Campaign Performance Metrics

Auto Pilot indicates whether intelligent automation is actively managing bids, budgets, and targeting for this campaign. When it’s on, the system continually nudges settings toward your goals (like target ACoS/ROAS) based on performance signals. Think of a car’s cruise control with lane assist: you still set the destination, but the system handles micro‑adjustments in traffic and hills.

Example: If weekdays convert better than weekends, Auto Pilot may raise bids Monday–Friday and scale back on Saturday to protect efficiency. If a budget caps out early, it can expand cautiously when returns justify it.

What to watch: Automation magnifies both the quality of goals and data. Garbage goals in, garbage outcomes out. Keep your targets realistic and your product pages healthy (price, reviews, stock). Use Auto Pilot to remove busywork, not to compensate for a weak offer or messy catalog.

IntelliScore is a composite “health” score (often 0–100) that summarizes how promising and well‑tuned a campaign looks right now. It typically blends factors like click‑through rate, conversion rate, cost efficiency, budget headroom, target coverage, and trend stability. Think of it as a car’s dashboard score: if it’s high, everything is humming; if it’s low, you’ve got leaks or misfires.

Example: A campaign with solid CTR and CVR, stable ACoS, and room to scale might score 85+. One with thin impressions, volatile spend, or poor conversion might score under 50. A score rising week‑over‑week signals fixes are working.

What to watch: Scores are summaries, not truth. Use IntelliScore to prioritize attention (which campaigns deserve your next hour). Then verify the underlying metrics. A short‑term promo can inflate scores; a price change can sink them. Context still rules.

Targeting Type tells you how the campaign finds shoppers. Common modes include Auto (Amazon/engine picks related queries and ASINs), Manual‑Keyword (you choose keywords; match types like Exact/Phrase/Broad control looseness), and Product/Category (target specific ASINs or categories). Each has a different role: Auto is discovery; Manual‑Exact is harvesting profit; Category/ASIN is competitive conquest or defense.

Example: Launch with Auto to learn which terms convert. Promote winners into a Manual‑Exact campaign for control and efficiency. Layer Product targeting to ride along on competitor pages or protect your own listings.

What to watch: Don’t confuse roles. If your Manual‑Exact is full of unproven terms, it will behave like discovery and burn cash. Keep Auto lean by negative‑matching obvious mismatches, and feed winning queries into Manual with appropriate bids.

The Daily Budget is the maximum fuel you allow the campaign to burn in a day. If performance is strong but the budget is tiny, you’ll stall at noon and leave sales on the table. If performance is poor and the budget is huge, you’ll finance a bonfire. Budgets should reflect both capacity (inventory, cash flow) and unit economics (acceptable ACoS/ROAS).

Example: If your campaign averages a 20% ACoS and your margins can tolerate up to 25%, raising budget while monitoring ACoS can unlock growth. Conversely, cap spend when ACoS drifts above your threshold until you fix targeting or listings.

What to watch: Budget caps hide problems and hide opportunities. If you always cap out, you don’t know if you could profitably scale. If you never approach the cap, the limit is irrelevant ; your bids or targets are the real bottleneck.

Spend is how much money the campaign paid to win clicks and show up. It’s the cost side of the ledger. Alone, spend says nothing about success ; $100 could be brilliant or wasteful depending on the sales it produced. Treat spend like fuel usage on a road trip: what matters is miles covered (sales) and terrain (competition).

Example: Spend climbing while sales flatline? Either bids are too high, targets are off, or the listing can’t convert. Spend steady but sales rising? You’re getting more efficient ; keep doing that.

What to watch: Sudden jumps can reflect seasonal traffic, new targets, or bid changes. Always pair spend with ACoS/ROAS and inventory status. Paying to advertise an out‑of‑stock item is the most expensive ad you’ll ever run.

Units is the count of items the ads helped sell in the period. It’s a real‑world measure shoppers voted with their wallets. High units with acceptable ACoS typically indicate product–market fit and room to scale. Low units despite many clicks suggest your listing needs help (images, price, reviews) or your targeting is mismatched.

Example: 600 clicks, 15% conversion → ~90 units. If clicks jump to 900 and conversion holds, you’d expect ~135 units. If units don’t rise, something changed downstream: price, stock, shipping time, or competition.

What to watch: Units are sensitive to availability. Running ads into low stock can tank organic rank when you sell out. Tie ad scaling to inventory forecasts, not just to demand.

