Free Amazon PPC Audit — Human-Led, Read-Only, 3–5 Business Days
CaptenAMZ’s Amazon PPC audit judges every campaign against each product’s break-even ACoS — not one blanket target. We find the search terms burning budget, the winners starved of bids, and the structure holding your account back, then hand you a prioritized 30-day fix plan.
An Amazon PPC audit is a structured review of your Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display campaigns. CaptenAMZ judges every campaign against each product's break-even ACoS, finds the search terms wasting budget and the winners starved of bids, then hands you a prioritized 30-day fix plan.
An Amazon PPC audit is a structured review of your Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display campaigns. It answers three questions: where is ad spend being wasted, where are profitable keywords being underfunded, and what should change first?
Most audits stop at ACoS. Ours starts with margin. A 35% ACoS can be healthy on one product and losing money on another, so CaptenAMZ sets a break-even ACoS for every ASIN and measures each campaign against it. The audit is the first step before PPC optimization or full Amazon PPC management — and it's useful on its own if you'd rather implement the plan in-house.
These are the patterns we see most often when sellers book a PPC audit. Each one quietly drains profit every day it goes unchecked.
Spend rises month after month but sales don't keep pace. Without a per-product break-even line, there's no way to tell which campaigns are profitable and which are quietly losing money on every order.
Broad and auto campaigns match irrelevant search terms, and nobody is reviewing the search term report often enough to negate them. Budget leaks to queries your product will never convert on.
Your best campaigns hit their daily cap early while weaker ones keep spending. You lose the afternoon and evening traffic that converts, and competitors take the top-of-search slots.
Dozens of overlapping campaigns, no naming convention, keywords competing against each other across ad groups. Without a clear structure, every optimization is guesswork.
Ad sales grow but total sales don't — TACoS keeps rising. That usually means ads are buying sales you'd have earned organically, or the listing isn't converting well enough to build rank.
Dashboards full of metrics but no clear next step. A previous agency or tool reported numbers without telling you what to change, in what order, or why.
Every CaptenAMZ Amazon PPC account audit runs the same nine checks, so nothing is skipped — then a specialist interprets the results for your category and margins.
We calculate the break-even ACoS for each ASIN from your price, COGS, and Amazon fees, then rank products by profit after advertising — worst first. This becomes the yardstick for every other check.
How to Lower ACoS →We flag every search term and target with meaningful spend and zero orders over 30–60 days — longer than Amazon's attribution window — and split queries into winners, negative candidates, and terms already blocked.
Find My Wasted Spend →We check that money-losing terms are actually negated, and the reverse: that no old negative is blocking a query that converts today. Both mistakes are common, and both cost sales.
PPC Optimization →We map every campaign and ad group by product, goal, and targeting type, flag overlapping keywords that compete against themselves, and recommend a structure you can actually manage and report on.
PPC Management Guide →We review the balance of broad, phrase, exact, and product targeting, find proven converters in auto and broad campaigns that should graduate to exact match, and tighten match types that bleed spend.
PPC Consultation →We compare your bids with actual CPC on top-spending keywords, check whether fixed or dynamic bidding fits your goals, and compare Top of Search, Rest of Search, and Product Page results against break-even ACoS.
Ads Management →We find profitable campaigns that cap out early and keywords converting below break-even but with low top-of-search share — the places where more spend would earn more profit.
Find My Scale Opportunities →We check whether you're over-reliant on Sponsored Products, missing Sponsored Brands video or brand-defense campaigns, and how Sponsored Display targets perform — audited by target and placement, since SD has no search term report.
Advertising Consultant →Ads can't fix a listing that doesn't convert. We review TACoS trends alongside titles, images, reviews, and A+ content, and flag listing issues our listing optimization and catalog team can fix.
Free Listing Score →ACoS only compares ad spend to ad sales. It says nothing about margin. These three metrics are what turn an Amazon ads audit into a profit plan.
Pre-ad profit ÷ selling price. If a $30 product earns $9 before ads, break-even ACoS is 30%. Above that line every ad sale loses money; below it, you have room to scale. We set this line for every ASIN.
Ad spend ÷ total sales (ad + organic). Falling TACoS means ads are building organic rank. Rising TACoS means you're paying for sales you'd likely earn anyway — or the listing isn't converting.
Pre-ad profit on ad sales − ad spend. Sorting products by this number, worst first, shows exactly where to cut and where to invest — something one account-wide ACoS target always hides.
These are the findings that show up most in our audits. Each one comes with a specific fix in your action plan — not a vague "optimize keywords."
| Audit Area | Red Flag | What It Costs You | How CaptenAMZ Fixes It |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search Terms | Spend with zero orders over 30–60 days | Pure wasted budget | Negate or lower bids; move budget to converters |
| Negatives | Old negatives blocking converting queries | Lost sales on proven terms | Remove conflicting negatives; re-target in exact |
| Match Types | Converters stuck in auto or broad only | Higher CPCs, no bid control | Harvest to exact match; negate in source campaign |
| Structure | Same keyword in several campaigns | You bid against yourself | Consolidate; one home per keyword per product |
| Bids | Bids far above actual CPC | Overpaying in auctions you'd win anyway | Bid to break-even ACoS using CPC and CVR data |
| Placements | Top-of-search modifier on a losing placement | Premium clicks that don't convert | Reset modifiers by placement ACoS vs break-even |
| Budgets | Best campaigns capped out by midday | Missed evening traffic and rank | Reallocate from low performers; raise caps on winners |
| Ad Types | Sponsored Products only, no SB or brand defense | Competitors take your branded searches | Add SB video and branded defense campaigns |
| TACoS | Rising TACoS with flat total sales | Paying for organic sales | Shift spend to non-branded growth terms |
| Listing | High clicks, low conversion rate | Every click costs more than it earns | Fix images, title, reviews, A+ before scaling spend |
Results from brands that started with a CaptenAMZ Amazon PPC audit and moved into optimization and management.
