How to Analyze Amazon PPC Ad Spend and Competitor Marketing Strategies

Amazon’s ad platform has become a multi-billion-dollar battleground for brand visibility, generating $56.2 billion in 2024. Thousands of brands invest heavily in PPC ads, with over 1,300 spending more than $1 million annually and around 14,000 spending at least $100K.

Since 70% of shoppers buy from the first page of search results, top sponsored slots are crucial. Analyzing competitor ad spend and strategy is essential for staying competitive. Tools such as SmartScout’s AdSpy and Traffic Graph help track key metrics such as Share of Voice and ad spend share, offering valuable insights for brand managers and PPC professionals.

Let’s learn more.
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Why Analyze Competitors’ Amazon PPC Strategies?

Understanding your competitors’ advertising moves can inform and improve your own Amazon marketing strategy in several ways:
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• Gauge Market Position: Analyzing competitors’ Share of Voice in ads shows how dominant they are in your category and for key keywords. It is a digital shelf market share scoreboard: if rivals hold top ad positions and you do not, they win visibility. Use this to see whether you are catching up or falling behind in the race for customer attention.
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• Optimize Ad Spend Efficiency: Competitive analysis reveals how much rivals invest in ads relative to results. Market leaders often spend less yet dominate sales. In protein bars, Quest Nutrition held a leading sales share while spending less on PPC. Strong brand recognition and organic rankings let leaders convert more efficiently. Compare ad spend to sales to gauge efficiency and set realistic ROAS goals.
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• Identify Aggressive Challengers: Heavy PPC spend by a smaller competitor signals a push to grow market share. Ad spend today can become future customers, especially in repeat purchase categories like supplements and beauty. Track spend patterns to spot rising threats and brands buying into top positions. Use these signals to decide whether to raise budget or double down on differentiation.
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• Strategic Budget Allocation: Knowing where rivals focus ad spend guides strategy. If a competitor dominates a keyword or ad format, either avoid the fight to protect margins or defend your share. When a rival holds about 50% of sponsored ad impressions on a high volume keyword, unseating them requires aggressive bids and budget. Target neglected keywords or ad types for easier wins.
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• Protect Your Brand and Customers: Competitors may target your brand name with ads. They bid on your branded keywords so their sponsored products appear alongside or above yours. Analyze PPC data to see who targets your brand and how often you lose sponsored placements on branded terms. Use these insights to run branded campaigns and protect visibility on your searches.
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• Learn from Competitor Tactics: Studying competitor marketing reveals what works in your niche. You can surface new keywords, ad copy or imagery that lift click through rates, and spot market gaps. Treat each move as a data point to map winning tactics for your audience, then adopt or counter them.
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In short, competitor PPC analysis shines a light on the “dark battlefield” of Amazon advertising. Instead of fighting blind, you gain intel on where and how to compete. Next, let’s define the key metrics and data points that will equip you in this competitive analysis.

