Most Amazon sellers have access to more advertising data than they will ever read. Search Term Reports, Placement Reports, Targeting Reports, Search Query Performance, Brand Analytics, Amazon Marketing Cloud, the new Marketing Stream, Sponsored Display Audience Insights, and the recently launched Search Term Impression Share and Rufus Prompts reports. The list keeps growing every year.
The truth is, hardly any account actually goes through more than a few of these reports and they end up making $50,000 a month decisions using $50 a month of insight. They open random reports as per convenience and wonder why their growth has plateaued.
But no single report can tell you what to do next. Each one answers a very specific question. So the actual edge is knowing which report to open at which moment. That is what we will guide you through here.
Why Do Most Amazon Sellers Open the Wrong Advertising Report
The lack of insight about which report to open. Opening a Search Term Report for a conversion problem, or a Placement Report for new keywords, is like using a thermometer to measure your weight.
Four reasons explain almost every case.
1. The default screen problem
Campaign Manager opens automatically the moment a seller logs in. ACoS, sales, and impressions are the first numbers visible. Most sellers never click further because the dashboard already looks like “the report.”while it is just a surface-level summary designed for monitoring, not for decisions.
2. Reports get taught as a checklist, not a framework
Most Amazon training treats reports as items to download weekly.Nobody teaches sellers to ask which problem each report is built to solve.
3. The newer reports stay invisible
Amazon has launched at least five major reports in the last 24 months. Brand Halo, Rufus Prompts, Search Term Impression Share, Marketing Stream, expanded AMC datasets. The reports sit under tabs that are three clicks away, and sellers cannot use what they do not know exists.
4. Reports feel like work, not like answers
A dashboard is a number in green or red. Humans gravitate toward it because it feels like progress. The result is that decisions get made on whatever metric is most visible, not whatever metric is most relevant.
With endless options available to customers and Amazon’s reporting console expanding every quarter, this confusion in 2026 is more expensive than ever.
How Long Does Amazon Keep Your Advertising Report Data
Here is something almost no agency mentions publicly. Amazon retains advertising data inside the Ads Console for roughly 60 to 90 days, depending on the report type. After that window, you cannot pull the same level of granular daily data through the interface.
The Amazon Ads API extends the lookback further (around 13 months for most report types, and 25 months for Amazon Marketing Cloud as of November 2025). But that only helps you if your team has API access set up.
For year-over-year analysis or long-term performance study, you have to download and archive the reports yourself.
Here is a simple fix: build an automated weekly export of every meaningful report into a cloud storage location. The Amazon Advertising API can do this automatically.
This single habit separates accounts that operate strategically from accounts that operate from memory.
Which Amazon Advertising Report Should You Open When Something Breaks
You just need to set a system to work efficiently and successfully. Before opening anything, ask yourself this question: what exactly is broken? The answer points directly to the right dataset you need to go through.
| Symptom | Open this report first | The metric to focus on |
| High clicks, low or zero purchases | Search Term Report | Customer search terms with clicks but no conversions |
| Low click-through rate | Placement Report | Top-of-search CTR vs rest of search |
| High impressions, low conversion rate | Advertised product report | Detail page view rate, add-to-cart rate |
| High ACoS on relevant keywords | Targeting Report | Match-type performance and bid efficiency |
| Strong ROAS but flat profit | Brand Analytics + Sponsored Brands New-to-Brand metrics | New-to-brand percentage, repeat purchase rate |
| Unsure if ads are causing sales or just claiming credit | Amazon Marketing Cloud | Incremental ROAS, path to purchase |
| Need real-time hourly data | Amazon Marketing Stream | Hourly conversion rate by campaign |
| Missing organic traffic share | Search Query Performance Report | Click share vs purchase share gap |
| External marketing seems to lift more than one product | Brand Halo Report | Cross-ASIN attribution from external clicks |
| Want to know how your products show up in Rufus AI suggestions | Sponsored Products Prompts Report | Prompt impressions, prompt-attributed clicks |
| Managing hundreds of campaigns and need to edit at scale | Bulk Operations Report | Bid, changes, budget shifts, keyword ads across the entire account |
Save this table. It will save you hours every month.
