7 Classic Errors E-commerce Brands Make with Amazon Ads [2025]

Today’s guest post is written by Max Sinclair. Max is based in London, UK, and is the founder of Snowball Creations (an award-winning paid advertising agency) and Forzeit (a complete time management system).

For many e-commerce brands, Amazon Ads are a highly lucrative channel. With millions of people actively shopping on the platform every day, the opportunity to grow your sales is huge. In a nutshell, Amazon advertising helps to boost product visibility, increase organic ranking, drive more conversions and give you direct access to high-intent shoppers.

While the potential benefits of Amazon ads are massive, obtaining these advantages isn’t as straightforward as you would think. Many sellers, especially when starting out, make costly mistakes that can seriously impact their returns.

In fact, plenty of brands end up wasting serious money because they don’t take the time to properly optimise their campaigns. In this post, we’ll dive into 7 classic errors that e-commerce brands should avoid.

Table of Contents

1. Overly Relying on Auto Campaigns
2. Making Changes Too Quickly
3. Exclusively Focusing on ACOS
4. Not Using Negative Keywords
5. Poor Product Listing Optimisation
6. Ignoring Keyword Research
7. Underestimating The Impact Paid Ads Have on Organic Rankings
8. Final Thoughts

1. Overly Relying on Auto Campaigns

First up on the list is over-reliance on auto campaigns. With automatic campaigns, you essentially hand Amazon the steering wheel and sit back while it decides which keywords to target and where your ads should appear.

While these campaigns might be useful if you’re just starting out, they are not so great for the long run. The problem is that when you hand Amazon the steering wheel, you are also handing over all your control.

In other words, auto campaigns do not let you fully manage what you’re bidding on or where your ads are showing. Manual campaigns, on the other hand, give you the power to choose your keywords, fine-tune bids and manage budgets much more effectively.

This is not to say that auto campaigns are completely useless, but if you have the experience, it is usually better to go with the manual option.

2. Making Changes Too Quickly

One of the biggest mistakes brands make is making too many changes too quickly. They launch a campaign, check it after a short while, panic when the numbers aren’t perfect and then start tweaking everything. The best advice here is to just take a step back.

Ads need time to collect data and settle in. Ideally, you want to give campaigns at least 7–14 days (depending on spend and traffic) before making any big changes. Otherwise, you’re constantly resetting the learning process and unintentionally sabotaging your own results.

3. Exclusively Focusing on ACOS

Everyone wants a low ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sales), but obsessing over it can lead you down the wrong path. The thing with ACOS is that it does not tell the whole story. You might have a higher ACOS on a new product launch, but if it’s helping you rank organically or dominate your category, it is a good thing.

Whereas a perfect low ACOS might mean you’re under-spending and missing out on market share. That’s where TACOS (Total Advertising Cost of Sales) comes in. It looks at your ad spend as a percentage of total revenue, giving you a better sense of how ads impact your entire business, not just ad-attributed sales.

Instead of zeroing in on a single number, zoom out and look at the bigger picture: total sales growth, profit margins, TACOS and lifetime customer value (LTV).

4. Not Using Negative Keywords

Negative keywords play a large role in paid advertising, not just Amazon ads. Think of them as your secret weapon that ensures you don’t waste ad spend on irrelevant traffic. If you’re not adding negatives, your ads can show up for completely irrelevant searches.

Put simply, this results in you paying for traffic that has a very small chance, if any, of converting. For instance, if you’re selling premium wallets and your ad is showing when someone searches “cheap wallets”, you are not exactly targeting your ideal customer.

By adding negative keywords, you block out irrelevant traffic, protect your budget and boost your conversion rate. Make it a habit to regularly review your search term reports and add negatives. At the end of the day, you and your ad budget will be thankful.

5. Poor Product Listing Optimisation

Another common mistake that businesses fall victim to is neglecting product listing optimisation. Amazon’s algorithms prioritise high-performing listings, thus, it is crucial to pay attention to how your listings are optimised.

The aim should always be to have positive reviews, relevant keywords, high-quality photos and strong descriptions that clearly highlight what makes your product better than competitors.

In addition, having optimised listing improves both your organic visibility and the overall performance of your PPC campaigns. After all, your product listing acts as your landing page. They need to inform people about your product, convince and then ultimately, convert.

Many brands mistakenly think that driving more traffic will fix poor sales, when in reality, it’s the listing itself that needs attention. Before trying to scale your advertising efforts, ensure that your listings are properly optimised and ready to convert traffic into actual sales.

6. Ignoring Keyword Research

If you’re launching your campaigns without doing proper keyword research, you are making things more difficult for yourself than they should be. The truth is that often campaigns fall flat because they are not aligned with customer search terms. In other words, not digging deep into keyword research translates to you basically playing Amazon Ads on hard mode.

Too many brands just pick a handful of obvious keywords and call it a day. Or worse, they go super broad, which results in campaigns underperforming, leading to wasted ad spend. Take the time to use tools like Amazon Brand Analytics or other third-party software to discover what your customers are actually searching for.

Continually refine your keyword list based on real campaign data and don’t forget to regularly add negative keywords to filter out poor traffic. In short, solid keyword research lays the groundwork for profitable and scalable campaigns. Skipping it puts you at a serious disadvantage.

7. Underestimating The Impact Paid Ads Have on Organic Rankings

Many brands treat their PPC campaigns and organic rankings as two separate worlds, but on Amazon, they’re closely connected. Paid ads can drive early sales velocity, which signals to Amazon’s algorithm that your product is relevant. As a result, your organic ranking can gradually improve over time.

By ignoring this relationship, brands might prematurely cut ad spend, causing them to miss out on the long-term benefit of climbing the organic ranks. In other words, they make decisions based solely on short-term metrics, without considering how their paid campaigns are laying the groundwork for sustainable organic growth.

For a more well-rounded strategy, make sure your ads are working toward both paid and organic growth. Try to think of PPC not just as a tool for getting more immediate sales, but as a way to build long-term visibility and help boost those organic rankings.

Final Thoughts

To have the best success with Amazon ads, it’s beneficial to understand where so many others have gone wrong so that you don’t make the same mistakes. The thing is that making one of these mistakes is not so drastic, but if you have a few of them, they will start to chip away at your results.

A comprehensive Amazon ads strategy involves taking control of your campaigns, conducting keyword research, staying patient with data and making decisions that support both paid and organic growth. If you are looking to get more out of your paid ad campaigns, contact Snowball Creations to find out how we can help you build a marketing strategy that actually delivers.