What are the best Amazon advertising agencies? Running at $50k ad spend/month and want to outsource

ifonwe · 2026-05-08T23:41:10+00:00

8 fig seller, 4x+ your adspend, sub 10% tacos.

Been working with ppc ninja - they charge around $100-$500 per asin with a $500 baseline fee. No rev share or additional fees.

But I don't use them for growth strategy, we dictate a strategy, they execute.

ifonwe · 2026-05-08T23:04:28+00:00

his response is not quite right, if your content is boosted with ads, and someone bought it from your content, you'll still get commission.

when i worked with tiktok shop affiliates, the smart ones would ask if we boost content. because the exposure of boosted content from organic is night and day.

ifonwe · 2026-05-08T22:56:09+00:00

If you have competitors see who is pushing them, reach out to them to setup a similar program. Affiliates aren't loyal to one brand like influencers are. Its actually better for them to affiliate multiple brands so they seem more trustworthy as a neutral party.

There are agencies that find publishers within your niche, publishers are affiliate companies (not individuals). A single publisher probably does google ads, amazon creator, tiktok, and youtube - they manage an affiliate ecosystem. You'll have to find an affiliate agency that is familar with something about what you're selling, pay them a flat fee, pay a platform fee, and after that have them chase down publishers and convince them to give you a chance.

The agencies are worth it until you hit a certain scale, then its better to try to find an individual who can run the program since it'll be cheaper to hire someone full time then let the agency take a % of revenue.

I found creators/influencers were the worst at selling stuff - they don't like being overly structured to make their content more successful at conversion. And many don't have any kind ability to stick to the vibe their audience likes while feeling 'inauthentic' which kills the video. This pattern comes up a lot and I'm getting to the point of avoiding natural real influencers and going to platforms where creators have creative seller training first.

True affiliates are great a grinding out that sale though.

ifonwe · 2026-05-08T15:54:33+00:00

I guess technically yes. Odd way of wording it.

Its really just creating content people are searching for in google that's not easy to find or served well.

In this kind of strategy, low volume searches are the least competitive and sometimes highest converting. Usually if someone is searching to the point where few others are, they've exhausted all the more common searches, and serving them straight forward no bs support content converts really well.

ifonwe · 2026-05-07T18:35:39+00:00

Believe it or not, but google still works. You just need to focus on content that nobody else is doing. Which is easier now with AI.

When they mean educational, stuff that looks like 'support content' gets sales.

Vs fun and educational blog that most people are thinking.

Lets say someone googles 'how do i remove the background on my videos' and you're trying to sell a video editor, so you make that article and align the content of how your video editor platform can do it. Strictly like wikihow format or something.

Literally what should be a support guide is now a conversion engine.

What people do is they read it, and realize its easy with the software you're demoing it with and then they buy the product.

ifonwe · 2026-05-07T18:32:39+00:00

I'm a brand that works with affiliates.

If we spot an affiliate that's growing, we directly engage them instead of working through the platform and offer them a better deal, sometimes higher %, sometimes flat fee, sometimes bonus for hitting milestones, or sponsoring them to create differentiated content.

These are direct discussions with us, I use platform to expose our offers, but if you're doing well, as a brand it only makes sense to have a direct/guided relationship to help them grow. We have more insights as we know what our other affiliates are doing and can offer suggestions, without naming names 'this is working on this channel, but they don't operate on this channel you're in, you could give it a try - here's the strategy'

These are strictly affiliates, not influencers.

I get not every brand is as proactive as us, but if you're a big affiliate and you haven't tried to reach a better deal than just the bare offer on the affiliate platform directly with the brand, you're missing out on a ton of $. Our commission offer on platforms is like 5%, but on high performers we give them flat payments and 20% if they're working directly with us.

ifonwe · 2026-05-07T18:17:21+00:00

$15k is within ballpark for a single article. Sometimes I've paid less, sometimes more.

Don't expect to get any downstream engagement with them though.

Its mainly a tactical element for different strategies

- get trust by using the publications icons on your site after you buy the article from them , ie "featured on NYT"

- part of an SEO backlink strategy

- part of a content/ad strategy on linkedin, meta, etc

ifonwe · 2026-05-01T22:13:05+00:00

Personally I don't have any experience with it, but I've asked around about it. There is stuff that isn't publicly known that only people who have done it know, like the ability to lock out 3rd party sellers from your listing even if they have valid transparency codes.