How to Organize Amazon Advertising Reports for Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Use
The fastest way to make sense of Amazon’s reporting landscape is to think in three layers.
Layer 1: Surface Reports for Daily Monitoring
Use these numbers ACoS, ROAS, impressions, clicks, conversion rate inside the campaign manager to notice problems early .Use them daily, but do not optimize from them. They tell you something is happening but not why.
Layer 2: Optimization Reports for Weekly Decisions
The Search Term Report, Targeting Report, Placement Report, and Search Query Performance dashboard belong here. Go through these tools weekly, not monthly.
Layer 3: Strategic Reports for Monthly and Quarterly Review
Amazon Marketing Cloud, Brand Analytics, Marketing Stream, Sponsored Display Audience Insights, Rufus Prompts, and the new Brand Halo report. These reports explain customer behavior,the path that leads to conversion, and the long-term shape of your brand on Amazon. The top 1% sellers live almost entirely in Layer 3.
Why You Should Stop Measuring Sponsored Brands and DSP Performance With ACoS
Here is one of the most expensive mistakes- Sellers run Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and Amazon DSP campaigns and judge them all using ACoS. Then they cut the ones that look “inefficient.”
The problem is that those campaigns were never built to convert immediately. Their first job is demand creation, not sales. Sponsored Brands is brand-building. Sponsored Display is interception. DSP is awareness and audience capture.
If you must use a single number, judge upper-funnel ads on new-to-brand percentage and lift in branded search volume the following month. Both tell you whether the campaign is doing the job it was actually designed for.
This is exactly why matching the right report to the right ad type is non-negotiable.
The Most Important Amazon Advertising Reports Sellers Should Use in 2026
Search Term Report
To open your Search Term Report – ads.amazon.com > Measurement >Reports > Create Report > Sponsored Products > Search Term
The question it answers- What are shoppers actually searching for when they click your ads?
When to open it- Weekly.
Point of Failure- Sellers scan it for negative keywords and stop there. But instead you should use it in finding the high-converting search terms that are hiding in your auto and broad campaigns and promoting them to exact match.
The insight you should have- Focus on sorting the report by conversions, not by spend. Every search term with three or more conversions at a profitable ROAS should be promoted to its own exact-match campaign with its own dedicated budget.
Adding a Negative Keyword- Wait for a keyword to have at least 15 to 20 clicks without conversion before you make the search term negative. Because killing a keyword on five clicks is too early and you might lose terms that would have converted on click 12.
The advanced move- Don’t treat every search term the same, group them by buying stage. Research-stage with broad, informational,search terms like “best running shoes” get lower bids and tighter budgets.
Comparison-stage with more specific search terms like “running shoes for flat feet” get moderate bids.
Purchase-intent stage with highly specific search terms like “Brooks Ghost 16 men’s size 11” get aggressive bids and dedicated budget.
Sorting search terms by intent stage is how the top 1% extract two to three times more profit from the same search term report.
Sponsored Brands Keyword Report
To open your Sponsored Brands Keyword Report – ads.amazon.com > Measurement > Reports > Create Report > Sponsored Brands > Keyword
The question it answers- For your Sponsored Brands campaigns specifically, how is each individual keyword performing – and how are those keywords driving both direct sales and new-to-brand customers?
When to open it- Weekly, alongside your Sponsored Products Search Term Report.
Where most sellers fail- They apply the same logic they use for Sponsored Products to Sponsored Brands. In Sponsored Products, a broad match keyword behaves roughly as you would expect. In Sponsored Brands, broad matches can trigger your ad on synonyms or even loosely related terms that have nothing to do with your keyword. A Sponsored Brands campaign targeting “protein powder” can surface for “meal replacement shakes” – which is either a smart expansion or a waste of budget depending on your catalog. The Keyword Report is what tells you which one it is.
