The PPC Den: Amazon PPC Advertising Mastery

The PPC Den

The world's first Amazon advertising podcast-- hosted by Ad Badger.

Here we discuss the ins and outs of Amazon PPC, including tips and tricks to help optimize your ad campaigns. Whether you're a die-hard PPC fanatic or an Amazon seller looking for an edge, this podcast is for you!

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#406
Yesterday · 33 min
Free AI Skills Find Your Amazon PPC Wasted Spend & N-Grams [The PPC Den Podcast 406]
The Badger here. Episode 406 of the PPC Den Podcast. Two episodes ago I read your bulk files so you don't have to. This time I go hunting. Mike used to chase wasted spend in a spreadsheet. Download, copy, paste, filter orders = 0, repeat. Now he types /badger waste and goes to get a coffee. Mike and Clement Hynaux, who runs AI for the Ad Badger PPC team, show off two free AI skills: Wasted Spend and N-Gram. Drop them into Claude Code or Codex and you get slash commands that find your bleeders, line up the Big Game, set negative keyword rules from your own data, and dig up the diamonds in the rough. Put them on a schedule and the report waits for you. Should AI run your account with nobody watching? Clement says you own the results. AI makes good people great and bad people worse. 🦡 GET THE SKILLS WHEN THEY DROP ➡️ https://www.adbadger.com/newsletter/ 🦡 Highlights 0:00 Adiós, spreadsheets. Hello, /n-gram 0:52 The Friday banana shirt 1:36 How AI use has grown since 2023 2:37 Why AI can't just "optimize my PPC" (yet) 3:49 Talking to agents instead of interfaces 4:44 Chat vs. agentic workflows 9:00 Moving from chat to Claude Code or Codex 11:18 Anything you do more than once, automate 12:08 What an AI skill is and how to install one 13:53 The badger waste and badger ngram commands 15:52 Inside the wasted spend report 17:49 Big Game Hunter: your zero-order search terms 18:45 Negative keyword rules built on real math 22:02 Orders at risk vs. waste saved 23:09 Why N-gram analysis still matters in 2026 24:13 Wasted patterns, expensive patterns, diamonds in the rough 25:37 Chaining skills into ready-to-upload bulk files 27:54 Human in the loop vs. full automation 29:49 Automation isn't the same thing as AI 31:13 AI makes good people great and bad people worse 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️ https://www.adbadger.com/pricing/ 🦡 FREE BULK FILE AUDIT ➡️ https://sheets.adbadger.com Mike on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-erickson-facchin/ Show notes: https://www.adbadger.com/podcast Go hunt some waste. Badger out. - Guest: Clement Hynaux Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno #AmazonPPC #AmazonAds #AmazonFBA
#405
October 16 · 27 min
5:30 AM. PPC Waste Found. Building an AI Agent for Amazon PPC [The PPC Den Podcast 405]
The Badger here. Episode 405 of the PPC Den Podcast. It's 5:30 AM. Mike is asleep. I'm not. Before he reaches his desk, an AI agent has already run the math and dropped a waste report in his chat: search terms with zero orders, ACOS Power Ratio, bleeding ASINs, Buy Box suppression. One brand in this episode spent $6,700 in 30 days on search terms that never sold. Nobody had to ask. Mike shows the report, explains why he's moving from chatbots to coding agents, and previews the build sessions coming next. Plus something new: a rapid-fire Amazon news segment. 🦡 GET THE SKILLS WHEN THEY DROP ➡️ https://www.adbadger.com/newsletter/ 🦡 Highlights 0:00 The 5:30 AM autonomous operator 1:59 Meet Synapse: my daily Amazon waste report 3:00 ACOS Power Ratio and Buy Box suppression 4:50 The 10 levels of AI for Amazon 7:01 Why AI makes your to-do list longer, not shorter 7:43 Rapid-fire Amazon news 9:53 B2B delivery rule and the fake ACOS trap 11:03 Why your agent should work off-peak 11:45 RIP the monthly spreadsheet ritual 13:35 Chatbots don't hallucinate. They under-analyze. 14:27 From chatbots to coding agents 16:13 Start from the output, not the prompt 17:12 Laptop, Mac mini, or cloud VPS 18:02 Local models and data sovereignty 20:01 The data layer: scripts do the math, not the AI 21:13 What lands in my chat at 5:30 AM 23:17 Turning the report into ClickUp tasks 24:49 What's coming next: build sessions 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️ https://www.adbadger.com/pricing-product-tour/ Find Michael Erickson Facchin, the human I work for. He talks about this stuff on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-erickson-facchin/ Watch the episode before this one, Free Amazon PPC Audit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVU2N5w3OJk Run a free audit on your bulk file: https://sheets.adbadger.com 📚 Free Amazon Marketing Playbook: https://www.adbadger.com/amazon-ppc-checklist/ Newsletter: https://www.adbadger.com/newsletter/ Show notes: https://www.adbadger.com/podcast Go decide what you want your 5:30 AM agent to do. I'll already be up. Badger out. - Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno #AmazonPPC #AmazonAds #AmazonFBA
#404
October 9 · 12 min
Free Amazon PPC Audit: Hand Me Your Bulk File, I'll Find the Leaks [The PPC Den Podcast 404]
The Badger here. Episode 404 of the PPC Den Podcast. Since 2018 Mike has been handing you spreadsheets. The bid calculator. The placement calculator. The n-gram sheet that took him eons to build. All of them needed you to copy, paste, and squint. I retired the copy-and-paste. Go to sheets.adbadger.com, drop in your bulk file, and I dig through it right there in your browser. Add your business report and I'll line your ad numbers up against your organic ones too. It costs nothing. It stays free. Every account starts at 100. Then I take points away. Most of them go to one thing: spend on search terms that never produced an order. Not at the keyword level. At the search term level, where the dirt actually is. In this episode Mike walks through the whole audit, screen by screen, in the order he'd audit an account himself. Reading bulk files is the most tedious job in Amazon advertising. I don't care. That's the job. 🦡 RUN YOUR FREE AUDIT ➡️ sheets.adbadger.com 🦡 Highlights (0:00) Eight years of Ad Badger spreadsheets (1:30) Why we retired the copy-and-paste (2:12) How I score your account (3:00) Search term level vs. keyword level (3:51) Converting terms you haven't promoted yet (4:47) Structure, budgets and placements (5:40) Competitor ASINs worth targeting (6:24) Share of spend vs. share of revenue (7:22) Ghost impressions and bleeders (8:19) Why any ACOS beats no sales (9:22) N-gram analysis and negative keyword coverage (10:12) AMC audiences and total ACOS by product 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 Get Ad Badger Find Michael Erickson Facchin on LinkedIn, the human I work for. He talks about this stuff there. Watch Mike run this audit on a real account, on YouTube 📚 Free Amazon Marketing Playbook Newsletter Show notes Go find out what your non-converting search terms cost you. Hopefully it's not too bad. Badger out. Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno
