When most sellers think about scaling on Amazon, their minds immediately jump to Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns. The logic seems sound — ads bring visibility, visibility drives clicks, and clicks turn into sales. But here’s the uncomfortable truth many discover too late: PPC alone isn’t a growth strategy.
I’ve seen sellers pump thousands into ads, watch their sales curve spike, and then two months later watch it crash back to reality. What happened? They treated PPC as the entire engine when, in reality, it’s just the ignition switch.
The real growth on Amazon comes from understanding — and working with — the platform’s ranking algorithms: A9 and A10. These algorithms decide what products show up for a given search, and how prominently they appear. PPC is a tool to feed them, but it’s not the endgame.
Why Outspending the Competition Doesn’t Guarantee Success
It’s tempting to believe that the bigger your daily ad budget, the better your results. After all, traditional advertising often works this way. But Amazon plays by its own rules.
Their ad system functions like an auction, but the highest bid doesn’t always win. The algorithms look at more than just money — they prioritize relevance, click-through rate (CTR), and conversion rate (CVR).
If your listing resonates with the shopper, Amazon is more likely to give you exposure even if your budget isn’t the highest. This is because Amazon earns more from ads that lead to purchases, not from ads that get ignored.
I’ve personally seen smaller, well-targeted campaigns outperform large, unfocused ones simply because the listings were optimized, relevant, and trustworthy. This is where sellers often miss the point: throwing money at PPC won’t fix a poorly constructed listing.
Optimization: The True Leverage Point
Whenever I step into an underperforming PPC account, the root problems are usually obvious. Campaigns target too broadly, meaning ad spend gets wasted on irrelevant clicks. Negative keywords — which filter out traffic that will never convert — are missing entirely. And the product listing itself fails to inspire confidence or urgency.
Turning these situations around requires a more surgical approach. The first step is keyword harvesting — running auto campaigns to discover which search terms are driving actual sales, and then shifting those winning terms into tightly controlled manual campaigns. Next comes implementing negative keywords to block irrelevant traffic. Last but not least, the product listing has to be improved with enticing images, buyer-centered titles, and bullet points that specifically answer buyer questions.
The effect is immediate. Wasted spend drops. ACoS improves. Sales become steadier, and PPC stops being a money pit and starts becoming a growth lever.
The Organic Ranking Question: Should You Pause PPC?
This is a debate I hear all the time. If your PPC campaigns are profitable and you’ve gained organic ranking, should you switch them off to save money?
Technically, you could. A well-run PPC campaign will improve your organic positioning over time, and you may retain some of that traffic when the ads stop. But the reality is that your competitors aren’t taking their foot off the gas. They will continue running ads, building velocity, and slowly overtaking you.
The smarter move is to maintain low-budget, always-on campaigns for your most important keywords. Think of it as insurance for your ranking — you’re protecting the real estate you’ve worked hard to win.
A9, A10, and the Bigger Picture
PPC spend is just one signal the algorithms consider. The A9 and A10 ranking systems also look at CTR, CVR, sales velocity, customer satisfaction (reviews, ratings, and return rates), listing relevance, competitive pricing, and even brand authority.
If your product is overpriced, has poor reviews, or fails to match shopper intent, you’re asking PPC to do an impossible job. No matter how much you spend, the algorithm won’t position you as a top seller if the fundamentals aren’t in place.
Building the Growth Loop
The best sellers I work with use PPC as the first step in an ongoing cycle of improvement. It appears as follows:
Drive early visibility with PPC and gather data about which keywords, creatives, and promotions actually work on customers.
Optimize your listing based on that data — better images, rewritten titles, and improved bullet points.
Increase organic rankings for your top keywords by creating sales momentum and trust signals.
Reinvest gains back into additional PPC, creative improvements, and review building to increase reach and conversions.
This cycle snowballs over time. PPC generates traffic, optimizations enhance conversions, conversions drive organic ranking, and increased rankings generate more sales without ad spend.
Final Thoughts
PPC is not the finish line. It’s the starting gun. Ads alone won’t make you a top seller if your listing is weak, your reviews are poor, or your pricing isn’t competitive.
The sellers who win understand that Amazon is a complex ecosystem. PPC feeds the algorithm, but the algorithm rewards complete, optimized offers that shoppers trust and buy from repeatedly.
If you’re pouring thousands into ads without upgrading your product page, building review equity, or refining your pricing strategy, you’re missing the bigger picture. On Amazon, PPC gets you seen — but everything else is what convinces someone to click Buy Now.