The insight you should have- The Sponsored Brands campaign tracks performance over a 14-day attribution window – not the 7-day window used by Sponsored Products.
A keyword that looks unprofitable on a 7-day view might be converting on day 10 or 12. So, don’t judge Sponsored Brands keywords on the same timeline as Sponsored Products.
This report also surfaces new-to-brand data at the keyword level – the Sponsored Products Search Term Report does not offer that.
If a keyword is driving a high volume of repeat buyers but almost no new customers, it is doing brand defense work, not acquisition work. That is useful, but it should not be funded like a growth keyword. The brands that separate their Sponsored Brands keywords by new-to-brand rate are the ones building customer acquisition systems, not just maintaining existing ones.
Tip – filter the Keyword Report for terms with high new-to-brand percentage and low ACoS. Those are your best acquisition keywords inside Sponsored Brands. Give them their own campaign, their own budget, and protect them.
Targeting Report
To open your Search Term Report- ads.amazon.com >Measurement > Reports >Create Report > Sponsored Products >Targeting
The question it answers- How individual keywords, ASINs, and audiences are performing across your campaigns?
When to open it- Weekly, alongside the Search Term Report.
Where most sellers fail- They look only at top-performing keywords and ignore the underperformers.
The insight you should have- Filter out keywords with 25 or more clicks and zero or one conversion. These are silent budget killers, often called “zombie keywords”. Pause them, negative them in adjacent campaigns, and reallocate the budget to the rising search terms from the Search Term Report.
Placement Report
To open your Placement Report- ads.amazon.com >Measurement > Reports > Create Report > Sponsored Products >Placement
The question it answers- Where on Amazon is your ad actually appearing and how does each placement perform?
When to open it- Every two weeks.
Where most sellers fail- They never adjust placement bids. They treat the default bid as a fixed setting.
The insight you should have- Top-of-search placements often convert two to four times better than rest-of-search.Amazon allows bidding up to 900% to show your ad on specific placements. So, you can start with 25-30% and increase based on the data. Increasing your bid by 50–100% for keywords that are already performing well can often boost your ROAS faster than changing or adding new keywords.
The Advanced Move- Top-of-search is only the best placement when your listing converts strongly. If your listing’s conversion rate is mediocre, top-of-search becomes the most expensive mistake. Audit your listing first, then only bid up on placement.
Advertised Product Report
To open your Advertised Product Report- ads.amazon.com > Measurement > Reports > Create Report > Sponsored Products > Advertised Product
The question it answers- How does each individual product (ASIN) perform within your campaigns?
When to open it- Every two weeks
Where most sellers fail- They scale entire campaigns. The top 1% scale individual products within campaigns.
The insight you should have- Two products inside the same campaign can have completely different ROAS, conversion rates, and margin profiles. Move the weak ASIN out of the shared campaign. Build a dedicated structure around the strong one.
Purchased Product Report
To open your Purchased Product Report– ads.amazon.com > Measurement > Reports > Create Report > Sponsored Products > Purchased Product
The question it answers- After a shopper clicked your ad, what did they actually buy- and was it even the product you were advertising?
When to open it- Monthly.
Where most sellers fail- They assume the Advertised Product Report tells the full story. The Advertised Product Report only shows performance for the ASIN you put in the campaign. The Purchased Product Report shows what the shopper walked away with. Those two things are often not the same product.
The insight you should have- When a shopper clicks your ad for a 500ml protein shaker and ends up buying your 1-litre version instead, your Advertised Product Report records a click with no conversion. Your Purchased Product Report records the actual sale on the other ASIN. If you are only reading the first report, you are drawing the wrong conclusion – the campaign worked, just not for the product you expected.
Run the Purchased Product Report monthly and look for ASINs that keep appearing as purchased products but are not in any active campaign. Those are your hidden sellers – products your ads are driving demand for that you have never deliberately promoted. Add them to dedicated campaigns and watch what happens.