Sales is the revenue attributed to the ads. It’s the top‑line return for your spend. Pair it with profit math (unit margin after fees) to judge real success. A campaign that generates slightly fewer sales at a much better ACoS may be healthier for your bank account than a “big revenue” campaign that leaks margin.

Example: If your average order value (AOV) is $25 and the campaign drives 100 orders, you’d expect ~$2,500 in sales. If a price change lifts AOV to $30, the same unit volume yields $3,000. ROAS improves even if clicks don’t.

What to watch: Promotions, coupons, or bundle changes can shift attributed sales without changing traffic. Track sales with AOV and units for a clean picture of what actually improved.

Impressions count how often your ad was shown. They indicate reach, not interest. Lots of impressions with low clicks means you show up but don’t tempt the shopper so fix creatives, titles, or relevance. Few impressions can mean bids are too low, targets too narrow, or the product is in a niche with limited traffic.

Example: 200,000 impressions with a 0.3% CTR yields ~600 clicks. If you double CTR to 0.6% with better main images or sharper keywords, clicks double without spending more on bids.

What to watch: Impression growth is a vanity metric when CTR falls. A smaller, better‑qualified audience that clicks and buys is superior to a stadium of scrollers who ignore you.

Clicks are visits earned by your ad. They’re the bridge between attention and action. High clicks with low sales means you’re paying for curiosity, not commitment so revisit relevance and listing quality. Low clicks with strong sales suggests your targeting is laser‑focused but under‑exposed ; consider higher bids or broader coverage.

Example: If 1,000 clicks convert at 10%, that’s 100 orders. Boosting conversion to 15% turns the same 1,000 clicks into 150 orders with a 50% lift without buying extra traffic.

What to watch: Click spikes often follow editorial features, seasonal trends, or competitors going out of stock. Capitalize while it lasts, but don’t extrapolate a holiday sugar‑high into January.

ACoS shows what portion of revenue you spent on ads. A 25% ACoS means you spent $25 to make $100 in sales. Whether that’s good depends on margins: if your total after‑fee margin is 35%, a 25% ACoS leaves ~10% contribution to overhead/profit. If your margin is 20%, 25% ACoS loses money on the ad‑attributed sales.

Example: Spend $500, Sales $2,500 → ACoS = 20%. If your breakeven ACoS is 28%, you have 8 points of headroom to scale bids or budgets, provided conversion doesn’t drop.

What to watch: ACoS can look worse during aggressive discovery but pay off later as winners are harvested. Don’t judge a nursery like a factory: give test campaigns tighter budgets and different expectations.

CTR measures how tempting your ad looks to the audience who saw it. If 1,000 people saw your ad and 5 clicked, CTR is 0.5%. Low CTR says your main image/title/price or targeting isn’t magnetic enough. High CTR means you’re matching the shopper’s intent and your creative invites the click.

Example: Improving the hero image (clear product, benefits in frame) or refining keywords from broad to phrase/exact can lift CTR without increasing bids, a quiet efficiency gain.

What to watch: CTR varies by placement. Top‑of‑search typically gets higher CTR than product pages. Compare apples to apples over time and don’t panic if placement mix shifts week‑to‑week.

CVR shows how good your product page is at turning visits into purchases. If 200 people visit and 30 buy, CVR is 15%. CVR bakes in everything the shopper weighs: price, reviews, images, shipping, competitors, and even coupon badges. When CVR rises, every click becomes more valuable; when it falls, ads feel “expensive” at the same bids.

Example: Adding a comparison chart, clearer sizing guide, or an extra image showing use‑case can bump CVR several points. That compounds: with the same spend, higher CVR yields more units, lower ACoS, and higher ROAS.

What to watch: Review count/score and price parity dominate CVR. Competing against a similar item with double your reviews often demands a better price, bundle, or niche positioning.

CPI tells you the average cost to show your ad once. It’s a cousin of CPC: CPI × (Impressions → Clicks via CTR) ≈ CPC. If CPI rises, you’re paying more to appear often due to higher auction pressure or more aggressive bidding. Use CPI to sense market heat even before clicks and sales respond.

Example: If CPI doubles week‑over‑week while CTR and CVR hold steady, CPC and ACoS will likely creep up. You may need sharper targeting, better creatives, or bid/placement adjustments to maintain efficiency.

What to watch: Vendors sometimes label CPM (per 1,000) as CPI (per 1). Check units. A “$4 CPI” may mean $4 CPM, i.e., $0.004 per impression.

