/Case study
42% ACoS to Profitable in 60 Days — A Full PPC Rescue
/Client
US SPORTING GOODS SELLER — AMAZON.COM
/Marketplace
Amazon.com (USA)
/Year
2024
/Engagement type
PPC rescue & profitability rebuild
Brief
A loss-making SKU in the US marketplace had been priced out by its own advertising: PPC bids were running roughly 4–5× higher than viable profit per unit, with ACOS stuck above 42%. Every sale deepened the hole. The client was ready to liquidate unless economics could be fixed fast. The mandate was blunt—rebuild advertising discipline and margin awareness, or exit the SKU.
The challenge
- ACOS above 42% with bids estimated at 4–5× viable profit per unit, so scale only amplified losses
- Flat, undifferentiated campaign structure—broad and auto campaigns soaked budget without a harvest ladder
- Weak negative keyword hygiene, so irrelevant queries continued to tax the account month after month
- No placement or daypart discipline—Top of Search and Rest of Search were treated identically despite very different conversion behavior
- No phased plan to freeze waste first, then reintroduce scale only where contribution margin allowed
What we did
Week 1–2 — Stop the bleed
Full account audit against unit economics. Paused spend that could not convert profitably, culled deadweight targets, and capped broad/auto to true discovery with aggressive negatives. Re-centered the account on intent that could support CPC at current retail and landed cost.
Week 3–5 — Rebuild for control
Rebuilt taxonomy around margin-aware targets: exact and phrase harvest lanes, isolated search-term winners, and placement adjustments so Top of Search spend went only where conversion justified it. Tightened match types and pacing so budget followed proof—not hope.
Day 30–60 — Path to profitability
Within the 60-day window we drove the account from 42% ACOS toward profitable contribution: weekly search-term sweeps, biweekly readouts, and refreshed bids against live performance. Scale returned only on ASINs and queries where contribution per order could absorb it.
Ongoing
Standing cadence: weekly search-term reviews, negatives on a fixed schedule, monthly structure checks, and reporting the client could use for inventory and retail decisions—not vanity metrics.
Skills & deliverables
- Campaign optimization
- PPC campaign setup & management
- Search term harvesting
- Negative keyword governance
- Placement & bid strategy
- Margin-aware scaling
- Sponsored Products
- Performance reporting
/Results snapshot
0
Opening ACOS
0
Days to turnaround
0
Marketplace