The report covers a 60-day lookback window. It is available for both Sponsored Products and Sponsored Display campaigns.
Search Query Performance Report
To open your Search Query Performance Report- sellercentral.amazon.com > Brands >Brand Analytics > Search Query Performance
The question it answers- For your top branded and category keywords, how is your share of clicks, share of cart-adds, and share of purchases compared to competitors?
When to open it- Weekly for monitoring, monthly for strategic review.
Where most sellers fail- They check their own numbers, feel good or bad, and close it.
The insight you should have- The gap between your click rate and your purchase rate is really important. If you have a 10% click rate but only a 4% purchase rate, your ads are working but your listing is failing to convert, especially when you compare against advertising benchmarks. The report is essentially telling you to stop spending more on ads and fix your detail page first.
Search Term Impression Share Report
To open your Search Term Impression Share Report – ads.amazon.com > Measurement > Reports > Create Report > Sponsored Products > Search Term Impression Share
The question it answers- Of all the available impressions for a specific search term in your category, what percentage are you actually capturing?
When to open it- Monthly.
Where most sellers fail- Amazon launched it in early 2026 and most sellers are not aware of it and have never opened it.
The insight you should have- If your impression share on a key search term is below 70% but your ACoS is healthy, there is demand you are not capturing because your budget is too tight or your bids are too low. Increase the budget aggressively.
If you are at 95% impression share and your ACoS is rising, you have hit the ceiling on that keyword. Try adjacent terms instead of bidding higher on the same one.
Brand Halo Report
To open your Brand Halo Report- ads.amazon.com >Measurement >Amazon Attribution > Brand Halo
The question it answers- When external traffic lands on one of your products, which other products in your catalog also benefit?
When to open it- Monthly, especially if you run external campaigns (Google, TikTok, Meta).
Where most sellers fail- They run Amazon Attribution and judge external campaigns only by the sales of the exact ASIN they linked to.
The insight you should have- A TikTok ad pointing to your bestseller often drives sales of three or four related ASINs in the same brand catalog. Amazon Attribution does not capture this in the standard report. The Brand Halo Report does.
So if your brand is running high external traffic you should check halo data otherwise you will end up cutting campaigns that are actually profitable when measured correctly.
Sponsored Products Prompts Report (Rufus)
To open Rufus Prompts Report- ads.amazon.com >Measurement >Reports > Create Report > Sponsored Products > Prompts
The question it answers- When shoppers ask Rufus (Amazon’s AI shopping assistant) a question, are your products being suggested, and how often?
When to open it- Quarterly .
Where most sellers fail- They have never opened it because Rufus still feels like a small fraction of their traffic.
The insight you should have- Sponsored Products Prompts officially moved from open Beta to general availability in the U.S. on March 25, 2026.
Most Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaigns were auto-enrolled, and a lot of advertisers do not realize the report is already pulling data inside their account and also started CPC billing for prompt clicks, which had been free during the beta.
If your Sponsored Products ACoS has drifted upward since late March without a clear cause, prompts are one of the first places to check.
The report shows which questions trigger your products as AI suggestions and how those suggestions convert. You can pause specific prompts inside Campaign >Ad Group > Ads > Prompts tab if any of them misrepresent your product.
Start optimizing for Rufus visibility now.
Bulk Operations Reports
How to open it- ads.amazon.com > Sponsored Ads icon > Bulk Operations > Create & download a custom spreadsheet.
The question it answers- How do I edit hundreds of campaigns, ad groups, keywords, or bids without losing a week to manual clicks?
When to open it- Weekly for high-spend accounts. Monthly for the rest.
Where most sellers fail- They optimize one campaign at a time inside Campaign Manager and accept that as the only way to work.
The insight you should have- Bulk Operations gives you a single Excel file containing every campaign, ad group, keyword, product target, and bid in your account. You filter, sort, and edit inside the spreadsheet, then upload it back. Amazon applies the changes simultaneously.
