Amazon PPC Cost in 2026: What It Actually Costs by Ad Type, Category, and Scale

The average Amazon seller wastes 35-40% of their PPC budget. Not because they spend too much — because they spend blind. They don't know what a click should cost in their category, what ACOS is acceptable at their margin, or how to structure budgets across Sponsored Products, Brands, and Display. This guide fixes that.

I've managed over $205M in Amazon sales across 50+ brands. Here's what PPC actually costs in 2026 — with real numbers, not vague ranges from people who've never run a campaign.

How Much Does Amazon PPC Cost Per Click in 2026?

There's no single answer. CPC varies wildly by ad type, category, and competition. But here are the real ranges we see across our portfolio:

Sponsored Products:

• Low-competition categories (home storage, pet accessories): $0.50–$1.20 CPC

• Mid-competition categories (supplements, beauty, kitchen): $1.20–$2.80 CPC

• High-competition categories (electronics, fitness, baby): $2.80–$5.50 CPC

• Ultra-competitive (phone cases, supplements subcategories): $5.00–$8.00+ CPC

Sponsored Brands:

• Typically 20-40% higher CPC than Sponsored Products in the same category

• Average range: $1.00–$4.50 CPC

• Video ads within Sponsored Brands often deliver 15-30% lower CPC due to higher CTR

Sponsored Display:

• Product targeting: $0.30–$2.00 CPC (cheapest clicks on Amazon)

• Audience targeting: $1.50–$6.00+ CPC (but different intent — retargeting, conquest)

• vCPM campaigns: $4.00–$12.00 per 1,000 impressions

These are 2026 numbers. CPCs have risen roughly 12-18% year-over-year since 2022. If you're benchmarking against 2023 data, adjust upward.

What Is a Good ACOS for Amazon PPC?

ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sale) is your ad spend divided by ad revenue. But "good" ACOS depends entirely on your margins.

The formula that matters:

Your break-even ACOS = your pre-ad profit margin. If your product nets 35% margin before ad spend, a 35% ACOS means you're breaking even on ad-attributed sales.

Typical ACOS ranges by strategy:

| Strategy | ACOS Target | When to Use |

|----------|------------|-------------|

| Aggressive launch | 50-80%+ | New product, first 60 days, buying rank |

| Growth phase | 30-50% | Scaling, reinvesting profits into share |

| Profitable scale | 15-30% | Established product, optimizing for profit |

| Harvest mode | 8-18% | Dominant position, maximizing margin |

The mistake most brands at $100K-$500K/mo make: they optimize every campaign for the same ACOS target. That's like putting the same amount of gas in a race car and a delivery truck. Different campaigns serve different strategic purposes.

How Much Should You Spend on Amazon PPC Monthly?

Here's the budget framework we use for brands doing $50K-$500K/month in revenue:

Rule of thumb: Allocate 10-15% of total revenue to ad spend for mature products, 20-30% for products still scaling. Budget allocation by ad type:

• Sponsored Products: 60-70% of total ad budget. This is your workhorse. Exact match, phrase match, broad match, and auto campaigns.

• Sponsored Brands: 15-25% of total ad budget. Brand defense, category conquest, and video ads. Higher funnel but critical for brand building.

• Sponsored Display: 10-20% of total ad budget. Retargeting, competitor product pages, audience conquest. Most sellers under-invest here.

Monthly budget examples:

| Monthly Revenue | Suggested Ad Spend | SP Budget | SB Budget | SD Budget |

|----------------|-------------------|-----------|-----------|-----------|

| $50K | $5K–$10K | $3.5K–$7K | $1K–$2K | $500–$1K |

| $100K | $10K–$20K | $7K–$14K | $2K–$4K | $1K–$2K |

| $250K | $25K–$45K | $17K–$31K | $5K–$9K | $3K–$5K |

| $500K | $40K–$75K | $28K–$52K | $8K–$15K | $4K–$8K |

Notice the spend doesn't scale linearly. At higher revenue, you should be more efficient — not just spending more.

Why Are Your Amazon PPC Costs Increasing?

If your CPCs are climbing and your ACOS is inflating, here are the likely causes:

1. Increased competition. More sellers, more brands, more aggregators entering your category. Amazon's ad auction is a second-price auction — more bidders means higher clearing prices. 2. Poor campaign structure. If you're running one auto campaign and one manual campaign per product, you're leaving money on the table and overpaying for clicks. We typically run 8-12 campaigns per SKU across match types and ad types. 3. No negative keyword strategy. Every irrelevant click is wasted spend. We add 50-200 negative keywords per campaign in the first 90 days. Most sellers add zero. 4. Bidding on the wrong funnel stage. Top-of-search placements cost 2-4x more than rest-of-search. If your listing doesn't convert at a high rate, you're paying premium prices for clicks that don't close. 5. Ignoring dayparting and budget pacing. Your budget runs out at 2pm, and you miss the 6pm-10pm buying window. Or worse, you don't even know it's happening.

How to Lower Amazon PPC Costs Without Killing Sales

This is where most guides give you generic advice. Here's what actually works at scale:

Harvest exact match winners. Pull your Search Term Report weekly. Any search term converting above your target ACOS at 15+ clicks gets moved to an exact match campaign with controlled bids. This alone drops ACOS 10-20% for most brands we onboard. Isolate branded traffic. Your brand name keywords convert at 3-5x the rate of generic keywords. If they're mixed into the same campaigns, your averages are lying to you. Separate branded and non-branded campaigns. Your non-branded ACOS is the real number. Use placement modifiers aggressively. Amazon lets you bid up to 900% more for top-of-search placement. But it also lets you bid DOWN by reducing base bids and only competing for cheaper placements. Test this systematically. Build a negative keyword flywheel. Every week: pull search terms with spend > $10 and zero sales. Add them as exact match negatives. Over 6 months, this compounds into massive waste reduction. Don't ignore organic rank. PPC and organic are connected. If you're ranking #1 organically for a keyword, you might not need to bid on it — or you can bid low for defensive purposes. If you're ranking #45, that keyword needs more aggressive PPC support.

The Real Cost of Amazon PPC: Beyond the Click

The biggest cost isn't the CPC. It's the opportunity cost of bad data leading to bad decisions.

When you don't know your true ACOS by product, by keyword, by placement — you're making six-figure decisions on guesswork. We see brands burning $10K-$30K/month on campaigns that haven't been meaningfully optimized in 6+ months. That's not an advertising cost. That's a tax on disorganization.

The brands in our portfolio that spend $20K/month efficiently outperform brands spending $50K/month blindly. Every single time.

Running $50K+/mo on Amazon and not sure if your PPC spend is working? We'll audit your campaigns and show you exactly where money is being wasted. Book a free strategy call: https://calendly.com/d/crft-5qs-x9w

Hunter Harris is the founder of GigaBrands, an AI-assisted Amazon growth agency managing 50+ brands with over $205M in total Amazon sales.