How to Read and Use Amazon Advertising Reports

Which reports are available?

Amazon Advertising offers several report types in Seller Central under the "Advertising" section. Each report answers different questions and delivers different data. Here is an overview of the most important reports:

Report	Core question	Available for
Search Term Report	Which search terms trigger my ads?	SP, SB
Targeting Report	How are my keywords and targets performing?	SP, SB, SD
Placement Report	Where are my ads being placed?	SP
Campaign Performance Report	How are my campaigns performing overall?	SP, SB, SD
Budget Report	How quickly is my budget being spent?	SP, SB

SP = Sponsored Products, SB = Sponsored Brands, SD = Sponsored Display

Downloading reports

You'll find the reports in Seller Central under "Advertising" and then "Reports." There you can select the report type you want, set the date range and download the report as a CSV or Excel file. Generation usually takes a few minutes. Keep in mind that data can be delayed by up to 72 hours, especially conversion data, which is only complete once the attribution window has elapsed.

The Search Term Report in detail

The Search Term Report is the most important report for PPC optimization. It shows you the actual search terms customers typed into the Amazon search bar that caused your ad to be shown (and possibly clicked).

The most important columns explained

Column	Meaning	What to watch for
Customer Search Term	The exact search term the customer used	Relevance to your product
Keyword	Your keyword that triggered the search term	Assignment to the right keyword
Match Type	Broad, Phrase or Exact	How tight the match is
Impressions	How often the ad was shown	Search volume and reach
Clicks	Number of clicks	Customer interest
Spend	Cost for this search term	Cost efficiency
7 Day Total Sales	Revenue within 7 days of the click	Conversion value
7 Day Total Orders	Number of orders within 7 days	Conversion rate
ACoS	Advertising Cost of Sales	Profitability

Reading the Search Term Report the right way

When you analyze the Search Term Report, you're looking for three categories of search terms:

1. Winners (harvest): Search terms with strong sales and an ACoS below your target. These keywords deserve their own exact-match bid in a manual campaign. That way you can control the bid deliberately and get the most out of the keyword.

2. Losers (block): Search terms with lots of clicks but zero or very few orders. As a rule of thumb: if a search term has more than 15 to 20 clicks without a single order, it's a candidate for the negative keyword list. Also calculate the break-even point: how many clicks can you afford before the search term becomes unprofitable?

3. Potential (watch): Search terms with few clicks and the occasional sale. Here the data isn't meaningful enough yet. Flag them and check again with the next report.

The Targeting Report

The Targeting Report shows the performance of your keywords and targets (for product targeting: ASINs or categories) at an aggregated level. While the Search Term Report shows individual search terms, the Targeting Report summarizes performance per keyword or target.

What you need the Targeting Report for

• Bid optimization: Which keywords have an ACoS that's too high? Here you can lower the bid. Which keywords perform well but get too few impressions? Here a bid increase pays off.
• Keyword evaluation: Which keywords have enough data to make an informed decision? A keyword with 3 clicks and 0 orders isn't meaningful. A keyword with 80 clicks and 0 orders is a clear candidate for pausing.
• ASIN targeting analysis: If you bid on competitor ASINs, the Targeting Report shows which ASINs bring conversions and which just cost money.

Adjusting bids based on data

A simple method for adjusting bids is based on the ratio between your target ACoS and your actual ACoS:

New bid = Current bid x (Target ACoS / Actual ACoS)

Example: your keyword has a current CPC of $0.80, an ACoS of 40% and your target ACoS is 25%. New bid = 0.80 x (25 / 40) = $0.50. So you lower the bid from $0.80 to $0.50.

The Placement Report

The Placement Report shows where your Sponsored Products ads are being served and how performance differs by placement. Amazon distinguishes three placements:

• Top of Search (first page): The most prominent placement, right at the top of the search results. Usually the highest CTR and best conversion rate, but also the highest CPCs.
• Rest of Search: All other positions in the search results (middle, bottom, page 2+). Cheaper clicks, but often lower conversion rates.
• Product Pages: Ads on the product detail pages of other products. Conversion rates vary widely, depending on whether the customer is still comparing or already ready to buy.

Insights from the Placement Report

The Placement Report helps you with two important decisions:

Setting placement modifiers: If "Top of Search" has a significantly better conversion rate and a lower ACoS than the other placements, you can set a placement modifier in the campaign settings. This raises your bid by a certain percentage (up to 900%) specifically for the Top of Search placement.

Adjusting campaign strategy: If "Product Pages" works especially well for a particular campaign, it indicates that your product wins in direct comparison with competitors. In that case it's worth setting up additional ASIN targeting campaigns.

The Campaign Performance Report

The Campaign Performance Report gives you an overview at the campaign level. It shows the aggregated performance of each campaign: impressions, clicks, spend, sales, orders and ACoS. This report is your dashboard for the big picture.