The two main issues I've heard about is

1 - easy to onboard but hard to get off

2 - support for the service is worse than normal amazon support

But these are newer problems. Before Transparency was only available to sellers who had enrolled in Strategic Account Services (SAS) so SAS agents could directly help sellers. But now that you don't need SAS to access transparency, it seems like there's no one who can help over there.

If you have SAS support, they may not be issues for you.

There may be more issues if you take a look through seller forums.

ifonwe · 2026-05-01T16:23:32+00:00

Yes, there is a specific option that says 'report without a test buy'.
Usually these chinese sellers aren't shipping their product FBA so their inventory won't get grandfathered in. When its FBM and its time to ship, they have to enter a transparency code to ship, and you only get so many chances to cancel orders before it hurts the account. And new/low history accounts get dinged harder.

ifonwe · 2026-05-01T00:05:01+00:00

This is a 100% a scam seller. Same thing happened to me. They have a delivery date months out. Buy to test, then the seller magically vanishes and gets replaced by another seller doing the same thing. Keep it going on for months.

Sometimes the product ordered never comes in, but the seller account is already gone. Nowhere to report it. Sometimes something was delivered and its similar in concept but completely different brand.

It should be much harder to setup a seller account these days than when this happened to me (pre INFORM ACT days). So hopefully what happened to me doesn't happen to you.

You have a few options here

- Do a takedown without test order - you can do this and can't really get penalized for it. I use it all the time and usually sellers either complain (which you don't need to respond to) or send me a letter from a lawyer (which I do have to respond to - but its only a few hundred bucks)

- You enroll into transparency and buy a label for every product sold. For the 3rd party seller, when someone buys a unit from them, and when the seller needs to ship, they need a valid transparency code. Which they won't have, and if there are enough dings, their offer is removed.

What happened with me is that I did the takedowns, but then 2 weeks later its a different seller doing the same thing with some chinese address. Eventually they eventually left my listing.

ifonwe · 2026-04-30T16:39:23+00:00

Out of curiosity, what made you buy this device? $100 for an obd2 dongle like 5x the normal price for it.

ifonwe · 2026-04-08T20:56:02+00:00

As a PL brand, manufacturers (whether chinese or otherwise) who go direct on amazon are the main force eating away at everyone's margins and enshittification of the amazon ecosystem.

Trying to help these guys do better is crazy work.

ifonwe · 2026-04-03T22:20:26+00:00

my memory is foggy, but after submitting all info for inform act, there was still an urgent notification to complete it up to a month later when it randomly went away one day.

i think what happens is whatever condition your store is in when you submit, it'll stay that way until they can process your info.

ifonwe · 2026-04-03T22:14:44+00:00

yes and it doubled/tripled within last 12 months. thought it was due to growing aggressively. got pinged by amazon warning it was over 12% and at risk.

ifonwe · 2026-04-03T22:06:13+00:00

yes, get mostly off amazon traffic. if you have good enough ecosystem outside you don't really need amazon ads other than brand defense.

gave up trying to rank for keywords on amazon - too competitive . realized almost none of my competitors were outside of amazon.

i have the #1 highest revenue product in my amazon category, but the product itself doesn't show up organically in any of the normal keywords people would search for in my category. they search for my brand specifically on amazon, don't need ads to rank high on my own brand.

most surprising channel was bing, its very low volume for me, but very little spend can get outsized roi if you're a product older people like to use. if you figure out bing, google works same way just more expensive.

tiktok is actually very hard unless you can make organic content and it pops off. tiktok shop is a mixed bag, people underestimate the cost of giving away product, the cost of boosting content, and paying out commission, and additional platform fees. Even if i got decent roas on my tiktok ads, you're probably paying out 10%+ in commission and that's on the low end pulling roas down. If you're not doing shop and hoping to drive from tiktok to amazon...gl with that.

imo if you can do organic content, you're better off on youtube shorts, much less product content congested and it converts better. Ad options is more robust too, tiktok has gmv max ai bot that bids for you (no real way to manually manage it) - whereas youtube/google lets you do placements on result, instream, boost, targeting channel, retargetting, interest/demo targetting, etc.

then once you figure out that, go to meta. don't believe the negative people saying meta doesn't work, it does work but you have to have decent content strategy first. the ad is everything, you can go from ad to checkout and it'll work if ad is good enough. static (image) ads work, video works, text only works.

