Is a double digit RoAs (or single digit ACOS) realistic anymore?

[Tallytony]

Before anything else, good to see you, fellow TT

@Tried_Tested

I can start a campaign right now and make it 2% acos and .01 tacos but what am I doing?

This is very valid, and yeah, of course I can force the numbers on a campaign. I can have them be as good as perfect, and yet have 0 real value.
I was asking was more on the spirit of an established product, that has suffered the increase of the ppc, and is just trying to gain exposure to new buyers.

@Tallytony

At least for campaigns with actual sales (more than 1 sale per day, preferably getting 4-5/day at least to have some meaningful data)

Regarding

@Tried_Tested

a. market share

and

@Tried_Tested

h. organic ranking

@Tallytony

Main issue I’m seeing is that without the absurd spending you can’t get new customers. They can’t find you, there’s no such thing as organic ranking for new buyers even when you’re #1 best seller for a given item/category.

Regarding

@Tried_Tested

f. kws
g. kw ranking

I tend to gravitate to limiting the number of keywords and keeping it as low as possible.
Few things annoy me more than looking for spare parts for a rocket launcher and be stuck with ads for face cream.
If you’re selling yellow lemons, and that’s what I want to buy, I would hope to just type “yellow lemons”. I even dislike the “phrase” and “broad” approach. If you seller pay for those, you get the clicks from the crowd searching for “undies with yellow lemons” under the phrase umbrella, and “the great coloring book of all fruits” under the broad umbrella. And I know about negative words, but that’s mostly wishful thinking. Murphy states that you can’t imagine all the negatives.

Of course, the exact keyword can be expensive. But at the end of the day, the name of the game is always volume. I hope that the exact keyword has to be the biggest hook, and even if by itself can’t give that desired roas/acos, using an obscure keyword that is tangentially related wont compensate the final roas/acos because volume always wins.

[Lost_My_Marbles]

@Tallytony

I tend to gravitate to limiting the number of keywords and keeping it as low as possible.

We agree with this … and if you have like items, put them in the same campaign / ad group if the keyword(s) apply to the like items. Similar items with like keywords in separate campaigns could set you up to be bidding against yourself thus rising your cost per click.

[Tried_Tested]

This then opens the discussion to even more queries. For instance, currently in our niche - High Volume KWs are very expensive and have consistently been unprofitable - we then shifted to mid-tail kw which are our hero kw and are profitable - less volume but higher organic ranking and better than market conversion - this game is so relative that unless we discuss more variables that need consideration its very difficult to assess where to start/place discussion. But overall PPC has increased by 20% in overall pricing or so since my shutdown.

[Tallytony]

@Tried_Tested

High Volume KWs are very expensive and have consistently been unprofitable -

Is what I’m seeing and prompted my complain (thread)

@Tried_Tested

shifted to mid-tail kw which are our hero kw and are profitable

Is the volume enough to catch new customers? My main fear with lack of ads is irrelevance. If you don’t capture new customers, eventually you run out of repeat customers.

@Tried_Tested

this game is so relative that unless we discuss more variables that need consideration its very difficult to assess where to start/place discussion

Agree, and as always, very happy to hear any suggestion, or if you have your own frustration that you’d like to vent, also interested.

I’m really curious about @Lost_My_Marbles suggestion, and I’m definitely using this absurdly cold weekend to implement it. Hopefully I can write in a couple months saying that I owe him a steak dinner!

[Tried_Tested]

@Tallytony

Is what I’m seeing and prompted my complain (thread)

But my earlier response was a bit of an oversimplification because it also depends on your sales history and conversion rate compared to competitors. In my case, after my year long shutdown - things have shifted considerably so its hard to compare from ASIN to ASIN - I guess in general things have gone up.

@Tallytony

s the volume enough to catch new customers? My main fear with lack of ads is irrelevance. If you don’t capture new customers, eventually you run out of repeat customers.

You would have to see NTB report - but yes it is and you still have to test your budget allocation on high volume kw spend and then reallocate to mid tail terms which then become your hero kw. It isn’t an either or - you would have to start at high volume and mid tail and then migrate just enough over to midtail to balance profitability and visibility - it truly is a process and can take 2 months on high volume SKUs - every shift we do is in very minor increments/decrements. But yah tough one since you’re in a shifting pool of SKUs that you compete with.

@Tallytony

I’m really curious about @Lost_My_Marbles suggestion, and I’m definitely using this absurdly cold weekend to implement it. Hopefully I can write in a couple months saying that I owe him a steak dinner!

