What an Amazon PPC agency actually covers
A PPC agency's scope is advertising: Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display and, at higher spend levels, DSP. The work is campaign structure, bid and budget management, keyword and search term harvesting, and reporting on advertising efficiency, usually measured through ACoS and total advertising cost of sales (TACoS).
That is a deep specialism in its own right. A good PPC agency is in the advertising console every day, understands auctions and placements in detail, and can make a real difference to advertising efficiency on an account whose listings and inventory are in reasonable shape.
What matters most is where the scope stops. A PPC agency is not usually responsible for listing content, organic search rank strategy, account health, inventory planning or wider brand positioning. If your account's problem sits in one of those areas, a PPC agency will improve what it controls while the real issue carries on untouched.
In a typical month, PPC work looks like this: weekly search term reviews and negative keywords, bid changes on keywords and placements, budget moves between campaigns, new campaigns for products or keywords that have earned them, and a report on spend, sales, ACoS and TACoS. Ask any PPC agency you are considering to show you a real example of that report with the client's name removed.
What an Amazon marketing agency typically adds
"Marketing agency" usually signals a broader scope: advertising plus content and listing optimisation, organic search strategy, and often brand positioning and creative direction across the catalogue. The thinking is that these workstreams affect each other. A strong listing makes ad spend more efficient, and ad traffic shows which content converts and which does not, so managing them together should produce a better result than managing each one alone.
In practice the industry uses the label loosely. Some agencies that call themselves marketing agencies are really running PPC with a content add-on. Others do integrate strategy, content, advertising and operations into one coordinated function. The name on the proposal will not tell you which you are getting, so confirm the scope directly instead of assuming it from the title.
The two scopes side by side
| Area | PPC agency | Marketing agency (integrated) |
|---|---|---|
| Sponsored Products, Brands and Display | Core of the work | Included |
| DSP | Sometimes, at higher spend | Sometimes, at higher spend |
| Listing copy and keyword research for organic rank | Usually not, or only advice | Usually included |
| Images, A+ Content and Brand Store | Not included | Often included or managed through partners |
| Account health and catalog issues | Not included | Sometimes included; check |
| Inventory planning | Not included | Sometimes included; check |
| Main measure of success | ACoS and TACoS | Total sales, TACoS and organic share |
The "check" rows are where proposals differ most. Two agencies with the same label can be very different on account health and inventory, and those are the areas that cause the most damage when nobody owns them.
Which one your account actually needs
A PPC agency fits well when your listings are already strong, account health is clean, and advertising efficiency is the one specific problem you need solved. Adding a narrow specialist to an otherwise well-run account is often the cheapest way to fix a focused issue.
A broader marketing agency fits better when several workstreams need attention at once, or when you do not have people in-house who can coordinate advertising, content and operations decisions. Running several narrow specialists side by side with nobody coordinating them often leads to conflicting priorities and slower progress than one integrated team would manage.
Whatever an agency calls itself, the practical test is to ask for its scope of work in writing and compare it with what your account needs. The statement of work tells you far more than the label on the door.
How to tell where your constraint is
You can get a good first answer from Seller Central before you talk to any agency. Open Reports, then Business Reports, and look at the Detail Page Sales and Traffic report for your main ASINs over the last 90 days.
- If sessions are healthy but unit session percentage (conversion) is low compared with your own history or similar products, the listing is probably the constraint. More ad spend will buy more traffic that does not convert.
- If conversion is healthy but sessions are falling, look at organic rank and advertising. That pattern is closer to PPC agency territory.
- If ACoS is high but TACoS is stable or falling, advertising may be doing its job of supporting organic sales, and a PPC agency that cuts spend to lower ACoS could hurt total sales. Our explainer on TACoS and ACoS covers how to read the two together.
- If you see stockouts, suppressed listings or account health warnings in the same period, no amount of advertising work will fix them. You need someone who owns operations.
If you have Brand Registry, the Search Query Performance report in Brand Analytics adds detail: it shows whether you are losing shoppers at the impression, click, cart or purchase stage for your main search terms, which points to either an advertising or a listing problem.
