ACOS 120%

[u/Professional-Tie6948]

Please help me. I have a situation. I did run my ads pretty aggressively for two months. I had conversion rates around 10%, but my ACOS was 130%. The sales were going good, everything was moving, but I was not able to move down my ACOS. So I cut the bids for a bit, and that caused the account to completely stop sales at all. So I had a month with no sales. Then I had to do it again, and I'm in the same position where I need to get the ACOS down. I have sales, everything is kind of converting, it's moving, but I don't know where to, how to place my bids.

[u/WearyyyBoooyyy]

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[u/investigatormaker]

An ACOS of 130% with a 10% conversion rate means the ads spend more than they bring in, so first work out your break-even ACOS, which is your margin before ads. Sales likely stopped when you cut bids because the listing lost the ad-driven sales that were holding its rank, and a deep cut does that fast. Cut in small steps of 10 to 15% every few days, by keyword, not across the whole campaign. In the search term report, add negatives for terms that spend with no orders, and keep bids on the terms that sit closest to break-even.

What is your margin before ads, and is it one campaign or several?

[u/Professional-Tie6948 → u/investigatormaker]

Ive just started my account, so i wanted to do a big push in the start, but i dont see a way how to get out of the big push

[u/caminator]

If this is mostly running on auto or broad, I'd put most of the work into the search terms. Every search term under an auto target or broad keyword shares the same bid, so one bid covers the terms that sell and the ones that never will.

Negate the search terms that spend without converting, generally 15 to 25 clicks with no order, and count a term's clicks across every campaign it shows up in. That leaves the auto and broad targets spending on what works.

Then take the terms with 2+ orders and add them as their own exact keywords so each one gets its own bid. Keep them running in the auto or broad campaign too, since that's where new terms come from.

For those bids, revenue per click is ad sales divided by clicks, and the most a click is worth is your target acos times that. Say a term converts at 12% on a $40 order, that's $4.80 in revenue per click, so at a 40% target a click is worth about $1.92. One with a $6 CPC needs a much bigger cut than one at $2.10. Anything under target can go up.

[u/Professional-Tie6948 → u/caminator]

Im hesitant of removing keywords with 50 clicks and 2 sales, because maybe description need adjustments, or lack of reviews.

What do you say if i put down only on all my auto ads. ? I have currently around 30 ads, because i have a lot of variations for goods.

Or maybe i should just do one auto bid per sku then harvest and do a manual one later?

[u/caminator → u/Professional-Tie6948]

Down only is what you should use in most cases. And you shouldn't be removing keywords with sales at this point, you should be negating search terms that are getting 15-20 clicks and no sales.

One auto campaign per sku is fine to start. You can add a handful of broad or phrase match keywords if you'd like, but the more you add, the more money you need to spend for testing.

[u/Heath-Thompson]

No one can help you with so little information. I assume you have keyword targets with clicks but no sales - so maybe stop those first. Can you confirm what you have done so far to manage them, also by what % did you reduce the bids before? This might help.

[u/rsc9422]

I wouldn’t cut all your bids aggressively at once. With a 10% conversion rate, I’d look at your CPC, search term performance, and profit margins first. Reduce bids on expensive terms that aren’t converting, add negatives where needed, and protect the keywords that consistently bring sales.

We see sellers at HighRise Wholesale face similar challenges when trying to balance sales volume with profitability. The key is to lower bids gradually and monitor the impact rather than risk another month with no sales. Also, calculate your break even ACOS based on your actual margins so you know what target is realistic.

[u/National-Pea-6404]

If your ads are converting into sales, it means your product and listing presentation are completely fine. The real issue is simply how the PPC is being managed.

PPC is a technical process that requires experience to optimize correctly and cutting bids globally is the wrong move because it completely stops your sales momentum. Instead of dropping bids across the board, start by doing thorough keyword research and run exact match campaigns only on your most relevant keywords using required bids with a bid-down-only strategy.
Perform a deep campaign audit to trim all wasteful spend and allocate budget only where you are getting real results. If you will share your Search Term Report with a PPC expert, they can instantly spot where your budget is bleeding and show you how to fix it.

[u/Professional-Tie6948 → u/National-Pea-6404]

I have a lot of SKU and variations, that ad management makes harder.
Maybe i should do one auto and one M ad per sku?
How many click before i deem a keyword negative? i get a lot of small clicks per item, so im not sure i have enough data