Marketplace ads for profit, not just sales: Amazon and Noon

Ads on Amazon and Noon can grow your sales fast. They can also spend your whole margin without you noticing. Many brands look at one number, sales from ads, and think the ads are working. Then the month ends and there’s no profit left.

This guide shows how to run marketplace ads so they grow sales and leave you money at the end of the month.

Before you spend: fix the basics

Ads send shoppers to your product page. If the page is weak, you pay for clicks that don’t buy. Before you start:

• Your product page is ready. Good title, 6–8 images, clear bullet points, Arabic and English. (See our guide Product pages that sell.)
• You have stock. Ads on a product that runs out waste the work you put into building it up.
• Your price can win. If another seller is cheaper and wins the Buy Box, your ads may send shoppers to their offer.
• You have some reviews. A product with no reviews converts poorly, so ads cost more per sale.

Step 1: Know your break-even point

This is the number most sellers skip, and the most important one.

Take your selling price, then subtract everything except ads: product cost, marketplace fees, shipping and fulfilment, returns. What’s left is your profit before ads.

Example:

• Selling price: EGP 500
• Product cost, fees, shipping and returns: EGP 350
• Profit before ads: EGP 150, which is 30% of the price

That 30% is your break-even ACoS. ACoS (advertising cost of sales) is what you spend on ads divided by the sales those ads bring. If your ACoS is:

• Below 30%: each ad sale makes you money
• At 30%: you break even
• Above 30%: you lose money on each ad sale

Work this out for every product you advertise. A product with a 15% margin can’t run ads the same way as one with 40%.

Step 2: Choose a goal for each product

Not every product needs the same goal:

• Launch: a new product needs sales and reviews to rank. You may accept spending more than break-even for a short, planned time.
• Grow: a product that’s selling and you want more of it. Aim near break-even and push to win more searches.
• Profit: an established best seller. Aim well below break-even and protect your margin.

Write the goal down, with an end date for any launch period. "We’ll lose money on ads for six weeks to launch this" is a plan. Losing money with no end date isn’t.

Step 3: Set up your campaigns

On Amazon, the main ad types are:

• Sponsored Products: your product shown in search results and on other product pages. This is where most sellers should start.
• Sponsored Brands: your logo, a headline and several products at the top of search. Needs Brand Registry.
• Sponsored Display: reaches shoppers who viewed your products or similar ones, on and off Amazon.

On Noon, Noon Ads lets you promote your products in search results and on product pages, with similar keyword and product targeting.

A simple structure that works on both:

1. An automatic campaign that lets the marketplace find search words for you. Use it to discover what shoppers type.
2. A manual campaign with the search words that already sell, so you control the bid on each one.
3. A brand campaign for searches that include your brand name. These are cheap and protect you from competitors advertising on your name.

Step 4: Move winners, cut the waste

Every week, open the search term report: the actual words shoppers typed before they clicked your ad.

• Words that sell below break-even: move them to your manual campaign and bid on them directly.
• Words that get clicks but no sales: after enough clicks to be sure (often 15–20), stop showing for them by adding them as negative keywords.
• Words that have nothing to do with your product: add them as negatives straight away.

This is where most wasted ad money hides. A few words that never sell can take a big share of your budget.

Step 5: Set bids and budgets with your margin

• Bid by profit, not by guess. Products and words with more room below break-even can take higher bids. Those near or above it should be lowered.
• Don’t let budgets run out early. If a campaign spends its daily budget by midday, you miss the evening, when many shoppers buy. Raise the budget on campaigns that are profitable, or lower bids.
• Change slowly. Change bids by small steps and give each change a few days before judging it.
• Plan for sale seasons. Clicks cost more during big events like White Friday and Yellow Friday. Raise budgets for your best products, and prepare before the event starts.

Step 6: Read the numbers that matter

TACoS is the one most sellers miss. If your ads work well, your product ranks higher in normal search, total sales grow, and TACoS goes down over time. If TACoS keeps rising, you’re buying sales you’d have got anyway, or you depend on ads to sell at all.

Your weekly ads routine

• Check ACoS against break-even for each product
• Review the search term report: move winners, add negatives
• Check which campaigns ran out of budget, and when
• Adjust bids in small steps
• Pause ads on products that are out of stock or losing the Buy Box
• Look at TACoS and total sales, not only ad sales

Mistakes we see often

• Judging ads by sales alone. High ad sales can hide a loss on every order.
• No break-even number. Without it, you can’t tell a good ACoS from a bad one.
• Never adding negative keywords. Money keeps going to words that never sell.
• Advertising weak pages. Ads can’t fix poor images, a high price or no reviews.
• Only automatic campaigns. You let the marketplace decide everything and lose control of your best words.
• Big changes every day. Ads need a few days to show the effect of each change.

Your checklist

1. Product page, stock, price and reviews ready before ads start
2. Break-even ACoS worked out for every advertised product
3. A goal for each product: launch (with an end date), grow or profit
4. Automatic, manual and brand campaigns set up
5. Search term report reviewed every week
6. Winning words moved to manual, wasted words added as negatives
7. Budgets that last the whole day on profitable campaigns
8. TACoS tracked monthly, alongside ACoS