#403
October 2 · 44 min
The Billion-Dollar Brands Leaving Amazon Search Wide Open
Sean Stone of Spillover Commerce is back on The PPC Den, and this time he refused to tell Mike the topic in advance. No pre-show. No planning. Just one question: which billion-dollar e-commerce market has nine of its eleven biggest players missing from Amazon? Mike guessed mattresses. It's telehealth. 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️ https://www.adbadger.com/pricing/ 🦡 Sean's agency, Spillover Commerce ➡️ https://www.spillovercommerce.com/ 🦡 Show notes ➡️ https://www.adbadger.com/blog/amazon-ppc-education/the-billion-dollar-brands-leaving-amazon-search-wide-open-the-ppc-den-podcast/ From there Mike and Sean get into what this means for everyone else: why the best Amazon brands cut their bottom 5% of products every quarter, why 15% of Google searches have never been searched before, why "demand generation" is a scary phrase if all you do is demand capture, and how to turn Amazon into an acquisition channel with a product insert, a QR code and a Meta pixel. Also in here: what telehealth brands could be selling on Amazon tomorrow, why continuous monitoring might be the next GLP-1, and Sean's new tagline, "Amazon demand starts elsewhere." We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 00:00 - Intro 01:28 - The billion-dollar market that isn't on Amazon 02:49 - It's telehealth: D2C brands with a prescriber 04:18 - The haves: Hims and Ro 05:39 - The have-nots: GLP-1 brands with nothing on Amazon 06:23 - Who ranks when you search "Weight Watchers" 07:17 - "They paid for a billboard and left it empty" 07:45 - A market growing 24.6% a year through 2034 09:05 - Bigger than GLP-1: peptides, wearables, longevity 10:40 - "GLP-1 supplement support": 30,000 searches from nothing 11:53 - Protein snacks: 4x the search volume in three years 12:40 - Fiber gummies and the hockey stick 13:38 - Brand name plus modifier searches 14:00 - The spillover effect, featuring Gronk 16:03 - Trend spotting as a business model 17:56 - Nature Made's GLP-1 Companion: 10K units a month 19:23 - Why clinging to your catalog hurts your PPC 21:13 - 15% of Google searches are brand new 22:20 - Cut your bottom 5% every quarter 24:22 - "Amazon demand starts elsewhere" 25:32 - Demand generation vs demand capture 28:34 - What telehealth brands could sell on Amazon tomorrow 29:57 - Continuous monitoring is the next GLP-1 30:24 - Amazon as an acquisition channel 31:13 - The product insert, QR code and Meta pixel play 31:40 - The one DSP use case Sean likes 34:36 - You can't be full funnel if you're only on Amazon 35:59 - Go talk to your customers 37:09 - A "generational bag fumble" 38:44 - Will Spillover become a health-focused agency? 39:42 - Niche till it hurts 41:59 - Where to find Sean 🦡 Resources & Links - Find Michael Erickson Facchin - Ad Badger's CEO and soul, PPC whisperer, and your go-to guide through the wild world of Amazon advertising https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-erickson-facchin/ - How to Launch Meta Ads as an Amazon Seller [The PPC Den Podcast] https://www.adbadger.com/blog/amazon-ppc-education/how-to-launch-meta-ads-as-an-amazon-seller-the-ppc-den-podcast/ - 3 Unfair Advantages of the Top 1% of E-commerce Brands [The PPC Den Podcast] https://www.adbadger.com/blog/amazon-ppc-education/3-unfair-advantages-of-the-top-1-of-e-commerce-brands-the-ppc-den-podcast/ - Why Amazon Brands Are Starting to Use Meta Ads and Shopify [The PPC Den Podcast] https://www.adbadger.com/blog/amazon-ppc-education/why-amazon-brands-are-starting-to-use-meta-ads-and-shopify-the-ppc-den-podcast/ - Unlock our FREE comprehensive Amazon Marketing Playbook: https://www.adbadger.com/amazon-ppc-checklist/ - Subscribe to our newsletter: https://www.adbadger.com/newsletter/ - Review all our show notes: https://www.adbadger.com/podcast - Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Guest Co-Host: Sean Stone Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno
#402
September 25 · 41 min
How to Hand Off Your Amazon PPC Without Blowing Up Your Brand
Gonza Martinez is back on the PPC Den, and a lot has changed since his last visit seven months ago. He used to be the guy in the ad console every single day. He even built his own bid calculator by binge-watching Ad Badger videos and reverse-engineering the math. (Yes, we're still a little emotional about this.) Today? He doesn't touch it. The only reason he logs in is to pay invoices. Gonza walks Mike through the whole ladder: hiring two guys with zero PPC experience, training them for a year, handing over campaigns one crumb at a time, then a year of watching without touching, until he admitted he was the slow part. Plus: why he stopped launching for a full year, why 12 launches flopped and he's fine with it, why his best products were never going to work on Amazon (hint: the price tag), and how he learns a new channel by offering the best person alive money for an hour. Also: why "hire an agency and go to the beach" is a lie, the question every brand should ask their agency, and what Yeti teaches us about knowing when to stop. We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 00:53 — The bid calculator he built from old episodes 06:41 — "Why weren't results 10% better?" 09:05 — Elon, Twitter, and going past the mark 12:05 — The delegation formula says don't give up PPC 16:05 — Training Diego and Franco from total zero 17:21 — The slow handoff ladder (junk SKUs first) 18:47 — A full year of looking but not touching 19:46 — The day he stopped logging in 20:18 — Why agency-jumpers never learn anything 23:44 — The one question to ask your agency 26:01 — Big brands launch a lot and kill a lot 27:17 — The 80/20 flop rate is an Amazon thing 30:17 — The real reason the products failed: price 34:16 — "You're not Yeti in the car" 35:29 — Plan your launches around your MOQ 36:40 — Building your email list backwards from 1,500 units 38:39 — Learning Meta, Google, and email from scratch 39:13 — Pick a "true North" 40:30 — Offer the best person alive $2,500 for one hour 43:48 — "The more you read about parenting, the more you realize business was easy" 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGER Find Michael Erickson Facchin, Ad Badger's CEO Our guest: Gonza Martinez of Ziresquare Training PPC Managers Who Can Train Others How Can I Reach My Full Potential In The Amazon PPC Space? What's the Best Way to Manage an Amazon Brand? 📚 FREE Amazon Marketing Playbook Subscribe to our newsletter Review all our show notes - Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Guest Co-Host: Gonza Martinez Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno
#400
September 18 · 12 min
4 Lessons from 400 Episodes of Amazon PPC
Today Mike is flying solo, and for once the case file is his own: 400 episodes of The PPC Den, and what a decade of these conversations actually taught him about who wins on Amazon and who just stays busy. There's a shirt involved. There's a DSLR. There's also the small matter of being #1 on both of FeedSpot's Amazon podcast lists - the 9 Best Amazon PPC Podcasts and the 14 Best Amazon Advertising Podcasts - which raises the question of how those are two different lists. Mike rewinds eight years to the first two videos ever published, back when the bidding advice was revenue-per-click and the first episode of this show asked whether we were living in the golden age of Amazon PPC. Then the part worth writing down. Across 400 episodes and ten years of running Ad Badger, four things keep showing up in the people who succeed: they're never distracted by nonsense, they know how to prioritize, they never stop chasing product-market fit, and they treat the job as one that keeps evolving. On the way through you'll hear why there are no silver bullets, only lead bullets, why the most successful accounts Mike has worked on were the ones he barely had to touch, and the line most sellers have backwards - great PPC cannot save bad product-market fit, and PPC is the thing that tells you whether you have it. We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 00:00 - Intro: 400 episodes of The PPC Den 00:32 - The DSLR, the shirt, and the milestone 01:32 - Two FeedSpot lists, two #1 rankings 01:54 - The first two YouTube videos, eight years ago 02:31 - The very first episode: the golden age of Amazon PPC 03:44 - Lesson 1: never distracted by nonsense 04:15 - No silver bullets, only lead bullets 05:48 - Lesson 2: the skill of prioritization 05:58 - Why the job got more complicated, not less 07:04 - Lesson 3: the product-market fit nobody finishes 07:20 - The easiest campaigns, and why they were easy 08:16 - What PPC tells you about product-market fit 08:40 - Lesson 4: the evolving role of the PPC manager 09:06 - The stock level and PPC performance mashup 09:51 - The commitments for the next 100 episodes 10:58 - The weekly digest plan 11:19 - Every company is a software company 12:52 - What 400 episodes changed 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️ Find Michael Erickson Facchin - Ad Badger's CEO and soul, PPC whisperer, and your go-to guide through the wild world of Amazon advertising How to Find Your Amazon Cross-Sales and True Organic Sales 📚 Unlock our FREE comprehensive Amazon Marketing Playbook Subscribe to our newsletter Transform your workflow with our comprehensive Amazon Advertising checklist Review all our show notes Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno
#401
September 18 · 13 min
Why Your Amazon PPC Team Needs Access to Your Stock Data
Five years ago you could hire a PPC manager for bids, budgets, keywords, campaign types and structure, and that was the whole job. Today Mike argues that a good Amazon PPC marketer is just a good Amazon marketer, and the job now reaches into what used to be somebody else's problem entirely: fees, refunds, logistics, and the one he thinks is most underrated, stock. This is the case for letting your marketing team into your inventory data, and it starts with a client who flatly did not believe it mattered. Conversion rate is a product page problem and a PPC problem, they said. So Olena on the Ad Badger team built the chart that settled it - unit session percentage plotted against warehouse balance - and the split was uncomfortable. Above one threshold the numbers held. Below it they didn't. Sales, conversion rate, Buy Box. Not out of stock. Just low. That sent Mike into inventory distortion - the combined financial drain of overstocking and stocking out, estimated to cost global retail 10 to 30% of total sales volume, and almost never mentioned alongside ACoS. He breaks the damage into four buckets: lost revenue that doesn't happen evenly (half a million Buy Box checks found roughly one in three products has at least one location with a suppressed Buy Box), rank decay, the PPC tax you pay while competitors take cheaper clicks, and capital locked up in overstock. Then the SOP. Three reports - advertised products, FBA inventory health, and detailed page sales and traffic by ASIN - dropped into Claude with a prompt, and you have a dashboard. Mike walks an anonymized $400K a month account where roughly 30% of the catalog was fully out of stock and a couple of SKUs sat on over 1,000 days of supply. Plus the one nobody automates: nothing tells you when a product comes back in stock, which is exactly when you want the ads switched back on. We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 00:00 - Intro 00:22 - What PPC management looked like five years ago 01:13 - Fees, refunds, logistics and stock: the new scope 01:44 - Lost revenue, rank decay, PPC tax and capital lockup 02:29 - The client who didn't believe it 03:07 - Unit session percentage vs warehouse balance 04:22 - Inventory distortion, and the 10 to 30% 05:36 - Problem 1: lost revenue, zip code by zip code 05:57 - What half a million Buy Box checks revealed 06:51 - Problems 2 and 3: rank decay and the PPC tax 07:28 - The SOP: three reports across two timeframes 09:03 - The case study: a $400K per month account 10:50 - Reading the dashboard: days of stock left 11:47 - The restocks nobody notifies you about 12:42 - A free zip code level Buy Box tool 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️ Michael Erickson Facchin - Ad Badger's CEO You're Not Out of Stock, So Why Are Your Sales Down? Buy Box Checker - free zip code level Buy Box and stock tracking 📚 Unlock our FREE Amazon Marketing Playbook Subscribe to our newsletter Review all our show notes Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno
September 14 · 29 min
The 10 Levels of AI for Amazon [Claws Out Ep. 2]
