Knowledge·Glossary50 terms

GLOSSARY.

Plain-English Amazon glossary — engineered for screen-reading, search, and AI engines.

50 core terms every Amazon brand owner and operator should know. No fluff, no affiliate links, no email gate.

A7 terms

ACoS

Advertising Cost of Sale — your ad spend divided by ad revenue, expressed as a percentage. A 25% ACoS means you spent $25 to generate $100 in attributed ad revenue. Lower is not always better; target ACoS depends on your margins and growth objectives.

ASIN

Amazon Standard Identification Number — a 10-character alphanumeric code Amazon assigns to every product in its catalogue. Each variation (size, color) typically gets its own ASIN. The ASIN is the atomic unit of Amazon's product graph.

A+ Content

Enhanced listing content below the bullet points — custom modules with images, comparison charts, and rich text. Available to Brand Registry sellers. A/B testing shows 3–10% conversion lift when done well. Premium A+ (available to top-tier sellers) adds video and interactive modules.

AMC

Amazon Marketing Cloud — a privacy-safe clean room where you can run SQL queries across Amazon's ad exposure, purchase, and streaming data. Used for multi-touch attribution, path-to-purchase analysis, audience overlap, and lifetime value modelling.

ASIN-level Profitability

A per-ASIN P&L view that accounts for revenue, FBA fees, referral fees, ad spend, COGS, and storage. The correct unit of analysis for pricing and PPC decisions. Amazon's Brand Analytics and third-party tools like Sellerboard calculate this automatically.

Attribution Window

The time period after an ad interaction during which a resulting purchase is credited to that ad. Amazon's default is 14 days for Sponsored Products, 14 days for Sponsored Brands, and 14 days for Sponsored Display. DSP offers 1-day, 7-day, 14-day, and 28-day windows.

Auto Targeting

A Sponsored Products campaign setting where Amazon automatically targets keywords and ASINs it deems relevant to your listing. Useful for keyword discovery but typically less efficient than manual targeting. Best used as a harvesting vehicle, not a primary campaign.

B5 terms

Brand Registry

Amazon's program that gives verified brand owners access to A+ Content, Sponsored Brands, Brand Analytics, Vine, and IP infringement reporting tools. Requires a registered trademark. Unlocks most advanced Amazon selling capabilities.

Buy Box

The featured offer box on a product detail page — the 'Add to Cart' button defaults to this seller. Only one seller wins the Buy Box at a time. Winning is determined by fulfillment method, price, seller metrics, and availability. ~80% of sales go through the Buy Box.

Bid Adjustment

A percentage modifier applied to a base keyword bid for specific placements (top of search, rest of search, product pages) or audiences. Lets you pay more to appear at top of search while keeping your base bid conservative.

Best Seller Rank (BSR)

A ranking number assigned to every product in every category it belongs to, updated hourly based on recent sales velocity. BSR #1 = best seller in that category. Useful as a relative velocity indicator but not a direct input to search rank.

Brand Halo

The organic sales lift attributed to advertising — when an ad impression or click leads to organic purchases of other products in your brand's catalogue. AMC can quantify brand halo; standard attribution windows cannot.

C4 terms

Coupon

A percentage or dollar-off discount displayed as a green badge on search results and detail pages. Increases click-through rate by signaling value. The discount is funded by the seller; Amazon charges a small fee per redemption.

Conversion Rate

Orders divided by sessions (or glance views), expressed as a percentage. Amazon's category average is roughly 10–15%. A low conversion rate points to listing quality issues — weak images, price misalignment, or poor social proof.

Click-Through Rate

Clicks divided by impressions on an ad. Industry average for Sponsored Products is around 0.3–0.5%. Low CTR suggests the main image, price, or review count is underperforming relative to competing listings at the same placement.

Customer Acquisition Cost

Total ad spend divided by new customers acquired — or new-to-brand orders. The primary efficiency metric for growth campaigns. Acceptable CAC depends on your product margin and estimated LTV. Calculate with AMC's new-to-brand order data.

D2 terms

DSP

Amazon Demand-Side Platform — programmatic display and video advertising that reaches audiences on Amazon-owned and third-party sites. Unlike Sponsored Ads, DSP buys impressions rather than keywords. Used for retargeting, conquest, and upper-funnel brand awareness.

Day Parting

Scheduling ad campaigns to run only during specific hours or days. Amazon's native ad console has limited day-parting support; most advanced day-parting requires a third-party tool like Pacvue or Perpetua with scheduled bid rules.