How the two are usually priced
PPC agencies commonly charge a percentage of ad spend, a flat monthly fee, or a flat fee with a percentage above a spend threshold. Marketing agencies more often charge a monthly retainer, sometimes with a performance element tied to sales growth, plus project fees for creative work.
Each model creates its own incentive. A fee based on ad spend rewards spending more, so check that the agency reports on TACoS and total sales and not only on ad-attributed revenue. A flat retainer is easier to budget but needs a clear scope, or the hours drift toward whatever is easiest. A performance element sounds attractive but needs a clear baseline and a definition of which sales count. Whatever the model, read the notice period and termination terms before you sign; our guide to Amazon agency contracts covers what to look for.
Questions to ask either type of agency
- Which of the areas in the table above will you own, and which will you only advise on?
- Who will work on our account each week, and how many other accounts do they manage?
- How will you measure success: ACoS, TACoS, total sales, organic rank, or a mix? What targets would you set for us in the first 90 days?
- When you find a problem outside your scope, such as a weak listing or a stockout, what will you do about it?
- What access will you need, and will we keep ownership of the ad account, reports and any tools if we part ways?
A PPC agency that answers the fourth question with "we flag it to you in writing, with the data" is usually a safe choice for an account with good listings. A marketing agency should be able to describe how its content and advertising teams actually share information, not just say that they do.
Warning signs in a proposal
- A "marketing agency" proposal where every deliverable is an advertising task, with content listed only as "optimisation recommendations". That is a PPC agency with a broader name.
- A PPC proposal that promises organic rank or total sales growth without saying who will fix the listings those depend on.
- Reports that show only ad-attributed sales and ACoS, with no TACoS, total sales or organic trend.
- No named person responsible for your account, or a team member managing so many accounts that they cannot realistically review yours every week.
- A request to run ads from an account the agency owns, or to share your Seller Central login instead of being added as a user.
- Long minimum terms with no performance review point. A reasonable agency will agree to a review at 90 days and say what it expects to have changed by then.
Moving from one type to the other later
The choice is not permanent. A common path is to start with a PPC agency while the listings are strong and advertising is the clear problem, then move to an integrated agency as the catalog grows and content, launches and operations start to compete for attention. The reverse also happens: once an integrated agency has fixed the listings and the account runs smoothly, some brands bring content in-house and keep only a PPC specialist.
Whichever way you move, ask the outgoing agency for a handover before the contract ends: campaign structure notes, negative keyword lists, any automation rules, and the reports for the last few months. Make sure every campaign, report and creative file sits in accounts you own, so the next agency starts from the record instead of rebuilding from nothing. Our guide to choosing an Amazon agency has a fuller checklist for comparing proposals.
Frequently Asked Questions
Generally yes, because the scope is broader and usually includes more workstreams and more specialist roles. Whether it is better value depends on whether you need that broader scope. Paying for integrated content, strategy and operations work you do not need is poor value at any price.
Yes, and some brands run this setup well, but someone on your side has to coordinate the two, because advertising and content decisions affect each other. If nobody is actively coordinating them, priorities can drift apart without either agency being at fault.
Usually yes, if it is a properly integrated marketing agency, since content and keyword work for organic rank overlaps heavily with the work that supports advertising. Confirm it in the scope of work instead of assuming it from the label, because practice varies.
Look at where your real constraint is. If listings are strong, account health is clean and advertising efficiency is the one problem, a PPC specialist probably fits. If several areas need attention together, or you lack the in-house capacity to coordinate several specialists, a broader marketing agency is usually the better fit.
No. The terms are used inconsistently across the industry, and a marketing agency and a PPC agency can offer very similar scope under different names, or very different scope under similar names. Always ask for the statement of work instead of relying on the label.
No. ACoS shows how efficiently ad spend turns into ad-attributed sales, but it can fall simply because the agency cut spend on keywords that were also driving organic sales. Look at TACoS and total sales alongside it, and agree before you start which of those numbers the agency is accountable for.