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Glossary

Amazon terminology, in plain language.

Short, opinionated definitions of the terms AMALYZE uses across Advertising, Analytics, and Listing. Every entry is auto-linked from the articles where it appears.

A

A+ Content

A+ Content is Amazon's enhanced description module available to Brand Registry sellers and vendors. It replaces the plain-text description with image-and-text modules, comparison charts, and brand story. Premium A+ adds interactive modules at higher tier.

Account Health

Account Health is the Seller Central dashboard and underlying Account Health Rating (AHR) that score a seller's compliance with Amazon's performance, customer-service and policy standards. A failing score risks listing suppression, account suspension and inability to sell.

ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sales)

ACOS is the share of advertising-attributed revenue spent on ads — calculated as ad spend divided by ad sales. It's the core profitability metric for Amazon PPC campaigns.

Ad Auction

The Amazon ad auction is the real-time mechanism that decides which Sponsored ads serve on each impression. Every search query, detail-page view and placement triggers a separate auction in which advertisers' effective bids — modified by relevance and dynamic bidding — compete for ranked slots.

Ad Group

An ad group is the container inside a campaign that holds ads, keywords or product targets, and bids. Ad-group structure is where bid precision actually lives — themes that share intent and CVR should share an ad group; everything else should split.

Ad Spend

Ad spend is the actual money charged for ad clicks in a given period — the realised cost, distinct from the budget cap. Total ad spend equals the sum of CPCs paid. Ad spend is the numerator of every efficiency metric in the account (ACOS, ROAS, TACOS).

Add-to-Cart (ATC)

Add-to-Cart is the moment a shopper places a product in their Amazon cart without yet purchasing. ATC rate is the pre-purchase intent signal — a leading indicator of CVR, a remarketing trigger, and a critical funnel metric exposed in Brand Analytics' Search Query Performance.

Amazon

The world's largest e-commerce marketplace and the primary sales channel that AMALYZE is built around — covering Sellers, Vendors, advertising, and listing optimization across all regional storefronts.

Amazon Advertising

Amazon Advertising is Amazon's full advertising platform — encompassing self-service Sponsored Products / Brands / Display, the programmatic Amazon DSP, the Ads API, and the Amazon Marketing Cloud data clean room. Amazon PPC is the self-service subset.

Amazon Audience

Amazon Audiences are pre-built shopper segments offered in Sponsored Display and DSP for behavioural and demographic targeting — in-market shoppers, lifestyle clusters, life-event segments, and interest categories — built from Amazon's first-party shopping and streaming data.

Amazon Brand Analytics

Amazon Brand Analytics (ABA) is a free Seller/Vendor Central reporting suite available to brand-registered sellers. It exposes shopper-level data Amazon does not surface elsewhere — top search terms with share metrics, market basket analysis, item comparison, demographics and repeat purchase behaviour.

Amazon DSP

Amazon DSP is Amazon's demand-side platform — a programmatic ad-buying system that places display, video and audio ads on Amazon properties and across the open web, targeted by Amazon's shopper and purchase signals.

Amazon FBA

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is Amazon's outsourced storage, packing, shipping, and customer service program for third-party Sellers — the operational backbone that makes Prime eligibility possible.

Amazon Global Logistics (AGL)

Amazon Global Logistics (AGL) is Amazon's own freight-forwarding service. It moves a seller's inventory by ocean or air from origin (typically China) directly into Amazon FBA fulfilment centres, with Amazon handling customs, drayage and inbound check-in.

Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC)

Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) is Amazon's privacy-safe clean room. It joins event-level Sponsored Ads, DSP, and conversion data so advertisers can run custom attribution, audience overlap, and incrementality analyses that the standard UI cannot deliver.

Amazon Marketing Stream

Amazon's near-real-time hourly data feed for advertising performance — replacing the daily reporting cadence of the Ads Console and unlocking 24/7 bid, budget, and placement optimization.

Amazon PPC

Pay-per-click advertising on Amazon — Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display campaigns where advertisers bid for placement and only pay when a shopper clicks.

ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number)

An ASIN is the 10-character alphanumeric identifier Amazon assigns to every product in its catalogue. Every detail page, every ad target, every report row is keyed by ASIN.

Attribution Model

The attribution model is the rule that decides which ad interaction gets credit for a sale when more than one is eligible. Amazon's Sponsored Ads default is last-touch, click-through; Sponsored Display and DSP add view-through.

Attribution Window

The attribution window is the number of days after an ad click during which a resulting order is still credited to that click. Amazon's default is 7 days for Sponsored Products; the choice of window directly changes reported ACOS.

Auto Targeting (Auto Campaign)

Auto targeting is the Sponsored Products mode where Amazon — not the advertiser — chooses which keywords and ASINs to bid on. The lowest-friction discovery engine in the format; underused as a harvest source.

Average Order Value (AOV)

AOV is gross sales divided by orders — the average revenue per order. On Amazon, AOV rises through virtual bundles, multi-packs, parent-child variations that include larger sizes, and frequently-bought-together placements.

Average Selling Price (ASP)

ASP is the average price a unit actually sold for in a defined period — gross sales divided by units sold. It is the single most important input into every PPC bid math formula and the lever advertisers most often forget they have.

B

Base Bid

The base bid is the unmodified bid value an advertiser submits at the keyword, product-target or ad-group level — before placement modifiers, dynamic-bid shading and relevance adjustments are applied. It is the single number every other bidding mechanic multiplies against.

Best Deal

A Best Deal is a multi-day (up to 14-day) promotional placement on Amazon's Deals page, slower and longer than a Lightning Deal. It trades the velocity spike of an LD for sustained discounted exposure across a full promotional week.

Best Seller Badge & Amazon's Choice

The Best Seller and Amazon's Choice badges are algorithmic awards Amazon applies to category-leading and query-leading ASINs respectively. Both lift CTR and CVR meaningfully and act as trust signals — neither can be purchased; both are earned through performance.

Bid (CPC Bid)

A bid is the maximum cost-per-click an advertiser submits for a keyword or product target in an Amazon Advertising auction. It is the ceiling — the realized price paid per click is the CPC.

Bidding Strategy

Bidding strategy is the per-campaign setting that controls how Amazon adjusts your bid in the auction — Fixed Bids, Dynamic Bids (Down Only or Up and Down), or Rule-Based Bidding. It determines the price range, not just the headline number.

Black Friday / Cyber Monday (BFCM)

BFCM is the November Thanksgiving-weekend-through-Cyber-Monday shopping event — the largest Western retail moment of the year. On Amazon it is the highest-CPC, highest-conversion-volume, highest-stakes window for most accounts.

Brand Registry

Brand Registry is Amazon's brand-protection program that grants brand owners access to enhanced reporting (Brand Analytics, Search Query Performance), enhanced creative (A+ Content, Sponsored Brands, Brand Store), and IP enforcement tools. Required for almost every advanced PPC and listing feature.

Brand Store (Amazon Store)

A Brand Store is a free multi-page brand microsite hosted on Amazon, available to Brand-Registered sellers and vendors. The highest-AOV landing destination available for upper-funnel ad traffic; chronically underused.

Brand Story

Brand Story is a carousel module that sits at the top of every product detail page belonging to a brand-registered seller. It is set once per brand and propagates across all ASINs, linking out to other products, the brand store and brand-level messaging.

Brand Tailored Promotions (BTP)

Brand Tailored Promotions (BTP) let Brand Registry sellers send exclusive discount codes to pre-built Amazon audiences — brand followers, repeat customers, cart abandoners, recent customers. It is the only first-party CRM tool Amazon gives brands.

Branded Keyword

A branded keyword is any keyword that contains your brand name (e.g. "amalyze ppc tool", "amalyze pricing"). Branded keywords carry the highest CVR and lowest ACOS in the account; bidding on your own brand is defensive, not optional.

