5 Common Mistakes Sellers Do While Running Amazon PPC Ads

Setting up Amazon Pay-per-click ads can help drive sales on your product listings. However, many sellers have been found making errors that cause them huge financial loss, failing to reach their objectives through their campaigns. No matter whether you’re a renowned brand or just new to the market, conducting a PP campaign audit is a must.

Are you making these mistakes? This blog post covers the most common mistakes in Amazon PPC campaigns, other major Amazon advertising mistakes to avoid, and, most importantly, how to identify and fix common mistakes sellers make when running Amazon PPC ads. Let’s get started.

Common Amazon PPC Mistakes Sellers Should Avoid

Running advertisements without a clear plan is one of the biggest Amazon PPC mistakes for new sellers. Wasting your budget on irrelevant traffic poses a significant risk. To safeguard your investment, you must learn which mistakes to avoid when dealing with Amazon advertising. Outlined here are the most common mistakes associated with Amazon PPC management, along with simple ways to rectify them.

1. Poor Product Listing Optimization

Your product listing is the landing page for your customers. This will let the user decide whether to make a purchase or not. If the listing is not optimized, then the chances of sales go down. If the listing is optimized, it will convert the visits into sales.

Running ads for an unoptimized listing is one of the most common mistakes in Amazon PPC management. Before making a campaign and running it, do a listing audit yourself. Ensure your images are clear, and your bullets are easy to read. Running ads for an optimized listing enhances the chance of good conversions and ensures your ad budget does not go to waste.

How to Fix It: 

Before launching any campaigns, perform a complete listing audit. Fix your product titles, use high-quality images, and add clear bullet points. Running ads on a fully optimized page is the best way to fix this Amazon PPC mistake, ensuring your clicks actually convert into sales.

2. Targeting Too Many ASINs in a Single Campaign

Sellers often add similar products to a single ad campaign to run ads. But this is not a good practice. Each product is unique and has some unique features when it comes to shape, size, material, problem-solving, etc.

If you are in the bottle industry, selling both plastic and steel bottles, you cannot merge both products into a single campaign. This will not work well. But if you make separate campaigns for both and target them, it will give good results. Grouping unrelated items is a classic Amazon PPC mistake that confuses the algorithm and ruins your performance.

How to Fix It: 

Break your products down into small, highly relevant groups. Create separate ad groups or campaigns for different variations (like separate campaigns for steel vs. plastic bottles). Structuring your account this way helps you avoid major Amazon PPC campaign mistakes and keeps your bidding accurate.

3. Excessive Use of Broad Match Type Keywords

Amazon ads have three keyword match types: exact, broad, and phrase. Each type of match has its own unique characteristics. You need to select one of these three while running Amazon sponsored brands ads and Amazon sponsored products ads. Exact match type refers to targeting exact keywords to run ads on. Phrase match targeting refers to those keywords having the complete phrase within them. Broad match type refers to targeting keywords with at least one or more words within the keyword. 

Most of the sellers prefer broad match campaign targeting. Amazon displays its ads on both relevant and irrelevant keywords. Gathering clicks from irrelevant keywords exhausts the budget. This is an important part of Amazon advertising mistakes & how to fix them:

So, when running ads, it is important not to rely too much on broad match type keywords. You can use broad match targeting for a few weeks to gather a list of potential keywords. Once you prepare a list of potential keywords, switch off the broad targeting and do either exact or phrase match targeting for better results.

How to Fix It: 

Treat broad match as a temporary research tool instead of a permanent strategy. To address common Amazon advertising mistakes and how to resolve them, run a broad match for just two weeks to gather data. Once you find high-performing keywords, move them into Exact and Phrase match types and lower your broad match bids.

Additionally, if you need help selecting the right keywords for an advertisement, you can consult with our Amazon PPC campaign management team.

4. Little or no Keyword Research and Performance monitoring

Planning an Amazon advertising campaign starts with keyword research. The better the keyword research you do, the better the campaign result will be. Use keyword research tools to get help with keyword planning. Enter your competitor’s ASIN, and you will receive a list of potential keywords for your product. Run and experiment with those keywords.

Monitor your keyword performance on a daily and weekly basis. Pause the keywords that are exhausting the budget and not delivering results. Keep those keywords active that bring sales for you. This way, you can lower the ACOS.

How to Fix It: 

Set a weekly schedule to download your Search Term Reports and track performance. Pause underperforming keywords that have high spend but zero sales. Regular monitoring is a core practice to eliminate common mistakes in Amazon PPC management and lower your overall advertising costs.

5. Overuse of auto-target campaigns

Amazon provides two primary methods for keyword targeting in Sponsored Ads: Automatic Targeting and Manual Targeting. Automatic targeting assigns permission to Amazon to run ads on its preferred keywords. In manual targeting, you direct Amazon to which keywords you want to display ads on.

Running auto-ads for a longer time period is not a good practice. You will have limited control over the campaign bids and keywords. Amazon will keep bids higher and run ads on both relevant and partial match keywords. This way, you will be charged for clicks that have less chance of conversion. To keep control over your budget, keywords, etc., always prefer manual targeting. 

Automatic targeting is good to start with for a few weeks. This way, you get a list of many long-tail keywords your audience searches to get products like yours. Once you have the list, switch to manual targeting.

How to Fix It: 

Use automatic targeting only at the start of a product launch to discover what shoppers are searching for. After 1 to 2 weeks, extract those successful long-tail keywords and launch them in a Manual campaign. Transitioning to manual control is essential to avoid the typical Amazon advertising mistakes to avoid that drain your daily budget.

Related Post: Amazon Ads: Automatic vs. Manual Keywords Targeting

Quick Summary Checklist

Before you check your Seller Central account, use this quick guide to manage your campaign types and match types correctly:

Campaign / Match Type	The Right Strategy	Mistake to Avoid
Auto Campaign	Use for 1-2 weeks just to discover new keywords.	Leaving it running for months without checking.
Broad Match	Use to find long-tail keyword ideas.	Bidding too high and letting it waste the budget.
Exact Match	Put your best-performing keywords here to scale sales.	Forgetting to optimize or adjust bids over time.

Conclusion

Amazon PPC is not a “set-and-forget” tool. It requires constant checking, cleaning, and optimization to remain profitable. By avoiding these Amazon PPC mistakes, you can save your ad budget and increase your organic rankings at the same time.

If your ad costs are still too high or you feel overwhelmed by these adjustments, you can always consult our experienced Amazon PPC experts. We can audit your current campaigns and help you turn your ad spend into actual profits!