Questions to ask an Amazon PPC agency fall into five groups: who works on your account each week, how the agency is paid and how easily you can leave, whether it manages to ACOS or to TACOS and profit, what you see and keep, and what ships in the first 30 days. Good answers are specific and written down. Vague answers are the red flag.
I have seen this decision from both sides. My agency years were spent as lead operator on a book of 10 accounts across 8 categories, together doing more than $1.76M a month in PPC sales. Now I run Stratum PPC alone and get vetted with these same questions, so this checklist is built to work on anyone, me included. Two earlier decisions have their own guides: whether to outsource Amazon PPC at all, and whether an agency beats PPC software or doing it yourself.
The questions to ask, with good answers and red flags
Each question below has a specific, checkable good answer and a red-flag answer that is vague, deferred, or quietly moves risk onto you. Ask them in this order, write the answers down, and compare agencies on one sheet. Specifics cost an agency something to give; confidence costs nothing.
| Question | A good answer sounds like | A red flag sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| Who runs my account day to day? | A named person, their role, and how many accounts they carry | "The team," or the person on the sales call never touches your campaigns |
| How will you access my account? | Their own login through Amazon's user permissions, revocable by you | A request for your Seller Central password |
| Percentage of ad spend or flat fee? | The exact number, and what cutting your waste does to their fee | A fee that grows with spend, sold with a pitch about cutting spend |
| How long is the contract, and the notice period? | Month-to-month, or a short notice window in writing | A multi-month minimum, long notice, or an exit fee |
| What costs extra? | A written list: ad types, work cadence, launch pricing | "It depends," then invoices you did not expect |
| Do you manage to ACOS, or to TACOS and profit? | An ACOS target set from your margin and phase, with TACOS and profit beside it | A target ACOS promised before anyone has seen your costs |
| How do you separate branded from non-branded? | Branded terms in their own campaigns, reported separately every month | One blended ACOS; case studies silent on branded |
| How are changes reported, and can I veto them? | A change log (before, after, reason) and a window to object before changes go live | A dashboard screenshot; changes you find after the money is spent |
| What do I keep if I leave? | Everything in your ad account, plus the change history in a file you can open | Bids and rules in their software that stop the day you cancel |
| What ships in the first 30 days? | Named deliverables, with results judged at around 90 days | "Learning the account" with nothing named, or a result promised in month one |
Who actually runs my account day to day?
Ask for a name, not a department. A good answer names the person who will open your campaigns each week, how many other accounts they carry, and who covers when they are away. If the answer is "the team," ask who made the last change in a current client's account.
Inside an agency, the person who sells the account and the person who runs it are often different people. That is fine if you know before signing. With a consultant, press on coverage instead. That question applies to me: I run 4 accounts today, all hands-on, which is one operator's strength and also its limit.
Then ask how they will get in. The right answer is their own login through Amazon's user permissions, which you can revoke without touching your own credentials. A request for your Seller Central password is a request to operate as you across the whole business, not just the ads.
How is the agency paid, and how hard is it to leave?
Ask three money questions: is the fee a percentage of ad spend or flat, how long are the contract and notice period, and what costs extra. A percentage fee shrinks when waste gets cut, and the terms decide whether leaving costs you a decision or a negotiation.
The fee arithmetic, including where flat and percentage cost the same, is in my guide to how Amazon PPC management is priced. On the call, ask the follow-up: if you remove a third of my wasted spend next quarter, does your invoice rise, fall, or stay put? Dodging that question is the red flag.
On terms, the good answer is month-to-month or a notice window you can state in one sentence. A rebuild does take about 90 days to judge (every case study on my results page is a 90-day number), but that argues for patience, not a contract. Mine: a flat fee that never tracks ad spend, cancellable any month without notice.
Get the inclusions in writing too, because two fees only compare when the work behind them matches: which ad types, how often the search term work happens, what a launch costs. Mine is a one-time $499 per new parent ASIN; a new color or size is not a launch.
Does the agency manage to ACOS, or to TACOS and profit?
The strong answer is both, in order: an ACOS target built from your margin and phase, with TACOS and profit tracked beside it so efficiency is never bought by shrinking the business. The weak answer quotes a target ACOS before the agency has seen your costs or one row of your data.
ACOS alone is easy to improve badly: cut bids until only the cheapest clicks survive, and ACOS falls while total sales fall with it. TACOS puts ad spend against all sales, organic included (more in my ACOS vs TACOS guide), and profit in dollars only rises when the changes actually paid. Ask for a sample report with all three on one page.
Then ask how the target is set. The right start is your break-even ACOS, which the free ACOS calculator works out from your price and costs, adjusted by phase: my Amazon PPC benchmarks run from under 40% account ACOS in awareness to under 15% in profitability. Take your own baseline first, so no agency grades its own before and after.
How do you separate branded from non-branded results?
Branded search terms usually convert cheaply because the shopper already wants you, so blending them into the totals flatters every number. A good agency runs branded terms in their own campaigns, negates your brand out of the non-branded campaigns, and reports the two separately, so you can see whether ads are finding new customers.
This is the question I would press hardest, because a healthy blended ACOS can hide a non-branded engine losing money on each order. The benchmarks I grade against cap branded sales at 5% of ad sales in awareness, 25% while defending market share, and 15% in growth and profitability. Beyond that, ads increasingly take credit for shoppers already on their way to you.
Ask it of every case study, mine included: the agency-era track record on my homepage is footnoted as branded-inclusive blended ROAS, because readers should know what sits inside a headline number. If an agency cannot say whether its showcase results include branded sales, assume they do.
