The 12 KPIs an Amazon Brand Manager Should Track, and How Often
Twelve numbers tell you whether an Amazon brand is healthy, growing and making money. This page defines each one from Amazon's own pages, says what good looks like only where a source states it, and says how often to look.
Short answer
An Amazon brand manager should track total sales, ACoS and TACoS, contribution margin, sessions, unit session percentage (conversion), Featured Offer (Buy Box) percentage, organic visibility, review rating and count, return rate, account health metrics such as order defect rate under 1%, and inventory health: in-stock rate, days of supply and IPI. Review sales, ads, stock and account health weekly, and the rest monthly.
The Amazon Brand Manager KPI Set, on One Page
A KPI (key performance indicator) is a number you agree to watch on a schedule so you notice a problem before it costs real money. Good Amazon brand management comes down to a short list of them.
The set below answers four questions. Is the brand selling more? Is it profitable after ads? Are shoppers finding and buying the product? Is anything about to break? For the role itself, see what an Amazon brand manager does.
One rule before the list: track every KPI by ASIN as well as for the whole account. A healthy account total can hide one variation that is out of stock, losing the Featured Offer, or drawing returns. The cadences below are our own working practice for $1M to $10M brands, not an Amazon rule.
Sales, ACoS, TACoS and Contribution Margin
Sales can rise while the brand loses money, and ad efficiency can look great while total sales shrink. Read these four together every month.
Total sales
Ordered product sales in Business Reports, counted when the order is placed. Compare by week and month against the same period last year, because Amazon sales are seasonal. Split it into ad-attributed and organic sales so the next two metrics make sense.
ACoS (advertising cost of sales)
Ad spend divided by ad-attributed sales, shown as a percentage. Amazon's own guide uses the example of $50 spent and $100 earned for an ACoS of 50%. Amazon also says there is no single good ACoS, and that to stay profitable your ACoS has to stay below your profit margin. That point is your break-even ACoS. Work it out per product with our ACoS, TACoS and break-even calculator.
TACoS (total advertising cost of sales)
Ad spend divided by total sales, ads plus organic. Amazon's ad guides do not define TACoS; this definition comes from Jungle Scout's TACoS guide (updated July 22, 2026). Example: $1,500 of ad spend, $5,000 of ad sales and $20,000 of total sales gives an ACoS of 30% but a TACoS of 7.5%. A flat or falling TACoS while total sales grow usually means organic sales are rising with the ads, which is what you want.
Contribution margin
The Corporate Finance Institute defines contribution margin after marketing as sales revenue minus variable costs minus marketing expense. On Amazon, variable costs include product cost, inbound freight, referral fees, FBA fees and returns; marketing includes ad spend, coupons and Vine. This is the number that tells you whether growth is worth having. Our contribution margin playbook walks through the math line by line.
Sessions, Conversion, Featured Offer and Organic Rank
These metrics come from the Detail Page Sales and Traffic report in Business Reports and from Brand Analytics. They explain why sales moved. Fewer sessions is a visibility problem; the same sessions with fewer orders is usually a detail page, price or review problem. High impressions with low clicks in Brand Analytics points at the main image, title, price or review count; high clicks with low purchases points at the detail page itself.
Sessions
In the definitions Amazon supplies for Business Reports, a session is a visit to your detail pages by one customer within a 24-hour period, so several page views in one visit still count once. Storefront and browse page visits do not count. Watch sessions by child ASIN; a parent total can hide one variation losing traffic.
Unit session percentage (conversion rate)
Units ordered divided by sessions, shown as a percentage. Amazon's glossary calls it the number of units purchased relative to the number of customers who viewed the products. Seller Labs, a tool vendor, suggests in a July 29, 2026 guide that under 5% likely needs work, 5% to 10% is solid for most categories and 10% to 15% is strong, and adds that benchmarks vary widely by category. Treat those as rough guides and compare against your own history first. Our Amazon conversion rate guide covers what moves it.
Featured Offer (Buy Box) percentage
The share of page views where your offer held the Featured Offer, the offer with the Add to Cart and Buy Now buttons. Amazon says competitive pricing against major outside retailers, fast shipping such as FBA, good order defect, cancel and late shipment metrics, and staying in stock all help, and that eligibility varies by category. Seller Labs notes that a private label brand that is the only seller should sit near 100%; if it does not, check for unauthorized sellers or hijackers on the listing.
Organic visibility and rank
Amazon does not publish an organic rank number in Business Reports. The closest native measure is the Search Query Performance dashboard in Brand Analytics, which shows impressions, clicks, cart adds and purchases for the queries that lead to your products, and your brand's share of each. Report those share numbers for your top queries. Our Brand Analytics playbook shows how to read them.