Key Metrics to Measure: Share of Voice, Win Rate, and Ad Spend Share

When dissecting competitors’ Amazon PPC presence, a few critical metrics and concepts will come up repeatedly. These tell you how visible a brand is, how often they win ad placements, and how much they might be spending. Below are the key metrics to understand:
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• Share of Voice (SOV): On Amazon, Share of Voice is the share of impressions or visibility your brand captures in search results or ads. It shows how dominant a brand is for a query or category. If 1 of 10 sponsored products on page one is yours, you have 10% SOV. High SOV means strong placement in ads or organic and often aligns with higher sales. Track SOV on key keywords to benchmark against competitors. If a rival has higher SOV, they are outadvertising or outranking you, so raise bids or improve relevancy to close the gap.
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• Keyword Win Rate: Win rate complements SOV at a granular level. It is the percentage of times a brand wins a sponsored ad placement for a specific search term. SmartScout AdSpy reports win rate per keyword, showing how often a brand appears in top sponsored spots. A 50% win rate on “wireless earbuds” means the ad shows in about half of top impressions for that query. Use win rate to find a competitor’s strongest keywords and the terms where they are weak. High win rates flag cornerstone keywords that drive sales. Low rates signal openings for you to capture share. No other Amazon tool offers this exact competitor win rate view.
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• Ad Spend Share (Budget Share): Amazon does not disclose brand ad spend, but third party tools can estimate ad spend share by category or keyword. SmartScout’s Ad Spend Share approximates each top brand’s spend using inputs like keyword volume, cost per click, and win rates. This puts investment in context with results. If a competitor holds 30% of sales but 50% of ad spend, they are likely overspending or pushing for share. A brand with high sales share and low ad spend share is efficient and benefits from organic traction. Use ad spend share to see who is buying visibility versus earning it, and to anticipate shifts in market leadership. Heavy sustained spending often comes before gains in sales rank.
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• Other Helpful Data Points: Watch related metrics. Impression Share shows the percent of eligible impressions your ads receive. If yours is 20%, competitors hold the other 80%. Brand Analytics reports Click Share for the top three products per term, hinting at who earns the most clicks. Use industry benchmarks like CTR and CPC for context. In 2025, Amazon’s average CPC is about $1.04, up from about $0.95, and can exceed $1.10 in hot categories and peak seasons. If a competitor dominates a $1 plus CPC keyword, they are committing significant budget.
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Techniques to Uncover Competitor PPC Strategies

Armed with an understanding of key metrics, the next step is to actually gather and analyze the data on your competitors. There are multiple approaches, from manual sleuthing to leveraging advanced analytics tools. Let’s break down the most effective techniques:
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1. Manual Observation and Amazon’s Own Data

Before jumping into fancy software, it’s worth doing some manual competitive research on Amazon itself. This boots-on-the-ground approach costs nothing and builds a baseline understanding of the landscape.

Here’s how to go about it:
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• Search Key Terms and Note Who Appears: List your most important keywords. Search each on Amazon and note which brands show in first page sponsored results. Focus on top of search sponsored product ads and the sponsored brand banner. Repeat at different times to spot consistency. If a brand consistently holds a top sponsored slot for “wireless earbuds,” they likely have a high win rate and aggressive bids. Record the top competitors per keyword as a manual Share of Voice gauge.
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• Leverage Brand Analytics (for Brand Registered sellers): Amazon Brand Analytics gives useful competitive insights for brand owners. The Search Terms report lists top clicked products and their click share. If a competitor’s ASIN leads “protein powder” with 25% of clicks, they have strong visibility from organic or ads. The Market Basket report shows products often bought with yours, revealing cross sell opportunities. It does not show spend, but it highlights who wins attention on key searches.
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• Exploit Search Query Performance (SQP) and Category Benchmarks: Use the advertising console’s Search Query Performance to see your impression share and click share. If your impression share on a high value keyword is 10%, competitors captured 90%. This checks assumptions about visibility. Category Benchmark reports compare your CTR and conversion to peers. If you trail benchmarks, competitors likely have stronger ads or listings, so review what they do differently.
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• Keep an Eye on Sponsored Display Ads on Pages: Visit your product pages and competitors’ pages to see which Sponsored Products and Sponsored Display ads appear. Look for carousels like “Sponsored products related to this item” or “Brands related to this brand” to spot rivals targeting your listings. This reveals active conquesting. If your product shows as a sponsored suggestion on a competitor page, you are winning placement. Manual checks confirm competitive targeting strategies.
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Manual checks have limits. They are labor intensive and can miss activity beyond your snapshot in time. Amazon results are dynamic and personalized, so you may not see every instance. Still, this method gives a qualitative view of the field and helps validate automated findings.
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2. Using Third-Party Tools for Data-Driven Insights

Amazon’s scale makes manual research impractical. Use specialized analytics tools to reverse engineer competitor PPC strategies. Different tools offer different strengths. SmartScout stands out with uniquely granular insights.

