- Campaign StrategyCreator campaigns and launch plans
- Contracts & ComplianceCreator agreements and disclosure rules
- Creator OutreachFind, pitch, and manage creators
- Performance & ROIMeasure creator campaign impact
- Scaling & GrowthScale influencer-led growth channels
- UGC & AffiliatesUGC content and affiliate partnerships
- Algorithm ChangesSearch, marketplace and ranking updates
- Funding & M&ADeals, acquisitions, rollups, capital
- Market ReportsMarketplace data and trend reports
- New LaunchesNew tools, brands and launches
- Platform UpdatesAmazon, TikTok, Shopify, Walmart changes
- Regulatory UpdatesCompliance, policy and regulation news
- Seller Success StoriesFounder stories and marketplace wins
The Selller Podcast EP 20| Bid Optimization Strategies | Stephen Noch x Abdus Samad Shah | AdLabs
YouTube · 16:9AdLabs founder Stephen Noch breaks down why most Amazon sellers are optimizing bids and placements wrong and shares the Revenue Per Click (RPC) method his agency uses to cut wasted ad spend on Product Pages and win more Top of Search placements.
In this episode
- Around 50% of all Amazon sales happen at the top of Search just five ad placements, making it the single most important spot to win, yet most sellers underfund it.
- Product Page placements typically convert 50–75% worse and get 80–95% lower click-through rates than search placements, but sellers routinely overspend there anyway.
- The two most common bid optimization methods increasing/decreasing bids by a fixed percentage based on ACoS, and letting "automated" software handle it as a black box are both mathematically flawed, since neither can push a placement below a 0% adjustment.
- The correct approach is the Revenue Per Click (RPC) method: calculate sales ÷ clicks for each placement, set the worst-performing placement to 0%, and increase the others based on their relative performance, creating a mathematically consistent bid every time.
- Because Amazon doesn't allow negative placement adjustments, the workaround is to reduce all keyword bids in a campaign by the percentage the worst placement underperforms, effectively creating a "negative" adjustment on product pages while still increasing top-of-search bids.
- In a real account audit, applying this method (with zero campaign restructuring or keyword changes) dropped total ACoS from 25.5% to 21.8% while sales grew from $396K to $472K in a single month reversing six straight months of year-over-year decline.
The most useful idea in this episode is simple but rarely followed: bidding shouldn't be a guessing game of "increase a little, decrease a little, see what happens." Stephen's Revenue Per Click method replaces trial-and-error with a formula, sales divided by clicks per placement, that tells you exactly what to bid from day one. If you're currently letting "automated" bidding software slowly creep your bids up and down over weeks, it's worth asking whether that tool is actually doing this math or just guessing faster than you would.
Resources mentioned
- AdLabs
- The Amazon Ads Podcast
Stephen Noch
Stephen Noch is an Amazon PPC expert, educator, and co-founder of AdLabs. He specializes in helping Amazon brands improve advertising performance through data-driven strategies rather than one-size-fits-all automation. A frequent speaker at leading e-commerce conferences and co-host of That Amazon Ads Podcast, Stephen shares practical insights on Amazon PPC, campaign optimization, bidding strategies, and scalable advertising systems that drive profitable growth.
