(3) Search | LinkedIn
By Jason Landro · July 29, 2025 · Curated by George's Blog
We’ve audited about 100 Amazon Ads accounts this year spending between $600,000 and $10,000,000 a year on average. Here’s the 3 most common problems we see:
1. Too much wasted ad spend (spend with no sales)
You shouldn’t have more than 15% wasted ad spend and it should really be under 10%
50% wasted ad spend in a mature account (or any account, for that matter) is terrible
Yet we see it over and over again
Around half the accounts we audit are between 35%-50%
To control wasted ad spend, you need to have proper safety nets in the forms of rules to bid down and pause underperforming search terms AND the correct setup to control where spend goes, which leads me to my next point
2. Wrong Campaign Setup (Over Reliance on Auto, Broad, and Phrase Match Types)
In a mature account, you know the search terms that are working
If you focus your spend on those search terms with exact match, you can control the spend with granularity
Otherwise, you’re leaving it up to Amazon to bid on seemingly relevant search terms and products, especially in auto and broad and also phrase match types
When you leave your spend to chance, in part, wasted spend gets out of control because your targeting isn’t precise
3. Too much branded spend
How much to spend on branded isn’t up for debate
You can actually measure branded conversion share on Amazon with Search Query Performance data provided directly by Amazon
We incorporate this report into our iDerive platform so it’s always there
In essence, you should pull back branded spend and see if your conversion share drops off on branded.
If it doesn’t, you’re overspending on branded
Most brands are overspending on branded.
I can’t tell you how many times brands come back to us after 30-45 days of working with us and thank us for fixing this
If you’re not sure about your ad performance or strategy, don’t hesitate to reach out to me or Nectar
We can definitely give you our thoughts or advice
#amazonsellers #amazonvendor #amazonads #amazonadvertising