Broad Match

Broad match is the loosest of the three Amazon PPC keyword match types. It triggers on any shopper query containing the keyword's tokens in any order, plus synonyms, plurals, and related terms — making it the discovery engine of the account.

Bullet Points

Bullet points are the five short feature/benefit lines at the top of the Product Detail Page. They are the most-read text block above the fold and the second-strongest keyword field after the title.

Buy Box (Featured Offer)

The Buy Box — officially the Featured Offer — is the section of the PDP containing the Add-to-Cart and Buy Now buttons. The seller who wins it gets the click; everyone else routes through the "Other Sellers" link. Losing the Buy Box silently zeros ad conversion.

C

Campaign (Amazon Advertising)

A campaign is the top-level container in Amazon Advertising that holds ad groups and sets daily budget, bidding strategy, targeting type, and dates. Campaign structure — not bid optimisation — is the highest-leverage decision in account performance.

Campaign Naming Convention

A campaign naming convention is the structured rule for labelling campaigns so the account is filterable, reportable, and legible at scale. Inconsistent naming compounds into untracked spend over months.

Cannibalisation

Cannibalisation is when paid ad spend replaces sales that would have happened organically — the advertiser pays for traffic that was already converting for free. It is the central question incremental ACOS and AMC holdout testing are designed to answer.

Category Targeting (Browse Node Targeting)

Category targeting is the Sponsored Products / Sponsored Display mode that bids on an entire Amazon browse-node category, optionally refined by price, star rating, brand exclusion, and Prime eligibility. The refinements are what turn a wasteful broad target into a sharp competitive tool.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of ad impressions that result in a click. On Amazon, CTR is primarily a SERP-creative metric — driven by main image, title, price, star rating, and badge — and signals to Amazon's algorithm how relevant your ad is to the query.

Close Variant

A close variant is a search query Amazon treats as a near-match of your exact or phrase keyword — plurals, misspellings, reorderings, and function-word changes. They expand reach automatically but quietly inflate ACOS when the variant CVR diverges from the canonical keyword's.

Competitor Keyword

A competitor keyword is a keyword containing a rival brand's name. Bidding on competitor keywords ("conquest") is a deliberate margin trade — high ACOS, lower CVR, higher new-to-brand acquisition rate — and must be funded from margin headroom.

Consideration Purchase

A consideration purchase is a category where shoppers research before buying — multi-session, multi-touchpoint journeys, often higher price points. Consideration categories require different PPC strategy: longer attribution windows, retargeting weight, and content-led discovery alongside direct response.

Conversion Rate (CVR)

Conversion rate (CVR) is the percentage of ad clicks that result in an attributed order. It is the most leveraged variable in the Amazon PPC bid formula — a 10% CVR improvement permits a 10% bid increase at constant ACOS, unlocking volume that no bid change alone can deliver.

Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)

COGS is the all-in cost to land one unit at an Amazon fulfilment centre — manufacturing, packaging, freight, duties, and prep. It is the foundation of every margin and bid calculation; getting it wrong cascades into every other metric.

Coupon (Amazon Coupon)

An Amazon coupon is a clip-to-apply discount displayed as a green badge on the search results page and product detail page. It lifts CTR and CVR while costing less per redemption than a permanent price cut, and it preserves the strike-through reference price.

CPC (Cost Per Click)

CPC (Cost Per Click) is the actual price paid for a single ad click. It is the realised auction-clearing price — distinct from the bid, which is the ceiling the advertiser submitted.

P

Parent-Child Variation

A parent-child variation is Amazon's catalogue structure for grouping product variants (size, colour, pack count) under one detail page. The parent ASIN is a non-buyable shell; child ASINs are the actual purchasable SKUs.

Phrase Match

Phrase match is the middle Amazon PPC keyword match type. It triggers when the shopper's query contains the keyword's tokens in the same order, with additional words allowed before or after. Useful where word order carries semantic meaning.

Placement Bid Modifier

Placement bid modifiers are percentage multipliers (0–900%) that increase a base bid for specific placements — Top of Search, Product Pages, or Rest of Search — letting advertisers buy premium real estate without raising the campaign-wide bid.

