← All insights Playbook 9 min read·Mar 2026
The 23-Point Amazon PPC Audit We Run Before We Touch a Single Bid
An Amazon PPC audit checks whether your account is structured to make money before anyone changes a bid. Our Amazon PPC audit checklist runs 23 concrete checks across six areas: account structure, keyword and search-term hygiene, bidding and budgets, placement and targeting, catalog and listing readiness, and profit measurement. We pull official SP-API data, find where the wasted ad spend is leaking, and only then build a 90-day plan.
What an Amazon PPC audit actually checks
An Amazon PPC audit checks the plumbing, not the paint. Most operators want to jump straight to raising and lowering bids, but a bid change on a broken structure just moves waste around. Our audit answers three questions: where is money leaking, what is the account structurally unable to do today, and what is the fastest path to profitable scale. To do that honestly we pull official SP-API data rather than screenshots, because the API exposes search-term reports, placement splits, and 60-day-plus history that the front end hides or rounds off. We have managed over $50M in sales this way, and every engagement starts with the same free Amazon account audit. The rule is simple and we never break it: we do not touch a single bid until the audit is done. A bid moved on a hunch might look smart for a week and quietly cost you a quarter, so we would rather spend the first days reading than guessing. Here are the 23 checks, grouped into the six areas we work through every time, and why each one changes the money.
Account structure: the first 4 checks
Structure decides how much control you have, so we start here. Check 1 is campaign segmentation: we confirm that branded, non-branded, competitor, and auto campaigns are separated, because when they share one campaign you cannot budget or bid them differently and your branded ROAS hides your prospecting losses. Check 2 is single-purpose ad groups, where each ad group targets a tight keyword theme so bids actually map to intent. Check 3 is match-type layering, making sure broad, phrase, and exact live in a deliberate structure rather than one broad campaign eating the whole budget. Check 4 is portfolio and naming hygiene, since a naming convention you can read at a glance is the difference between managing 200 campaigns and drowning in them. Good structure is what let us drive PrimeWeld to 163K in PPC sales at a 25% ACoS on the way to $19.7M total.
Keyword and search-term hygiene: checks 5 to 9
This is where most wasted ad spend hides in plain sight. Check 5 is the search-term report pull, where we export the last 60 to 90 days and read what shoppers actually typed, not what you bid on. Check 6 is negative keyword coverage: we flag high-spend, zero-sale terms that should have been negated months ago, because every one of them is money burned. Check 7 is search-term harvesting, the opposite move, where converting terms buried in auto and broad campaigns get promoted to their own exact-match targets. Check 8 is duplicate and cannibalizing keywords, where the same term competes against itself across campaigns and inflates your own CPCs. Check 9 is branded-term defense, confirming you are actually holding your own brand searches so competitors are not buying traffic you should own for pennies. Cleaning this layer is often the single biggest fast win in an Amazon PPC management engagement, because the money is already being spent and we are simply stopping the part that never earned. On most accounts we find a double-digit share of spend going to terms that have never once converted, and recovering it costs nothing but attention.
Bidding and budgets: checks 10 to 14
We audit the bidding logic, but we still do not change it yet. Check 10 is bid strategy sanity, reviewing whether campaigns run dynamic up-and-down, down-only, or fixed bids, and whether that choice matches the goal of each campaign. Check 11 is placement bid adjustments, since a blanket top-of-search multiplier can quietly double your costs on campaigns that never needed it. Check 12 is budget-capped campaigns, where we find profitable campaigns hitting their daily ceiling before noon and leaving sales on the table. Check 13 is the dayparting and pacing picture, checking whether spend clusters at hours that never convert. Check 14 is bid-to-target-ACoS alignment, confirming current bids are even mathematically capable of hitting your margin target. This discipline is how we hold our own ads to a 7.1x ROAS at 14% ACoS, and it is why the plan comes before the bid change, never after. Every one of these five checks can point to a bid move, but we write them all down first and sequence them, because changing budgets and bids in the wrong order can undo each other and leave you back where you started.
Placement and targeting: checks 15 to 18
Placement is where the same keyword can be profitable and ruinous at once. Check 15 is the placement performance split, reading top-of-search, rest-of-search, and product-page numbers separately, because averaging them together hides the real story. Check 16 is product targeting and ASIN defense, making sure you are targeting competitor detail pages worth winning and defending your own from being poached. Check 17 is auto-campaign targeting types, confirming close-match, loose-match, complements, and substitutes are each pulling their weight rather than one dragging the campaign down. Check 18 is audience and remarketing reach, checking whether Sponsored Display and any DSP retargeting are actually recovering shoppers who bounced. Reading placement correctly is how we hit a 4.9 ROAS on Walmart for Dr. Pooper, where product-page placements behaved nothing like search.
Catalog and listing readiness: checks 19 to 21
You cannot bid your way out of a listing that does not convert, so we audit the destination before we spend to reach it. Check 19 is listing conversion readiness, reviewing titles, images, A-plus content, and bullets, because ad clicks landing on a weak page just fund your CPC with nothing to show for it. Check 20 is catalog and variation health, confirming child ASINs are correctly parented and that reviews and Buy Box are consolidated rather than scattered. Check 21 is Buy Box and pricing risk, since ads that spend while you are losing the Buy Box are pure waste. We handle these directly through listing optimization and catalog management, because ad performance and page performance are the same problem. A jewelry brand we audited this way went on to $3M in 60 days at a 12% TACoS once the catalog was fixed.
Measurement and profit: checks 22 and 23
The last two checks decide whether any of the above actually made you money. Check 22 is TACoS and true-profit visibility, where we move past ACoS to total advertising cost of sales and net margin per unit, because a campaign can post a beautiful ROAS and still lose money after fees, COGS, and returns. Check 23 is attribution and incrementality, asking whether ad-attributed sales are genuinely incremental or just harvesting demand you would have won organically anyway. Getting profit measurement right is what let us drive a 7% ACoS across the EU for Braingain without starving the organic engine. If these two checks are not in place, every earlier optimization is being graded on the wrong scorecard.
Why we never touch bids before the audit finishes
Changing a bid before the audit is guessing with your budget. The 23 checks tell us which levers exist, which are broken, and which will move profit fastest, and that map is what turns a random bid tweak into a deliberate plan. Once the audit is complete we build a 90-day growth model: the first weeks fix structure and stop the leaks the audit found, the middle stretch scales the winners and harvests new terms, and the back stretch pushes on placement, catalog, and profit measurement together. We charge a flat monthly retainer for this, never a percentage of your ad spend, so our incentive is your net profit and not your gross spend. We are Top Rated Plus with 100% Job Success across 8 retail networks, and every relationship starts the same way. If you want the leaks in your own account found first, start with a free account audit or get in touch.
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