Operator glossary
TACoS (Total Advertising Cost of Sale)
Ad spend divided by total revenue — organic and ad-attributed together — which makes it the only ad ratio that shows whether advertising is building a business or propping one up.
TACoS is ad spend divided by total sales, not just ad-attributed sales. A campaign can hold a flattering ACoS while the account quietly becomes dependent on ads; TACoS is where that dependence shows. If TACoS trends down while revenue grows, ads are seeding organic rank that later carries the listing for free. If TACoS climbs while revenue is flat, you are renting your sales.
We run PPC engagements against a TACoS target, not per-campaign ACoS, because the per-campaign number is too easy to make pretty — cut every mid-funnel campaign and ACoS improves while the business shrinks. Healthy ranges vary by category and stage: launches often run 15–25% on purpose, mature catalogs settle toward 5–10%.
The numbers
- TACoS = total ad spend ÷ total revenue (organic + ad-attributed). A 40% ACoS campaign inside a 70%-organic account is a 12% TACoS.
- Benchmark bands we run against: launch 15–25%, growth mode 10–15%, mature catalog 5–10% — the trend matters more than the level.
- Live auction-density read (Helium 10, Aug 2026): 'yoga mat' carries ~552,000 monthly US searches with 10,000+ competing products and 325 ASINs running sponsored placements — the crowding that makes a TACoS ceiling non-negotiable.
Primary sources: Amazon Ads: sponsored ads basics
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