Outdoor brands can’t afford to ignore Amazon’s massive marketplace. 

In 2023, Amazon’s global advertising revenue hit $49 billion – nearly triple its 2019 level. Amazon now drives around 40% of U.S. e-commerce sales, and 41% of shoppers start product searches there. For outdoor gear companies, that means massive opportunity – and fierce competition. Success comes down to making every advertising dollar count. With over half of marketing budgets now spent on digital channels, tracking the right Amazon advertising metrics is essential. 

Enter ROAS, ACoS, and TACoS – three key metrics every outdoor brand should be tracking to run efficient, scalable Amazon ad campaigns. 

Let’s break down each metric and show how to leverage them strategically.

ROAS Decoded: How to Measure and Maximize Your Advertising ROI

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) measures how much revenue your ads generate for each dollar spent – essentially your advertising ROI. It’s calculated as:

Ad Revenue ÷ Ad Spend
For example, if you spend $100 on Amazon PPC ads and they drive $400 in sales, your ROAS is 4.0 (or 400%). 

A higher ROAS means a strong return on ad spend, indicating efficient campaigns. Many marketers monitor ROAS as a primary success indicator because it quantifies revenue gained per dollar invested. However, ROAS alone isn’t a full picture – ROAS doesn’t account for profit margins. For instance, a spike in ROAS for a seasonal outdoor product might reflect better targeting and creative, but without profit context, it can be misleading.‍

Pro tip: ROAS is the inverse of ACoS — they’re two sides of the same coin. Use ROAS to compare performance across campaigns and optimize budget allocation (a campaign with ROAS 5x is generally outperforming one at 2x). Just remember: very high ROAS can also mean you’re underspending or not scaling effectively.

To improve ROAS, focus on better keywords, smarter bidding, and high-converting creatives.

From Overspend to Optimization: Understanding ACoS in Amazon PPC

ACoS stands for Advertising Cost of Sales, the flip side of ROAS. It’s calculated as: 

Ad Spend ÷ Ad Sales (usually expressed as a percentage) 

ACoS tells you what percentage of your sales revenue is being eaten up by ad spend. For instance, if you spent $100 on ads for your hiking backpacks and those ads drove $500 in sales, your ACoS is 20%. 

In general, lower ACoS is better – it means you spent less for each dollar of sales. An ACoS of 20% indicates you spent $0.20 per $1 of sales, whereas an ACoS of 50% means you spent half the revenue on ads. Crucially, 100% ACoS is roughly break-even (spending $1 to make $1). In fact, Amazon notes that your break-even ACoS aligns with your product’s profit margin – any ACoS higher than your margin means you’re losing money on those sales. 

High-margin outdoor gear like premium trekking poles might tolerate a higher ACoS during launch to build awareness. But for low-margin items, keeping ACoS lean is essential.ACoS is ideal for keyword-level and campaign-level optimizations: you can set target ACoS for campaigns and adjust bids accordingly (for example, lower bids on keywords with too high ACoS). Keep in mind that sometimes a high ACoS can be strategic – if you’re investing in a new product launch or trying to dominate a category, overspending on ads upfront can boost organic ranking later. The key is to monitor ACoS closely and bring it down to sustainable levels over time. 

In practice, many outdoor sellers aim to keep ACoS below their profit margin (say your margin is 30%, you’d target <30% ACoS) for day-to-day profitability. ACoS gives a clear view of ad spend efficiency, but it still only considers sales from ads. This is where the holistic metric TACoS comes in.

Looking Beyond ACoS: Why TACoS Matters Most for Growth

TACoS (Total Advertising Cost of Sales) expands the view to your total sales, not just ad-attributed sales. The formula is:

 Ad Spend ÷ Total Sales (ad sales + organic sales)

TACoS reveals how your ad spend compares to all revenue generated, providing a holistic health check on your Amazon performance.

Why does this matter? 