$1 million in sales per month after restructuring campaigns and catalog. Read case →
Ad spend brought under control — ACoS stabilized at 27%, TACoS at 13%. Read case →
Any tool can export a report. Here's what makes a CaptenAMZ audit something you can actually act on.
A PPC specialist reviews your account by hand and interprets the data for your category, margins, and goals. Tools help us pull data; they don't write your recommendations.
Every finding is measured against each product's break-even ACoS, so the plan tells you where you're losing money — not just where ACoS looks high.
We audit through secure sub-user access and never change bids, budgets, or settings during the audit. Nothing moves until you approve it.
Most PPC audits ignore the listing. Our catalog team checks the detail pages your ads send traffic to — because no bid strategy fixes a page that doesn't convert. See our catalog management service.
You get a ranked 30-day action plan plus the wasted-spend and negative keyword lists — specific enough for your team, or ours, to start implementing the same day.
Keep the audit and implement it yourself, or hand it to us. If you move to PPC management, there are no long-term contracts.
Five steps, 3–5 business days, and nothing in your account changes until you say so.
Tell us your marketplaces, target margins, and what you want from ads — profit, growth, launch, or rank. We confirm scope on a short call.
Add our team as a user with view access to your Amazon Ads console. We never ask for your login, and you can remove access at any time.
We pull 60–90 days of campaign, search term, placement, and business report data, then set a break-even ACoS for each ASIN from your pricing and costs.
A specialist runs every check — wasted spend, negatives, structure, match types, bids, placements, budgets, ad types, and TACoS with listing readiness — and ranks each finding by profit impact.
You receive the report, wasted-spend and negative keyword lists, and the 30-day plan, then walk through it with us. Implement it yourself, or have our optimization team do it.
Get your free Amazon PPC audit. We'll show you what's wasted, what's underfunded, and what to fix first — before you commit to anything.
Rated 4.9/5 by 200+ Amazon Sellers
Every marketplace is audited in its own currency, against its own margins, and with search terms in the shopper's language.
Full audits for US sellers on Amazon.com, from new launches to eight-figure catalogs. CaptenAMZ is based in Trenton, NJ — see our Amazon advertising consultant (USA) service.
UK audits judged in GBP with VAT-inclusive pricing built into break-even ACoS, plus British-English search term review. See our Amazon PPC management UK page.
Local-language search terms, negatives, and match types reviewed per marketplace — not copied from the US account. See our EU PPC case study.
North American expansion audits for Amazon.ca and Amazon.com.mx, including budget and bid levels set for smaller, lower-CPC auctions.
Amazon.com.au audits for brands expanding into a younger marketplace, where structure and harvesting set up from day one pay off for years.
Running ads in several marketplaces? We audit each one and compare them side by side, so winning strategies spread and losing ones stop. Contact us to scope it.
Should you use an automated PPC audit tool, run the audit yourself, or get a specialist review? Here's the honest comparison.
| Feature | CaptenAMZ Audit | Automated Audit Tool | DIY Audit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Break-Even ACoS per ASIN | ✓ Set for every product | Usually one account target | Only if you build it |
| Search Term & Negative Review | ✓ Judged for relevance by a human | Rule-based thresholds | Time-consuming |
| Context for Your Category | ✓ Seasonality, launches, margins | None | Depends on experience |
| Sponsored Brands & Display | ✓ Included | Often SP-focused | Often skipped |
| Listing & Conversion Review | ✓ Catalog team included | Not included | Separate effort |
| Prioritized Action Plan | ✓ Ranked by profit impact | Score or alerts | Up to you |
| Walkthrough Call | ✓ Included | No | No |
| Risk to Live Campaigns | ✓ None — read-only | Some tools auto-apply changes | Mistakes go live instantly |
| Implementation Option | ✓ DIY or done-for-you | Self-serve | All on you |
From a single-ASIN launch account to a multi-marketplace catalog, the Amazon PPC audit scales to what you're running.
Full review of every campaign, ad group, and target
AuditSpend with no orders, ranked by cost
CutWinners, negative candidates, and blocked queries
CutGaps and negatives blocking converters
FixAuto, manual, keyword, and product targeting
AuditHeadline, video, store spotlight, brand defense
AuditAudience and product targets by placement
AuditBids vs CPC, bidding strategy, modifiers
FixBreak-even per ASIN and profit after ads
ProfitLaunch structure and early harvesting
LaunchIndependent review of a current agency's work
ReviewUS, UK, DE, FR, IT, ES, CA and more
ExpandReal feedback from Amazon brands whose advertising CaptenAMZ audited, optimized, and managed.
"In just three months, they helped us reduce our ACoS from 35% to 18% while boosting our sales by over 50%."
"Sidra and her company did an amazing job supporting Clarity Products on Amazon. Her team were super knowledgeable, responsive and got results. They are proactive in managing all aspects of selling on Amazon — from pricing to keyword selection to advertising and product presentation — making sure we maintained a positive return on investment."
"He approaches our campaigns with a strategic mindset and treats our budgets as if they were his own."
Top questions about Amazon PPC audits — answered by CaptenAMZ's advertising specialists.
Book a free audit. A PPC specialist will show you what's wasted and what to scale — no obligation.
Talk to a PPC ExpertStay informed and ahead of the curve by learning from our experiences and expertise in the Amazon market.
