Amazon PPC Audit: The 15-Point Checklist Agencies Use

Open most Amazon ad accounts and you will find the same three things: campaigns nobody has opened since launch, broad-match campaigns quietly absorbing budget on irrelevant search terms, and a blended ACOS figure that makes all of it look acceptable. An Amazon PPC audit is how professionals cut through that fog — a fixed sequence of checks that separates what is working from what is merely spending, and turns the difference into an action list.

This is the 15-point checklist we run, in the order we run it, with what "good" looks like at each point. Work through it yourself or hold any agency's audit against it.

An audit runs in three passes: structure, targeting, and money — in that order, because structure failures invalidate everything downstream.
Most findings are subtractive: a good audit's first hours identify spend to remove before anything new to add.
Search terms are where the money hides. The search term report is the single highest-yield artifact in the account.
Every point needs a verdict, not a screenshot — "healthy," "fix," or "rebuild" — or the audit is just a tour.
Audits are periodic, not one-time. Rerun quarterly, or whenever ACOS drifts without a cause you can name.

What Is an Amazon PPC Audit?
When to Run One
The 15-Point Checklist
From Findings to Fixes
Red Flags That Mean You Need an Audit Now
FAQ

What Is an Amazon PPC Audit?

An Amazon PPC audit is a systematic review of an Amazon Ads account — its campaign structure, targeting, bids, budgets, and measurement — performed to find wasted spend, missed conversions, and structural problems, and to produce a prioritized fix list. It is a diagnostic, not an optimization: it tells you what to change, and in what order, before anyone touches a bid.

The order matters more than most sellers expect. Checking bids before structure is repainting a house with a cracked foundation — the numbers only mean something once the campaign architecture is sane.

When to Run One

Before hiring help or taking over an account, so month one targets the real problems.
Quarterly, as routine maintenance on a mature account.
When ACOS drifts without an obvious cause such as a price change or a season shift.
After a product line change, when campaigns built for an old catalog keep spending against a new one.
When you simply do not know why the account performs the way it does — that uncertainty is itself the finding.

The 15-Point Checklist

Pass 1: Structure (Points 1–5)

Campaign inventory. List every campaign with its type, ASINs, and purpose. Good: every campaign has a name and a job you can state in one sentence. Verdicts of "no idea" mark rebuild candidates.
Portfolio logic. Check whether campaigns are grouped by product role — launch, rank, defense, harvest — or just accumulated. Good: groups match how you would explain the account to a colleague.
SKU placement. Verify each advertised ASIN is in the right campaign type and that discontinued or out-of-stock products are not silently eating budget.
Campaign count versus management capacity. An account with hundreds of micro-campaigns and no one tending them is worse than a smaller, tended one. Good: every campaign is looked at on a schedule.
Naming conventions. Cosmetic but load-bearing: names that encode product, match type, and purpose make every later step faster and mistakes visible.

Pass 2: Targeting (Points 6–10)

Search term waste. Pull 60–90 days of search term data and list spend on terms with zero orders. Good: negative lists are current, and no term shows heavy spend with no history of conversion.
Harvest coverage. Check whether converting customer search terms have been promoted into exact campaigns. An account that never harvests pays broad-match prices forever.
Match-type mix. Review the split among exact, phrase, and broad. Good: the mix is deliberate, with broad used for discovery on limited budgets rather than as the default spend engine.
Product targeting quality. For ASIN and category targets, verify the targeted products are relevant and that competitor pages with low conversion are not absorbing budget out of habit.
Negative targeting hygiene. Audit negative keyword and negative product lists for gaps and for accidental blocking of proven terms — both happen, and the second one is expensive silence.

Pass 3: Money (Points 11–15)

Bid reasonableness. Compare bids against actual conversion value per keyword. Good: proven terms are defended, unproven terms are conservative, and nothing is bidding itself into irrelevance.
Budget pacing and caps. Find campaigns that ran out of budget on profitable terms — the cheapest growth in the account — and campaigns that never spend, which are shelf decor.
Placement performance. Check top-of-search and product-page placements separately. Good: placement modifiers are set from placement-level data, not left at defaults.
Branded versus non-branded split. Separate the two and evaluate each on its own target. A blended ACOS that flatters the account usually means branded sales are hiding non-branded bleed.
Measurement integrity. Confirm the account's targets match unit economics: contribution margin per unit, each product's role, and whether ACOS or TACoS governs. Good: anyone opening the account can say what number it is trying to hit.

