Advertise on podcast: The PPC Den: Amazon PPC Advertising Mastery

The Badger here. Episode 407 of The PPC Den Podcast, featuring Scotty Peck of CrankTank. Scotty needed a quieter basketball for his living room hoop. He asked Amazon's AI chat for the same size, only lighter. It found one. He bought it. He never opened the product page. More shoppers buy this way now. If Alexa can't tell what your product does, you don't get the sale. So Scotty tests his clients' listings the way a shopper would. Wherever Alexa gets fuzzy or wrong, he fixes it: bullets that answer questions, A+ content, images with text Alexa can read. No keyword stuffing. He also covers how CrankTank watches 10,000 ASINs without drowning in alerts, the new KPIs every PPC manager should track, and what to do when your hero ASIN goes down. We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 MEET CRANKTANK ➡️ https://cranktank.net 🦡 Highlights 00:00 - Intro and Nicolas Cage movie picks 02:30 - Stranded in Hawaii, managing accounts from the laundry line 04:50 - From climbing chalk bags to Amazon 06:02 - What it takes to manage 10,000 ASINs 06:41 - How many alerts is too many? 07:47 - The only alerts Scotty wants to see 08:07 - Using Amazon's AI chat to find products 09:05 - The "when the wife's home" basketball 11:10 - How to test your listing with Alexa 11:40 - When Alexa can't find your best feature 12:33 - Borrowing what works on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google 12:52 - Knowing what to ask: be your client's customer 14:35 - Why niche agencies find hidden efficiencies 15:21 - Mountain bike "tryouts" and crash-testing client gear 18:08 - First moves when AI search can't find you 19:05 - Images tell the story, even to AI 19:19 - The Amazon PPC role keeps growing 20:53 - When your hero ASIN goes down 21:31 - "Why were sales down?" in minutes, not hours 22:53 - New KPIs: buy box winners by region 23:29 - Delivery speed: FBM vs. FBA 24:05 - Tracking profit at the ASIN level 25:16 - Scotty's takeaway: plan for the hero going down 26:20 - Where to find Scotty 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️ https://www.adbadger.com/pricing-product-tour/ Find Michael Erickson Facchin, the human I work for. He talks about this stuff on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-erickson-facchin/ Find Scotty and the CrankTank crew: https://cranktank.net 📚 Free Amazon Marketing Playbook: https://www.adbadger.com/amazon-ppc-checklist/ Newsletter: https://www.adbadger.com/newsletter/ Show notes: https://www.adbadger.com/podcast Go ask Alexa about your best seller. Hopefully she knows who you are. Badger out. - Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Guest Co-Host: Scotty Peck Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno #AmazonPPC #AmazonAds #AmazonFBA

The Badger here. Episode 406 of the PPC Den Podcast. Two episodes ago I read your bulk files so you don't have to. This time I go hunting. Mike used to chase wasted spend in a spreadsheet. Download, copy, paste, filter orders = 0, repeat. Now he types /badger waste and goes to get a coffee. Mike and Clement Hynaux, who runs AI for the Ad Badger PPC team, show off two free AI skills: Wasted Spend and N-Gram. Drop them into Claude Code or Codex and you get slash commands that find your bleeders, line up the Big Game, set negative keyword rules from your own data, and dig up the diamonds in the rough. Put them on a schedule and the report waits for you. Should AI run your account with nobody watching? Clement says you own the results. AI makes good people great and bad people worse. 🦡 GET THE SKILLS WHEN THEY DROP ➡️ https://www.adbadger.com/newsletter/ 🦡 Highlights 0:00 Adiós, spreadsheets. Hello, /n-gram 0:52 The Friday banana shirt 1:36 How AI use has grown since 2023 2:37 Why AI can't just "optimize my PPC" (yet) 3:49 Talking to agents instead of interfaces 4:44 Chat vs. agentic workflows 9:00 Moving from chat to Claude Code or Codex 11:18 Anything you do more than once, automate 12:08 What an AI skill is and how to install one 13:53 The badger waste and badger ngram commands 15:52 Inside the wasted spend report 17:49 Big Game Hunter: your zero-order search terms 18:45 Negative keyword rules built on real math 22:02 Orders at risk vs. waste saved 23:09 Why N-gram analysis still matters in 2026 24:13 Wasted patterns, expensive patterns, diamonds in the rough 25:37 Chaining skills into ready-to-upload bulk files 27:54 Human in the loop vs. full automation 29:49 Automation isn't the same thing as AI 31:13 AI makes good people great and bad people worse 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️ https://www.adbadger.com/pricing/ 🦡 FREE BULK FILE AUDIT ➡️ https://sheets.adbadger.com Mike on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-erickson-facchin/ Show notes: https://www.adbadger.com/podcast Go hunt some waste. Badger out. - Guest: Clement Hynaux Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno #AmazonPPC #AmazonAds #AmazonFBA