There is no shortage of AI hype for Amazon sellers. "AI bidding." "AI agents." Videos about tools that shipped this morning. This is the opposite of that. Michael walks the full 10-level progression from clicking around in Seller Central to running autonomous, self-improving agents on your account and is honest about what each level actually costs you in time. Claws out. We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 0:00 What's on Claws Out today 1:51 The problem with "AI bidding" content 2:11 AI is amazing and still a boatload of work 3:43 Bloom's Taxonomy: the framework to climb 5:06 ACT 1 Level 1: just the Amazon interface 6:04 What the interface is good and bad at 7:52 Don't automate anything until you have a mental model 8:45 Level 2: spreadsheets still a prerequisite? 9:38 Bulk files are the one file worth mastering 11:08 N-gram analysis on bulk files 11:50 ACT 2 Level 3: asking a raw LLM (the worst option) 12:16 The canoe problem: AI knows a lot, but it isn't wise 13:59 "My ACoS is high, what do I do?" where the nuance dies 14:58 Level 4: project-based LLMs and your knowledge base 16:14 Level 5: drop a spreadsheet into an LLM 17:56 Level 6: two data sources at once the magic starts 18:21 Maryna's stock-level dashboard 20:25 Level 7: coding agents (and why the line is blurring) 22:54 What a skill actually is 23:49 Level 8: read-only APIs and MCPs 24:52 Buy Box Checker MCP tools in action 26:59 No spreadsheets, no interface have AI build your own 28:19 Level 9: agentic workflows and the ad waste firewall 29:34 The catch: AI is not deterministic 30:32 Level 10: memory and the self-improvement cycle 31:38 Ad Badger now has its own MCP 32:20 Open-source skills and the Badger audit process 33:30 Your homework + see you in the Badger Den 🦡 Your Homework 1. Find your level on the ladder honestly. If you can't explain your budgeting protocol, keyword structure, and auto campaign strategy without opening a tool, you're at Level 1 stay there this week. 2. Get good at one bulk file. The legacy sponsored ads reports are being retired; bulk files are here to stay. 3. Connect the Ad Badger MCP wherever you already use AI and run a wasted spend audit. 4. Get on the Ad Badger email list weekly skill drops and walkthroughs are coming. 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 Get Ad Badger The N-Gram Analysis Tool Amazon Ads Bulk Operations Use AI & Spreadsheets to Prevent Stock-Outs📚 FREE Amazon Marketing Playbook All show notes -· Host: Michael Erickson Facchin · Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez · Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash · Editor: Pedro Moreno
#399
September 14 · 30 min
How to Find Your Amazon Cross-Sales and True Organic Sales
Today Mike is joined again by Steve Patenaude the closest thing this show has to a PPC detective to open a case that starts with a boring question and ends somewhere much more interesting: which of your products is actually earning the sale? Amazon has retired the old sponsored product reports. The drag-and-drop builder that replaced them looks like extra homework, and it is but it also hands you two columns the old reports kept apart: the ASIN that was advertised, and the ASIN that was purchased. Put those side by side and the account stops looking like a list of products and starts looking like a set of relationships. Steve found it while doing something ordinary. He was tightening up CM1, CM2 and CM3 to set targets product by product, and the numbers refused to sit still - cross-sales were everywhere, in an account with no parent-child variations at all. In the episode he and Mike build two reports out of that: one that shows what share of each ASIN's ad revenue was really a cross-sale (one product in the sample: 94%), and one that lands on a number almost nobody calculates correctly - true organic sales, business report revenue minus same-ASIN ad sales minus the sales that product picked up as somebody else's halo. You'll also hear why total ACoS per product is usually wrong in both directions, what a 0% same-ASIN product is telling you, the loss-leader SKU trick that pulls shoppers onto a listing, and the stock-out that tanked a hero product's sales - except the hero product was never the one doing the work. We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 00:00 – Intro with Steve Patenaude 02:50 – The end of the old sponsored product reports 03:43 – The new drag-and-drop report builder 04:29 – A client mystery: per-product profit targets 06:52 – One report for sponsored products, brands and display 07:22 – Advertised product ID vs converted product ID 07:59 – The most common total ACoS miscalculation 09:01 – The size of the halo without parent-child variations 09:31 – The non-hero ASIN driving the traffic 12:39 – A lookback window longer than 60 days 13:04 – Report 1: cross-sale share by advertised ASIN 14:42 – The reasons behind click A, buy B 15:48 – The cross-sale engineered on purpose 17:38 – The meaning of a 0% same-ASIN product 19:52 – The wrong way to read total ACoS per product 22:19 – Report 2: the true organic sales formula 23:16 – The share of product B's sales that PPC earned 27:04 – A rank drop misdiagnosed after a stock-out 28:26 – 100% organic vs 10% organic: the levers 30:09 – Three dashboards from the new reporting tool 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGER Find Michael Erickson Facchin — Ad Badger's CEO and soul, PPC whisperer, and your go-to guide through the wild world of Amazon advertising Our guest today is Steve Patenaude PPC Detectives: Solving Amazon's Most Mysterious Performance Crimes When Higher Total ACOS Means More Profit How to Audit Your Amazon PPC Account Using Bulk Files and Business Reports 📚 Unlock our FREE comprehensive Amazon Marketing Playbook Subscribe to our newsletter Transform your workflow with our comprehensive Amazon Advertising checklist Review all our show notes - Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Guest Co-Host: Steve Patenaude Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno
#399
September 11 · 30 min
How to Find Your Amazon Cross-Sales and True Organic Sales
Today Mike is joined again by Steve Patenaude, the closest thing this show has to a PPC detective, to open a case that starts with a boring question and ends somewhere much more interesting: which of your products is actually earning the sale? Amazon has retired the old sponsored product reports. The drag-and-drop builder that replaced them looks like extra homework, and it is — but it also hands you two columns the old reports kept apart: the ASIN that was advertised, and the ASIN that was purchased. Put those side by side and the account stops being a list of products and becomes a set of relationships. Steve found it while doing something ordinary — tightening up CM1, CM2 and CM3 to set targets product by product. The numbers refused to sit still: cross-sales were everywhere, in an account with no parent-child variations at all. He and Mike build two reports out of that: one showing what share of each ASIN's ad revenue was really a cross-sale (one product in the sample: 94%), and one that lands on a number almost nobody calculates correctly — true organic sales, business