Amazon TACoS: formula, targets and how to read the trend
ACOS tells you whether advertising is efficient. TACoS tells you whether advertising is helping the whole business. The useful signal is not one isolated percentage; it is the relationship between ad spend, total revenue and organic sales over a settled period.
The TACoS formula
TACoS = advertising spend / total sales revenue x 100.
If an account spends EUR 1,000 on ads and records EUR 10,000 in total Amazon sales, TACoS is 10%. Total sales must include both attributed ad sales and organic sales for the same marketplaces, currency and date window. Mixing a global ad number with sales from one market creates a percentage that looks precise but means nothing.
ACOS and TACoS answer different questions
ACOS divides ad spend by ad-attributed sales. It is a campaign efficiency metric. TACoS divides the same spend by all sales. It is a business exposure metric. A launch can have high ACOS while TACoS falls as organic sales grow. The reverse can happen when ACOS looks stable but ads become responsible for more of total revenue.
Read four trend patterns
TACoS down, total sales up: advertising is supporting organic growth.
TACoS up, total sales up: growth is increasingly paid; check contribution profit.
TACoS down, total sales down: lower spend may be shrinking demand rather than improving it.
TACoS up, total sales down: the account is paying more for less and needs diagnosis.
Compare complete weeks or months, not today's partial data. Advertising attribution and order reporting settle at different speeds, especially across multiple marketplaces.
Set a target from margin, not from a benchmark
There is no universal good TACoS. A private-label launch, a mature branded catalog and a clearance campaign have different jobs. Start with contribution margin after VAT, Amazon fees, fulfilment, landed product cost and returns. Decide how much of that margin can fund advertising, then set guardrails by SKU lifecycle and marketplace.
A practical weekly workflow
Reconcile spend and total sales in one currency, compare TACoS with ACOS and organic share, then diagnose the change at search-term level. Remove persistent zero-sale waste before reducing bids on converters. Protect new launches and recently changed targets from premature decisions while attribution is still settling.
Sales Hub reconciles total sales and profit, while Sniper Hub exposes the PPC actions behind the ratio. Together they keep TACoS connected to the decisions that move it.