I don’t mix SKUs in campaigns. The idea of losing control on spend is a tough sell. Additionally, we only advertise Hero SKUs and leave variations to sell themselves.

This is an insanely wide discussion with too many layers so glad an agency is handling it for me.

[Tried_Tested]

@Tallytony I say all this in my best ability as such responses go, not to minimize your OP and the purpose of your thread only to say that it is monumental at this juncture to pinpoint things. Of course, all this is known by all. So anyway my responses can be of any utility, please let me know

[Tallytony]

Hey! Sorry I didn’t answer earlier, I have SAS on the office computer, and during my “forum break” I did a lot of things in my personal life (got married, had a baby daughter ), so I’m doing a big push to use my family time for family and limit work (or work related time)

Needless to say, I am incredibly appreciative of the responses and the insight everybody has provided. If I had wanted to hear echoes of how everybody is doing the exact same as I, I would have gone to the pet store and asked the parrots!

I’m extremely thankful for the ideas, and even the ones that I have begun to implement, I have modified slightly to my reality. We can share ideas, but ultimately, and very much to what you say, our business needs have differences, so even the common ground needs to be adapted. Only thing I can say, other than thanks to the people who share and bounce ideas, is how sad it is that Amazon killed such a great (and free) knowledge-base. Imagine how many people could have benefited (and participated) in this thread 4 years ago.

@Tried_Tested

depends on your sales history and conversion rate compared to competitors

This is part of what I’m seeing. The market moves, inflation affects everything, including keywords, and to remain in the game, the strategy needs to be updated

@Tried_Tested

You would have to see NTB report

I hate that the immediate nbt numbers that the console shows are for sponsored brands, does the report shows them for sponsored products as well? I like sponsored brands, but they get abused hard, their roas/acos has always been worse than that of the sponsored products, though their reach is probably more impactful.

@Tried_Tested

it truly is a process and can take 2 months on high volume SKUs

Yes, and this year so far has been very complicated with half the year with the country buried under snow. Unless you’re selling snow shovels I imagine sales have suffered a bit. But I wouldn’t want to deal with the returns of the snow shovels come the spring…

@Tried_Tested

I don’t mix SKUs in campaigns. The idea of losing control on spend is a tough sell. Additionally, we only advertise Hero SKUs and leave variations to sell themselves.

So this is tricky. I have some skus that share KW but are not in the same variation family, there I have no recourse but to advertise both. I use separate campaigns with exact KW and very specific negative words, but it does frustrate me that I’m bidding against myself

[Lost_My_Marbles]

@Tallytony

So this is tricky. I have some skus that share KW but are not in the same variation family, there I have no recourse but to advertise both. I use separate campaigns with exact KW and very specific negative words, but it does frustrate me that I’m bidding against myself

This is how you would avoid bidding against yourself …

In an Amazon ad campaign, two or more ad groups can have separate, unique negative keywords. By adding negative keywords at the ad group , you restrict specific terms only for that specific ad group, allowing for granular control within a single campaign without affecting other ad groups.

Key Details on Ad Group Negatives:

• Targeted Control: If you have Ad Group A (“white shoes”) and Ad Group B (“blue shoes”), you can add “blue” as a negative keyword only in Ad Group A to prevent cross-targeting.
• Levels of Negatives: While campaign-level negatives apply to everything, ad group-level negatives offer a more precise, narrow, and effective way to manage traffic.
• Implementation: Within the Campaign Manager, you can navigate to the specific ad group, select the “Negative Keywords” tab, and add your keywords.
• Match Types: You can use negative phrase or negative exact match types for these keywords to control which search queries are excluded.

This approach is considered a best practice for refining targeting and optimizing budgets.

[Tallytony]

Yeah, I have done this, but empirically I have found that the campaign favors the best selling item
This may be a problem of my particular product. Imagine that I’m selling the waterproofed and the non-waterproofed version of something, and waterproofing is not a valid variation theme (though it is for Amazon Vendors…) When you go to the negative targeting it gets tricky to use the correct negative word taht doesn’t negate the item (same goes with the exact kw, and waterproofing is an example, is not the actual difference)

[Tried_Tested]

Right so here again the data would speak. You could separate the variations to their own Parents or keep them pending ROI - my guess is variations are always better (shared reviews pending amazon review changes) and organic sales (pending customer intent, purchasing habits and returns if the waterproof vs non-waterproof doesn’t cause confusion). Something like that, but again I’m not saying anything new.