Navigating Amazon's advertising ecosystem can feel overwhelming, especially when your time and resources are limited. Understanding the key terms and metrics is essential for optimizing campaigns, controlling costs, and driving sales. This glossary focuses on Amazon-native concepts to help you get started.

Advertising Basics

• ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sale): Percentage of ad spend relative to ad revenue. 
  Formula: (Ad Spend ÷ Ad Revenue) × 100.
• Ad Group: A collection of ads within a campaign that share the same targeting criteria and budget.
• Impressions: Number of times your ad is displayed to potential customers.
• Ad Spend: Total amount spent on a specific ad or campaign.
• Ad Status: The current state of an ad, such as 'Active', 'Paused', or 'Ended'.
• Campaign: A set of ad groups with a shared budget, targeting strategy, and settings.

Bidding & Budgeting

• Bid: Maximum amount you are willing to pay for a click on your ad.
• Budget: Total amount allocated for a campaign or ad group over a set period.

Campaign Types & Targeting

• Sponsored Products (SP): Ads that promote individual product listings in search results or product detail pages.
• Sponsored Brands (SB): Ads that showcase your brand and product portfolio in search results.
• Sponsored Display (SD): Ads that target audiences both on and off Amazon, including retargeting options.
• Targeting: Method for defining who sees your ads, including keyword targeting or product targeting.
• Keywords: Words or phrases that trigger your ads when a shopper’s search matches them.

Data & Metrics

• CTR (Click-Through Rate): Percentage of impressions that result in clicks. Formula: (Clicks ÷ Impressions) × 100
• CPC (Cost Per Click): Average amount you pay for each click on your ad.
• CVR (Conversion Rate): Percentage of clicks that result in a sale. Formula: (Conversions ÷ Clicks) × 100.
• ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): Revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. Formula: Ad Revenue ÷ Ad Spend.
• ACOS: Advertising Cost of Sale, indicating the percentage of ad spend relative to ad revenue.

Expansion & Optimization

• Negative Keywords: Keywords you exclude to prevent your ads from showing for irrelevant searches.
• Keyword Match Types: Determines how closely a keyword must match a shopper’s search term for your ad to appear
• Broad Match: Ads may show for searches including misspellings, synonyms, or related terms.
• Phrase Match: Ads may show for searches including the exact phrase or close variations.
• Exact Match: Ads show only for searches matching the exact keyword or close variations.
• Bid Adjustments: Modifications to bids based on device, location, or time of day to optimize ad performance.

Guidance for New Amazon Ads Users

Start with a manageable budget and a few campaigns to learn what works. Enable BQool’s Auto-Harvesting to discover effective keywords, and monitor key metrics like ACOS, CTR, CPC, and ROAS to track performance.

Make small, gradual adjustments to bids, budgets, and targeting. Add negative keywords (cautiously) early to avoid irrelevant traffic, understand match types to balance reach and precision, and regularly check ad status and budgets to keep campaigns running smoothly.