Amazon TACoS: how to work it out and what a healthy figure looks like

What ACoS and TACoS mean

Most of Amazon’s sponsored ads are PPC (pay-per-click) ads: you pay each time a shopper clicks. ACoS (advertising cost of sale) is Amazon’s own measure of them. Its ACoS guide gives the formula as “ACOS = (ad spend ÷ ad revenue) x 100”.

What is advertising cost of sales (ACOS)?

Advertising cost of sales (ACOS) is a metric that measures ad spend and ad revenue.

Formula ACOS = (ad spend ÷ ad revenue) x 100

Example if you spent $50 on an ad campaign and earned $100 from it, your Amazon ACOS would be 50%.

Profit In order to maintain a profit, your Amazon ACOS needs to be lower than your profit margin.

That guide never mentions TACoS. TACoS is a seller’s metric: you build it yourself from two reports, one for ad spend and one for total sales.

The difference is the bottom of the fraction. ACoS only counts sales Amazon attributes to a click on your ad. TACoS counts every sale, including shoppers who found you in search or came back on their own.

ACOS vs. TACOS: What Every Amazon Seller Should KnowMy Amazon Guy

Total sales are normally at least as large as ad sales, so TACoS is normally lower than ACoS. Over a short date range it can flip, because Amazon credits an ad sale up to 7 or 14 days after the click.

The TACoS formula, worked in dollars

Take one month for a single brand:

1. You spend $3,000 on sponsored ads.
2. Amazon credits those ads with $12,000 of sales.
3. Your Business Reports show $40,000 of total sales.

ACoS is 3,000 divided by 12,000, or 25%. TACoS is 3,000 divided by 40,000, or 7.5%.

The two figures are linked. Ads brought in 30% of your sales (12,000 of 40,000), and 25% times 30% gives the same 7.5%. So TACoS equals ACoS multiplied by the share of sales your ads drive. Written out:

TACoS = ACoS × (ad sales ÷ total sales)

In Eva’s sample, ads drove a median 36.3% of total sales, so a 28.4% ACoS works out at about a 10% TACoS (28.4% × 36.3% = 10.3%).

What a rising or falling TACoS tells you

TACoS moves when either ad spend or total sales moves faster than the other. Read it beside both numbers, never alone.

A falling TACoS while you spend more is the result most sellers want. Eva links creator and social content to branded search, which it says “shows up on Amazon as cheaper branded clicks and more organic sales, which is what pulls TACoS down over time.”

A rising TACoS is not always bad. A launch pushes spend ahead of organic sales on purpose, to win rank. The question is whether total sales follow within the months you planned for.

What a healthy TACoS looks like on Amazon

The most detailed dated benchmark is Eva Commerce’s October 2026 study, published on 26 October 2026. It covers 150 US brand accounts Eva works with, over 90 days that include Prime Big Deal Days. Its headline figures are medians, so “one large account cannot move them.”

The middle half of those brands ran a TACoS between 8.1% and 12.8%, with the median at 10.6%. Their median ACoS was 28.4%.

Size matters too. The smallest band in the study (76 accounts) had a median TACoS of 11.2%. The largest (11 accounts) had 9.7%, even though its ACoS was not lower. Eva calls that top band, eight to twenty million dollars a year, “directional”, because it has only 11 accounts.

Those figures describe what other brands spend, and brands selling under a million dollars a year are not in the sample. Your ceiling comes from your own margin.

Your break-even TACoS is your margin before ads

Profit before ads, divided by total sales, is the highest TACoS you can carry. Above it, ad spend outruns what all your Amazon sales earn before ads, and the account loses money. Say a product sells for $25 and costs $17 once the product, referral fee and FBA fee are paid.

That leaves 8 of 25, a 32% margin before ads. A 32% TACoS breaks even; 10% leaves 22 points of profit; 40% loses money on the whole account, organic sales included.

How to read TACoS per product

One TACoS for the whole account can mix a product that earns with one that burns cash. Work it out for each ASIN (Amazon’s product ID), from two reports:

1. Total sales per product: in Seller Central, Business Reports, the sales and traffic report by child item. Amazon’s Sales and Traffic report holds ordered product sales by date and ASIN, at parent, child or SKU level.
2. Ad spend per product: the advertised product report in the Amazon Ads console. Amazon’s guide to measuring campaigns lists it for the sales and performance of each advertised product over time.

Use the same date range and the same level in both. Then divide spend by total sales, product by product.

Child ASINs (a size or colour of one listing) show which variant the ads sell. Picture a best seller at 6% beside a new product at 30%: the account average can look healthy while the new one loses money.

Working out TACoS with a calculator

A spreadsheet with the formula above does the job. If you prefer sliders, BidX has a free Enterprise TACoS Calculator that runs in the browser. The BidX profile covers what the paid tool automates and what it costs.

It takes six inputs. The first three are your number of brands or ASINs, monthly ad spend and total monthly Amazon revenue. The others are average order value and the share of sales from PPC. The last is the share of spend on Amazon DSP (Amazon’s display and video ad platform).

It returns TACoS, blended ROAS (revenue over ad spend), organic sales and cost per customer.

The calculator grades your TACoS with BidX’s own bands: under 12% is “Best in Class”, up to 18% “Strong”, up to 25% “Fair” and above that “Needs Attention”. The page says it is built for brands spending $50,000 a month or more on Amazon ads.

The median brand in Eva’s sample, at 10.6%, already sits inside BidX’s “Best in Class” band, and the line sits close to the sample’s upper quartile of 12.8%. So read the bands as a pitch to big spenders. For a benchmark, use Eva’s figures above.

Want software to steer bids towards a TACoS target? Amazon PPC software compares the options.

Questions about Amazon TACoS

What is a good TACoS on Amazon?

Below your margin before ads, first. In Eva Commerce’s October 2026 study of 150 US brands, the median was 10.6% and the middle half ran between 8.1% and 12.8%.

Is TACoS higher or lower than ACoS?

Normally lower. TACoS divides the same ad spend by all your sales, and total sales are normally at least your ad sales.

What is the TACoS formula?

TACoS = ad spend ÷ total Amazon sales × 100. It also equals ACoS multiplied by the share of sales that come from ads.

Is a high TACoS bad?

Not during a launch, when you spend ahead of organic sales to win rank. It is bad when it stays above your margin, or rises while total sales stay flat.

Does Amazon show TACoS?

No ready-made figure in the ACoS guide: you work it out from your ads console spend and your Seller Central total sales.