What you use it for

• Budget allocation: Which campaigns are profitable and deserve more budget? Which are burning money and should be paused or optimized?
• Trend analysis: How are ACoS and revenue developing over weeks and months? Is the ACoS creeping up? Are conversions dropping?
• Campaign comparison: Which campaign type (auto vs. manual, broad vs. exact) performs best? Where's the sweet spot between reach and profitability?

Performance evaluation by campaign type

Campaign type	Typical ACoS	Primary goal
Auto campaign	25 to 45%	Keyword discovery, reach
Broad/Phrase manual	20 to 35%	Keyword research, medium reach
Exact manual	15 to 25%	Profitability, targeted control
ASIN targeting	20 to 40%	Market share, competitor customers

These values are guidelines. The "right" ACoS always depends on your margin, your product life cycle and your strategic goals. A new product at launch can carry a higher ACoS than an established product where profitability is the priority.

The Budget Report

The Budget Report shows you how quickly your campaigns spend their daily budget and how often they go "out of budget" over the course of a day. That's more important than many sellers think.

Why budget utilization is critical

If a campaign has spent its daily budget by 2 p.m., you lose all potential impressions and clicks for the rest of the day. In the evening between 6 and 10 p.m. is prime shopping time for many product categories. So a campaign that stops at 2 p.m. misses the most valuable hours.

Conversely, a campaign that spends only 30 percent of its budget shows that either the bids are too low, the targeting is too narrow or the keywords have too little search volume.

Actions based on budget utilization

• Campaign regularly goes "out of budget": First check whether the campaign is profitable. If it is, increase the budget gradually. If not, identify the cost drivers (expensive keywords, low CR) and optimize there.
• Campaign spends under 50% of its budget: Check whether the bids are competitive. They may be too low for the chosen keywords. Alternatively, you could expand the keyword set.
• Budget is spread evenly across the day: This is the ideal state. Your campaign is active all day and uses the budget fully.

The optimal reporting rhythm

Not every report needs to be checked daily. A structured rhythm saves time while making sure you don't miss any important developments.

Daily check (5 minutes)

• Check total spend vs. budget in the campaign dashboard
• Identify noticeable outliers (e.g. a campaign that spent twice as much as usual)
• No detailed reports needed, just a quick look at the dashboard

Weekly review (30 to 45 minutes)

• Search Term Report: Identify new profitable keywords and move them into manual campaigns. Add irrelevant search terms as negative keywords.
• Targeting Report: Adjust bids for keywords. Pause poorly performing keywords or lower their bids.
• Budget Report: Check budget utilization and reallocate budgets as needed.

Monthly deep dive (60 to 90 minutes)

• Campaign Performance Report: Evaluate the overall performance of all campaigns. Identify ACoS trends. Reallocate budget between campaigns.
• Placement Report: Review and adjust placement modifiers.
• Overall strategy: Calculate TACoS. Check the ratio between PPC revenue and organic revenue. Plan new campaign types or products.

A reporting workflow for everyday use

So you don't have to start from scratch with every report, here's a concrete workflow you can run every week:

1. Download the Search Term Report (date range: last 7 days, or since your last review)
2. Sort by Spend (descending): Look at the most expensive search terms first.
3. Flag the winners: Search terms with an ACoS below your target and at least 2 orders. Move these into your manual exact campaign (keyword harvesting).
4. Flag the losers: Search terms with more than 15 clicks and 0 orders, or with an ACoS well above your break-even. Add these as negative keywords.
5. Open the Targeting Report: Review the bids for the top 20 keywords by spend and adjust as needed.
6. Budget check: Are campaigns regularly "out of budget"? Reallocate budget.
7. Document: Note which changes you made and why. That helps at your next review.

Common reporting mistakes

Typical mistakes happen when reading and interpreting reports, too:

• Analyzing time frames that are too short: A single day is no basis for a decision. At least 7 days, better 14 days, are needed for meaningful results.
• Forgetting the attribution window: If you download the report for the last 3 days, conversions may be missing because the 7-day window hasn't elapsed yet. Always analyze time frames that are at least 7 days in the past.
• Looking only at ACoS: A keyword with a 50% ACoS that generates $5,000 in revenue can be more valuable than a keyword with a 10% ACoS that brings in $50. Always factor in the absolute volume as well.
• Overweighting one-off outliers: A keyword that had an extremely low ACoS in one week isn't automatically a winner. Check whether the performance is consistent over several weeks.
• No documentation: If you make changes without documenting what you changed, when and why, you lose the ability to assess the effect of your optimizations.

Conclusion: reports are your compass

Amazon Advertising reports aren't paperwork you can ignore. They're the compass that shows whether you're on the right course. Without regular report analysis, you're optimizing blind and inevitably wasting budget.

The Search Term Report is your most important tool here. It provides the basis for keyword harvesting and negative keyword management. The Targeting Report helps with bid optimization. The Placement Report shows where your ads perform best. And the Budget Report ensures your money is deployed at the right time in the right place.

If you want to reduce the manual effort of report analysis, you can use a tool like Sellantica. It analyzes your reports automatically, identifies profitable keywords and money-wasters, and applies optimizations based on rules. That leaves you more time for strategic decisions.