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• Jungle Scout Cobalt (Enterprise): Provides Share of Voice analytics to show which brands win the most ad impressions in a category or keyword group. A dashboard might show Brand A at 40%, Brand B at 25%, Brand C at 10%. Useful for positioning, but pricing is steep and SOV is often aggregated without the specific keywords behind it.
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• Helium 10 (Cerebro & Black Box): Cerebro reveals keywords a competitor’s ASIN ranks for and flags if it runs sponsored ads. Market Tracker and Adtomic add high level competitive views, and Black Box can filter for Frequently Bought Together relationships. Advertising insights are lighter on win rates and spend, so you may not see how often they win or budget estimates.
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• SmartScout AdSpy: Deep competitor ad intel: Select any brand and see all keywords they bid on with win rate per term. You can view dominance by keyword and where they do not advertise. SmartScout also estimates spend by keyword and in total using win rates, search volume, and average CPC, focusing on top of search placements for Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Video on page one. Sponsored Display and page two are not included, but the main battle is page one.
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• Data export and analysis: Ensure the tool lets you export data for deeper work. SmartScout AdSpy supports quick Excel exports so you can sort and filter to find patterns, such as clusters a competitor dominates or products that absorb most of their budget. Sorting by win rate surfaces untouchable terms versus contested ones.
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SmartScout is transparent because it shows the keyword level data behind a brand’s aggregate ad spend. This builds trust and enables action. If Brand X spends an estimated $50k per month and Brand Y $10k, X is the bigger spender. If X puts $5k into “wireless earbuds,” you have a clear budget target.

Tip: Analyze multiple competitors and adjacent categories. Leaders may cluster around the same terms while a niche player wins with a different set. Related category brands can bid on crossover keywords you can use.

Amazon PPC CPC rose from mid 2024 to mid 2025. In costly categories, study rivals closely to avoid wasteful bidding wars.
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3. Benchmarking Ad Spend and Share of Voice in Your Category

Zoom out to the category level and compare Ad Spend Share to Market Share.

With SmartScout’s category view or Scope, estimate how top brands split ad spend. A table of the top five brands showing monthly ad spend and sales can reveal that Brand A has 30% of sales but only 20% of ad spend, signaling strong organic strength, while Brand B has 25% of sales and 40% of ad spend, signaling overspend to catch up.

SmartScout’s data on protein bars showed Quest Nutrition with larger sales share than ad spend share, while rivals spent more yet lagged in sales. Big budgets do not guarantee leadership. A high ad spend share flags an aggressive push. Tactically, either raise spend or compete efficiently with long tail keywords and better conversion. If you hold 10% sales share but 25% ad spend share, optimize and cut low return keywords.
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Benchmarking tips:
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• Sponsored Brands vs. Sponsored Products: Many brands focus on Sponsored Products and neglect Sponsored Brands or Sponsored Video. That gap is an opportunity since Sponsored Brands get prominent placement and can showcase multiple products. If a rival runs many Sponsored Brand Video ads, consider launching your own to counter.
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• Ad spend vs. organic rank: Check where heavy spenders rank organically. If ads compensate for weak organic placement, the spend may be hard to sustain. Strong organic leaders often spend less on those terms and shift budget elsewhere. Allocate PPC to keywords where you are not yet strong organically and defend lightly where you already rank well.
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• Use directional data for planning: Estimates are not exact, but they show who spends more. If one competitor is estimated at $50k per month and another at $10k, the first is the bigger spender. Keyword level estimates, like $5k on a single term, mark major battlegrounds and guide whether to match investment or find another angle.
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Benchmarking creates a clear map of your competitive landscape: who the leaders are, how hard they push ads, and which keywords or sub niches they target. Use it to shape PPC strategy, deciding where to confront, where to carve a niche, and where to concede costly battles to win more efficiently elsewhere.
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4. Leveraging “Frequently Bought Together” and Traffic Graphs for Strategic Insight

We have focused on search keywords and placements, but competitor strategy also includes which products they target or pair. Amazon’s Frequently Bought Together data reveals product affinities for cross selling and conquesting.

