Getting started with Amazon Ads in India: a seller's guide

Amazon Advertising India has matured significantly over the past few years. It is no longer a secondary channel for Indian sellers. For products sold on Amazon.in, advertising is increasingly the difference between visible and invisible. Organic ranking alone is insufficient in most competitive categories, and sellers who understand how to run Amazon Ads profitably gain a meaningful advantage.

This guide covers the basics for sellers who are new to Amazon Advertising or have been running it without a clear strategy.

The three main Amazon Ad formats for India

Sponsored Products are the most important format for most Indian sellers. These are keyword-targeted ads that appear within search results and on product detail pages. They look like organic listings and drive traffic directly to your product listing. For most sellers, starting with Sponsored Products is the right move.

Sponsored Brands appear at the top of search results and feature your brand logo, a custom headline, and up to three products. These work well once you have an established product range and are trying to build brand recognition on Amazon, not just drive individual product sales.

Sponsored Display lets you target customers based on their browsing and purchasing behaviour on Amazon, including retargeting people who viewed your product listing but did not purchase. This format is worth testing once you have Sponsored Products running well.

Setting up your first Sponsored Products campaign

Before you advertise, your listing must be ready. A poorly written listing with few or low-quality images will not convert well regardless of how much you spend on ads. Optimise your title, bullet points, product description, A+ content (if eligible), and images first.

Create one campaign per product or product group. Starting with an auto-targeting campaign alongside a manual targeting campaign gives you two things: sales quickly (auto finds customers while you learn), and keyword data (auto campaigns reveal search terms that convert, which you can add to manual campaigns).

Set your daily budget based on what you can afford to spend while learning. ₹200 to ₹500 per day per campaign is a reasonable starting point for most Indian sellers. Keep budgets modest while you gather data.

Understanding ACoS and its role in Indian selling

ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale) is your primary metric on Amazon. It is the percentage of sales revenue that you spent on advertising. If you sold ₹10,000 in products and spent ₹2,500 on ads, your ACoS is 25 percent.

To determine your target ACoS, you need to know your margin. If your profit margin after Amazon fees, GST, and cost of goods is 35 percent, then an ACoS of 35 percent is breakeven. Anything below that is profitable. Most Indian sellers aim for an ACoS of 15 to 25 percent for established products.

New products can run at a higher ACoS deliberately to build sales velocity and review count, which improves organic ranking over time. This is an investment in organic growth, not just direct return.

Keyword research for Indian Amazon buyers

Indian Amazon shoppers search differently from US shoppers. Include regional transliterations in your keyword strategy. A kurta seller should include "kurta for women" but also "kurti," "cotton kurta," and category-specific terms like "anarkali," "straight kurta," and "indo western."

Use Amazon's own search bar to see autocomplete suggestions for your category. These are real searches from Indian buyers. Also mine your auto-targeting campaign's search term report after two weeks of running it. The terms that have converted are your most valuable manual targeting keywords.

Negative keywords are as important as positive ones. Adding irrelevant terms as negatives stops your budget from being wasted. A seller of premium cotton kurtas should probably add "artificial" and "polyester" as negatives.

Frequently asked questions