At a glance
Total advertising cost across all Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and DSP campaigns over the window. SUM(cost) in account currency. The denominator under ROAS, the numerator under ACOS, and the budget figure your CFO checks first. Watch for unexpected spend spikes (>2σ above the 30D baseline) which usually mean auto-campaign drift or competitor cost-per-click pressure.
| The formula | SUM(cost) over the window across all campaign types. From Amazon Advertising Reports API: the cost field on Sponsored Products / Brands / Display reports. DSP spend is pulled from the DSP Reports API and added to the same total. |
| Reports API endpoint | POST /reporting/reports with reportTypeId per ad type (spCampaigns, sbCampaigns, sdCampaigns). DSP uses a separate Reports API endpoint. The card sums across all four. |
| What “spend” means | Gross media cost, billed by Amazon. Excludes any agency markup or rebates. This is the figure on your Amazon Advertising invoice. |
| ACOS vs ROAS framing | Spend is the numerator of ACOS (spend ÷ sales) and the denominator of ROAS (sales ÷ spend). Movement in this card directly drives both. |
| Attribution model | N/A for cost itself, cost is recorded at click time, not at attribution. ACOS / ROAS calculations attribute sales back to clicks within 14 days. |
| Brand vs non-brand keyword scope | Tracked together in this card; split available via Branded vs Non-Branded Spend. Branded spend is typically 10-25% of total for established brands. |
| Sponsored Products vs Brands vs Display vs DSP | All four are summed. Split available via DSP vs Sponsored Spend Mix. Typical share for sellers without DSP: SP 70-85%, SB 10-20%, SD 5-10%. With DSP committed, DSP can be 0-30%. |
| Currency | Account currency only. Multi-marketplace sellers run separate accounts; total spend is reported per-account. |
| Amazon-only attribution gap | Spend is what it is; the “gap” only matters when computing ROAS / ACOS, not for raw spend. |
| Time window | T/7D/30D vsP. Today is provisional for ~24h while the 1-3h report-generation lag clears. |
| Alert trigger | spike >2σ vs 30D baseline. A 2-sigma spike is unusual enough to investigate, common causes: a competitor entered the auction (CPC up), an auto-campaign drifted (broad-match leakage), or a budget cap was raised without intent. |
| Roles | owner, marketing, finance |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Amazon Ads data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A US home-goods seller, same account as the ROAS / ACOS examples. The 30-day window covers 14 Mar 26 to 12 Apr 26.| Campaign type | Spend | Share of total | 30D-prior spend | % change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sponsored Products | $20,400 | 76.1% | $19,800 | +3.0% |
| Sponsored Brands | $4,800 | 17.9% | $4,200 | +14.3% |
| Sponsored Display | $1,600 | 6.0% | $1,400 | +14.3% |
| DSP | $0 | 0% | $0 | - |
| Total ad spend | $26,800 | 100% | $25,400 | +5.5% |
- A 5.5% rise in spend is well within the 2σ window (which on a 5,000 spike). No alert fires; the rise is within normal scaling. Pair with ROAS to confirm: ROAS dropped 8.5% over the same period, so spend up + ROAS down = scaling slightly past the efficient frontier. Watch.
- SP at 76% of spend is normal for a Sponsored-only seller. SB and SD share remained roughly stable. If SD spend were rising disproportionately, it would suggest the merchant is leaning into remarketing without being asked to.
- No DSP commitment yet. DSP requires minimum spend commitments ($35K+ for managed-service, less for self-service). For sellers below that threshold, DSP shows zero, which is correct.
- The 14% rise in SB and SD with only 3% in SP could mean Amazon’s auto-budgeting shifted spend toward the better-converting campaigns last cycle, or that the merchant manually raised SB and SD budgets after a good week. Both are normal; investigate only if ROAS by Campaign shows the rise concentrated in a single drifting campaign.
- What a 2σ spike would look like: A sudden jump to $34,000 in 30D (~33% above baseline). Common causes: a single auto-campaign exploded due to broad-match leakage (open Search Terms immediately); a competitor entered the auction with aggressive bids (CPC Spike Detection); or a budget cap was raised without team awareness.
- Spend up + ROAS up = healthy scaling. Best case.
- Spend up + ROAS flat = clean scaling without efficiency loss. Good.
- Spend up + ROAS down = scaling beyond efficient frontier. Common; watch.
- Spend down + ROAS up = pruned low-quality. Good if intentional.
- Spend up sharply (2σ+) with ROAS flat = budget caps or competitor pressure, not deliberate scaling. Investigate.
- Spend flat + ROAS down = attribution change or external factor. Don’t react before checking ACOS / ROAS reconciliation.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with Total Spend |
|---|---|
| Amazon Ads Total Revenue | The numerator in ROAS. Spend rising while attributed revenue is flat = ROAS dropping. |
| Amazon Ads ROAS | The efficiency multiple. Spend by itself isn’t actionable, ROAS is the qualifier. |
| Amazon Ads ACOS | The percentage twin of ROAS. Same data, same answer. |
| Amazon Ads Spend vs Budget | Pacing check, are you on-track or burning the month-end budget early? |
| Amazon Ads TACOS | The strategic context, is rising spend lifting the whole business? |
| DSP vs Sponsored Spend Mix | The sub-platform breakdown. |
| Branded vs Non-Branded Spend | The keyword-class breakdown. |
| Amazon Ads Spend Anomaly | The detector that fires the 2σ alert. |
| Google Ads Spend | Cross-platform paid spend comparison. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Amazon Ads Console: Amazon Ads Console > Campaign Manager, sort all campaigns by Cost descending. The total at the foot of the table should match this card to within ~1%. Amazon Ads Console > Reports, choose a 30-day window and the same date range. The Spend column total reconciles directly. Amazon Ads Console > Billing, the invoice view. This is the authoritative source for finance-team reconciliation; this card pulls report-level cost which matches invoiced cost to within ~0.5% (the small drift is invalid-click refunds processed later). Why our number may legitimately differ from Amazon’s invoice:| Reason | Direction of divergence | Why it happens |
|---|---|---|
| Timezone. Amazon Advertising reports use PT (Pacific) regardless of account location. Vortex IQ aligns to PT. | None when both are PT-aligned. | Amazon’s reporting backend is in Seattle. |
| Report-generation latency (1-3 hours). | Today’s spend is provisional for ~24h. | Amazon batches report builds; the most recent hours catch up on the next refresh. |
| Invalid-click refunds. Amazon retroactively credits invalid clicks ~7-14 days later. | This card may show ~0.5-2% higher spend than the final invoice. | Invalid-click filtering happens in batches after the click. |
| API rate limits. Amazon Advertising API enforces ~2 requests/sec; large accounts may have stale partials during heavy refresh. | Stale by up to 1 refresh cycle (~4h) in extreme cases. | The pull is paginated and rate-limited. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
amazon_sp.amzn_sp_total_sales | No direct relationship; this is spend, not sales. The two pair to compute TACOS. | N/A. |
google_ads.gads_spend | Cross-platform paid spend. Different ecosystems; the two together give “total paid acquisition cost”. | None, they’re independent. |
google_analytics.ga_revenue_by_channel | No relationship. GA4 doesn’t see Amazon Ads cost. | N/A. |
shopify.total_revenue | No relationship. Different sales channel. | N/A. |