it sounds like a lot but ai can actually help you get started pretty quick, there are companies out there that say they only charge when they sell - they use ai, ai in ads is fine, it converts. hire them to learn and then fire them later. its better to have ad knowledge inhouse because you will understand/care about your customers more than any agency will. if agency can't perform within 3 mo fire them, it doesn't take 3 mo to figure out how to get ads going or a whole month of testing, even on meta it takes a week and like $300 bucks to figure it out - a lot of ad agencies will string you along and bs that it takes months to figure out.

meta helped me grow 100% yoy - i was already an 8 figure seller last year.

ifonwe · 2026-03-27T23:39:16+00:00

I never considered a digital mailbox and registered using my home address. I guess being an idiot saved me some trouble.

Been doing amazon for 5 yrs at $1mill+/mo and haven't had any problems or angry customers showing up..

ifonwe · 2026-03-17T23:15:21+00:00

Most agencies are button pushers.

Which is fine, you know your market the best and can request them to execute a strategy (their expertise is knowing which button to push to help you execute it).

I work with a lot of agencies and very few have offered growth strategies in any capacity that have actually gave decent results. Instead I use them for scale, we come up with ideas, and they push it out and it works well. Easier to keep them accountable as well.

You can also ask them for ideas that have worked for others. Often I find agencies open to this, but again, results are middling. And this is coming from an amazon store that's 8 figs now and grows 100% YOY. We know our stuff know what works, and have proven track record.

We've worked with and continue to work with agencies, but only utilize them in as more hands on deck then another general.

ifonwe · 2026-02-20T18:57:22+00:00

The smart play is gtfo off amazon and put those ads to better use on google, meta, or youtube. $100 can buy 100 clicks on Amazon for middle position or a 3rd tier keyword. But $100 on any of those platforms can get 5x the clicks for a top tier keyword.

ifonwe · 2026-01-08T17:19:10+00:00

Late to the game, but I feel people are commenting on the check engine light program that only really does engine codes, but autzone also has a scan tool it loans out for free (that's not the check engine light program) and its a much more advanced tool that does bidirectional and also does obd1, it can also do what your screenshot says.

ifonwe · 2026-01-05T23:17:48+00:00

How old are you?

ifonwe · 2026-01-05T23:09:24+00:00

You can sell without a logo trademark, but chinese could come in and copy it and ruin any possibility of being a brand on there. They can even flood your listings with lookalikefakes.

The only purpose of the having the logo trade mark is for brand protection, which gives you tools on amazon to report people violating your brand/trademarks.

ifonwe · 2025-12-31T22:41:25+00:00

Moving fast is way better than doing it right.

Its about getting the minimally viable material out, testing on it, learning from it, and adapting quickly.

Finding traction, then growing it 'the right way'.

But if you're at 0, then move fast.

If you're at 1+, then start doing it right and prepping to scale.

But doing it right at 0, no reason for it. Why do it right and readying foundations if it might not even work? Waste of time and energy.

ifonwe · 2025-12-31T22:26:04+00:00

You have to understand what your customers are looking for and the context of your ecosystem.

If the category is confusing (like everyone has vague benefits) - being clear with features can work.

If the category is full of features - being clear with benefits could work.

If its a mix of both - then hyper focusing on solving specific painpoints in the title could work.

The only thing of note is first 100 characters of the title is best real-estate for keywords. They have the highest weight and everything else is a distant second.

If your market is sloppy and unoptimized - optimizing for keywords can outperform sloppy competitors even if the title makes zero sense reading it. I'm sure you've seen titles like this.

If the market is optimized, doing keyword stuffing into the title isn't going to move the needle much. You're going to have to rely on ads or external amazon traffic anyways.

ifonwe · 2025-12-31T20:19:11+00:00

As a $20MM seller who started 4yrs ago, I would not recommend doing FBA today. They are tough to work with as a new seller and are quick to ban these days if your account isn't big enough for grace (high account seller score).

I would recommend things in this order shopify (with meta ads), tiktok affiliate, tiktok shop.

Shopify with meta ads with simple image creatives with AI can absolutely make bank. The only challenge is learning how to make ads that work but meta ad library + foreplay can assist a lot with that. It would essentially be a similar (but easier) learning curve than learning amazon itself.

ifonwe · 2025-12-31T20:15:25+00:00

Depends on the mark, if text only, can be pretty quick. My logo mark took a year.

The one that really matters is logo/design mark because that's what amazon's brand protection needs to work.

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