How Does a New Amazon Product Hit CA$177K in 18 Weeks?

A first-time home and textile seller on Amazon Canada. A 40% ACoS on purpose. Then the week the plan almost broke.

A first-time home and textile seller on Amazon Canada went from zero to CA$177,887 in 18 weeks. The launch paid a high ACoS early to buy ranking signals. Then it scaled into rank. Then organic orders took over. The hard part came in the middle. One bad week said pull back. The team read the trend and held the plan.

What was the challenge?

The product was brand new on Amazon Canada. It had no reviews, no sales history and no organic rank. In week 1 the listing sold 15 units for CA$1,125. Only 13% of orders came from organic search. Ads brought in the rest. The launch had to buy its first sales before organic search sent any.

The week 1 row in the launch tracker showed a 40.1% ACoS and a 34.4% TACoS. For every dollar of total sales, 34.4 cents went to ads. A row like this makes a new seller want to cut the ads in week 2.

What did we find?

The week 1 ACoS was the cost of starting from zero. A new listing has no organic rank. Ads have to create the first sales. The real risk was clicks without purchases. So the team checked click-through and conversion on the target terms before adding budget. Both held.

ACoS is ad spend divided by ad sales. TACoS is ad spend divided by total sales. Organic share is the percent of orders with no ad click.

The working rule on this account: organic rank on a search term follows sales on that term. Week 2 sales rose to CA$2,145. ACoS came down to 36.1%.

What did we fix first and why?

The launch ran in four phases. Weeks 1-2 bought ranking signals. Weeks 3-7 scaled into rank. Weeks 8-14 cut ad spend to hold rank at a profit. Weeks 15-18 kept PPC as support. The order mattered. Each phase bought rank for the next phase to use.

Week 4 was the test. Revenue rose from CA$6,169 in week 3 to CA$9,787. TACoS jumped from 11.0% to 21.2%. Organic share of orders fell from 54.8% to 39.2%.

On one week's report, ads looked like they were buying back free organic sales. Pulling back looked like the safe choice.

The team held the plan and kept scaling into rank. The phase ran from week 3 to week 7. The team judged it on those five weeks. Week 5 sold CA$14,692 at a 14.9% TACoS, with 62.6% of orders organic. Week 7 peaked at CA$19,879 and 297 units, at a 9.5% TACoS. That was the week I knew the rank was real.

In weeks 8 to 14, ad spend came down. Weekly sales slid from CA$15,992 in week 8 to CA$9,783 in week 14. Organic share stayed between 57.6% and 72.3%. TACoS averaged 11.9%. The goal of this phase was rank at a profit.

In weeks 15 to 18, ACoS averaged 50.3%. Week 15 alone ran at 62.8%. I left it alone. TACoS across those four weeks averaged 14.7%. Organic share stayed between 69% and 80% of orders. Weeks 1 to 14 built the rank. The 62.8% ACoS paid to defend it.

What did the 18 weeks deliver?

The launch made CA$177,887 and sold 2,583 units. ACoS over the full run was 31.09%. TACoS was 12.9%. 59.35% of orders were organic: 1,533 organic orders against 1,050 from ads. PPC spend for the whole launch was CA$22,969.60.

Organic revenue reached CA$103,997.31. PPC revenue was CA$73,889.49. The ads paid for the rank. The rank paid for most of the sales.

What does this mean for your brand?

Judge your launch by phase averages and direction. A single week's ACoS or TACoS hides where the launch is going. In this account, week 4 ran at a 21.2% TACoS. Weeks 3 to 7 averaged 13.8%. Set the phase targets before launch. Then read each week against them.

Write the targets down before the first click. An ACoS limit for weeks 1-2. A TACoS target for the end of week 7. An organic share you expect by week 15. Then you judge a bad week against the plan.

I run Amazon launches for brands from the first ad report to the harvest phase. Much of the job is knowing which weeks to ignore.

What to do this week

• Before launch, put the three phase targets in your launch sheet: weeks 1-2 ACoS, week 7 TACoS, week 15 organic share.
• In week 1, open the search term report in Campaign Manager. Check click-through and conversion on the terms you want to rank for before you raise the budget.
• Each week, log revenue, TACoS and organic share of orders in one sheet. Organic orders are total orders from the Business Report minus ad orders from Campaign Manager.
• Before you cut a high-ACoS campaign late in a launch, read TACoS and the organic order share for the same weeks.

FAQ

What ACoS should a new Amazon product launch at?

In the first two weeks, on terms you want to rank for, a high ACoS is fine while shoppers click and buy. In this launch, ACoS averaged 38.1% in weeks 1-2. TACoS across the 18 weeks was 12.9%.

How long does a new listing take to get most orders from organic search?

In this launch, 55.3% of orders were organic in week 7. By week 15 the share was 79.7%. Category, price and review count all change the timeline.

Should I cut PPC when TACoS jumps during a launch?

Read the phase first. In this launch, TACoS jumped to 21.2% in week 4. Week 5 came back to 14.9%. The average for weeks 3 to 7 was 13.8%.

Week 4 looked like the week to pull back. Three weeks later the listing had its best week of the launch.

In your last launch, which week almost made you cut the ads?

Sources

First-hand account data from an account our team ran (agency-side), anonymised. All figures in Canadian dollars. Proof Bank row PB-04 (18-week launch). No outside sources.