The Metric That Actually Matters: Auditing an Amazon Ads Dashboard Export

Marketing Academy · Field Work●Paid Ads

All projects·From: Amazon Advertising: The Third Giant in Paid Ads

MiniAudit· 35 minutes

MVMT

Objective: Given a real Amazon Ads dashboard export with ACoS, TACoS, and campaign structure, diagnose whether the account's trend is healthy and whether the campaign structure has a coverage gap.

You're the paid media analyst at MVMT, the DTC watch and accessories brand, reviewing six months of Amazon Ads performance ahead of a quarterly budget review.

Read the ACoS/TACoS trend correctly, then check the campaign structure against the lesson's three-layer framework for coverage gaps.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Amazon Ads

FreePull the campaign list and ACoS/TACoS reporting

Native Campaign Manager reporting, no third-party tool required

Google Sheets

FreeChart the ACoS/TACoS trend and log the campaign structure audit

Free and fast for a 6-month trend comparison

The process

2 steps

Step 01 of 02

TACoS vs ACoS trend interpretation

The lesson explains TACoS reveals business health because it includes organic sales: if TACoS is declining while ACoS stays flat or rises, it means ads are building organic rank, which is a good sign, not a problem.

Over 6 months, ACoS rose from 22% to 27% while TACoS fell from 9% to 7%. Is this a problem?

Amazon Ads— Campaign Manager > Advertising reports, plus Seller Central Business Reports for total revenue.

Procedure

Pull ad spend and ad-attributed revenue by month to calculate ACoS
Pull total revenue (ad-attributed plus organic) by month to calculate TACoS
Plot both trends side by side over the 6-month window
Compare the direction of each line, not just the latest month's number

Sample output

MVMT, 6-month trend
  Month 1: ACoS 22%, TACoS 9%
  Month 3: ACoS 24%, TACoS 8%
  Month 6: ACoS 27%, TACoS 7%

Healthy

TACoS declining over time while ACoS holds flat or even rises slightly, meaning organic sales are growing faster than ad-attributed sales.

Unhealthy

TACoS rising alongside ACoS, meaning the business is becoming more dependent on paid spend, not less.

What this means

This is the healthy pattern the lesson describes. Rising ACoS with falling TACoS means the ads are functioning as a rank-building investment, not a growing cost problem.

So what do I do about it?

Symptom	Action	Effort
ACoS trending up month over month	Before cutting ad spend to lower ACoS, check the TACoS trend first, cutting spend here would slow the organic growth ACoS rising is currently funding	5 min

YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Step 02 of 02

Auto vs manual campaign structure completeness

The lesson's three-layer framework is Discovery (auto/broad), Performance (exact-match manual on proven keywords), and Defense (campaigns on your own brand terms to stop competitors stealing page visitors).

The campaign list shows one auto campaign running for 6 months and one broad-match manual campaign. There is no exact-match harvest campaign and no campaign targeting the brand's own name. What's missing?

Amazon Ads— Campaign Manager > campaign list, filtered by targeting type.

Procedure

List every live campaign and tag it Discovery, Performance, or Defense
Check whether any campaign is exact-match on proven converting terms (Performance layer)
Check whether any campaign targets the brand's own name (Defense layer)
Flag any missing layer

Sample output

MVMT campaign list
  MVMT-Auto-Discovery: auto targeting, live 6 months
  MVMT-Broad-Manual: broad/phrase match, live 6 months
  MISSING: exact-match Performance campaign, brand-defense campaign

Healthy

All three layers present: Discovery finding new terms, Performance running exact-match on proven winners, Defense protecting the brand name.

Unhealthy

Only Discovery-layer campaigns after 6 months, with no harvest into exact-match and no brand-defense campaign at all.

What this means

Six months of auto/broad data with nothing harvested into exact-match means proven winning terms are still paying broad-match rates instead of controlled bids, and the brand name is sitting undefended.

So what do I do about it?

Symptom	Action	Effort
No campaign targets the brand's own name after 6 months live	Launch an exact-match campaign bidding on the brand's own name at a low floor bid immediately	30 min

YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Final deliverable

A one-page audit memo stating whether the ACoS/TACoS trend is healthy, and listing the specific campaign-structure gaps to fix before the next quarter.

See a reference example

Sample output

RXBAR, Amazon Ads audit (excerpt)

TREND: HEALTHY
  ACoS 19% -> 23% (up), TACoS 11% -> 8% (down) — organic rank is absorbing more of total sales

STRUCTURE: GAP FOUND
  Discovery: present (auto campaign, 4 months live)
  Performance: MISSING — no exact-match harvest campaign
  Defense: present (brand-name campaign live)

RECOMMENDATION: Pull the search term report and harvest top 10 converting terms into a new exact-match campaign this week.

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

Correctly reads a rising-ACoS/falling-TACoS trend as healthy, not a problem
Correctly identifies which of the three campaign-structure layers is missing