Amazon PPC Audit: The 2026 Checklist and Scorecard

When we take over an Amazon ads account, the first week is always an audit. Most accounts look fine at the campaign level and leak money one level down.

This is the checklist we use, with the reports to pull, the thresholds we apply and a score out of 100. It also covers the 2026 changes most older audit guides miss.

What Is an Amazon PPC Audit?

An Amazon PPC audit is a structured review of an advertising account that finds wasted spend, missed sales and broken settings, then ranks the fixes by impact.

It covers Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display, plus the retail side that decides whether a click can convert: Buy Box, stock and listing quality.

A good audit ends with a ranked list of changes and a number you can track next quarter. A list of "observations" is not an audit.

Amazon's ad business is now large enough that small leaks matter. Amazon reported $19.8 billion in advertising services revenue for Q2 2026, up 26% year over year, and more competition means pricier clicks to waste.

Before You Start: Pull These Reports

Use a fixed window so the numbers agree with each other. We use the last 60 days for search terms and targets, and 30 days for budgets and pacing.

If you run an agency or several brands, export everything as a bulk file. Pivot tables on a bulk sheet are faster than clicking through campaigns. Save the exports: you will compare against them next quarter.

The Amazon PPC Audit Checklist: 12 Areas, Scored

We score 12 areas. Each has a maximum, weighted by how much money it usually moves, and the total is 100.

Give full points when an area passes every check below, half when it passes most, and zero when it fails the main check.

Read the total like this:

• 85 to 100: a healthy account. Optimize at the margins.

• 65 to 84: real leaks. Fix them within 30 days.

• Below 65: stop scaling. More budget will scale the problems at a higher cost per click (CPC).

1. Account Structure (8 Points)

Open the bulk file and ask whether a stranger could tell what each campaign is for from its name. Then check four things:

• Campaigns are split by product group, and by intent: branded, generic, competitor and discovery.

• Ad groups hold one product or a tight set of variations, not 40 unrelated ASINs.

• Each keyword lives in one place per match type, so campaigns don't bid against each other.

• Names follow one convention, such as brand, product, ad type, targeting and match type.

Amazon's own Sponsored Products best practices recommend separate campaigns or ad groups for each product group. Our campaign structure guide shows the layout we use.

2. Search Terms and Negatives (12 Points)

This is the biggest single source of waste in the accounts we audit, so it carries the most points.

Sort 60 days of the search term report by spend and filter to zero orders. Then split the list in two.

Irrelevant terms get negated on sight. A dog bed ad showing on "cat tree" needs no more clicks to prove anything.

Relevant terms get a click threshold. We use three times your clicks per order: at a 10% conversion rate, that is 30 clicks with no order.

Score full points if no relevant term sits past the threshold and no irrelevant term has spent more than a few dollars. Our negative keywords guide covers the threshold math and when to use negative exact or phrase.

Check the words as well as the terms. An n-gram analysis catches a word like "toddler" spending across 40 different searches, none of which crossed the threshold alone.

3. Match Type Balance (6 Points)

Group spend and sales by match type: auto, broad, phrase, exact, product targeting and category targeting.

A healthy account usually spends most on exact and product targets that are proven, with discovery campaigns feeding them. Watch for two failures:

• All discovery, no control. Most spend in auto and broad means Amazon decides where your money goes.

• All exact, no discovery. Sales plateau because nothing finds new terms.

Check the harvesting loop too. Every search term with two or more orders in auto or broad should exist as an exact keyword, and be negated as exact in the source campaign. Our match types guide covers both halves of the loop.

4. Targeting Coverage (8 Points)

Coverage asks what you are not bidding on that you should be.

• Hero keywords. List the 10 to 20 terms that drive most of your category's sales. Each should have an exact target for the right ASIN.

• Product targeting. Your own ASINs (defense), competitor ASINs where your price and rating win, and complementary products.

• Every advertised ASIN. Find products with stock and a good rating that have no active ad at all. Most accounts have a few.

For hero terms, check where you actually show up. Share of voice tracking tells you whether a competitor took top of search last week.

5. Bids and Bidding Strategy (10 Points)

Pull the targeting report and compare each target's ACOS (advertising cost of sales) with its own target, not with an account average. The target comes from margin: your break-even ACOS is your profit margin before ad spend. Our guide to Amazon ACOS has the formula and worked numbers.

Flag three groups:

• Targets at two or more times their target ACOS with enough clicks to judge.

• Targets far under target with low impressions, which are underbid and leaving sales behind.

• Bids nobody has touched in 60 days, visible in change history.