CPC is what you pay for each visit. High CPC isn’t automatically bad if those clicks convert into high‑margin sales. Low CPC with poor conversion is cheap but wasteful. Think “price per footfall” the value is in who walks in and whether they buy.

Example: Dropping CPC from $1.80 to $1.50 while holding CVR and AOV steady boosts ROAS materially. You can achieve that by pruning weak targets, improving Quality/Relevance, and bidding more precisely by match type and placement.

What to watch: Chasing the lowest CPC can cut quality. Competitors often pay more for top‑of‑search because it converts. Optimize for profit, not for the prettiest CPC number.

EPC says how much revenue, on average, each click generates. It bundles CVR and AOV into one tidy figure. If EPC > CPC, you’re generally profitable at the click level; if EPC < CPC, you’re paying more for traffic than it’s bringing back.

Example: EPC $3.50 with CPC $1.70 → strong unit economics. Raising AOV (bundles, add‑ons) or CVR (better page) increases EPC without buying more traffic, compounding ROAS.

What to watch: EPC fluctuates with promotion mix and seasonality. Monitor it alongside CPC and ACoS to see whether changes helped because of cheaper clicks, better conversion, higher order values or all three.

Ad Groups organize targets (keywords/ASINs) and creatives into manageable buckets. They let you set different default bids and tailor messages to closely related terms or product themes. Fewer, well‑structured ad groups make optimization simpler; too many micro‑groups fragment data and slow learning.

Example: One ad group for “Noise‑Cancelling Over‑Ear” and another for “Workout Earbuds.” Each can highlight different benefits and hold different bids because shopper intent and price points differ.

What to watch: If an ad group mixes unrelated targets, performance averages will hide problems. Split by intent, price tier, or use‑case so each group can get the right bid and creative.

Products is the count of items actively promoted in the campaign. More products can broaden reach, but they must share similar economics and positioning. A premium and a budget SKU in the same campaign often need different bids and creatives; lumping them together muddies signals.

Example: If one color variant vastly outsells others, consider isolating it to scale with confidence while keeping slower variants at conservative bids.

What to watch: Don’t advertise out‑of‑stock or suppressed listings. Keep catalog hygiene tight: correct browse nodes, bullet points, images, and price parity. Ads can drive traffic; they can’t fix a broken product page.

Targets are the specific queries, products, or categories you bid on. Think of each as a fishing spot with its own traffic and quality. Too few targets limit reach; too many low‑quality targets waste budget. The art is steady pruning and promotion: cut what bleeds, feed what performs.

Example: Start broad, add negatives to stop obvious mismatches, then graduate converting search terms into Exact targets with tailored bids. For ASIN targeting, ride along with complement products and defend your own listing against competitors.

What to watch: Target creep. Over time, discovery campaigns collect debris. Schedule regular audits to free spend for winners.

Auto Pilot ACoS is the efficiency target the automation aims to maintain or beat. It’s your “cruise‑control speed.” Set it near your breakeven or contribution goal. Too strict and the system will under‑spend, missing profitable volume; too loose and it will chase scale at the cost of margin.

Example: If breakeven ACoS is 28% and you want 8% contribution after ads, set Auto Pilot ACoS ≈ 20%. The system will dial bids up on targets beating 20% and trim those above it.

What to watch: Targets should reflect reality. If supply chain costs rise or price changes, revisit the number. Automation can’t outsmart arithmetic.

ROAS flips ACoS around to show revenue generated for each ad dollar. A ROAS of 5.0 means $5 revenue per $1 spend. High ROAS feels great, but balance it with scale: a tiny, hyper‑efficient campaign may leave growth on the table. The sweet spot is a ROAS that meets your profit targets while moving meaningful volume.

Example: If your minimum viable ROAS is 3.0 to break even on contribution, pushing to 4.0–5.0 during peak season can bank margin to reinvest in discovery elsewhere.

What to watch: Sudden ROAS dips are often inventory, price, or review shocks not just ad settings. Fix the listing first, then the bid.

Spend Percentage shows how much of your total ad budget this campaign consumed. It’s a portfolio view: if one campaign eats 40% of spend but contributes little sales, you’re over‑allocating. Healthy portfolios push spend toward the highest expected return, not the loudest line item.

Example: If a discovery campaign burns 25% of spend with mediocre ACoS, it may be seeding future winners which is fine temporarily. But if it never graduates targets to profitable harvest campaigns, re‑balance.

