What’s included
Amazon punishes brands that treat it as just another ad channel. Ads can’t save a broken product catalog, and if Amazon hides your listing (a “suppressed” listing), no bidding strategy matters. So this service is the ads and the marketplace work underneath them, as one job.
Focus areas · Full-funnel marketing
Marketplace audit
Account health, listing quality, tracking and wasted spend. We look before we touch anything, and you get the findings either way.
Sponsored campaign management
Amazon’s three ad types (Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display) built clean and judged by sales, not by how many people saw them.
Listing & content work
Titles, bullet points and product content written to convert shoppers and to feed Amazon’s ranking algorithm. This is the unpaid half of marketplace revenue.
Buy box & suppression recovery
A hidden listing is a dead listing, and losing the buy box (the “Add to Cart” button) means someone else gets your sale. We’ve recovered a client’s buy box twice. It’s in the case study below.
Variant & catalog hygiene
Parent and child listings (your sizes and colors) untangled so the data means something and the reviews roll up to one product.
Keyword & competitor research
What your category actually bids on, where the leader is beatable, and what it costs to defend what you have.
Seasonal budget curves
Spend goes up when demand does. We plan it the way we plan kayak summers, instead of the same flat budget every month.
Weekly marketplace reporting
Spend, sales, rank movement and what changed, reported weekly in plain English. See our scorecard format →
The Amazon shelf, explained
Search for any product on Amazon and most of the first screen is paid for. Here’s the same shelf with each placement named. This is what your campaigns compete for.
- Sponsored Brands banner. Your brand and tagline across the top of the search results. It’s the shelf’s billboard, won on brand and category searches.
- Sponsored Products. Ads that look like regular listings, placed inside the results. This is the workhorse placement, and it carries most marketplace ad revenue.
- The organic slots. Earned, not bought, and sales from ads push you into them. That’s the flywheel in the section below.
Not drawn: Sponsored Display, the ads that follow shoppers on and off Amazon. We add it when the numbers justify it.
The transparency gap
Amazon agencies hide more than any other corner of this industry. Of the top-ranking Amazon ads agencies we studied, most publish no pricing, no contract terms and no FAQ at all. We think that’s the opening.
The typical Amazon agency
- Pricing hidden behind a “free audit” call
- Contract terms never stated
- Silence on who controls your Seller Central account
- Ads sold separately from the catalog health they depend on
- No word on how often you’ll get a report
Southern Tide Media
- 18% of spend, $450 minimum, printed here
- Plain-English scope, with any setup work disclosed up front
- Your Seller Central stays yours. We work inside your account
- Ads and marketplace upkeep as one job
- Weekly reporting, in a format you can read right now
Where it starts
18% of ad spendManagement feeWith a $450 per month minimum per channel. Amazon is a channel, billed separately from your ad budget, exactly like our Google and Meta management.
How pricing worksHow the Amazon shelf works
Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display bid on real shopper searches. The shelf is bought and re-bought every day.
Amazon promotes what sells, and sales from ads count. Every paid sale pushes your unpaid listing up the same results page. That’s the flywheel that makes early spend pay off later.
A hidden listing or a tangled set of variants kills campaigns no bidding strategy can save. That’s why marketplace upkeep is part of this service, not an upsell.
ACoS grades each campaign (ad spend ÷ ad sales). TACoS grades the business (ad spend ÷ total sales). When TACoS falls while sales grow, the flywheel is turning.
None of this is secret. It’s just work most agencies skip. The audit shows you exactly where your account stands on all four.
How pricing works
Same structure as the rest of our paid media: one simple fee, and your ad budget is never part of it. For context, typical Amazon management retainers run $1,000 to $4,000 a month, most agencies won’t print a number, and anything above 30% of your ad spend should raise questions. Ours is below.
With a $450 per month minimum per channel. Amazon is a channel, billed separately from your ad budget, exactly like our Google and Meta management.
Paid directly to Amazon on your own Seller or Vendor account. We never mark it up. The account, the data and the history stay yours.
Major listing rebuilds, catalog restructures and integrations are scoped in writing and approved before we start.
Bundling is cheaper than buying the pieces.
See plans & pricingHow long it takes
What to expect
Amazon rewards sellers who get their catalog right before they spend. Here’s the order we work in.
Account structure, listing health, variants and tracking put right first. Ads on a broken catalog burn money.
Sponsored campaigns go live and start learning. Bids and targets settle against real sales data.
Winners get the budget, spend follows demand, and the weekly report keeps score.
Who we help
Amazon isn’t for every business on our roster. It’s for the ones that ship products in boxes. Where we run it:
E-commerce & DTC
Amazon as a channel beside your own store, measured by return on ad spend, not by fees.
Explore →Outdoor & Recreation
A short season and a bigger competitor to outmaneuver. This is our home turf.
Medical & wellness products
Experience in restricted categories that keeps listings live and inside Amazon’s rules.
Home & B2B products
Bigger purchases and distributor channels. When your own distributors sell against you on Amazon, we manage it instead of ignoring it.
When you win, we win
Real clients, real numbers. Ratios and rankings, sourced, with each client’s sign-off.
Outbidding the category leader — at a 5.9× return
2023 – 2026
A 599% return in a category Google restricts
2023 – present
Don’t take our word for it
“The Southern Tide Media team has smartly positioned itself as partners, versus “vendors.” Each step along the strategic path, I feel as if they are “all in” and have our best interests at heart.”
“Southern Tide Media increased our conversion rates on our SEO campaigns by 60% in short time… Brandon takes the worry out of all the technical jargon and translates that into workable applications you can understand as a business owner.”
“In every dealing I have ever had with Brandon Evans, he has been knowledgeable, fair, and has responded quickly. I would highly recommend using him for any of your business’s marketing or advertising needs!”
Questions, answered
Do you need control of our Seller account?
We work inside your account and you keep full ownership, the same rule as every ad platform we manage. If we ever part ways, nothing is held hostage.
What campaign types do you run?
Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display: the ads that drive marketplace sales. If your scale ever justifies Amazon’s DSP (its larger display-advertising platform), we’ll say so. Most catalogs don’t need it yet, and we’d rather tell you that than sell it.
What’s a good ACoS — and what’s TACoS?
ACoS is ad spend divided by the sales your ads made. It grades a campaign. TACoS is ad spend divided by all your sales, including the unpaid orders your ads helped you rank for. It grades the business. What counts as “good” depends on your margin and your goal: spend harder at launch, tighter once you’re established. We set the target from your actual numbers, not a category average.
Do ads really help our organic rank?
Yes. Amazon promotes what sells, and sales from ads count. That’s the flywheel in the section above: paid sales lift your unpaid ranking, unpaid orders bring TACoS down, and your budget works twice. It’s also why turning ads off on Amazon usually costs more than the ad budget it saves.
Can you fix a suppressed listing or lost buy box?
Yes, it’s a specialty. We’ve recovered a client’s suppressed buy box twice, and the catalog upkeep that prevents the next one is part of the engagement, not an upsell.
Should we sell on Amazon or on our own site?
Both, usually. Amazon is a channel; your site is the asset. We run them together with one budget conversation, which is the point of having one team on Google, Meta and Amazon.
What does the AI actually do?
The around-the-clock work a person can’t: adjusting bids and budgets against your targets, flagging when rank or conversion moves, and watching for changes to your listings. Strategy stays with a person.
When is Amazon advertising NOT worth it?
When the catalog is too thin to defend, the margins can’t carry the auction, or the listing basics aren’t fixed yet. Ads on a broken catalog burn money, which is why the audit comes first. We’ve told prospects to wait before, and we’d rather earn the account when it’s ready.