Amazon ad costs, counted per order rather than per click

How much does Amazon PPC cost?

Amazon charges only when a shopper clicks your ad: there is no monthly fee, and a Sponsored Products campaign needs a daily budget of at least $1 (Amazon Ads). What you pay is the number of clicks times their price. At the median US store we run, a Sponsored Products click cost $1.63 and each order from ads $9.14, and the store spent about $48,800 a month.

• The spread is wide. A quarter of stores paid under $1.36 for a non-branded click and a quarter over $3.15, more than twice as much. Category, price point and competition set the level, so your own reports beat any average.
• Cost per order spreads further than CPC. The 75th percentile store paid 4.6 times the 25th percentile store per non-branded order, against 2.3 times per click, because CVR differs as much as price.
• Branded orders cost half as much. At the median store a non-branded order cost $13.86 and a branded one $6.84: the clicks were 23% cheaper and converted 1.9 times as often.

What is the average cost per click on Amazon?

At the median US store we run, a Sponsored Products click cost $1.74 on non-branded searches and $1.54 on searches for the store’s own brand, from August to early November 2026. The middle half of stores paid $1.36 to $3.15 for a non-branded click. These are Sponsored Products figures; for Sponsored Brands, see how the Amazon ad types compare.

The CPC in Amazon’s reports is an average: spend divided by clicks (what CPC measures). It hides big differences by placement. Non-branded clicks at the top of search cost $2.14 at the median store, against $1.47 in the rest of search and $1.51 on product pages (what each placement is worth).

How much does an Amazon ad sale cost?

Divide CPC by CVR: a $1.74 click that converts 13% of the time costs about $13.40 per order (what cost per order means). At the median store we run, an order from non-branded searches cost $13.86 and one from branded searches $6.84.

Judge cost by the order, not the click. A cheap click that rarely converts can cost more per sale than a dear one that often does: at the median store, product-page clicks cost less than top-of-search clicks ($1.51 against $2.14) but each order from them cost $17.99, against $10.02.

How much do brands spend on Amazon ads?

The median US brand we run spent about $48,800 a month on Sponsored Products from August to early November 2026, and the middle half spent $33,100 to $76,300. These are established brands, not new sellers, so read the figures as what a brand with steady sales spends, not as a minimum.

About 18% of that spend went on searches for the brand’s own name or products at the median store; the rest bought non-branded searches, where new customers come from and each order costs about twice as much.

Why does my Amazon CPC change through the year?

Because more advertisers bid for the same searches around shopping events, and fewer in quiet months. In the year to October 2026, the median store’s clicks cost least in January, 13.5% below its own yearly average, and most in June, 14.7% above. Cost per order moved less, from 8.5% below to 9.3% above, because shoppers convert better in the busiest months.

• Winter is the cheapest stretch. From December to March clicks cost 8.3% to 13.5% below the year’s average, and in January 15 of 17 stores paid less than their own average.
• Spring and early summer cost the most. April to July ran above average, peaking in June, the month of Prime Day (June 23 to 26, 2026, per Amazon). May and July also ran 7% above, so the event alone does not explain the high.
• November and December were not the dearest months for clicks. November ran 2.7% above the year’s average and December 8.8% below, while CVR rose in both, so cost per order was below average in both months.

Monthly figures smooth out the event days, when prices jump for a few days at a time. In Q4 2025, across 25 US stores, clicks cost 22% more than baseline on Prime Big Deal Days and 17% more from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, while cost per order rose only 11% and 5% (Amazon ad costs in Q4). Treat the monthly table as one year of data, not a rule: plan around the events (how to budget for Prime Day), and expect quiet months to be cheaper.

What sets the price of an Amazon ad click?

An auction among the advertisers bidding for that search and placement. For Sponsored Products, Amazon weighs mainly the keywords advertisers bid on, how much they bid and how likely shoppers are to be interested in each offer (Amazon Ads), and sets the final CPC from your adjusted bid plus other factors, never above that adjusted bid (Amazon Ads). Your bid, raised by any placement adjustment or dynamic bidding, is the most a click can cost (why your CPC can be higher than your bid).

Whether a winner pays close to the runner-up’s bid or close to its own is disputed; our bidding guide sets out what Amazon says and what the FTC alleges. Either way, the safe bid is the most a click is worth to you, less the profit you want to keep.

Is there a minimum budget for Amazon ads?

No minimum monthly spend, and a minimum daily budget of $1 per Sponsored Products campaign (Amazon Ads). Amazon itself recommends at least $10 a day per campaign (Amazon Ads), since a budget smaller than a few clicks a day gathers too few clicks to judge a keyword. Amazon averages a daily budget over the month, so a single day can spend more (how Amazon daily budgets work).