F5 terms

FNSKU

Fulfillment Network Stock Keeping Unit — a barcode Amazon generates for FBA products that ties inventory to your specific seller account. Required on every unit sent to a fulfillment center. Different from your manufacturer's UPC.

FBA

Fulfillment by Amazon — you ship inventory to Amazon's fulfillment centers; Amazon picks, packs, ships, and handles customer service and returns. Grants Prime eligibility and generally improves Buy Box win rate.

FBM

Fulfillment by Merchant — you store, pick, pack, and ship orders yourself. Lower fees but loses Prime badge unless you qualify for Seller Fulfilled Prime. Often used as a backup when FBA inventory runs out.

Flat File

A tab-delimited spreadsheet Amazon uses for bulk listing creation and editing. Each row is a product; columns map to listing attributes. The fastest way to update hundreds of ASINs at once. Mistakes can suppress listings — always test on a single ASIN first.

Frequency

Average number of times each unique user saw your ad. Impressions divided by reach. High frequency (above 5–7 for display) signals audience fatigue and creative refresh need. Relevant for DSP and Sponsored Brands video campaigns.

G1 term

Glance Views

The number of times your product detail page was viewed — equivalent to page views. The top metric for measuring listing traffic. Glance views come from both organic search and paid clicks. Divide orders by glance views to get unit session percentage.

I3 terms

IPI

Inventory Performance Index — Amazon's 0–1000 score measuring how efficiently you manage FBA inventory. Scores below 400 can trigger storage limits. Driven by in-stock rate, stranded inventory, excess inventory, and sell-through rate.

Inventory Performance Index

See IPI. Amazon's composite score (0–1000) of FBA inventory health. Reflects excess inventory, stranded inventory, in-stock rate, and sell-through. Scores below 400 trigger storage capacity restrictions.

Impressions

The number of times your ad was displayed, regardless of unique users. Total impressions divided by reach equals average frequency. High impressions with low clicks indicate creative or relevance issues rather than inventory or bid problems.

L4 terms

Lightning Deal

A time-limited promotional discount (typically 4–12 hours) featuring your product on Amazon's Deals page. Requires a minimum discount, sufficient inventory, and Amazon's approval. High-traffic events like Prime Day amplify reach significantly.

Long-Term Storage Fee

An additional FBA fee charged on inventory that has been in a fulfillment center for more than 365 days (assessed monthly). Rates are significantly higher than standard monthly storage fees. The main financial incentive to manage ageing inventory proactively.

Last-Touch Attribution

A model that gives 100% of conversion credit to the last ad interaction before purchase. Amazon's default attribution model. Tends to over-credit bottom-funnel campaigns (Sponsored Products) and under-credit awareness campaigns (DSP, Sponsored Brands).

Lifetime Value

The total net revenue a customer generates over their entire purchasing relationship with your brand. LTV calculation requires cross-purchase data from AMC or a CRM. High-LTV brands can justify higher customer acquisition costs on Amazon.

M1 term

Marketing Stream

Amazon Ads API feature that streams near-real-time campaign performance data (hourly granularity) to your data warehouse. Enables day-parting dashboards, hourly anomaly detection, and faster bid response than the standard reporting lag.

N2 terms

Negative Match

A keyword exclusion in a PPC campaign that prevents your ads from showing for that search query. Negative exact match blocks only that exact phrase; negative phrase match blocks any query containing the phrase. Critical for controlling wasted spend.

New-to-Brand %

The share of ad-attributed purchases made by customers who had not bought from your brand on Amazon in the past 12 months. A key metric for upper-funnel campaign evaluation — tells you whether ads are growing your customer base or just capturing existing demand.

P1 term

Placement Modifier

A bid multiplier (0–900%) that increases your bid for top-of-search or product page placements. If your base bid is $1.00 and you set a 50% top-of-search modifier, you bid $1.50 for that placement only.

R3 terms

ROAS

Return on Ad Spend — the inverse of ACoS, expressed as a multiplier. A 4× ROAS means every $1 in ad spend returned $4 in attributed revenue. Useful for cross-channel comparisons because it speaks the same language as Facebook and Google Ads.

Repeat Customer Rate

The percentage of your orders that come from customers who have purchased from you before. High repeat rate indicates strong brand loyalty or consumable product dynamics. Visible in Brand Analytics and AMC.

Reach

The number of unique users who saw your ad at least once within a given period. A DSP and Sponsored Brands metric. Reach combined with frequency determines how saturated your target audience is with your creative.

S8 terms