Worked example: a complete answer on real numbers
The measurement questions are easiest to judge against a real report. Here is one of my own published 90-day results, laid out the way any agency should lay out theirs: ACOS, TACOS, and profit together, budget stated. Then the branded question, asked of a second real account.
| Metric | Before | After 90 days | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACOS | 39.66% | 27.02% | The ad account got more efficient |
| TACOS | 9.25% | 4.96% | Advertising became a smaller share of all sales |
| Profit margin | 34.11% | 41.58% | The efficiency reached the bottom line |
| Monthly profit | Baseline | +$4,735 a month | The gain in dollars, on a flat budget |
Read it like an agency slide. The ACOS row alone could come from cutting bids until sales fell with them. The TACOS row shows advertising shrank as a share of total sales, down 46.4%. The last two rows settle it: margin up 7.47 points and $4,735 more profit a month on a flat budget. If a case study skips any of these rows, ask for it.
Now the branded question, on the anonymized real account in my audit demo: $111,058 in ad sales on $36,303 of spend, a 32.7% ACOS. Suppose branded sat exactly at the 15% ceiling. That is $16,659 from shoppers who typed the brand name, leaving $94,399 of non-branded sales, the part that reaches new customers. What is the ACOS on that $94,399? Branded orders are usually the cheapest, so it normally sits above 32.7%, and a report that cannot show it cannot tell you whether the account is growing or buying back its own customers at a markup.
How will I see changes, and can I veto them?
You should see every change, not just outcomes: a written change log with what changed, the number before and after, and why, plus a stated window to object before changes go live. A dashboard screenshot shows where the account landed, never what anyone did to get it there.
Ask for a redacted change log from a current client. Weekly work produces one every week and redacting a brand name takes minutes, so calling it proprietary is an answer in itself. The veto exists so you never learn what happened to your account after the spend. Mine: every change is prepared as a bulk file before it goes live, the client can veto any line, and anything without a reply in 48 hours goes ahead so nothing stalls. Any clear mechanic will do.
What do I keep if I leave?
Everything built inside your own Amazon Ads account stays there: campaigns, negatives, naming. The risk sits outside it. Bid rules running in an agency's software stop when the relationship does, and a change history stored only in their tool leaves with them. Get the history in a file you can open.
So ask: if I cancel on the 1st, what is running in my account on the 2nd? A good answer describes a structure any competent operator could pick up from the bulk file. If the answer leans on their automation, remember that when it disconnects, every bid stays wherever the last rule left it. Mine: you keep the rebuilt structure, your negatives, and the written change record, in a standard bulk-sheet layout that needs none of my software.
What should an Amazon PPC agency deliver in the first 30 days?
Work, not results. A good agency names its month-one deliverables (a graded audit, a negative keyword pass, a first harvest into exact match, repriced bids, a change log) and says results get judged at around 90 days. Promises about ACOS in month one are guesses; deliverables are checkable.
Here honesty and salesmanship part fastest. A rebuild resets what Amazon has learned about the campaigns, harvested terms need a full cycle to feed exact match, and the first month can read worse than the one before. A lower ACOS in 30 days is achievable by cutting bids everywhere: the ACOS row of the worked example, without the other three.
The opposite failure is months of "learning the account" with nothing named. Ask what you will hold on day 30. Mine, for comparison: the audit graded against published benchmarks, a rebuilt structure that stays in your account, a negative pass, the first harvest into exact, repricing on every keyword with enough data, placement modifiers set from placement data, and a written change log. If those are missing, the month is not paid for.
Frequently asked questions
How do I choose an Amazon PPC agency?
Shortlist two or three (my guide to the best Amazon PPC agencies is one place to start) and put the same questions to each, in writing if you can. Weight what you can verify, such as a named operator, a sample change log, and written month-one deliverables, above confidence on the call. Take your own baseline first, so you can grade whoever you hire.
What are the red flags when vetting an Amazon PPC agency?
Five answers should end the conversation: an ACOS guaranteed before anyone has seen your data, a request for your Seller Central password, no named person on your account, a long minimum term with a notice period or exit fee, and case studies that never say whether branded sales or a bigger budget drove the result. None is about skill, which is what makes them a fast first filter.
Are the questions different for an Amazon PPC consultant?
Barely. The questions to ask an Amazon PPC consultant are the same list with one swap: a consultant answers "who works on my account" by default, so ask about capacity instead, meaning how many accounts they run and what happens to the weekly work when they are sick or away. Everything else carries over, from the fee model and notice period to the branded split and what you keep.
What questions should an Amazon PPC agency ask me?
Before proposing anything, a good agency should ask for your price and landed cost, your phase (launching, defending share, growing, or harvesting profit), your inventory depth, which products carry the business, and what changed recently in the listing or the competition. Those facts set every target. A plan pitched without them is a template applied to your account.
Should an Amazon PPC agency guarantee results?
Be wary of a guarantee on a specific ACOS or sales figure. No agency controls your price, listing, reviews, inventory, or competitors, and the quickest way to hit an ACOS promise is to shrink the account. A credible guarantee covers what the agency does control: named deliverables, on time, with your money back if they are missing.
Take your own baseline before the first call
Every question here is easier to grade once you know your own numbers. The free Account Health Snapshot scores eight metrics from a bulk file against your phase, including wasted spend and, if you enter your brand name, branded share: no email, no account, nothing stored. Take the result into every agency call, including the free 30-minute diagnosis call I run, and hold me to the same answers.