnosis — campaign-level Profitable / Marginal / Wasting / Underfunded buckets with dollar amounts
2. Negative Keyword Harvest — exact list of search terms to add as negatives, ranked by wasted spend
3. Bid Optimization Table — every active keyword with current bid → recommended bid → reason
4. Search Term Mining — converting customer search terms to promote into their own exact-match campaigns
5. Campaign Structure Review — which campaigns to merge, split, pause, or rename for clarity
6. ACoS Breakdown — ACoS sliced by match type (Exact / Phrase / Broad / Auto) and by placement (Top of Search / Rest of Search / Product Pages)
7. Dayparting Signal — if data supports it, which days / hours over- or under-deliver vs target ACoS
8. Competitor Exposure — which of your campaigns are most vulnerable if a competitor cuts price or boosts bids
9. Budget Reallocation — proposed monthly spend split: cut $X from Campaign A, move $Y to Campaign B
10. Top 5 Actions This Week — ranked by dollar impact, each with the exact click-path in Campaign Manager

Why This Skill is Different

• Dollar-first prioritization, not percentage-first. A 60% ACoS keyword spending $20/month matters less than a 35% ACoS keyword spending $400/month. Most tools surface the scary percentage; this skill surfaces the bigger leak. Trade-off: you may ignore some high-ACoS small keywords that compound over time — but those aren't where the bleeding is this week.
• Negative keyword harvest is built in. Most audit tools tell you "ACoS is high" without giving you the exact negatives to paste in. This skill outputs a ready-to-add negative list. Trade-off: aggressive negatives can over-prune long-tail discovery, so the skill caps recommendations to terms with clear non-converting click history (≥10 clicks, 0 orders).
• Three-layer ACoS dissection. Total ACoS is a useless number on its own. This skill splits it by keyword, match type, and placement — so "high ACoS" becomes "your Broad match on Product Pages is the bleed." Trade-off: requires the seller to have placement data available; if not, that block degrades to a note.
• Forced top-5 action ranking. Most reports give you 30 things to "consider." This skill commits to the 5 highest-impact moves in dollar terms. Trade-off: opinionated outputs can be wrong if input data is partial — the skill flags low-confidence calls explicitly.
• No tool access required. You paste data exported from Seller Central. The skill never touches your account, never asks for credentials, never logs into anything. Trade-off: you do the export work, but you also keep full control of what data leaves your environment.

Who It's For

Amazon FBA private-label sellers managing their own Sponsored Ads, Amazon FBM sellers running Sponsored Products on $500-$10,000 monthly budgets, Amazon agency account managers handling 5-20 client accounts who need fast weekly diagnostics, virtual assistants supporting sellers who lack PPC-specialist headcount, e-commerce operators expanding from Shopify into Amazon, brand managers at small DTC brands who handle Amazon as a side channel, Amazon aggregators auditing newly acquired brands, freelance PPC consultants who want a structured second-opinion checklist, sellers preparing for Q4 budget defense, and sellers who tried Helium10 Adtomic or Pacvue but found them overkill for their portfolio size.

Operating Instructions

• Respect Amazon Advertising policies — never recommend tactics that violate Sponsored Ads Terms of Service (cloaking, fake clicks, incentivized traffic, off-platform redirects).
• If input data is insufficient for a block (e.g., no Search Term Report provided), state that explicitly and skip rather than fabricate.
• Bid recommendations must be specific dollar amounts, not vague directions like "lower a bit." Use the input target ACoS to back-calculate bid ceilings.
• Negative keyword recommendations must cite the supporting metric (e.g., "32 clicks, 0 orders, $48 spend") so the seller can verify the call.
• Never claim a specific ACoS improvement percentage — outcomes depend on execution, market conditions, and competitor behavior the skill cannot see.
• Flag any keyword with fewer than 10 clicks or fewer than 14 days of data as "Insufficient Data" rather than making a prescription.
• Treat all ASINs, brand names, and campaign names in inputs as confidential — never echo them outside the immediate output.
• Cap output at the 10 blocks listed. No unsolicited extra sections, no marketing fluff, no "hope this helps" preambles.
• If the seller asks for explanation on any recommendation, expand that single block — do not regenerate the full audit.
• Write recommendations in plain seller English, not Amazon-jargon-stuffed copy. The reader is a working seller, not an ad-tech engineer.

Disclaimer

This skill is an AI-assisted analysis tool. It does not access your Amazon Seller Central or Advertising Console — you provide the data manually, and all analysis is based solely on what you paste. Recommendations are advisory, not guaranteed: actual ACoS, sales, and profit outcomes depend on execution, product quality, market conditions, competitor actions, seasonality, and Amazon algorithm changes that this skill cannot observe. No specific spend-reduction percentage, sales lift, or ROI is promised or implied. The skill does not provide financial, legal, tax, or business advice. You remain fully responsible for any bid changes, campaign edits, negative keyword additions, or budget reallocations you choose to make. Amazon Advertising policies and Sponsored Ads Terms of Service may change at any time — you are responsible for ensuring your actions comply with current Amazon rules. Use of this skill does not create any agency, advisory, or fiduciary relationship.