Portfolio (Amazon Advertising)

A portfolio is an Amazon Advertising grouping that holds multiple campaigns and enforces an optional monthly budget cap across them. The only native Amazon mechanism for cross-campaign budget control.

Price Point

A price point is the specific shelf price chosen for a SKU relative to category competitors and psychological thresholds. The choice determines CVR, impression share, ad efficiency, and total addressable demand simultaneously.

Prime Badge

The Prime badge is the blue Prime icon displayed next to a listing on search results and the PDP, indicating Prime-member free fast shipping. It lifts CTR and CVR meaningfully and is effectively a gating requirement for competitive ranking in most categories.

Prime Day

Prime Day is Amazon's flagship two-day Prime-member shopping event, typically in July, with a second event ("Prime Big Deal Days") in October. For most accounts it is the single highest-revenue 48 hours of the year and demands 6–8 weeks of preparation.

Prime Exclusive Discount (PED)

A Prime Exclusive Discount is a percentage-off promotion visible and redeemable only by Prime members. It appears as a strike-through reference price on the listing, and during peak events (Prime Day, BFCM) it is the canonical discount mechanic Amazon promotes.

Private Label

Private label is the business model of sourcing a generic product, branding it as your own, and selling it under your brand — typically via Amazon FBA. The seller owns the brand, the listing and the customer perception; the manufacturer is interchangeable.

Product Detail Page (PDP)

The Product Detail Page (PDP) is the per-ASIN shop window on Amazon — the URL a shopper lands on after clicking an ad or organic result. Everything that determines whether the click becomes an order lives here.

Product Opportunity Explorer (POE)

Product Opportunity Explorer is Amazon's first-party tool in Seller Central that surfaces customer demand at the search-niche level — search volume, click share, conversion share, and price band — for product research and gap analysis.

Product Targeting (PAT)

Product targeting (PAT) is the Amazon PPC mode that bids on specific ASINs instead of search keywords — placing ads in the carousel beneath a competitor's product detail page or as cross-sell on your own PDPs.

Product Title

The product title is the headline of the Product Detail Page and the most heavily weighted text field for organic ranking. Amazon limits titles to 200 characters per marketplace (often less by category), and policy bans promotional language.

Product Video

A product video is a short demo or lifestyle clip placed in the Product Detail Page image carousel. It is one of the highest single-lever CVR boosts available — typical lift is 5–15% versus a listing without video.

Purchase Order (PO)

A Purchase Order (PO) is the document Amazon issues to a vendor (1P seller) committing to buy a specified quantity of a SKU at an agreed cost, with a ship-by date. The PO is the unit of vendor business — order intake, ship-window planning and chargebacks all centre on it.

R

Ranking Signal

A ranking signal is any input Amazon's search algorithm uses to determine which ASINs appear, and in what order, for a given query. Signals split into two groups — relevance signals (does this listing match the query?) and performance signals (do shoppers buy when shown this listing?).

Referral Fee

The referral fee is the percentage of the sale price Amazon takes on every order, regardless of fulfilment method. It is the marketplace commission, set per category — usually 8–15% — and is the single largest fee for most sellers.

Remarketing Audience

Remarketing audiences are Sponsored Display and DSP targets built from shoppers who previously interacted with your brand — viewed your PDP, viewed similar products, or purchased — but did not complete a desired action. The highest-CVR, lowest-CPC audience type available.

Rest of Search (ROS)

Rest of Search is the placement bucket covering paid positions below Top of Search — the interleaved sponsored placements scattered through the organic rows and the bottom-of-search row before pagination. Cheaper than TOS per click; usually meaningfully less efficient per sale.

Return Rate

Return rate is the percentage of units sold that customers return — calculated as returned units divided by units sold over a period. It is the single most under-tracked driver of unit economics and the precursor to the Frequently Returned Item badge.