Then check the bidding strategy on every campaign. Amazon's dynamic bidding guide says "dynamic bids, up and down" can raise or lower a bid by up to 100% based on the chance of a conversion.

Our older audit guide said "switch everything to down only". We no longer think one setting fits every campaign. We use up and down on proven exact targets and down only on broad, auto and anything above target, as our bidding strategies guide explains.

6. Placements (6 Points)

Run the placement report per campaign. Amazon lets you raise bids for top of search, rest of search and product pages by up to 900% each.

Placement adjustments stack with the bidding strategy, and that is where audits find surprises.

Score full points when every adjustment above 0% is backed by that placement converting better, and no old event-day adjustment is still live. Our placement bid modifiers guide shows how to set them from the report.

Check the off-Amazon line too. Sponsored Products has served on third-party sites and apps since 2023, and in 2026 that grew (see the 2026 checks below).

7. Budgets and Pacing (8 Points)

A campaign that runs out of budget at 2 p.m. misses the evening, when many categories convert best. Amazon's best practices say to add budget to campaigns that frequently run out.

Look at the last 30 days and flag:

• Campaigns under target ACOS that ran out of budget on several days. They are the cheapest growth in the account.

• Campaigns above target that never run out. Budget is not the problem there; bids and targets are.

• Budget split by product that ignores margin and stock.

Daily reports hide when the money runs out. Hourly data from Amazon Marketing Stream shows it, which is what you need before you add a dayparting schedule.

8. Branded vs Non-Branded Split (6 Points)

Tag every keyword and search term as branded or non-branded, then compare the two. A blended ACOS can look healthy while non-branded spend loses money.

Both extremes fail. No branded campaigns means competitors take your own searches. A large branded share means you are paying for customers who were already looking for you, which is not growth.

We flag accounts where branded terms take most of the spend, or none of it. Our Sponsored Brands guide covers branded defense formats.

9. Retail Readiness (10 Points)

Ads amplify a listing. They don't fix one.

Amazon states that products must be eligible for the Featured Offer to advertise, and its best practices add that products must be in stock to be the featured offer. Lose the Buy Box and the ad stops, while the campaign still says "enabled".

Check every advertised ASIN for:

• Buy Box share in Business Reports. Our guide on how to win the Buy Box covers the fixes.

• Days of cover. Anything under about two weeks needs a plan before ad spend goes up. See our inventory management tips.

• Listing quality: a main image that reads at phone size, a title with the main keyword, enough reviews and a rating at least as good as the products you target.

The old mistakes list put "neglecting your product listing" first. It still belongs near the top, because a weak listing turns every paid click into a lower conversion rate.

10. Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display Coverage (6 Points)

Many accounts run only Sponsored Products. That works, but it leaves the top of search banner and the retargeting audience to competitors.

Check that each brand has:

• Sponsored Brands on its own branded terms and its top generic terms, with video where you have creative.

• Sponsored Display retargeting of detail page viewers, and defense on your own product pages.

• Each ad type judged on its own goal. Sponsored Display reach campaigns should not be judged on last-click ACOS.

Score full points when every product group with real volume has all three Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display jobs covered.

11. Measurement: TACOS, New-to-Brand and Attribution (10 Points)

ACOS only tells you what ads cost against ad sales. The audit has to ask whether ads grow the business.

• TACOS. Total ad spend divided by total sales from Business Reports. Flat or falling TACOS while sales grow is healthy; rising TACOS with flat sales means ads are buying sales you would have had anyway. See our TACOS guide.

• New-to-brand. On Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display, check what share of ad orders came from first-time customers. Rising NTB share at a stable cost is the clearest sign ads are finding new demand.

• Attribution consistency. Confirm everyone reads the same window and the same view-attribution method (see the 2026 checks).

Full points go to accounts that set targets by product margin, track TACOS monthly and can say which campaigns acquire new customers.

12. Automation and Rule Conflicts (10 Points)

This is the area most audits skip, and the one that produces the strangest numbers.

In 2026 one bid can be changed by six different things: your manual bid, Amazon's bidding strategy, placement adjustments, Amazon's bid rules and budget rules, audience bid boosting and any third-party automation or dayparting. Amazon's guides describe each on its own, not how they interact.

Open change history for your top 20 targets. If a bid moved up and down several times in one week, two systems are fighting over it.

Then list every active rule with its condition, action, lookback and the campaigns it touches. Look for overlaps on the same entity, opposite actions on similar conditions, and lookback windows shorter than your attribution delay.

2026 Checks Older Audit Guides Miss

Amazon changed a lot between late 2025 and late 2026. Each change below has a matching audit check.