What you can do inside one bulk file:
- Add new campaigns, ad groups, keywords, or product targets in batches.
- Pause or archive across the entire account in one shot.
- Adjust bids or budgets across hundreds of keywords
- Mass-add negative keywords pulled from the Search Term Report.
One warning- Never touch the Record ID column. That is how Amazon tracks each entity internally. Only campaigns with impressions in the last 60 days will be downloaded into the bulk sheet, so if you are auditing older history, archive your bulk files weekly.
Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC)
To open Amazon Marketing Cloud- advertising.amazon.com/amc > AMC instance> Query Library or SQL Editor
The question it answers- What does the full customer journey across multiple touchpoints actually look like, and which combination of ads is genuinely driving incremental revenue?
When to open it- Monthly.
Where most sellers fail- Most people ignore it completely because it requires working directly with raw data using tools like SQL, which feels too technical and intimidating.
The insight you should have- AMC tells you how many sales your ads actually created, not how many sales they got credit for. ACoS and ROAS treat all attributed sales equally, even sales that would have happened anyway without the ad. AMC separates the two.
Financial Importance- A keyword campaign showing a 10x ROAS looks like a clear win. But if 70% of those shoppers were already searching for your brand by name, those sales were going to happen. And you spent money for this.
AMC is the report that catches this. AMC is the single most important report on the platform to figure this out.
If SQL feels out of reach, agencies and platforms can run AMC queries on your behalf.
Amazon Marketing Stream
To open Amazon Marketing Stream- Amazon Ads API > Marketing Stream subscription >Amazon SQS or Kinesis
The question it answers- What is happening in your Amazon ads right now, in near real time, hour by hour?
When to open it- Continuously (As much as possible)
Where most sellers fail- They confuse Marketing Stream with the standard reports. It is not the same data. Marketing Stream provides hour-by-hour performance that can completely change how you optimize ads.
The insight you should have- Hourly performance is wildly uneven. Marketing Stream lets you find those hours. Bid up 30 to 50% during the peak hours and bid down or pause during the dead hours. ROAS often shifts the same day you flip the switch.
A home decor brand was bidding the same at 7am and 9pm. But Amazon Marketing Stream data showed most conversions happened between 7-10pm. Meanwhile, because of the morning spent driving impressions and decent CTR-but almost no sales,the budget was being wasted, and now they can optimize bids based on peak converting hours.
They cut morning bids by 40% and moved that budget into the evening window. Same monthly spend. ROAS went up 34% in the first two weeks.
The product hadn’t changed. The listing hadn’t changed. The customer was always there in the evening. The brand just had no way of seeing it until the hourly data made it impossible to ignore.
Sponsored Display Audience Insights
To open Sponsored Display Audience Insights- ads.amazon.com > Sponsored Display campaign > Audience tab > Audience Insights
The question it answers- Who is actually buying your products on Amazon, and how is your Sponsored Display spent genuinely performing?
When to open it- Quarterly.
Where most sellers fail- They never connect audience data back to creative. Worse, they read Sponsored Display performance using the wrong column.
The insight you should have- In Amazon Sponsored Display ads, the default report counts two types of sales:
- sales from people who clicked your ad
- and sales from people who only saw your ad but didn’t click
The problem is, Amazon still gives your ad credit even if someone just saw it and later bought it on their own. This can make your results look much better than they actually are.
The fix-
Open your Sponsored Display report, go to the “14-day sales (clicks)” column- sometimes labelled as click-attributed sales depending on your console view. This is the only number that tells you whether your ad caused the purchase, not just witnessed it.
Run that column against your spend and recalculate your ROAS.
Amazon Advertising API for Sponsored Products Reports
To open Sponsored Display Audience Insights- advertising.amazon.com > Tools >API Access > Request credentials
The question it answers- Anything you want, at any level of detail and can do it automatically, even for large amounts of data.
