At a glance
Spend on whole campaigns that produced zero ad-attributed sales over the 30-day window AND have been live for at least 7 days (so they had a fair shot). The campaign-level analogue of Wasted Spend, pause candidates rather than negative-keyword candidates. Industry rule: any active campaign at zero attributed sales for >14 days is a pause/rebuild candidate.
| The formula | SUM(cost) where attributedSales14d = 0 AND campaign_age >= 7 days, grouped by campaign. The 7-day floor avoids flagging just-launched campaigns that haven’t had time to convert. |
| Reports API endpoint | POST /reporting/reports with reportTypeId=spCampaigns (Sponsored Products), sbCampaigns (Sponsored Brands), sdCampaigns (Sponsored Display). DSP campaigns pulled from the DSP Reports API. |
| What “zero-conversion” means | Zero ad-attributed sales over the 14-day click window for the entire campaign. A campaign with even one 5,000 spend is NOT in this card (that’s “low ROAS”, a separate concept). |
| ACOS vs ROAS framing | Zero-conversion campaigns have ACOS = ∞ and ROAS = 0. Total budget burn with zero return. |
| Attribution model | Last-click within Amazon ecosystem, 14-day click window. A campaign that drove a sale outside this window is marked zero-conversion here. |
| Brand vs non-brand keyword scope | Branded campaigns at zero conversion are almost always a Buy Box / OOS issue, not a true campaign-design problem. Non-branded zero-conversion is usually wrong-audience, wrong-keyword, or wrong-creative. |
| Sponsored Products vs Brands vs Display vs DSP | All four are tracked. SP zero-conversion is the strongest pause signal. SB and SD zero-conversion may be intentional awareness; review per-campaign. DSP zero-conversion in a 14-day window is rarely surprising; DSP’s ROAS plays out over weeks. |
| Currency | Account currency only. |
| Amazon-only attribution gap | A zero-conversion campaign may have driven DTC sales Amazon never sees. For multi-channel sellers, treat the figure as a ceiling on actual waste. |
| Time window | 30D with a 7-day campaign-age floor. |
| Alert trigger | >$0 on any campaign >7D old. Currency-aware. |
| 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 | Age | Spend | Attributed sales | Likely cause |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SP, “Cooling Pillow Test, Audience B” | SP manual | 18d | $480 | $0 | Wrong audience target. Pause. |
| SB, “Mattress Pad Awareness” | SB | 12d | $620 | $0 | New SB launch with weak creative. Could be intentional awareness, but 12 days at zero is too long. Rebuild creative or pause. |
| SD, “Lookalike, Cart-Abandoners” | SD audience | 9d | $310 | $0 | Audience too narrow; not enough scale. Broaden or pause. |
| SP, “Vintage Decor Cross-Sell” | SP manual | 22d | $410 | $0 | Inventory mismatch with the cross-sell ASIN. Pause. |
| Total zero-conversion spend | - | - | $1,820 | $0 | - |
- **The 2,140 in Wasted Spend, the wasted-spend figure includes search-term-level losses inside otherwise-converting campaigns; this card is whole-campaign-level losses.
- The 7-day age floor is doing real work. Two SP test campaigns launched in the last 5 days are NOT in this card (they have 300 of zero-conv spend each, but they may convert in days 6-14). Pausing too early kills launches before learning is complete.
- SB campaigns at zero for 12+ days need creative rebuild, not a pause. SB is mid-funnel; the lever is the banner creative, not the keyword target. Open Amazon Ads Console, swap the lifestyle image, and give it another 7 days before pausing.
- SD lookalike audiences with <1,000 reachable shoppers usually fail. Check the audience size in Amazon Ads Console; if it’s a small lookalike pool, broaden the seed audience.
- A campaign with $0 sales for 14+ days is essentially never recoverable in its current form. Pause and rebuild, keep the keyword research, dump the structure.
- Total > 5% of account spend = sweep needed. Pause anything 14+ days at zero.
- Single campaign > $300 zero-conv = highest-priority pause.
- A new campaign (5-10 days old) at zero = not in this card; give it more time.
- Zero-conv rising while overall ROAS holds = test campaigns proliferating; tighten test discipline.
- Zero-conv falling while spend rising = team is actively pruning; healthy.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with Zero-Conversion Spend |
|---|---|
| Amazon Ads Wasted Spend | The keyword-level twin. Wasted = bad search terms inside otherwise-converting campaigns; Zero-Conv = whole-campaign failures. |
| Amazon Ads Worst Performing Campaigns | The fuller campaign-level review (includes low-ROAS, not just zero). |
| Amazon Ads Underspending Campaigns | The other “audit” view, campaigns that aren’t getting enough budget. |
| Amazon Ads ROAS by Campaign | Where to redeploy paused-campaign budget. |
| Active Ads on No-Buy-Box ASINs | If a branded campaign is in zero-conv, this is usually the cause. |
| Active Ads on Out-of-Stock SKUs | Same. Branded zero-conv = OOS or Buy Box issue ~80% of the time. |
| Amazon Ads Conversion Drop | A sudden rise in zero-conv may correlate with a global conversion drop. |
| Google Ads Zero Conversion Spend | Cross-platform parallel. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Amazon Ads Console: Amazon Ads Console > Campaign Manager, sort by 14-day Sales ascending, filter status “Active”, and look at any campaigns with $0 sales. Add a Cost > 0 filter to drop the never-impressed campaigns. The total at the foot should match this card to within ~1-2%. Amazon Ads Console > Reports > Campaign Performance, same data, alternative view. Amazon Ads Console > Recommendations. Amazon’s “underperforming campaigns” suggestions overlap heavily with this card. Why our number may legitimately differ from Amazon Ads Console:| Reason | Direction of divergence | Why it happens |
|---|---|---|
| Timezone. Both use PT (Pacific). | None. | Amazon’s reporting backend is in Seattle. |
| Report-generation latency (1-3 hours). A sale attributed in the last hour may still be missing here, falsely keeping a campaign in zero-conv. | This card may show ~2-5% more zero-conv spend than the live Console view; corrects within 4 hours. | Amazon batches report builds. |
| ACOS calculation timing. The 14-day click window means a campaign at zero today may attribute a sale tomorrow. | This card may over-state zero-conv on the most recent days. | Conversions land late. |
| Campaign-age filter. This card excludes campaigns younger than 7 days; the Console doesn’t filter. | This card shows less zero-conv than the Console’s raw view (which includes new launches). | Intentional: don’t pause a campaign before it has had a chance to convert. |
| Attribution window choice. Comparing against a Console report set to 7d will show different figures. | This card shows less zero-conv than a Console 7d view. | Wider window captures more late conversions. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
amazon_sp.amzn_sp_total_sales | A zero-conv campaign may have driven organic sales Amazon Ads doesn’t credit back. | Amazon’s attribution model is intentionally simple. |
google_ads.gads_zero_conversion_spend | No relationship; separate ecosystems. | Independent budgets, independent reviews. |
shopify.total_revenue | A zero-conv campaign may have driven DTC sales Amazon doesn’t see. | The Amazon-only attribution gap. |