How to choose an Amazon PPC agency — and when you don’t need one.

There is a real case for hiring an Amazon PPC agency, a real case against, and a set of questions that separate the operators from the resellers. Most articles with this title are written by agencies. This one is written by a software company, so read it with that in mind — and then check the recommendations against your own numbers, which is what we would tell you to do with any advice about your account.

When an agency is genuinely the right answer

Your problem is strategy, not arithmetic. Which products to push, how to sequence a launch, what to do when a competitor undercuts you, whether to defend a category or concede it. No bidding tool has an opinion about any of that. A good operator does.

You need someone accountable. Software will not get on a call and explain a bad month. If you need a name attached to the outcome, that is a legitimate reason to pay for one.

Your catalogue is complex and changing. Frequent launches, seasonal swings, many variations, multiple marketplaces with different competitive dynamics. That is judgement work.

You have the spend to make the fee rational. At $50k/month, a 12% fee is $6,000. If the agency improves efficiency by 15%, they have paid for themselves. At $8k/month the same fee is $960 against a much smaller pool of possible gain, and the maths gets thin fast.

When you don’t

Below roughly $10k monthly ad spend. The fee floor most agencies charge eats the gain. You are paying agency prices for work that is mostly mechanical at your scale — the weekly task list is short and largely arithmetic.

When the actual problem is the listing or the margin. If conversion rate is the constraint, no amount of bid management fixes it — you will just buy the wrong traffic more efficiently. Fix the listing, the images, the price, the reviews. Then advertise.

When you can’t tell whether it is working. If you do not have a baseline, you cannot evaluate an agency, and you will end up renewing on vibes. Get a baseline first. Even a month of your own disciplined management gives you something to compare against.

The fee models, and what each one does to incentives

Percentage of ad spend (10–20%). The most common, and the one with the clearest conflict: their revenue rises when your spend rises. Most good agencies do not act on that conflict, but you should still know it exists and ask how they handle it. A reasonable answer is a cap, a tapering rate, or a flat retainer above a threshold.

Flat retainer. Cleaner incentives. The risk shifts to you — if your spend drops, the fee does not.

Performance / commission on sales. Sounds aligned, usually is not. Attribution on Amazon is messy enough that "sales driven by ads" is a number both sides can argue about. It also creates pressure to chase revenue at any ACoS.

Hybrid (retainer + percentage above a threshold). Common at the upper end and generally the fairest structure, provided the threshold is set somewhere honest.

Whichever model you are quoted, price it out over a year at your real spend before you sign — the fee model calculator does the four of them side by side.

Nine questions to ask before signing

1. Who actually works on my account, and how many others do they manage? The person on the sales call is rarely the person in the account. Twenty-plus accounts per manager means yours gets a checklist, not attention.
2. Show me a search term report you cleaned up. Redacted is fine. This is the fastest way to tell an operator from a reseller — they will either have one to hand or they will change the subject.
3. What is my break-even ACoS, and how did you calculate it? If they have not asked for your COGS, FBA fees, referral fee and return rate, they cannot answer this, which means their target ACoS is a guess.
4. What software do you use, and is it included? Many agencies run a tool and bill you for it separately. That is fine — but you should know whether you are paying twice, and whether you keep access if you leave.
5. How often do you touch the account? Weekly is the honest minimum. Ask what "touch" means.
6. What will you report, and how often? Ask for a sample. If the report is ACoS and spend with no explanation of what changed and why, you are buying a dashboard you could build yourself.
7. What happens to my campaigns if I leave? You want structure and history intact, bids in a sane state, and no dependency on their tooling. Get this in writing.
8. What is the notice period? Twelve-month lock-ins for a service you can evaluate in ninety days are a red flag.
9. When would you tell me not to advertise a product? The best answer is a specific story about telling a client to stop. An agency that has never advised against spending is selling spend.

What a good agency relationship looks like six months in

You know why ACoS moved last month without having to ask twice. Your negative keyword list has grown and you can see which additions came from which search term report. Campaign structure reflects how the catalogue actually sells now, not how it sold when you signed. And someone can answer question 3 above from memory.

If none of that is true at month six, the relationship is not going to improve at month twelve.

The middle option people forget

Agency or software is a false binary. A common and sensible setup is software doing the mechanical work, and a consultant on a few hours a month for the judgement calls. You get consistency on the recurring tasks and expertise where it actually earns its rate, usually for less than a full percentage-of-spend retainer.

That is also how a lot of good agencies run internally, which is worth knowing: when you hire one, you are often paying for their software plus their judgement. Asking which part of the fee is which is a fair question.

The one-line version

Hire an agency when the problem is strategy, accountability or a catalogue that will not sit still; skip one below roughly $10k in monthly spend, when the listing is the real constraint, or when you have no baseline to judge them by.

Common questions

How much does an Amazon PPC agency cost?

Typically 10–20% of monthly ad spend, often with a floor around $1,000–2,000/month. Flat retainers and hybrid models (retainer plus a percentage above a threshold) are also common at the upper end.

When should you hire an Amazon PPC agency?

When the problem is strategy rather than arithmetic, when you need someone accountable for the outcome, or when spend is high enough — usually above $10,000/month — that the fee is small relative to the efficiency they can gain.

What should you ask an Amazon PPC agency before hiring?

Who works on the account and how many others they manage; how they calculated your break-even ACoS; what software is included; how often they touch the account; what happens to your campaigns if you leave; and when they have advised a client not to advertise something.

Is an Amazon PPC agency better than software?

They solve different problems. Software applies mechanical rules consistently and costs less above roughly $10k monthly spend. An agency brings judgement on strategy, launches and catalogue decisions. A common middle path is software for the recurring work plus a consultant for the judgement calls.

We build the software half, and how it sits against the other tools is set out here. If you are an agency, the multi-account console is here — per-bid traces you can hand a client, client reports carrying your branding, and per-seat billing rather than a slice of your clients’ spend.

If you are a seller weighing this up: run the free waste audit first, on us. It gives you the baseline you need to evaluate anyone — including us. No card, and you keep the report whichever way you go.