What to watch: Drift. As new products launch, spend mix should evolve. Quarterly reviews keep the pie chart honest.

Sales Percentage tells you how much this campaign contributed to overall ad‑attributed revenue. Compare it to Spend Percentage to see whether you’re getting your fair share of outcomes for the investment.

Example: A campaign with 10% of spend but 18% of sales is over‑delivering (excellent). One with 30% of spend and 12% of sales is under‑delivering (fix or de‑fund). This is the simplest speedometer for portfolio efficiency.

What to watch: New launches will under‑index on Sales % initially so judge them on learning milestones, not parity with mature winners.

This index summarizes whether a campaign’s results justify its budget share. Above 1.0 means it’s earning more than its slice of pie; a candidate for more budget. Below 1.0 means it’s under‑performing its share audit targeting, bids, or listing health.

Example: Spend 15% / Sales 24% → Index 1.6 (great). Spend 25% / Sales 18% → 0.72 (needs work). Pair this with ACoS/ROAS to avoid false positives: high index with terrible ACoS may simply reflect a smaller denominator.

What to watch: Indices can be gamed by starving other campaigns. Keep portfolio metrics honest by reviewing the whole table, not just one hero row.

Delta Share tracks how a campaign’s share of spend or sales moved versus the previous period (e.g., week over week). It’s the “who’s gaining ground?” metric. Positive delta on Sales % with flat Spend % is a win you’re capturing more revenue without demanding more budget. Negative delta on Sales % with rising Spend % is a red flag.

Example: Last week Sales % was 10%, this week it’s 14% → +4 pts. If Spend % held near 10%, celebrate. If Spend % leapt to 20%, you bought the growth and should check ACoS.

What to watch: Deltas bounce during promos or stockouts. Confirm that the change came from your levers (bids/targets) and not a temporary external shock.

Relative ACoS shows how this campaign stacks up against a benchmark often your account average or a target ACoS. Above 1.0 means it’s less efficient than the bar; below 1.0 means it’s better. It’s a fast way to decide who gets more budget and who goes on a diet.

Example: If account average ACoS is 28% and a campaign runs at 21%, Relative ACoS ≈ 0.75 likely a keeper to scale. At 40%, Relative ACoS ≈ 1.43 : fix or reduce investment.

What to watch: Use the right benchmark. Comparing a new‑launch discovery campaign to the account’s best evergreen hero is unfair; compare like‑for‑like stages.

Impact is a composite “so what?” score: how much this campaign matters to the business right now. It typically weights sales volume, margin, efficiency, and momentum (positive or negative). High‑impact items deserve fast action: scale winners, triage sinkholes. Low‑impact items can wait.

Example: A campaign driving 18% of sales at sustainable ACoS and stable stock will rank high. A tiny test with volatile ACoS ranks low regardless of its current ROAS; it’s not moving the needle yet.

What to watch: Impact should evolve with seasonality and catalog changes. Recompute it regularly to avoid managing yesterday’s priorities.

Opportunity Score estimates how much upside a campaign has if you take action now. It often blends untapped impression share, budget throttling, above‑target ROAS (room to bid up), and target expansion potential. High score = “greenfield to capture.” Low score = “already near ceiling” or “fix fundamentals first.”

Example: If you’re hitting budget caps midday, have high ROAS, and limited exact‑match coverage of converting terms, your Opportunity Score should spike so raise budgets, add targets, and carefully increase bids.

What to watch: Scores are directional. Validate with a small, reversible test: +10–15% budget/bids for 5–7 days and review ACoS/ROAS and stock levels before committing fully.

Quadrant classifies each campaign into a 2×2 matrix, usually along axes like Sales % (or volume) and Efficiency (ROAS/ACoS). A common scheme: Star (High Sales, High Efficiency), Scale (High Sales, Low Efficiency), Polish (Low Sales, High Efficiency), and Fix/Trim (Low Sales, Low Efficiency). The goal is to move items clockwise toward Star status.

Example: A campaign with 18% Sales % and ROAS 5.0 → Star (feed it budget). 12% Sales % and ROAS 2.2 → Scale (optimize bids/targets to improve efficiency). 4% Sales % and ROAS 6.0 → Polish (expand responsibly). 3% Sales % and ROAS 1.5 → Fix/Trim (pause or rebuild).

What to watch: Quadrants shift with seasonality and pricing. Re‑plot weekly during peak seasons so action plans stay fresh.