Because a moderate ACoS might not look bad on the surface, but if those ad sales aren’t leading to any organic lift, your total growth may be stagnant. TACoS captures the full impact of advertising, both direct and indirect.  

“You can’t spend wisely unless you understand marketing’s full impact.” – McKinsey

In the context of Amazon, that means tracking whether your ads spur broader sales momentum. For example, imagine your camping gear ad campaigns have a high 50% ACoS, but your overall TACoS is only 15% because you’re getting lots of organic sales volume. That indicates your ads are driving organic visibility (perhaps improving rankings and reviews), which boosts non-ad sales – a positive sign. On the flip side, if your TACoS is nearly as high as your ACoS (meaning most of your sales are coming via ads), you may be over-reliant on paid traffic. 

Smart brands use TACoS as a long-term performance indicator. Ideally, TACoS decreases over time as organic sales rise.

Example: An outdoor apparel brand launched a jacket line with an ACoS of 40% and TACoS of 20%. As ads boosted rankings and reviews, organic sales climbed. Six months later, TACoS dropped to 10% while ACoS improved to 30% — a clear signal of sustainable growth.

Data-driven marketers who watch TACoS can balance short-term ad efficiency with long-term brand growth – Gartner found that data-driven companies are 23% more likely to acquire new customers underscoring the value of measuring metrics like TACoS. 

If tracking all these metrics feels overwhelming, you’re not alone – our team at Algofy Outdoors helps outdoor brands make sense of the data and fine-tune their Amazon ad optimization for sustainable growth.

Outdoor Brand Success Stories: ROAS, ACoS, and TACoS Driven by Amazon Metrics

Nothing illustrates the power of these metrics better than real-world outdoor brands who have optimized their Amazon PPC. Let’s look at two success stories – one from fishing and one from hiking/camping – and how focusing on ROAS, ACOS, and TACOS paid off.

Feeder Creek (Fishing Flies)

Feeder Creek, a specialty fishing fly brand, realized they were missing out on Amazon sales and wasting ad spend on inefficient campaigns. They partnered with a marketing team to overhaul their Amazon strategy, optimizing listings (SEO and A+ content) and revamping PPC targeting to eliminate waste and boost conversions. The result? Feeder Creek’s Amazon traffic jumped by 146%, and revenue by 108%, after focusing on the right keywords and reducing their ACOS. In practice, they cut spending on broad terms that weren’t converting (improving efficiency) and doubled down on profitable ads (raising ROAS). Their Total ACOS likely fell as organic sales climbed from better product visibility. This fishing brand went from feeling invisible to reeling in orders hand over fist, simply by getting their metrics in line.

Orange Screw (Camping Gear)

 Orange Screw, known for innovative tent anchors, also faced stagnating Amazon performance. After a couple of years, their advertising sales flatlined and ROAS began to decrease, causing serious FOMO as competitors gained ground. By deploying a smarter, data-driven PPC strategy (leveraging an AI bidding platform and targeting tweaks), Orange Screw achieved a stunning turnaround: Amazon-driven traffic rose +165%, revenue +108%, and transactions +95%. In other words, they nearly doubled their sales by improving ad efficiency and scaling winning campaigns. Orange Screw’s case underlines how monitoring these metrics can signal when you’re “falling behind” and need to optimize. 

The Bottom Line

These real-world wins show just how powerful it is to track the right Amazon metrics. At Algofy Outdoors, we’ve seen brands grow fast by leaning into data: one client boosted Amazon revenue by +321% in just a year with optimized listings and smarter PPC; another saw a 77% jump by dialing in their ad strategy. These aren’t vanity metrics—they’re the payoff of tracking ROAS, ACoS, and TACoS with purpose.

For more actionable Amazon strategies, be sure to check out our guide on 2025 Amazon Marketing Secret: Non-PPC Strategies You’re Missing! – it explores how to drive product visibility beyond PPC, complementing the metric-driven tactics discussed here.

Ready to elevate your Amazon advertising ROI? Contact Algofy Outdoors today to start optimizing.