Reviews, Returns and Account Health Metrics
This group decides whether the brand keeps selling at all. A conversion drop costs you a month of sales; an account health problem can cost you the account. Check this group every week.
Review rating and count
Report the displayed star rating, total rating count and new reviews per ASIN. Seller Labs explains (September 24, 2026) that Amazon calculates the displayed rating with a machine-learned model that weighs factors such as review recency and Verified Purchase status, not a simple average. Never offer anything for a review that has to be positive or negative; the FTC's 2024 fake reviews rule bans it.
Return rate
Units returned divided by units sold, by ASIN and return reason. Seller Labs (July 29, 2026) says most categories average 5% to 15% and apparel can run above 25%; that is a vendor estimate, not an Amazon figure. Seller Labs adds that Amazon's Voice of the Customer dashboard labels listings Excellent, Good, Fair or Poor on CX Health. Sort returns into listing accuracy, product quality and buyer behavior; the first two are yours to fix.
Order defect rate (ODR)
Orders with a defect (negative feedback, an A-to-z Guarantee claim that is not denied, or a credit card chargeback) as a share of all orders over 60 days. Amazon's policy is to keep it under 1%, and above 1% can lead to deactivation. This applies to FBA and seller-fulfilled orders alike.
Account Health Rating
A color-coded score from 0 to 1,000 that Amazon says reflects your risk of deactivation based on policy compliance. Per SellerSprite's June 2026 guide and Amazon's 2023 launch announcement as reported by ChannelX, 200 to 1,000 is Healthy, 100 to 199 is At Risk and under 100 is Unhealthy. Our account health guide covers appeals.
Inventory KPIs: In-Stock, Days of Supply, IPI and Excess
A stock-out takes the Featured Offer and stalls ranking. Too much stock draws aged inventory charges and can shrink FBA storage limits.
In-stock rate
The share of days, or of your top ASINs, that were buyable. Amazon lists staying in stock as one of the things that helps you win the Featured Offer, and says stock-outs are a common cause of cancellations. Track it weekly for your top sellers and investigate any ASIN that went out of stock in the period.
Days of supply
Units on hand and inbound divided by average daily sales. Amazon's inventory guide suggests keeping about two months of supply and counts more than 90 days as excess. If days of supply is shorter than your manufacturer's lead time plus shipping, you are already late.
Excess and aged inventory
Amazon considers you to have excess inventory if you have over 90 days of supply, at least one unit aged over 90 days, or a better return available by lowering the price. FBA charges aged inventory costs monthly on items stored more than 181 days. Report units and dollars aged over 90 and over 180 days. Our FBA storage and aged inventory fee guide covers the fee side.
IPI (Inventory Performance Index)
Amazon describes IPI as a measure of how efficiently you manage FBA inventory, like a credit score, based on replenishing popular products, keeping optimal levels and fixing listing problems. Amazon's public pages we opened do not state a threshold. Seller Labs, a tool vendor, says in a July 29, 2026 guide that 400 is the level below which storage capacity can be restricted, and lists excess inventory, sell-through, stranded inventory and in-stock rate as the main inputs. Check it monthly, and weekly from August through Q4.
How to Set Up and Run the KPI Review
The value comes from looking at the same numbers the same way every week and month, so a change stands out. Here is the routine we use.
Pick your baseline period and freeze it
Pull the last full month and the same month last year for every KPI, by ASIN. Save it as the starting point. Without a baseline you cannot tell whether a new listing, price or campaign worked.
Set targets only where you have a reason
Use Amazon's stated targets for account health (ODR under 1%, and the seller-fulfilled targets above). Set break-even ACoS from your margin. For conversion, TACoS and return rate, set targets against your own history rather than a number from the internet.
Build one table, one row per KPI
Columns: this period, last period, same period last year, target, and a one-line note. Keep it to the twelve KPIs on this page. Anything else goes in an appendix. Our guide to the brand management monthly report shows a full outline.
Run the weekly check in under an hour
Account Health and any notices, Featured Offer percentage on top ASINs, in-stock and days of supply, last 7 days of ad spend and ACoS, and new reviews under three stars. Amazon suggests resolving critical reviews at least every 30 days with its Customer Reviews tool; weekly is better.
Run the monthly review in half a day
Update the full table. Read sessions and unit session percentage together, check Search Query Performance share for top queries, recompute TACoS and contribution margin, sort returns by reason and check IPI and aged stock. Write down the cause of every KPI that moved more than expected.
Tie every change to a KPI
Keep a change log: date, ASIN, what changed (price, image, bid, coupon) and which KPI you expect to move. Make one major change per ASIN at a time where you can, so the result is readable.