Use these insights with SmartScout’s Traffic Graph to uncover bundles, complements, and targets for ads.
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• Mine the FBT section: On a product page, “Frequently Bought Together” shows complementary items. A neck pillow paired with a sleep mask signals a bundle or cross sell. Advertise your pillow on the mask listing and vice versa. Many sellers chase substitutes, but FBT exposes adjacent needs that others ignore.
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• Identify competitor product networks: Check competitors’ listings to see what their items are bought with. If a protein powder often pairs with a third party shaker, they may launch a shaker or target that page. Use these pairings to understand lateral traffic and plan your own targeting.
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• Use SmartScout’s Traffic Graph: Automate FBT research with a visual network of products and their connections. Input any product to see related items and traffic strength. Reveal the ecosystem around a competitor, including accessories and likely partnerships.
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• Apply it to advertising strategy:
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  • Product targeting ads: Run Sponsored Products or Sponsored Display on complementary items you identified.
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  • Bundles or cross promotions: Create virtual bundles or partner with brands that pair with yours.
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  • New product development: Build accessories that FBT shows are frequently bought with your category.
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  • Defense and attack: Target pages where your product appears with a competitor, and intercept buyers on the other paired items.

SmartScout’s Traffic Graph maps shopper behavior into a web of opportunity on Amazon. It reveals the paths customers take that most tools do not show, such as adjacent categories your competitor’s buyers also purchase.

This visualization replaces tedious manual clicks and surfaces broader marketing or product opportunities. Do not ignore product side analysis: keywords show how shoppers find items, while the traffic graph and FBT show what they do next. Combine keyword targeting with smart product targeting to gain an edge.
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Conclusion: Turn Data into Action

Analyzing Amazon PPC ad spend and competitor strategies is a multi-faceted undertaking, but the payoff is a clearer roadmap for your own brand’s success. By monitoring who is winning visibility (Share of Voice), how much they’re investing (ad spend estimates), and where their tactics lie (keywords, products, formats), you move from reactive selling to proactive, strategic marketing.
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To recap key steps:
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1. Benchmark the Battlefield: Start by understanding the lay of the land – which competitors dominate your space and how visible they are. Use Share of Voice as your high-level gauge of dominance.
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2. Dive into the Details: Uncover the specific keywords and placements driving that dominance. Competitor win rate data from tools like SmartScout AdSpy will show you exactly where a rival is concentrating their firepower (and conversely, where they might be weak).
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3. Compare Spend vs. Results: Use estimated ad spend share to see who is punching above their weight or burning cash for little reward. This can inform whether you need to defend against an aggressive spender or exploit a competitor’s inefficiencies.
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4. Leverage Complementary Insights: Don’t forget to analyze product relationships via frequently bought together data. A competitor’s marketing strategy can also involve product targeting and cross-selling – areas where you can insert your brand if you know the opportunities.
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5. Adapt and Act: Finally, turn all these insights into action. For instance, if you learned that Competitor X wins 50% of impressions on your top keyword, consider allocating more budget or optimizing your ads for that term. If Competitor Y is outspending everyone but still losing market share, maybe focus on increasing your organic rankings and efficiency to outlast their ad blitz. And if you found that customers often pair your product with another item, run ads on that item’s page to capture those combos.
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Data is your ally. Continuously monitor competitor PPC to anticipate shifts, such as new entrants ramping spend or rivals doubling down on video ads, and act before sales slip. The right tools and analysis illuminate the battlefield and replace guesswork. With an expert, data driven approach, you can navigate Amazon PPC, make informed decisions, and allocate budget for maximum impact.
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