report revenue minus same-ASIN ad sales minus the sales that product picked up as somebody else's halo. You'll also hear why total ACoS per product is usually wrong in both directions, what a 0% same-ASIN product is telling you, the loss-leader SKU trick that pulls shoppers onto a listing, and the stock-out that tanked a hero product's sales — except the hero product was never the one doing the work. We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 00:00 – Intro with Steve Patenaude 02:50 – The end of the old sponsored product reports 03:43 – The new drag-and-drop report builder 04:29 – A client mystery: per-product profit targets 06:52 – One report for sponsored products, brands and display 07:22 – Advertised product ID vs converted product ID 07:59 – The most common total ACoS miscalculation 09:01 – The size of the halo without parent-child variations 09:31 – The non-hero ASIN driving the traffic 12:39 – A lookback window longer than 60 days 13:04 – Report 1: cross-sale share by advertised ASIN 14:42 – The reasons behind click A, buy B 15:48 – The cross-sale engineered on purpose 17:38 – The meaning of a 0% same-ASIN product 19:52 – The wrong way to read total ACoS per product 22:19 – Report 2: the true organic sales formula 23:16 – The share of product B's sales that PPC earned 27:04 – A rank drop misdiagnosed after a stock-out 28:26 – 100% organic vs 10% organic: the levers 30:09 – Three dashboards from the new reporting tool 🦡 Resources & Links • Get Ad Badger • Michael Erickson Facchin — Ad Badger's CEO and PPC whisperer • PPC Detectives: Solving Amazon's Most Mysterious Performance Crimes • When Higher Total ACOS Means More Profit • How to Audit Your Amazon PPC Account Using Bulk Files • 📚 Amazon Marketing Playbook & Advertising checklist • Our newsletter • All our show notes · Host & Exec Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin · Guest Co-Host: Steve Patenaude · Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez · Coordinator & Design: Sofiia Podash · Editor: Pedro Moreno
September 9 · 8 min
Amazon Is Taking Ad Spend From Your Seller Balance [Claws Out Ep. 1]
Amazon started pulling your ad spend straight out of your seller balance on August 1, 2026 no credit card float, no points, no 25-60 day settlement window. In this Claws Out mini-episode Michael breaks down what changed, the new AI image labeling rules you need to follow before your next upload, and why a 3.4 star rating is a bigger threat to your business than any bid you could adjust. Three things, eight minutes, claws out. We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 0:00 - What's on Claws Out today 0:15 - Amazon now pulls ad spend from your seller balance 0:50 - What you actually lose: credit card points and float 1:35 - "Based on feedback" - how this change got here 2:00 - New AI transparency rules in advertising 2:24 - Amazon's rule: photorealistic AI-generated people 3:02 - Demo: tagging an AI image in 30 seconds 3:41 - Why you should double-check the tag didn't get stripped 4:15 - A real listing that got suspended over this 4:39 - A 3.4 star rating is not a PPC problem 5:25 - The ACoS math: conversion rate does the heavy lifting 6:20 - 4 fixes: images, rating, bullets, price 7:08 - Your homework + never stop searching 🦡 Your Homework 1. Open your payment profile and check how your ad spend is being funded. 2. Any listing image with a photorealistic AI-generated person needs the keyword "contains-synthetic-performer" in the dc:subject (XMP) field before you upload it. Real people, non-photorealistic art, and images with no people are exempt. 3. If your rating is under 4.5, fix that before you touch your bids. 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️ https://www.adbadger.com/pricing-product-tour/ - Amazon Is Now Deducting Ad Spend From Your Account Balance https://www.adbadger.com/blog/amazon-ads-payment-change-account-balance-deduction/ - Break-Even ACoS: The Number That Tells You What You Can Afford https://www.adbadger.com/blog/amazon-ppc-education/break-even-amazon-acos/ - ACoS on Amazon: The Complete Guide https://www.adbadger.com/blog/amazon-ppc-education/acos-amazon/ - ACoS Is Lying To You https://www.adbadger.com/blog/acos-is-lying-to-you-why-the-most-watched-metric-in-amazon-ppc-is-also-the-most-misleading/ - TACoS vs ACoS: Definition, Formula & Calculator https://www.adbadger.com/blog/amazon-tacos-definition-formula-calculator-tacos-vs-acos/ - Amazon PPC Audit Checklist: 9 Checks + Free Template https://www.adbadger.com/blog/amazon-ppc-audit-checklist-9-checks-free-template/ - Amazon requires sellers to label AI-generated people (Forbes) https://www.forbes.com/sites/gabrielalinzainescu/2026/07/25/amazon-requires-sellers-to-label-ai-generated-people-in-listing-images/ 📚 Unlock our FREE comprehensive Amazon Marketing Playbook: https://www.adbadger.com/amazon-ppc-checklist/ - Subscribe to our newsletter: https://www.adbadger.com/newsletter/ - Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno
#398
September 4 · 38 min
How to Build an AI "Second Brain" for Your Amazon Business
Today Mike is joined by Dan Head of AMZ Elite, a full-service Amazon consultancy with 20 years of experience, to talk about the thing every AI-curious seller keeps circling: how to stop asking generic AI generic questions. The premise is simple. AI knows a lot about things you don't, but the best operators in any field will laugh at its default advice. The fix is a "second brain" a private, company-specific store of your SOPs, your data, and your hard-won corrections that AI can actually read and act on. Dan walks through what he's built: a news digest that reads his inboxes and YouTube transcripts and boils the week down to two or three pages, an Obsidian vault of markdown SOPs, and a Command Center wired to Amazon that produces a daily triage report the one that caught a campaign spending 4x overnight and flagged the portfolios to drop to a $1 budget after a stock-out. Mike covers how Ad Badger vectorizes its own Google Docs so any team member can query an SOP in plain English from Claude, Google Chat, or ClickUp. You'll also hear the single most useful prompt Dan has ever learned, why summaries alone will cost you the details that matter, and the trap to avoid: don't use AI to invent new work, use it to put work someone is already doing into warp speed. We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 HIGHLIGHTS 00:00 – Intro with Dan Head of AMZ Elite 04:21 – What a "second brain" is, and why default AI advice falls flat 08:17 – Dan's news digest: inboxes, YouTube transcripts, Obsidian clips 11:32 – The SOP problem in a remote team 13:03 – Inside the Command Center and the daily triage report 14:52 – What triage caught today: a stock-out and a 4x spend spike 15:47 – The simple version: three CSV exports and one SOP 17:29 – Saving time, not cutting staff 19:32 – Getting a team to actually adopt it 21:37 – Obsidian, and a new listing built in 60 minutes 25:18 – Giving your AI the keys to do the task 27:21 – Keeping SOPs fresh: the 75/125 title change 32:53 – Dan's best prompt: drop the bias 35:00 – Make your second brain log its own mistakes 37:59 – The trap: don't let AI invent work 🦡 RESOURCES & LINKS 🦡 GET AD BADGER Your host: Michael Erickson Facchin, Ad Badger's CEO and soul, PPC whisperer, and your go-to guide through the wild world of Amazon advertising Our guest: Dan Head of AMZ Elite Dan's first appearance: Three Important Weekly Tasks for Amazon PPC Actually Useful Use Cases of AI in Amazon Marketing How to Combine Organic, PPC & Ranking Data with AI to Optimize Every Amazon Keyword How to Use AI & Spreadsheets to Prevent Amazon Stock-Outs How to Audit Your Amazon PPC Account Using Bulk Files and Business Reports How to Avoid Micromanaging Your Amazon PPC Team 📚 Free Amazon Marketing Playbook & Advertising checklist Subscribe to our newsletter Review all our show notes Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Guest Co-Host: Dan Head Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno
#397
August 28 · 33 min
How to Forecast Amazon PPC Spend & Revenue Before You Spend a Dollar
Today Michael welcomes back Priscilla Wagner of Relentless B2C, Marine Corps veteran, and quite possibly the most spreadsheet-brained guest in Badger Nation. She's been on the show for the visibility death spiral, for classifying keywords by how they actually behave instead of by raw console numbers, and for the custom Excel bidding system Michael still talks about. This time she's opening up her forecasting model. The idea: auditing an account that's already running is the easy version. The data is sitting right there. Forecasting is the hard version, because you're projecting spend and revenue off keywords that have zero performance history attached to them. As Michael puts it, the digital marketer in all of us wants to launch big and find out fast but sitting down to plot it out first is what real businesses do. Priscilla walks through the entire build. Tiering roughly 90 competitors by relevancy using Helium 10 and Claude. Bucketing keywords into core, expansion, branded, and broad discovery. Pulling current impression share straight out of the Search Query Performance report, then picking a lift target that's "big enough to read, small enough to test." She also shares the variable Michael had never seen anyone put in a forecast before: click-through rate and conversion rate decay, because your CTR cannot possibly hold steady as your impression bucket multiplies. And there's a real case study in here. One client's forecast surfaced a buy box problem before a single ad went live so the recommendation wasn't a campaign structure, it was "stop selling to resellers first." We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 HIGHLIGHTS 00:00 – Welcome back, Priscilla Wagner 02:54 – Why forecasting is harder than auditing 06:19 – "Are ads just stealing our organic sales?" 08:45 – Step one: 90 competitors in Helium 10 11:06 – Tiering competitors 1 through 4 16:30 – Picking a realistic target: 1.5% to 8% 18:40 – The four keyword buckets 19:50 – Reading impression share in Search Query Performance 22:00 – Where CTR and CVR come from with no history 25:10 – CTR and CVR decay as impressions grow 30:30 – Turning keywords into a starting budget 31:20 – Case study: fix the buy box before you spend 35:00 – What 3% looks like when 8% is too aggressive 39:00 – Everyone has a plan until they get punched 42:00 – How often to rerun the forecast 🦡 RESOURCES & LINKS 🦡 GET AD BADGER Find Michael Erickson Facchin — Ad Badger's CEO and soul, PPC whisperer, and your go-to guide through the wild world of Amazon advertising Find Priscilla Wagner at Relentless B2C — MBA, Marine Corps veteran, and full-service Amazon PPC + SEO strategist (LinkedIn) Advanced Amazon PPC Bid Optimization 📚 Unlock our FREE comprehensive Amazon Marketing Playbook Subscribe to our newsletter Transform your workflow with our comprehensive Amazon Advertising checklist Review all our show notes 🦡 CREDITS Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Guest Co-Host: Priscilla Wagner Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno
#396
August 21 · 30 min
Can Amazon PPC Success Be Predicted? (Classic)
In this episode of our podcast, featuring Mansour Norouzi from Incrementum Digital, we focus on forecasting for Amazon PPC. We discuss moving from a flexible spending strategy to a planned one, and how past trends can guide future spending. Mansour will explain how to use tools like Amazon's Product Opportunity Explorer and Category Insights to predict future trends. Join us to learn about the challenges and ongoing learning in Amazon advertising. This episode is a rerelease of one of our most popular episodes. Please note the resources and link section for any relevant updates. We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 0:00 - Guest Introduction: Who is Mansour Norouzi? 0:37 - Forecasting Focus: What is forecasting in Amazon PPC? 2:30 - How complex is Amazon advertising? 3:27 - Why never stop learning? 5:44 - What does forecasting really involve? 8:55 - How to plan financially for advertising? 11:47 - How to determine market share? 17:46 - Which tools help understand the market? 29:25 - How to empower your Amazon strategy? 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGER Find Michael Erickson Facchin — Ad Badger's CEO and soul, PPC whisperer, and your go-to guide through the wild world of Amazon advertising Where to find Mansour: Mansour Norouzi Incrementum Digital How Does Tracking Keywords Help PPC? How To Develop A Successful Client Relationship? How To Launch Amazon Products That Customers Actually Want? What Amazon PPC Updates Do You Need For 2024? How Can I Build Tasks To Help My Amazon PPC Campaign? How Can I Best Use The Product Opportunity Explorer For My Amazon PPC Campaign? 📚 Unlock our FREE comprehensive Amazon Marketing Playbook Subscribe to our newsletter Review all our show notes Credits Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Guest Co-Host: Mansour Norouzi Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno
#395
August 14 · 14 min
How to Combine Organic, PPC & Ranking Data with AI to Optimize Every Amazon Keyword
