Ads costs spiking but ROAS tanking - Ads are now costing more than my sales are bringing in
I've dabbled with Amazon Ads for a few months and I generally spent about half what the sales bring in. I've just checked today and my £30 daily spend has spent £55 (not even sure how that's possible) and my ads are now costing more than the sales they are bringing in. This has never happened to me before and my ROAS has completely tanked.
Has there been a change recently? Sales across FBA and FBM have been extremely down too. Usually around £500-£1500 sales a day and for the first time since we started on Amazon, we've actually had completely ZERO sales days.
Luckily we sell more on other platforms but it's very odd and feels extremely sudden.
Ads costs spiking but ROAS tanking - Ads are now costing more than my sales are bringing in
I've dabbled with Amazon Ads for a few months and I generally spent about half what the sales bring in. I've just checked today and my £30 daily spend has spent £55 (not even sure how that's possible) and my ads are now costing more than the sales they are bringing in. This has never happened to me before and my ROAS has completely tanked.
Has there been a change recently? Sales across FBA and FBM have been extremely down too. Usually around £500-£1500 sales a day and for the first time since we started on Amazon, we've actually had completely ZERO sales days.
Luckily we sell more on other platforms but it's very odd and feels extremely sudden.
19 replies
Seller_9fA2L82vl2c6V
I've dropped my £30 a day down to £5 for now.
Seller_GnfwUNu4kP47c
Have you got any issues under account health? I had a massive drop in sales and noticed my OTDR went below 50% and until i could get this back to where it needed to be which was 95% and above, my sales were non existent
Seller_pFQ0WwEqpglxS
I've always considered advertising on Amazon to be unprofitable, but over this month it's got much worse. The ad spend continues, but the resulting sales have dropped.
I couldn't say why, or whether it's happing to everyone.
Seller_OM4BK6pjqIuuR
seen a few folk say the same since the AWS outage. I dropped ads aa while back because the roas was awful and they started posting ads on irrelevant 3rd party sites to get impressions up but as the target market wasnt there didnt convert to sales
Seller_7DHSdNwUGZKi5
I thought I was alone on this, it has awful as at some point in September ads spent was £600 plus and my sales were nothing compare so basically paying for adverts, my account was always in minus. I even a VA to help but no improvement. I was told if I stop the adverts completely there will be no sale at all. Up till now my account remains minus. How then can this be addressed?
Seller_7tW7yNKxGkkOW
Ads are working better than ever right now.
You need someone reviewing and optimising them at least once a week to control wasted spend. Regularly using negative phrases and exact matches is essential to shape traffic and filter out the clicks that don’t convert.
Your campaign structure also needs to be clean and organised so you can clearly see what’s delivering a return and what isn’t.
If your structure isn’t well thought out, and you’re mixing different products or combining branded and non-branded terms, you’ll struggle to scale sales or improve ROI.
For example, in my category, fitted sheets and flat sheets are both bedding sheets, but they’re two completely different products. If I mix those within the same campaign, I can’t effectively negative out “flat sheet” or “fitted sheet,” and I can’t remove a colour keyword if it applies to one but not the other. The result is messy data and wasted ad spend.
Seller_9fA2L82vl2c6V
UPDATE: I've turned ads off. Since posting this, my ROAS has completely dipped. I'm spending almost double than the sales I'm making. This is a sudden shift. I've had ads on for a few months and suddenly they are costing more than the sales I am bringing it. Haven't made any changes or anything.
Why would this happen? Now I'm worried no sales are gonna come in.
Minerva_Amazon
Hello @Seller_9fA2L82vl2c6V ,
Have you made any recent changes to your Amazon Ads campaigns, like adjusting targeting, bids, budgets, or ad placements?
Have you reviewed your ad performance metrics like click-through rate, conversion rate, and ACOS to identify where the costs are increasing? Understanding the root causes at the campaign or ad group level could help pinpoint the issues.
I suggest you also to raise a case with the Ads Support Help Center.
Seller_4q3v098L8Fbyy
I spent £1200 in February 2026. My ads were set up to spend no more than £515 a month. I reached out to advertising support and they told me there's no issues...... By the way, I earned £1192 in February so yes, my ads completely burned through 100%+ of my earnings.
I've completely turned them off. I've been with Amazon years and this is the first time anything like this has happened, no change in spend on my end, no change in products, I even did a competition search and nothing stood out.
I've started pushing my website now and stopped Amazon ads altogether