When to use it- When your account is large enough that pulling reports manually is no longer realistic.
Where most sellers fail- They never set the API up. They manually pull CSV(Comma-Separated Values ) files every week, waste hours, and get inconsistent data.
The insight you should have- The Amazon Advertising API allows automated daily pulls of every report mentioned above, structured exactly the way you want them. This sets the difference between a team that reports on Amazon and a team that operates on Amazon. For accounts above $50,000 a month in spend, the API is no longer optional.
If you are under $50,000 a month in spending, the API is not your next move. But the habit it creates is.
Start with a manual export schedule you actually stick to. Every Friday, pull your Search Term Report, Targeting Report, and Placement Report. Drop them into a shared Google Sheet with a date tab. That is the thing that, six months from now, tells you whether your account is building or just spending.
Two tools that can be helpful here are Perpetua and Scale Insights both offer scheduled report exports and basic automation without needing API access. They will not give you the full flexibility of raw API data, but they will get you out of the manual CSV loop and into a rhythm that scales.
How Do You Diagnose Amazon Ad Performance Problems Using Reports in the Right Order
Reading reports in sequence produces strategy. Here is the five-step flow that fixes 80% of ad performance issues.
Step 1: Start with the Campaign Performance Report
Identify where the drop is happening. Which campaigns, which products, which time period.
Step 2: Move to the Search Term Report
Diagnose targeting and intent issues. Are shoppers searching for what you think they are searching for?
Step 3: Check the Advertised Product Report
Confirm whether the product itself is the bottleneck. Sometimes the campaign is fine and the listing is the problem.
Step 4: Use the Placement Report
Optimize visibility and scaling. Where are your ads actually winning, and where are they wasting budget.
Which Amazon Advertising Report Pairings Reveal the Most Profit Opportunities
Most reports on Amazon are read alone. Sellers open the Search Term Report, study it, close it, then open the Placement Report a few hours later. The reports are treated as independent diagnostics.
Instead they should read them together. Three pairings change everything.
Search Term Report plus Search Query Performance
When a search term appears in both reports it means it is both a high-converting search term in your ads and a high-share keyword in your category -let that keyword grow organically. Aggressive ad spend on that keyword is no longer a cost.
Placement Report plus AMC
AMC tells you which placements drive incremental versus non-incremental sales. The Placement Report tells you where your ads are running. Cross-referencing tells you which placements you are over-paying for and which deserve aggressive bid uplifts.
Marketing Stream plus Targeting Report
Hourly performance combined with keyword-level performance lets you build a true dayparting strategy for better conversion.
Most brands do not run them because they require effort to pull, format, and read across two data sources at once.
A keyword sitting at 3.5x ROAS looks fine in the Targeting Report. But when you layer in Marketing Stream, you find it is converting at 6x between 7pm and 10pm and barely breaking even before noon.
Set a bid increase of 40 to 60% during the peak window. Pull back during the dead one. Same keyword, same listing, same budget just timed correctly. ROAS moves the same week.
The Targeting Report tells you which keywords deserve attention. Marketing Stream tells you exactly when they deserve it.
The Add-to-Cart Exclusion That Quietly Lifts Your Real ROAS
Stop retargeting shoppers who have already added your product to their cart.
The instinct is to chase them. But that should not be done. Because shoppers who have already added your product to their cart are statistically very likely to buy. By retargeting them anyway, you are spending money for purchases that were going to happen on their own. The ROAS looks great but the actual incremental revenue is close to zero.
The fix: build a Sponsored Display retargeting audience that excludes “added-to-cart in the last 30 days.” Your real, incremental ROAS will rise sharply.
To set it up, go into Sponsored Display and create a new campaign. Audiences> Remarketing>Product targeting -views. Then look for the audience refinement options and exclude “Added to cart.” Set the lookback window to 30 days.
Run this alongside your existing retargeting campaign for 30 days and compare click-attributed ROAS between the two.
How Often Should You Check Each Amazon Advertising Report?
