Two acronyms cause more confusion than any others in Amazon ads. Get them straight and your reporting suddenly makes sense.
What’s the difference between ACoS and TACoS?
ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales) measures ad spend against sales from ads only. TACoS (Total Advertising Cost of Sales) measures the same ad spend against your total sales, ads plus organic. ACoS tells you how efficient a campaign is. TACoS tells you how much your whole business leans on ads.
What is ACoS?
ACoS = ad spend ÷ ad revenue, as a percent. Spend $25 to make $100 in ad sales and your ACoS is 25%. It’s the fastest way to judge whether a campaign or keyword is pulling its weight. The number to beat is your break-even ACoS, the margin left in your price after product cost, Amazon fees and shipping.
What is TACoS?
TACoS = ad spend ÷ total revenue (ads + organic), as a percent. Spend $25 in ads while the product makes $250 total and your TACoS is 10%. Because it includes organic sales, TACoS shows the bigger picture: are ads actually growing the business, or just moving sales you’d have made anyway?
What counts as a good number?
- ACoS: often 15–30%, but the real target is anything below your break-even point.
- TACoS: often 10–20%. More important than the exact figure is the trend, a TACoS that falls over months means organic ranking is doing more of the work.
Which one should you optimize for?
Both, for different jobs. Use ACoS to prune individual keywords and campaigns. Use TACoS to judge account health and growth. Sellers who chase a rock-bottom ACoS often cut spend that was actually driving ranking and organic sales, so the account stalls.
For how these fit into a full ad strategy, see our Amazon PPC management guide, or let our advertising team run the numbers for you.