The useful minimum is set by your CPC and CVR: to see one order a day at a $1.74 click and a 13% CVR, a campaign needs about eight clicks, or roughly $13 a day.

How do I turn a cost per order into a monthly Amazon ads budget?

Multiply the orders you want by what each one costs: cost per order is CPC ÷ CVR, so the month’s spend is orders × CPC ÷ CVR. Then check that cost per order against what an order leaves you before ads (the most you can pay per click): a budget that buys orders above your margin buys them at a loss.

The example below works through a month. How large the total should be, against your margin or a TACOS ceiling, is a separate question: how much to spend on Amazon ads each month.

A worked example: budgeting from a target number of orders

The numbers below are hypothetical.

1. 01
   Clicks needed500 ÷ 12% = about 4,170 clicks.
2. 02
   Monthly spend4,170 × $1.50 = about $6,250, or about $208 a day.
3. 03
   Cost per order$1.50 ÷ 12% = $12.50, an ACOS of 35.7%: $1.50 of profit kept per order, $750 for the month.
4. 04
   If CPC rises 15%About as far as June ran above the yearly average at the median store: $1.725 ÷ 12% = $14.38 per order, $0.38 more than the order’s margin. Unless CVR rises with it, the same 500 orders now lose money, so lower bids on the weakest searches before the month starts.

Is Amazon PPC worth it?

It is when the orders it buys are worth more than they cost. Branded searches usually clear that bar easily: at the median store we run they ran at an 18.1% ACOS. Non-branded searches ran at 47.7% (how far ACOS runs across stores): at that ACOS a first order makes money only on a product whose margin before ads is above 47.7%, and below that the spend has to be repaid by repeat orders and by the sales it adds to organic rank.

Check yours by comparing each search’s cost per order with its product’s margin before ads (break-even ACOS), branded and non-branded apart, since a blended number hides both. More on what branded and non-branded clicks are each worth.

How do I lower my Amazon CPC without losing sales?

Lower bids only where clicks are worth less than they cost, and leave the profitable ones alone. The aim is a lower cost per order, not the lowest CPC: cutting every bid also drops the searches that sell.

• By placement: lower or remove placement adjustments where a placement’s cost per order is above your margin, often product pages (how to bid each placement).
• Dynamic bidding: use “down only” where “up and down” has been raising bids in placements that do not convert (which to use).
• Negative keywords: stop paying for searches that keep getting clicks without orders, once they have had enough clicks to judge (when to add them).
• Match types: move proven searches into exact match, where the bid applies to that search alone, instead of paying broad match prices across loosely related ones (which match type).
• Relevance and the listing: Amazon weighs how likely shoppers are to be interested in your ad, and a listing that converts better lowers the cost of every order even at the same CPC.
• The calendar: expect higher prices around events and lower ones in winter, and set bids ahead of the dates rather than reacting after.

Should I count management fees in my Amazon PPC cost?

Yes: add what you pay to run the ads to the ad spend before you judge what an order costs. Agencies usually charge a monthly retainer, a share of ad spend or a share of ad sales, often with a minimum term; PPC software charges a subscription, usually tiered by ad spend, and your team still runs it; an in-house manager costs a salary. Compare them on the profit they add after their fee, not on the fee alone (what agencies and PPC software charge).

Laurence doesn’t publish a price list (how Laurence is priced).

How Laurence keeps cost per order down

Laurence prices every click from what it is worth to you, so it pays for clicks below their value and stops buying the ones above it. More on how Laurence values a click and how it runs your campaigns.

• From your margins, every hour: each bid starts from your margin after Amazon’s fees and the cost of goods you enter, times the CVR Laurence measures, and is repriced every hour as new clicks and orders come in.
• Placement by placement: Sponsored Products placement adjustments are recalculated nightly from each campaign’s own results by placement, and the Sponsored Products campaigns Laurence launches use “down only” dynamic bidding.
• Branded and non-branded apart: once your brand terms are set, branded searches get their own campaigns, so cheap branded orders do not hide what new customers cost.
• Budget where it pays: when a profitable campaign runs low during the day, Laurence can raise that day’s budget and puts it back at midnight.

How we measured this. Sponsored Products search-term reports (Amazon Ads API) for US stores on the Laurence platform, at Amazon’s default attribution window. The cost table covers 20 stores from August 6 to November 3, 2026, each with clicks, orders and sales on both branded and non-branded searches; monthly spend is the 90 days’ spend scaled to 30 days. The monthly table covers the 17 of those stores with at least 200 clicks and one order in every month from November 2025 to October 2026; many were not yet on Laurence for all of it, so it shows what brands paid, not a pure market price. Searches for a store’s own brand or its own products are branded; every other search, competitors’ brands included, is non-branded. Each figure is computed per store first, then summarized across stores; no store is named.