If your team is small or you have time costraints. This will help you.
Daily: Five-minute glance at Campaign Manager for anomalies. ACoS spikes, sudden drops in impressions, sudden CPC inflation.
Weekly: Search Term Report and Targeting Report. Promote winners, kill losers, add negatives.
Bi-weekly: Placement Report and Advertised Product Report. Adjust placement bids based on conversion data. Identify ASIN-level winners and losers within shared campaigns.
Monthly: Search Query Performance, Search Term Impression Share, Brand Halo, and AMC. This is where you ask whether the account is building or merely spending.
Quarterly: Sponsored Display Audience Insights, Rufus Prompts, and a full account-level review against Amazon Advertising Benchmarks year-over-year. Reset budgets, reset ROAS targets, reset structure.
Always: Automated archival of every key report into your own data storage. Amazon deletes after 90 days.
The Reports You Should Actually Stop Looking At Daily
Hourly performance summaries, daily campaign performance summaries, and the default Campaign Manager date-range reports often distract more than they inform. They lead to short-term, reactive decisions like changing bids on day three of a campaign that needed two weeks to settle.
The cost of looking at the wrong report is not zero. It is decisions made on the wrong data, and the mistakes build up over time across the account and give negative results.
Final Thought
A report does not tell you what to do. A report shows you the truth of what is happening. The decision is yours.
The brands that win on Amazon in 2026 are the brands who know which report answers which question, who read those reports together instead of alone, and who act on what the data is telling them instead of what the dashboard makes them feel.
The next time you open Amazon Ads, do not start with the Campaign Manager dashboard. Start with the Search Term Report. Or the Placement Report. Or AMC if you have access. And when the data tells you your bids need work, make sure the strategy behind those bids is as sharp as the data pointing you there – our Amazon Bidding Strategies guide covers exactly how to structure that.
If you are finding that reports are pointing to listing problems more than campaign problems -which happens more often than most sellers expect – the fix usually starts one level up. Our Amazon Advertising Strategy guide walks through how to align your full account structure before the reports start telling you something is broken.
And if you want a faster read on where your campaigns stand right now before you go through each report manually, our free Amazon PPC Audit Tool runs the diagnostic in minutes.
If this guide changed how you think about Amazon ads reporting, share it with the seller on your team who still lives inside the dashboard alone.
Drop a comment below -which report do you open first when you want to know what is actually happening in your account?
Frequently Asked Questions
How to interpret Amazon advertising reports
Match the symptom to the report before you read anything else. High clicks but low sales means open the Search Term Report. Low clicks means check the Placement Report. Strong ROAS but weak profit means look at New-to-Brand metrics. Sort each report by spend descending, and fix the top 10 rows first because they hold 80% of the waste or the profit.
What are Amazon advertising reports?
Amazon advertising reports are structured data exports from Seller Central, the Ads Console, or the Amazon Advertising API showing how Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and DSP campaigns perform. They cover impressions, clicks, spend, attributed sales, ROAS, and audience signals. Sellers use them to diagnose campaign issues, find profitable keywords, and refine bid strategies.
How do I download Amazon ads reports?
Open Campaign Manager, click into a campaign, go to the Reports tab, choose the report type, set your date range, and download as CSV. For Brand Analytics reports like Search Query Performance, log into Seller Central and open the Brands tab. For Amazon Marketing Cloud, you need an AMC instance and SQL access. For automated daily pulls at scale, use the Amazon Advertising API.
What is the Search Term Report in Amazon ads?
The Search Term Report shows the actual customer queries that triggered your ads, regardless of which keywords you bid on. It is the most actionable PPC report on Amazon because it bypasses your assumptions and shows what shoppers really searched. Use it weekly to promote high-converting terms to exact match and add wasteful terms as negatives.
Why is my Amazon ads data delayed?