Score each point "healthy," "fix," or "rebuild." A professional audit output is that scored list plus a sequenced fix plan — never a raw data dump.

From Findings to Fixes

Finding	Likely cause	First fix
Heavy spend on irrelevant search terms	Negation stopped happening; broad default	Add exact negatives, then restructure the discovery budget
Profitable campaigns out of budget by noon	Flat budgets set at launch	Raise caps on proven terms, fund them from zero-conversion campaigns
Great blended ACOS, poor non-branded performance	Branded sales masking the blend	Split branded and non-branded, set separate targets
Hundreds of untouched micro-campaigns	Accumulated launch experiments	Consolidate into named, purpose-driven campaigns
Bids changed after good and bad days	Instinct-based management	Move to weekly, data-threshold-based bid rules
Converting terms never promoted to exact	No harvest routine	Stand up a weekly search-term harvest into exact campaigns

Sequence fixes subtractively: cut waste first, reallocate second, add structure last. That order funds itself — the first two steps release budget that pays for the third.

Red Flags That Mean You Need an Audit Now

ACOS drifting up with no price, season, or catalog change to explain it.
Spend rising while orders stay flat — the classic signature of accumulating junk search terms.
Nobody can explain the campaign structure. If the account has outlived the person who built it, assume the structure has outlived its purpose too.
Budgets ending early on your best keywords while broad campaigns spend freely.
You last looked properly more than a quarter ago. Amazon's ad system changes quietly; accounts do not stay audited.

And one boundary: an ads audit finds ad waste, but ads are only one of several leaks in an FBA P&L. Lost inventory and missing reimbursements leak money no bid change will recover — our FBA reimbursement checklist covers that side of the ledger.

FAQ

How long does a proper Amazon PPC audit take?

For a typical scaling account, a focused audit takes a few hours of report analysis plus the fix list. Very large accounts take longer, mostly in the structure pass. An "audit" delivered in twenty minutes with no report pulls is an opinion.

What does a PPC audit cost?

It varies by account size and depth. Some agencies include it in onboarding, some sell it as a fixed-price project, and some offer a lighter free version. Whatever the price, the deliverable should be a scored findings list with priorities — not a dashboard screenshot.

Can I run this audit myself with Seller Central reports?

Yes. Every check above runs on standard advertising reports and Seller Central data. The barrier is time and the discipline to give each point a verdict rather than a shrug — the same barrier that makes self-managed accounts drift in the first place.

What should I fix first after an audit?

Whatever released wasted spend: negation and budget reallocation. Those two moves fund everything else and show effect fastest. Structural rebuilds come after the obvious waste is gone.

How often should the audit be rerun?

Quarterly is the standard rhythm, plus after any major catalog or pricing change. Between audits, the weekly loop of bid, budget, and search-term work keeps the findings from reversing.

Next Step

Fifteen points, three passes, one scored action list — that is the whole discipline. If you would rather have it run for you, Tim's Amazon Lab offers a free account audit that includes your PPC structure, alongside account health, listings, and reimbursements, reviewed by a dedicated account manager who then runs the fix list as part of ongoing Amazon PPC management.

Want a professional pair of eyes on your account?
Tim's Amazon Lab offers a free account audit — a dedicated account manager reviews your account health, listings, and reimbursements, and tells you exactly what needs fixing. No contract, no pressure. Start your free audit →

Related Reading

A 15-point checklist graphic grouped into structure, targeting, and money passes. Alt text: "Amazon PPC audit 15-point checklist grouped by structure, targeting, and bids".
A scored audit sheet mock showing healthy, fix, and rebuild verdicts. Alt text: "Amazon PPC audit findings scored by priority".
A before-and-after structure diagram of campaign consolidation. Alt text: "Amazon PPC campaign structure before and after an audit".

Tim Moon Founder, Tim's Amazon Lab — 10 years in marketplace operations

Amazon PPC audit Amazon PPC audit checklist Amazon advertising audit PPC account structure audit Amazon ad waste audit