Glossary

Short definitions, alphabetical. Most link to the page that explains the term.

Term	Meaning
`ACOS`	Advertising cost of sales: ad spend ÷ the sales Amazon attributes to the ads. Lower is more efficient. The inverse of ROAS.
`Ad sales`	The sales Amazon credits to ads within the attribution window. The denominator of ACOS and the numerator of ROAS. See Measuring Results.
`AMC`	Amazon Marketing Cloud: Amazon’s clean room for event-level queries over ads and retail data, returning only aggregated results. See Measuring Results.
`AMS`	Amazon Marketing Stream: Amazon’s near real time feed of ads traffic and conversion events. See Measuring Results.
`AOV`	Average order value: revenue per order.
`ASIN`	Amazon Standard Identification Number, the id of one product. A child ASIN is one size, colour or scent; a parent ASIN groups them into a variation family. See How a Shopper Buys.
`Attribution window`	How long after a click an order still counts as caused by the ad (1, 7, 14 or 30 days, depending on the ad product and report). See Measuring Results.
`AUTO targeting`	A campaign with no keywords, where Amazon chooses where the ad appears (close match, loose match, substitutes, complements). See Sponsored Ads.
`Bid`	The most an advertiser will pay for one click on a target. See The Auction.
`Brand Analytics`	Amazon’s reports for brand owners, including search frequency rank and the top three clicked products per search. See Demand and Markets.
`Branded search`	A search containing the brand’s own name. Its economics differ sharply from generic searches. See Demand and Markets.
`Buy Box`	The featured offer on a product page. Sponsored Products ads only serve while the advertiser holds it. See How a Shopper Buys.
`Close variant`	A search Amazon treats as the same as an exact keyword: plurals, punctuation, spacing and dropped function words. See Sponsored Ads.
`Contribution margin (CM2)`	The share of the price left after Amazon’s fees and the cost of goods: (price − Amazon fees − COGS) ÷ price. It is the margin before advertising, and it decides what a sale is worth. For Vendor Central, what Amazon pays (its cost price, less trade terms) replaces price less fees.
`CPC`	Cost per click: what an advertiser actually pays for one click. See The Auction.
`CTR`	Click-through rate: clicks ÷ impressions. See Placements.
`CVR`	Conversion rate: orders ÷ clicks. The quantity our bidder’s model estimates. See Placements.
`Detail Page`	The product page, and the ad placement on other products’ pages. See Placements.
`DSP`	Amazon’s demand-side platform for programmatic display and video ads, bought outside the sponsored ads auction.
`Dynamic bidding`	A campaign setting that lets Amazon lower, or raise and lower, a bid at auction time. See The Auction.
`FBA / FBM`	Fulfilled by Amazon (Amazon stores and ships) or Fulfilled by Merchant (the seller ships). See How a Shopper Buys.
`Impression`	One display of an ad or a listing to a shopper.
`Keyword`	A search text an advertiser bids on, with a match type. See Sponsored Ads.
`Market`	An Amazon subcategory (a browse node), the set of products a listing competes with. Never a set of searches. See Demand and Markets.
`Match type`	How loosely a keyword matches a search: exact, phrase or broad. See Sponsored Ads.
`Negative target`	A keyword or product that blocks an ad from showing there. See Sponsored Ads.
`Niche`	A cluster of searches that share one shopper intent. Never a subcategory. See Demand and Markets.
`Organic rank`	Where a listing appears among the unpaid results for a search. See The Search Results Page.
`Placement`	Where an ad shows: Top of Search, Rest of Search or Detail Page. See Placements.
`Placement modifier`	A per-campaign percentage that raises bids for one placement. See The Auction.
`PPC`	Pay per click: the advertiser pays only when a shopper clicks.
`Product line`	Our term for listings that differ only by colour, scent or size. See How a Shopper Buys.
`Product target`	A bid on a specific product or category instead of a search. See Sponsored Ads.
`Rest of Search`	Ad placements in search results other than the top of the first page. See Placements.
`ROAS`	Return on ad spend: ad-attributed sales ÷ ad spend. The inverse of ACOS.
`SB / SD / SP`	Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, Sponsored Products: Amazon’s three sponsored ad products. See Sponsored Ads.
`Search frequency rank`	Brand Analytics’ rank of a search by how often shoppers make it. It ranks searches, not products. See Demand and Markets.
`Search Query Performance`	SQP: Amazon’s Brand Analytics report of searches, impressions, clicks and purchases for a brand’s own products. See Demand and Markets.
`Seller / Vendor`	A third-party (3P) seller sells directly through Seller Central; a first-party (1P) vendor sells wholesale to Amazon through Vendor Central. See How a Shopper Buys.
`SERP`	Search engine results page: the page a shopper sees after a search. See The Search Results Page.
`Sponsored tile`	A paid product in the search results. See The Search Results Page.
`TACOS`	Total advertising cost of sales: ad spend ÷ total sales (paid and organic).
`Top of Search`	The ad placement at the top of the first page of search results. See Placements.
`Total sales`	All of a product’s sales, from ads and organic, as the Selling Partner API reports them. The denominator of TACOS. See Measuring Results.
`Trade terms`	The allowances a Vendor Central agreement lets Amazon deduct from what it pays the vendor (co-op or marketing, damage, freight, early payment), as a share of the cost price.

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Search and the Auction

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Measurement

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