Reset targets each quarter
Recompute break-even ACoS after any cost or fee change, refresh the priority keyword list from Brand Analytics, and plan stock for the next season. Our Amazon brand management checklist lists the full weekly, monthly and quarterly tasks behind these numbers.
When to Track KPIs Yourself and When to Get Help
Plenty of brands should track these KPIs themselves. With a handful of ASINs, a simple ad account, steady stock and someone who opens Business Reports every week, a spreadsheet and this page are enough.
Help makes sense when the numbers are there but nobody acts on them: ACoS drifts above break-even for two months, a hero ASIN runs out in November, or a policy notice sits unread. At that point you are paying for a brand manager who is accountable for moving the KPIs, not for a dashboard.
Do it yourself
Under about ten ASINs, ad spend you can review in an hour a week, no recent account health notices, and an owner who reads the numbers.
Hire for a specific KPI
One number is the problem, such as ACoS or conversion. A PPC audit or a listing optimization project can fix it without a monthly plan.
Bring in a brand manager
Several KPIs are slipping at once, the catalog is growing, or nobody owns the weekly check. That is a brand management problem, not a tool problem.
Here is how Evolve helps. Evolve Media Agency was founded in 2017 by Ian Smith, who has sold on Amazon since 2015. We are a husband-and-wife team in Colorado backed by AI agents, and we make photo and video in house. Our Amazon brand management plans put one accountable brand manager on these KPIs, with a monthly report against the table above.
Our prices, as of October 2026: Brand Support, 5 hours for $750 a month; Brand Manager, 10 hours for $1,250; Brand Manager Plus, 20 hours for $2,000; and Full Brand Management, 40 hours for $3,600. Plans are paid upfront monthly, run month to month, and hours do not roll over. Work beyond a plan is $150 an hour. Ad spend and fixed-price production are billed separately. If one KPI is the whole problem, fixed-price work may be enough: a PPC audit and restructure is $995 one time, and listing optimization is $495 per listing. Everything is on the pricing page.
As a rough guide from our own accounts, a stable brand that mostly needs the weekly check and a monthly report fits Brand Support or Brand Manager; one that also needs monthly listing, ad and content changes fits Brand Manager Plus or Full Brand Management. Email Ian at [email protected], call or text 719-257-3557, or start with a free listing audit.
Where These Facts Come From
Amazon (sell.amazon.com): Amazon selling policies guide, Oct 16, 2024
sell.amazon.com · Open source →
Amazon help document G200205250: Monitor your account health (PDF)
m.media-amazon.com · Open source →
Amazon Ads: What is advertising cost of sales (ACOS)?
advertising.amazon.com · Open source →
Amazon (sell.amazon.com): Amazon pricing strategies, Oct 18, 2024
sell.amazon.com · Open source →
Amazon (sell.amazon.com): Inventory management guide
sell.amazon.com · Open source →
Amazon (sell.amazon.com): Fulfillment by Amazon costs
sell.amazon.com · Open source →
Amazon (sell.amazon.com): Brand Analytics guide, Oct 20, 2026
sell.amazon.com · Open source →
Openbridge: Amazon sales and traffic reports glossary (Amazon-supplied definitions)
docs.openbridge.com · Open source →
Seller Labs: Business Reports explained, Jul 29, 2026 (tool vendor)
sellerlabs.com · Open source →
Jungle Scout: What is Amazon TACoS?, updated Jul 22, 2026 (tool vendor)
junglescout.com · Open source →
Seller Labs: Restock limits explained, IPI score and FBA capacity, Jul 29, 2026 (tool vendor)
sellerlabs.com · Open source →
Corporate Finance Institute: Contribution margin after marketing (CMAM)
corporatefinanceinstitute.com · Open source →
Amazon (sell.amazon.com): Customer Reviews tool
sell.amazon.com · Open source →
FTC: Final rule banning fake reviews and testimonials, Aug 14, 2024
ftc.gov · Open source →
Seller Labs: How Amazon calculates your product star rating, Sep 24, 2026 (tool vendor)
sellerlabs.com · Open source →
Seller Labs: Why customers return products on Amazon, Jul 29, 2026 (tool vendor)
sellerlabs.com · Open source →
SellerSprite: Amazon Account Health Rating in 2026, Jun 19, 2026 (tool vendor)
sellersprite.com · Open source →
ChannelX: Amazon Account Health Rating live in UK and EU, Feb 22, 2023
channelx.world · Open source →
About the Author
Ian Smith
Founder, Evolve Media Agency
Ian has run Evolve Media Agency since 2017 and has sold on Amazon since 2015. He and Megan run brand management, launches, PPC and in-house photo and video for Amazon, Shopify and TikTok Shop brands, including supplement brands, from Colorado. Questions about this page go straight to him at [email protected].
Common Questions
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