Amazon ad campaigns behind an apparel brand's reported revenue growth

A September 2025 Amazon advertising case presented by PPC manager Chris Rawlings claimed that a young clothing brand grew monthly revenue from $64,000 to $213,000 over a year. A September 30 email described the niche as women's accessories; the video called it women's apparel and said the brand was less than two years old. Rawlings compared August with the previous August and said total advertising cost of sales, or TACoS, fell from 18% to below 11%. These are the presenter's historical account figures, not independently established returns or a promise for other sellers.

He attributed the result to a mix of campaign types rather than a single trick. His argument was that Amazon's improving matching system could make automatic, broad, phrase and expanded targeting useful performance tools, not merely ways to discover keywords. The tutorial then walked through its strongest campaigns and one additional competitor-targeting setup.

Automatic close-match and loose-match campaigns

The largest sales contributor during the growth period was a Sponsored Products automatic campaign using close match. Rawlings said the team later stopped it when other campaigns performed better. Amazon offered four automatic groups in the demonstration: close match, loose match, substitutes and complements. He recommended trying close match first, while judging the actual account results.

His setup route was Create campaign, Sponsored Products, Amazon and beyond, select the advertised product, then automatic targeting. Instead of one default bid, he selected bids by targeting group and left only close match enabled. Known irrelevant terms could be excluded with negative phrase keywords, such as metal for a product made of wood. Negative product targets could also be added; he said much of that exclusion work would come later from optimisation data.

He started with dynamic bids down only, suggesting up and down only as a test if impressions were not arriving. The close-match example used top-of-search, rest-of-search and audience adjustments. Its audience was high likelihood to purchase based on recent shopping activity, with a 10% adjustment. He suggested a small 10% or 20% audience test, not an automatic large increase.

Placement increases were to follow evidence about which position worked. If a seller already knew a placement performed well, he suggested beginning around 10% to 20%, or at most 30%, rather than jumping to 500%. Daily budget was to reflect the share of the product's total advertising allowance assigned to that campaign and be adjusted as results arrived.

The second-largest sales campaign used automatic loose match. It had a 10% product-page adjustment and a top-of-search adjustment, but no rest-of-search or audience increase. Rawlings reported 17% advertising cost of sales, or ACoS, for that campaign. Its setup followed the first example, with loose match selected instead of close match.

Move successful targets into category video campaigns

Rawlings called the next method campaign chaining: taking a target that worked in one ad format and testing it in another. A Sponsored Brands video targeted the brand's own product category and ranked third for sales, at a reported 22% ACoS. Another successful video campaign targeted a different but closely related category. He described both as important routes to profitable scale in this account.

The demonstrated sequence was Sponsored Brands, daily budget, drive page visits, Amazon, ad-group name, video and product detail page. After selecting the product, he disabled cost control and used product targeting rather than keywords. Under categories, sellers could choose the suggested category, search for it or browse. Negative product targets were reserved for exclusions supported by known performance data.

The case used a human-produced video. Rawlings mentioned Amazon's then-beta AI video builder as an option for sellers without footage and said other tests had worked, but did not attribute this brand's reported results to AI-generated video. Bid adjustments were not used in the category-video example, although he presented them as a later test.

Group keywords by shopper intent

Another Sponsored Products campaign grouped search terms around one product function that shoppers wanted. The team identified that intent in search-term reports and combined related keywords. In the tutorial's manual keyword-targeting setup, Rawlings selected broad rather than phrase or exact and described a plus-sign technique he called broad modified. This is his explanation of the 2025 setup, not a current platform rule established here.

His example +sparkling +scarf was intended to retain both required words while allowing different order or extra words. For a wooden phone holder, +wooden +phone +holder required all three in his explanation; removing plus signs from phone and holder was intended to give the system more freedom while retaining wooden. He then added known non-converting negative keywords, used down-only bids, tested rest-of-search placement and a small purchase-likelihood audience increase, and set the campaign name and daily budget.

Target selected competitors rather than every similar listing

The additional campaign targeted busy competing listings where the brand believed it had a better price, quality or feature offer. Rawlings chose Sponsored Products, Amazon and beyond, the advertised product, manual targeting, product targeting, individual products and enter list. He deselected expanded targeting and selected exact, then entered the competitors' ASIN identifiers, which he showed in Amazon product-page addresses after DP.

He explained exact as choosing those particular products, while expanded gave Amazon room to include similar ones. He also said product-targeted Sponsored Products ads could appear on product pages or in search results associated with the targeted listing. Known unproductive product targets could be excluded. The starting bid strategy was dynamic down only; placement adjustments could wait for data before changing. The final steps were a campaign name and daily budget.

The video promoted a dated Profitable PPC Challenge and the presenter's management service, then pointed to a separate case about growing monthly sales from $10,000 to $100,000. Those invitations and the separate case were not additional lessons supplied in this tutorial. The clothing photograph is illustrative, not the featured brand's stock or evidence of the reported revenue.