Amazon’s standard advertising reports run on a 24 to 72 hour delay because of attribution windows. Conversions take time to attribute correctly to the original click, especially for Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display. Do not optimize campaigns based on data less than 48 hours old. For real-time hourly data, use Amazon Marketing Stream.
How long does Amazon keep advertising data?
Amazon retains advertising data for only 60 to 90 days depending on the report type. After that, the data is deleted permanently. This is why brands serious about long-term performance analysis archive their data weekly into their own storage. The Amazon Advertising API makes this simple to automate.
How often should I check my Amazon ads reports?
Check Campaign Manager daily for anomalies, like sudden ACoS spikes or drops in impressions. Pull the Search Term and Targeting Reports weekly to promote winners and cut losers. Review Search Query Performance, Brand Halo, and AMC monthly. Audit Sponsored Display Audience Insights and Rufus Prompts quarterly.
What is the difference between Sponsored Products reports and Sponsored Brands reports?
Sponsored Products reports focus on direct, product-level performance because each campaign promotes a specific ASIN. Sponsored Brands reports include brand-level metrics like new-to-brand customers, brand searches, and store visits, since those campaigns drive both sales and brand awareness. Reading Sponsored Brands reports purely on ROAS undervalues the brand-building portion of the spend.
Can I access Amazon advertising reports through an API?
Yes. The Amazon Advertising API supports Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display reports, plus most Brand Analytics datasets. Most agencies and high-volume sellers automate reporting through the API instead of manually pulling CSVs. For Amazon Marketing Cloud specifically, queries are written in SQL inside the AMC console.
How long should I run a campaign before judging it from a report?
Wait at least 14 days before making meaningful changes based on a report. Amazon’s algorithm needs roughly 10 to 14 days to stabilize after any campaign change or launch. Pulling a report on day three and reacting to it usually causes more damage than letting the campaign run. Impatience is the most expensive habit on Amazon.
What is the difference between the Search Term Report and the Targeting Report -and why do I need both?
The Search Term Report shows what shoppers actually typed when your ad appeared. The Targeting Report shows how the keywords and ASINs you chose to bid on are performing. One report tells you what you chose. The other tells you what actually happened. The gap between the two is where most ad waste hides.
How long should I wait before pulling a report and making changes to a campaign?
Wait 14 days minimum. Amazon’s attribution window runs up to 14 days, so a sale today may be tied to a click from last week. If you cut a keyword on day three, you might be killing one with conversions still sitting in the pipeline. Most early reactions create damage that takes weeks to repair.
My ads are getting clicks but nothing is converting. Which report tells me why?
Open the Search Query Performance Report first. If your click share is strong but your purchase share is weak, the ad is working but the listing is not converting. Then check the Advertised Product Report to find the specific ASINs bleeding clicks. The fix is almost always the main image, title clarity, or review count.
Does Amazon Marketing Cloud actually work for sellers who are not enterprise-level brands?
Yes, but only if your monthly ad spend is roughly $30,000 or more. AMC requires an AMC instance and someone who can write SQL queries, which puts the technical setup out of reach for solo sellers. If SQL is the barrier, most serious Amazon agencies will run AMC queries on your behalf. The cost is usually recovered in one month by cutting spend that AMC reveals as non-incremental.
Why does my Sponsored Display ROAS look great in the dashboard but my overall account profitability keeps dropping?
Sponsored Display ROAS includes view-through sales, meaning shoppers who never clicked your ad but bought later anyway. That inflates the dashboard number without adding real incremental revenue. Switch to the “14-day sales (clicks)” column and recalculate. For most accounts, the click-only ROAS is 30 to 50 percent lower than what the dashboard shows.
Sayali is Director of Revenue Growth at Sequence Marketing Agency, where she specializes in developing data-driven revenue optimization strategies for brands selling across major eCommerce platforms including Amazon, Walmart, and Shopify. Her expertise includes strategic campaign planning, comprehensive market analysis, and cross-functional coordination with creative teams to drive measurable growth and ensure cohesive brand messaging across advertising efforts.