We've got two supplement launches running this month, and in both cases the ad b
By Ted Gibson · July 22, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
We've got two supplement launches running this month, and in both cases the ad budget is basically sitting untouched. That surprises people, because the instinct on a new product is to come out swinging with spend from day one.
The reason is simple. Paid traffic landing on a brand new listing with no reviews doesn't convert, it just burns money and sends a weak signal to the algorithm right when you most want a strong one. So the order of operations matters far more than the size of the budget.
First we build velocity. On one launch that means holding the price deliberately low for the first few weeks, so the product is genuinely competitive against the cheaper, established options, and we gather clean data before stepping up to full price. Alongside that we run Vine to seed the first honest reviews, because the number we're actually chasing early is a rating above 4.2 stars. Below that line conversion struggles no matter what you spend, and above it everything else starts to work. Only once the rating is healthy do we open up the ads, into a listing that's now ready to convert the traffic.
AI runs the moving parts for us now, the pricing, the timing, the keyword groundwork. But the sequence itself, knowing that reviews come before spend and that 4.2 is the line, is hard won judgment.
Launch is one of the few things on Amazon you only get to do once per product, so it's worth doing in the right order.