This skincare brand runs a roughly $650K-a-month Amazon business. At that size, ad-spend drift is expensive: spend had crept toward broad generic head terms where the brand already ranked organically, including one exact-match keyword burning over $40K a quarter at a 200%+ ACOS.
We audited every dollar, reallocated by intent, and cut monthly ad spend from $118.6K to $86.1K while revenue held at roughly $650K. Five points of TACOS, straight back to the P&L. Meanwhile the brand's Ulta channel grew 96.5% year over year to over $1M in the quarter.
Paying for Traffic It Already Owned
Spend concentrated on broad generic head terms, including terms where hero SKUs already held page-one organic rank.
Hero-SKU Spend Gravity
A handful of hero SKUs absorbed most of the budget at the worst efficiency, while proven low-ACOS SKUs sat starved.
Reseller Exposure at Scale
A brand this visible attracts unauthorized sellers; unprotected listings put both price integrity and ad efficiency at risk.
At $650K a month, efficiency work IS growth work: five points of TACOS is worth more than most brands' entire ad budgets.
Full-Catalog Spend Audit
Mapped paid spend against organic position SKU by SKU. Where the brand already ranked, paid stepped back; where paid was the only visibility, it earned its keep or got cut.
Reallocation, Not Just Reduction
Dollars moved from 200%-ACOS head terms to starved, efficient SKUs. The cut was a byproduct of putting money where it worked.
DSP for Acquisition, Not Vanity
DSP tuned to bring in new customers, over half of DSP-attributed sales were new-to-brand.
Lock the Listings
Hero SKUs enrolled in Amazon Transparency; counterfeit and unauthorized listings now blocked before they list.
Five points of TACOS on a $650K month is roughly $32K a month back, every month. That's the line a CFO reads twice.
Organic rank is an asset, stop renting what you own
The biggest single waste was paid spend defending positions the brand already held organically.
Cut spend, keep revenue, it's possible when the waste is real
This only works when the analysis is honest about which dollars were doing nothing.
Efficiency funds expansion
The dollars freed on Amazon coincided with an Ulta channel nearly doubling. One P&L, one budget, better allocation.