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

ROAS is ad-attributed sales divided by ad spend, expressed as a multiple. The mathematical inverse of ACOS — a 25% ACOS equals a 4.0× ROAS. Dominant outside Amazon, less common inside it.

Rule-Based Bidding

Rule-Based Bidding is the Amazon bidding strategy where the platform autonomously adjusts bids to chase a user-defined ROAS or ACOS target, overriding most manual bid inputs. Convenient for hands-off accounts, opaque for accounts that need diagnostic transparency.

S

Sales Velocity

Sales velocity is the rate at which an ASIN sells — typically expressed as units per day or units per week. It is the single most important input to Amazon's organic-ranking algorithm and the leading indicator behind every other listing metric.

Search Query Performance (Brand Analytics)

Search Query Performance is the Brand Analytics report that exposes funnel-level data — impressions, clicks, add-to-carts, purchases — for the top shopper queries that lead to your brand's ASINs, broken out by your brand's share vs. category total.

Search Term (Customer Search Term)

A search term is the actual phrase a shopper types into Amazon's search box. It is what the shopper did; the keyword is what you bid on. Search terms live in the Search Term Report and are the raw material of the keyword harvest loop.

Search Term Report

The Search Term Report is the Amazon Advertising export that shows the actual shopper queries that triggered an ad, with click, spend, sale, and ACOS data per term — the primary data source for keyword harvesting and negative keyword management.

Seller / Vendor Hybrid

A seller/vendor hybrid is a brand that runs both a 3P seller account (Seller Central) and a 1P vendor relationship (Vendor Central) at the same time — typically using vendor for hero SKUs that benefit from Amazon's distribution and seller for long-tail SKUs where margin and control matter more.

Seller Central

Seller Central is the web interface Amazon third-party (3P) sellers use to manage listings, inventory, orders, ads, and reports. It is the operational home base for any brand that sells *on* Amazon as a marketplace seller rather than *to* Amazon as a vendor.

Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP)

Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP) lets approved FBM sellers earn the Prime badge by fulfilling orders from their own warehouses against Amazon's strict Prime delivery SLA. It combines FBM economics with FBA's Buy Box weight.

SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

The SERP is the page of search results Amazon returns after a shopper enters a query — a mixed grid of organic listings, sponsored placements, editorial content, and refinement filters. It is the single most contested surface in Amazon advertising.

SKU (Stock Keeping Unit)

A SKU is the seller-defined identifier for an item in their own inventory. On Amazon, multiple SKUs from the same seller can map to one ASIN — most often to track different warehouses, lots, or pricing tiers.

Sponsored Brands

Sponsored Brands are keyword-targeted banner ads that appear above, beside, or within Amazon search results, featuring a custom headline, brand logo, and curated set of products or a Store landing page. Brand Registry required.

Sponsored Brands Video

Sponsored Brands Video is a muted-autoplay video ad unit that drops into Amazon search results between organic results. Typically 2–3× the CTR of static Sponsored Brands and one of the most efficient ad formats in the platform once creative is amortized.

Sponsored Display

Sponsored Display is Amazon's self-service display ad format that targets shoppers both on and off Amazon based on product, audience, and remarketing signals — the only Amazon Ads format that follows shoppers off-site.

Sponsored Products

Amazon's keyword- and product-targeted PPC ad format that appears inline with organic search results and on product detail pages. The most-used and highest-converting Amazon ad type.

Star Rating

Star rating is the 1.0–5.0 average of customer review scores shown on the product detail page and search results. It is simultaneously a CVR driver (visible on the SERP) and a ranking signal — listings below 4.0 stars lose both organic placement and ad efficiency.

Statistical Significance

Statistical significance is the discipline of not making bid decisions on samples too small to be meaningful. In PPC, the practical threshold is roughly 30+ clicks or 3+ orders before any keyword-level inference is defensible.

Storage Fee

The storage fee is the monthly charge Amazon levies per cubic foot/metre for inventory sitting in FBA warehouses. Long-term storage fees and aged-inventory surcharges escalate sharply on units that linger past 6–12 months.