Today Michael is coming to you solo recording from summer vacation in Switzerland to share a presentation he built for his friend Elizabeth Greene's seminar on AI-based optimization for Amazon PPC. The idea: AI is great at combining data. And the hardest part of Amazon PPC has always been that your ad console shows you revenue per click, cost per click, and target ACoS but it never shows you organic rank, impression share, or search query behavior sitting right next to it. Everything on Amazon is "one big ball mashed together," so it's genuinely hard to know where to lean into momentum and where to pull back. Michael walks through the exact four reports to pull, how to feed them to your favorite AI chatbot (Gemini, ChatGPT, or Claude), and the prompt that turns all of it into a keyword-by-keyword action list bid up here, cut back there even if you've never opened a spreadsheet in your life. Get the exact prompt. The full AI prompt Michael references in this episode, the one that cross-references organic rank, search query data, impression share, and ACoS into one action list is already sitting inside the free Badger Guide to Amazon PPC Checklist. Look for the section called "PPC with Organic Data and AI" on Row 209. We’ll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Resources & Links 00:00 – Intro from summer vacation in Switzerland 00:45 – The presentation Michael built for Elizabeth Greene's seminar on AI-based PPC optimization 01:30 – Why AI is so good at combining data sources into one PPC "assistant" 03:10 – The real problem: Amazon mashes organic, PPC, and ranking into one big ball 04:40 – Why goal-setting is still the hardest part of Amazon PPC in 2026 06:00 – The mastermind presentation (shoutout to Gansa) that started this whole framework 07:45 – From manual spreadsheets to AI: what's changed in how Badger builds these reports 08:30 – Badger Sheets: what's coming next 09:15 – The 4 reports to download: search query performance, brand analytics top-clicked terms, sponsored products search term impression share, and organic ranking data 12:00 – Running the prompt and reading your output: strong organic + low ACoS = cut bids 13:15 – Your 4 action items to go do this week 🦡 Highlights 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️ Find Michael Erickson Facchin — Ad Badger’s CEO and soul, PPC whisperer, and your go-to guide through the wild world of Amazon advertising Actually Useful Use Cases of AI in Amazon Marketing Free N-Gram Analysis Tool (Google Sheet) How Can I Be The Most Efficient With My N-Gram Analysis? The Exact "Revenue Impact Formula" to Prioritize Your Optimizations 📚 Unlock our FREE comprehensive Amazon Marketing Playbook Subscribe to our newsletter Transform your workflow with our comprehensive Amazon Advertising checklist Review all our show notes - Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator and Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno
#394
August 7 · 40 min
Can Agencies Serve as Teachers in Amazon Selling? (Classic)
Wondering why some Amazon sellers do really well and others don't? In this video, Michael and Destaney Wishon from BetterAMS share their own ups and downs with Amazon ads. They talk about how tricky Amazon advertising can get, why focusing too much on one thing can be a problem, and what basics you need to know. They also discuss whether it's better to handle your ads on your own, use software, or work with an agency. This episode is a rerelease of one of our most popular episodes. Please note the resources and link section for any relevant updates. We’ll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 0:00 - Introduction 2:19 - Marketing myopia 7:38 - Now harder for solo Amazon sellers? 11:40 - Focus on financial literacy 17:01 - Michael's view: Amazon ad forecast for brands 20:00 - Steps for better Amazon performance 23:44 - Should advance Amazon entrepreneurs improve skills? 28:17 - Back to basics 32:35 - SOP issues 37:48 - Destaney's book recommendation 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️ Find Michael Erickson Facchin — Ad Badger’s CEO and soul, PPC whisperer, and your go-to guide through the wild world of Amazon advertising Our guest today is Destaney Wishon of BTR Media How Can I Use ChatGPT To Advance My Amazon PPC Campaign? How Should I Analyze My Data for my Amazon PPC Campaign? How Can I Use Amazon’s New Dashboard To Boost My Amazon PPC Sales? Amazon PPC Horrors: 10 Terrifying Mistakes You Might Be Making How Can I Reach My Full Potential In The Amazon PPC Space? What Amazon PPC Updates Do You Need for 2024? Are We Still In The Golden Age of Amazon PPC? 📚 Unlock our FREE comprehensive Amazon Marketing Playbook Subscribe to our newsletter Transform your workflow with our comprehensive Amazon Advertising checklist Review all our show notes - Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Guest Co-Host: Destaney Wishon Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator and Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno
#393
July 31 · 17 min
How to Use AI & Spreadsheets to Prevent Amazon Stock-Outs
Today, we are joined by the amazing Maryna from the Ad Badger team. If you have ever wondered why your Amazon PPC performance suddenly dropped, even when your bids, keywords, and competitor pricing look perfect this episode is for you. Maryna shares her brilliant workflow for managing massive Amazon accounts that juggle thousands of SKUs. We discuss how to combine three essential Amazon reports into one master spreadsheet to accurately track your inventory levels. But the real magic happens next: we explore how to feed that data into AI chatbots, like Claude or Gemini, to instantly generate beautiful, actionable dashboards. We’ll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 00:00 – Intro 01:28 - The challenge of tracking inventory for large accounts 02:25 - How hidden low stock secretly ruins PPC performance 05:35 - The 3 essential Amazon reports you need to download 06:03 - Reading the master spreadsheet for stock and inbound data 08:28 - How Amazon penalizes your ranking when inventory drops 09:21 - Turning spreadsheets into a Claude dashboard 14:31 - Spotting restocked SKUs that are ready to be pushed 16:41 - Exactly when to pause, trim, or boost PPC budgets 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️ - Find Michael Erickson Facchin — Ad Badger’s CEO and soul, PPC whisperer, and your go-to guide through the wild world of Amazon advertising - Today on the show, we’re thrilled to welcome Maryna Nelep, an Amazon PPC manager and proud member of our Ad Badger family! - How to Audit Your Amazon PPC Account Using Bulk Files and Business Reports - You’re Not Out of Stock, So Why Are Your Sales Down? - Why Amazon PPC Bulk Files Are More Powerful Than Ever (And How to Get Started) - 3 Bad Habits in Amazon PPC It’s Time to Break 📚 Unlock our FREE comprehensive Amazon Marketing Playbook - Subscribe to our newsletter - Transform your workflow with our comprehensive Amazon Advertising checklist - Review all our show notes - Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Guest Co-Host: Maryna Nelep Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno
#392
July 24 · 30 min
How to Launch Meta Ads as an Amazon Seller
Sean Stone of Spillover Commerce joins Mike to explain why most Amazon sellers fail when they try Meta ads and the fix: anchor your first campaign to a real event, not a generic sale. They break down a live case study: a Father's Day push that turned $8K in ad spend into $38K in sales for a brand whose Shopify site normally got 10 visitors a day. Topics include the offer ingredients you need, reverse-engineering winning ads from the Facebook Ad Library, avoiding creative fatigue, and building a year-round holiday calendar for your product. We’ll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 00:00 – Intro 02:43 – Why Amazon sellers want off-platform sales 04:12 – Amazon's Aug 1 credit card policy as the trigger event 08:30 – Why most sellers fail at Meta/Shopify 09:44 – Case study: $11M on Amazon vs. $60K on Shopify 11:04 – Rented land: Amazon vs. TikTok Shop vs. owning your site 12:37 – The strategy: anchor to an event 15:52 – Results: $8K spend → $29K generated 18:52 – $38K total sales, traffic surge, creative fatigue 20:16 – In-house creative vs. influencers 22:07 – Reverse-engineering ads via Facebook Ad Library 26:51 – Building a repeatable event calendar 31:16 – More examples: Yeti's Knicks & Stanley Cup ads 33:50 – Outro 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️ Find Michael Erickson Facchin — Ad Badger’s CEO and soul, PPC whisperer, and your go-to guide through the wild world of Amazon advertising Today’s guest is Sean Stone of Spillover Commerce 3 Unfair Advantages of the Top 1% of E-commerce Brands Why Amazon Brands Are Starting to Use Meta Ads and Shopify https://www.adbadger.com/blog/amazon-ppc-education/why-amazon-brands-are-starting-to-use-meta-ads-and-shopify-the-ppc-den-podcast/ 📚 Unlock our FREE comprehensive Amazon Marketing Playbook Subscribe to our newsletter Transform your workflow with our comprehensive Amazon Advertising checklist Review all our show notes - Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Guest Co-Host: Sean Stone Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno
#391
July 17 · 23 min
Actually Useful Use Cases of AI in Amazon Marketing
In this episode, host Mike chats with Shane White from NoBul Partners about practical and highly effective ways to use AI in Amazon marketing. Shane explains his transition from ChatGPT to Claude, highlighting its powerful capabilities in visualizing large datasets and generating client-ready presentations. He also shares a clever hack for training the AI to scrape a client's website to automatically match brand colors and fonts in slide decks. We’ll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 00:00 - Intro 02:30 - AI in Amazon marketing 03:45 - Claude vs. ChatGPT 05:20 - AI data visualization 08:15 - Presentation branding hack 12:00 - Time-saving benefits 15:30 - Merging data sources 19:10 - Training AI memory 22:45 - Final takeaways 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️ Find Michael Erickson Facchin — Ad Badger’s CEO and soul, PPC whisperer, and your go-to guide through the wild world of Amazon advertising Our guest today is Shane White from NoBul Partners 3 Unfair Advantages of the Top 1% of E-commerce Brands We Tested AI Video Ads — Here’s What Improved Our ROAS Amazon Growth Lessons from an 8-Figure Agency: Audit-Proof Accounts & Client Goal-Setting 📚 Unlock our FREE comprehensive Amazon Marketing Playbook Subscribe to our newsletter Transform your workflow with our comprehensive Amazon Advertising checklist Review all our show notes - Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Guest Co-Host: Shane White Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno
#390
July 10 · 43 min
Amazon Growth Lessons from an 8-Figure Agency: Audit-Proof Accounts & Client Goal-Setting
Welcome back to The PPC Den! This episode we're pulling back the curtain on how a real Amazon agency runs behind the scenes from AI to accountability. Michael sits down with Joshua Rawe of AmpliSell to talk about how they personally use AI (spoiler: Claude Opus is the daily driver), why "average" AI output is a trap if you don't already have great ideas, and how they built an ongoing, AI-powered account audit so nothing falls through the cracks between reviews. We also get into the messy reality of client goal-setting: how to pin clients down on revenue vs. margin vs. ACOS before you ever touch a bid and the #1 mistake killing Amazon brands in 2026: not killing dead products and not launching new ones fast enough. Plus, why winning on Amazon today means winning off Amazon first. We’ll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 00:00 - Intro 02:30 – Personal vs. offline AI use, LM Studio for local LLMs 04:45 – Staying on top of Amazon changes with Claude Opus 4.8 07:00 – Amazon's title character limit change (75 characters) as a case study 08:15 – How information flows from AI digest → Slack → SOP → knowledge base 11:00 – Trust, delegation, and not micromanaging the last mile 13:30 – The "wasted spend check" problem: audits that never get repeated 15:45 – Building an ongoing, AI-run account audit ("audit-proof accounts") 18:00 – Client retention goals and the emotional cost of getting fired 19:30 – Weekly OKR feedback loops with leadership 21:15 – Nailing down client goals: revenue vs. margin vs. ACOS 24:00 – Biggest mistake in 2026: not killing bad products / not launching new ones fast enough 26:30 – Anker example category expansion vs. one hero product 28:00 – AI and copywriting/images: client pushback then client demand 29:30 – Highest-leverage activity: advertising + off-channel marketing 31:00 – Why Amazon is a demand-capture engine, not demand-creation 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️ Find Michael Erickson Facchin — Ad Badger’s CEO and soul, PPC whisperer, and your go-to guide through the wild world of Amazon advertising Our guest today is Joshua Rawe of AmpliSell Why AI Will Be Your New Assistant on Amazon What’s the Best Way to Manage an Amazon Brand? Exploring Agency Strategies 📚 Unlock our FREE comprehensive Amazon Marketing Playbook Subscribe to our newsletter Transform your workflow with our comprehensive Amazon Advertising checklist Review all our show notes - Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Guest Co-Host: Joshua Rawe Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno

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