Amazon PPC India — Beginner’s Complete Guide 2026

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Most Amazon India sellers either overspend on PPC with no system, or underspend and wonder why nobody can find their product. This guide fixes both.

Amazon PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising is not optional for new products on Amazon India. Without it, your listing sits on Page 8 where no customer ever scrolls. With it — run correctly — you buy visibility, collect sales data, and climb the organic ranks. This guide tells you exactly how to set up, run, and optimise your first Amazon PPC campaign.

What is Amazon PPC and Why New Sellers Need It

Amazon PPC is an auction-based advertising system. You bid on keywords. When a customer searches that keyword and your ad wins the auction, your product appears at the top of the results page. You only pay when the customer actually clicks your ad — hence Pay-Per-Click.

For new products on Amazon India, organic ranking takes 60–120 days to build. During this period, PPC is the only way to get in front of customers. The advertising spend in these early months is not a cost — it is an investment in ranking data, review accumulation, and sales velocity.

The 3 Types of Amazon PPC Campaigns

Sponsored Products (Start Here)

Sponsored Products ads appear in Amazon search results and on product detail pages. They look almost identical to organic listings — the only difference is a small ‘Sponsored’ label. This is the most powerful ad type and where every new seller should focus 80% of their budget.

Sponsored Brands

Sponsored Brands show your brand logo, a custom headline, and multiple products at the top of search results. Only available to Brand Registry sellers. Once your brand is registered, add this to your campaign mix.

Sponsored Display

Sponsored Display ads appear off Amazon — on websites, apps, and competitor product pages. More advanced. Do not start here. Master Sponsored Products first.

Auto vs Manual Campaigns — What to Run When

Start with Auto Campaign (Days 1–30)

An Auto campaign tells Amazon to match your product to relevant searches automatically. You set a daily budget and a default bid — Amazon does the rest. The purpose of an Auto campaign is data collection. You are paying Amazon to tell you which keywords customers use to find products like yours.

• Daily budget: ₹400–₹600 for a new product
• Default bid: ₹4–₹8 per click (start higher, optimise down once you have data)
• Match types in Auto: Close match, Loose match, Substitutes, Complements — leave all enabled

Add Manual Campaign at Week 2

After 2 weeks of Auto campaign data, open your search term report in Seller Central. Any keyword with 1 or more sales and ACoS below 40% should be moved to a Manual campaign. In the Manual campaign, you control exactly which keywords trigger your ads and at what bid level.

1. Go to Seller Central → Reports → Advertising Reports → Search Term Report
2. Filter for: Orders ≥ 1 AND clicks ≥ 5
3. Take these converting keywords into a Manual Exact Match campaign
4. Set bids based on your target ACoS — if you want 25% ACoS and product margin is 35%, your maximum bid = (35% – 25%) × selling price. For a ₹599 product: max bid ≈ ₹60

Understanding ACoS and Why It Matters More Than Spend

ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales) = (Total Ad Spend ÷ Total Ad Revenue) × 100.

Example: If you spend ₹3,000 on ads and generate ₹12,000 in ad sales, your ACoS = 25%.

What is a Good ACoS for Amazon India?

• Break-even ACoS: Your product net margin percentage. If your margin is 30%, your break-even ACoS is 30%.
• Target ACoS: 5–10% below your break-even. For a 30% margin product, target ACoS = 20–25%.
• Launch ACoS (first 60 days): You may accept 35–45% ACoS during launch to build velocity and reviews. This is intentional, not failure.

Keyword Research for Amazon PPC India

Your PPC campaigns are only as good as the keywords you target. Here is where to find them.

• Helium 10 Magnet — enter your main keyword, get 500+ related search terms with volume data
• Amazon Auto campaign search term report — the most accurate source because it shows what Amazon customers actually type
• Competitor ASIN reverse lookup in Helium 10 Cerebro — shows which keywords your competitors rank for organically and in ads
• Amazon’s own ‘Customers Also Searched’ and ‘Related Searches’ sections on product pages

Campaign Structure That Scales

Organise campaigns in this structure from the beginning. Do not mix everything into one campaign.

Campaign 1: Auto — Discovery	Daily budget ₹400–600. Collects data. Never turn this off completely.
Campaign 2: Manual Exact — Converters	Your best-performing exact match keywords. Higher bids. Protect these.
Campaign 3: Manual Phrase — Growth	Mid-performing phrase match keywords. Moderate bids. Scale what works.
Campaign 4: Manual Broad — Expansion	New keyword discovery at controlled spend. Lower bids.
Campaign 5: Negative Keywords — Control	Add poor-performing keywords as negatives in all campaigns weekly.

Frequently Asked Questions