1. Prompts Are Enrolled by Default

Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands prompts moved from open beta to general availability in the US on March 25, 2026. Amazon says campaigns are automatically enrolled and charged within your normal CPC.

Run the Prompts report (Reports, Sponsored Products, Prompts) and pause prompts that spend without selling, as you would negate a search term. Our guide to Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands prompts walks through it.

2. View Attribution Changed on January 1, 2026

From January 1, 2026, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display campaigns billed on viewable impressions (vCPM) report view-based sales with a new model and a shorter window. Click attribution did not change.

The old 14-day count is still available as "all views" metrics, such as Purchases (all views), in unified reporting. Before you compare 2026 with 2025, check which method each number uses.

3. Off-Amazon Placements Grew Again

From August 10, 2026, Sponsored Products campaigns were enrolled in creator placements at their existing bids and budgets, PPC Land reported. Top of search and product page adjustments don't apply off Amazon, but dynamic bidding does.

Check the off-Amazon row of the placement report. If it spends without converting, use the campaign's "Limit off-Amazon spend" setting.

4. Legacy Reports Retire by December 31, 2026

Amazon made unified reporting generally available on June 8, 2026, and says the separate Sponsored Ads and Amazon DSP report pages will be sunset by December 31, 2026.

Audit every scheduled report, client dashboard and spreadsheet that depends on the old reports. Amazon says a migration tool for scheduled reports is coming, but don't wait for it in the last week of December.

5. Amazon Ads Agent Now Recommends Changes

On September 29, 2026, Amazon renamed its unified buying platform Amazon Ads Agent. It includes Sponsored Products recommendations for targeting, bids and budgets that apply in one click, and its conversational features are rolling out over the coming months.

Add it to your rule audit. A one-click recommendation is one more system changing bids, and change history is the only place you will see that it did.

Amazon PPC Mistakes We Find in Almost Every Audit

These come from our old list of common Amazon PPC mistakes, updated for how accounts run in 2026.

• Advertising a listing that can't convert. Weak images, few reviews or a lost Buy Box. Fix retail readiness first.

• Launching without keyword research. Use Brand Analytics and your search term history, then build from proven terms.

• Relying only on auto campaigns. Auto is good for discovery, but harvest winners into manual exact campaigns where you control the bid.

• No negatives, or negatives in the wrong place. Performance negatives belong at ad group level as exact; brand-wide junk can go at campaign level.

• Not bidding on your own brand. Competitors will, and branded clicks are the cheapest sales you have.

• Over-bidding on your own brand. The opposite failure: a low blended ACOS bought with branded spend.

• Hasty changes. Changing a bid daily on two days of data. Wait for enough clicks, and remember sales attribute over several days.

• One target ACOS for every product. A 15% margin product and a 45% margin product cannot share a target.

• Turning ads off too early. A new product at a high ACOS may be buying the sales velocity that lifts organic rank.

• Automation nobody audits. Rules written two years ago, still running on products that changed price, margin or stock.

How Often to Audit Your Amazon Ads Account

Run the full audit before any big spend increase. Our Q4 preparation guide has the short pre-event version.

How We Audit Accounts in Adbrew

Everything above can be done with reports, a bulk file and a few pivot tables. On one account it takes a day or two. Across 30 brands it doesn't get done.

Adbrew is an agentic retail media management platform for Amazon and Walmart, and the audit runs inside it:

• Adbrew Intelligence audits your rules. It reviews your optimization rules to find gaps and inefficiencies, and flags rules that conflict or waste spend, such as two rules acting on the same bid. Ask it for "search terms past a 30-click threshold with no orders" and it builds the list from live data. See what Adbrew Intelligence does.

• Rulesets with control. Harvesting, negation and bid rules run on thresholds and lookbacks you set, and every change lands in Change History.

• Retail-aware automation. Ads pause when an ASIN goes out of stock or loses the Buy Box, and resume when it's back.

• Hourly data. Amazon Marketing Stream shows when budgets run out, not just that they did.

Brands on Adbrew see a 46% decrease in ACOS on average. Seller Presto saves more than 250 hours of manual optimization every month.

Want a second pair of eyes? We run a free Amazon ads audit on your account and walk you through the scorecard. Book your free audit.

For Walmart, our Walmart PPC audit covers the same idea for Walmart Connect.

Audit Before You Scale

An account that scores well can take more budget. One that doesn't will turn more budget into more waste.

Score your account this week, fix the lowest areas first, and score it again next quarter. If you'd rather we do it with you, book a free Amazon ads audit.