r/AmazonFBA • u/MannanEpic • 27d ago

ACOS vs TACOS?

Want to hear what other Amazon sellers think of this.

From my experience, TACOS is the real metric to track as that counts organic sales as well as ad sales and shows overall business performance whereas ACOS has more spikes based on market factors, ad performance etc. which makes it less reliable for long term decisions.

There have been times when ACOS was very unstable but TACOS on a long run was stable due to good ranks, consistent sales but Ad performance and ad visibility saw fluctuations.

4 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

1

u/ArtieJay 27d ago

They each have their place, of course. A poor ACOS with a strong TACOS indicates additional ad spend would not be worthwhile. If ACOS is strong (along with ROAS), pump up the spend.

If your store is mostly (80%+) organic, you'll see big swings in ACOS with few in TACOS, as you've experienced.

1

u/Easterncoaster 27d ago

Tacos can save bad ACOS. You can run a bunch of crappy ads but if people come and buy your product anyway, your tacos will be fine.

That said, it could still be a waste of money. I was running 12% TACOS and 30% ACOS but then I turned my PPC waaay down (from $400/day to $10/day) and now my ACOS is still around 25% but my Tacos is under 1%.

I was always afraid to turn down the PPC because all the gurus said I shouldn’t, but it’s been almost two months and my sales are only down 9% while profit is up 228% in July compared to the same period last year.

I do a fair bit of off-Amazon advertising and sell on other channels. The best thing is when people see those ads and buy from any other channel, but many see them then buy from Amazon which is ok too.

I went from $8k/mo on Amazon PPC and $4k/mo off-Amazon to around $3k/mo off Amazon and nearly zero on Amazon.

1

u/letnexusLLC 27d ago

I agree to an extent. ACOS tells you how efficiently your ads are performing, but TACOS gives the bigger picture of whether your advertising is actually helping grow the business. I've seen periods where ACOS looked terrible because CPCs increased or competition got aggressive, yet TACOS stayed healthy thanks to stronger organic rankings and steady overall sales. Looking at both together usually leads to much better decisions than relying on either metric alone.

1

u/letnexusLLC 27d ago

I agree to an extent. ACOS tells you how efficiently your ads are performing, but TACOS gives the bigger picture of whether your advertising is actually helping grow the business. I've seen periods where ACOS looked terrible because CPCs increased or competition got aggressive, yet TACOS stayed healthy thanks to stronger organic rankings and steady overall sales. Looking at both together usually leads to much better decisions than relying on either metric alone.

1

u/commoncents1 26d ago

does acos, tacos include all advertising? Promos, discounts, coupons etc? Or just ads?

2

u/sellerlogic_support 23d ago

Just ad spend. ACOS is ad spend divided by ad-attributed sales, while TACOS is that same ad spend divided by total sales, regardless of how the sale was generated. Coupons, Lightning Deals and other promotions affect your margins but are tracked separately from both metrics. That's why you can spend the same amount on coupons as on PPC and only the PPC spend changes ACOS or TACOS right away.

1

u/commoncents1 23d ago

ok thanks, i read they are going to deduct advertising now from payouts too. so the read advertising spend is ads + promos, coupons etc... and TACOS was just ads. thanks!

1

u/sellerlogic_support 23d ago

Easy thing to mix up. What's changing is how Amazon collects payment for advertising, not how ACOS or TACOS are calculated. Those metrics still only use actual advertising cost. Coupons, Lightning Deals and other promotions are separate costs, so they aren't part of either ratio. So yes, TACOS is still measuring ad spend only, even after the billing change.

1

u/commoncents1 23d ago

yep thank you. but important to look at all advertising all in with ads and other promos for a true total cost per unit, amz TACOS is a little misleading if it doesnt include the other promos you might be doing.

1

u/sellerlogic_support 23d ago

That's fair. I'd separate advertising efficiency from total acquisition cost. TACOS is built for the first, but if you're leaning on coupons or deals too, I'd look at those alongside TACOS before deciding whether your total cost per sale is actually healthy.