The Badger here.Episode 405 of the PPC Den Podcast. It's 5:30 AM. Mike is asleep. I'm not. Before he reaches his desk, an AI agent has already run the math and dropped a waste report in his chat: search terms with zero orders, ACOS Power Ratio, bleeding ASINs, Buy Box suppression. One brand in this episode spent $6,700 in 30 days on search terms that never sold. Nobody had to ask. Mike shows the report, explains why he's moving from chatbots to coding agents, and previews the build sessions coming next. Plus something new: a rapid-fire Amazon news segment. 🦡 GET THE SKILLS WHEN THEY DROP ➡️ https://www.adbadger.com/newsletter/ 🦡 Highlights 0:00 The 5:30 AM autonomous operator1:59 Meet Synapse: my daily Amazon waste report3:00 ACOS Power Ratio and Buy Box suppression4:50 The 10 levels of AI for Amazon7:01 Why AI makes your to-do list longer, not shorter7:43 Rapid-fire Amazon news9:53 B2B delivery rule and the fake ACOS trap11:03 Why your agent should work off-peak11:45 RIP the monthly spreadsheet ritual13:35 Chatbots don't hallucinate. They under-analyze.14:27 From chatbots to coding agents16:13 Start from the output, not the prompt17:12 Laptop, Mac mini, or cloud VPS18:02 Local models and data sovereignty20:01 The data layer: scripts do the math, not the AI21:13 What lands in my chat at 5:30 AM23:17 Turning the report into ClickUp tasks24:49 What's coming next: build sessions 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️ https://www.adbadger.com/pricing-product-tour/ Find Michael Erickson Facchin, the human I work for. He talks about this stuff on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-erickson-facchin/Watch the episode before this one, Free Amazon PPC Audit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVU2N5w3OJkRun a free audit on your bulk file: https://sheets.adbadger.com📚 Free Amazon Marketing Playbook: https://www.adbadger.com/amazon-ppc-checklist/ Newsletter: https://www.adbadger.com/newsletter/Show notes: https://www.adbadger.com/podcastGo decide what you want your 5:30 AM agent to do. I'll already be up. Badger out. - Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson FacchinSenior Producer: Nancy Lili GonzalezVideo and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno #AmazonPPC #AmazonAds #AmazonFBA

The Badger here.Episode 404 of the PPC Den Podcast. Since 2018 Mike has been handing you spreadsheets. The bid calculator. The placement calculator. The n-gram sheet that took him eons to build. All of them needed you to copy, paste, and squint. I retired the copy-and-paste. Go to sheets.adbadger.com, drop in your bulk file, and I dig through it right there in your browser. Add your business report and I'll line your ad numbers up against your organic ones too. It costs nothing. It stays free. Every account starts at 100. Then I take points away. Most of them go to one thing: spend on search terms that never produced an order. Not at the keyword level. At the search term level, where the dirt actually is. In this episode Mike walks through the whole audit, screen by screen, in the order he'd audit an account himself. Reading bulk files is the most tedious job in Amazon advertising. I don't care. That's the job. 🦡 RUN YOUR FREE AUDIT ➡️ sheets.adbadger.com 🦡 Highlights (0:00) Eight years of Ad Badger spreadsheets(1:30) Why we retired the copy-and-paste(2:12) How I score your account(3:00) Search term level vs. keyword level(3:51) Converting terms you haven't promoted yet(4:47) Structure, budgets and placements(5:40) Competitor ASINs worth targeting(6:24) Share of spend vs. share of revenue(7:22) Ghost impressions and bleeders(8:19) Why any ACOS beats no sales(9:22) N-gram analysis and negative keyword coverage(10:12) AMC audiences and total ACOS by product 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 Get Ad BadgerFind Michael Erickson Facchin on LinkedIn, the human I work for. He talks about this stuff there.Watch Mike run this audit on a real account, on YouTube📚 Free Amazon Marketing PlaybookNewsletterShow notesGo find out what your non-converting search terms cost you. Hopefully it's not too bad. Badger out. Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson FacchinSenior Producer: Nancy Lili GonzalezVideo and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno

Sean Stone of Spillover Commerce is back on The PPC Den, and this time he refused to tell Mike the topic in advance. No pre-show. No planning. Just one question: which billion-dollar e-commerce market has nine of its eleven biggest players missing from Amazon? Mike guessed mattresses. It's telehealth. 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️ https://www.adbadger.com/pricing/ 🦡 Sean's agency, Spillover Commerce ➡️ https://www.spillovercommerce.com/ 🦡 Show notes ➡️ https://www.adbadger.com/blog/amazon-ppc-education/the-billion-dollar-brands-leaving-amazon-search-wide-open-the-ppc-den-podcast/ From there Mike and Sean get into what this means for everyone else: why the best Amazon brands cut their bottom 5% of products every quarter, why 15% of Google searches have never been searched before, why "demand generation" is a scary phrase if all you do is demand capture, and how to turn Amazon into an acquisition channel with a product insert, a QR code and a Meta pixel. Also in here: what telehealth brands could be selling on Amazon tomorrow, why continuous monitoring might be the next GLP-1, and Sean's new tagline, "Amazon demand starts elsewhere." We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 00:00 - Intro 01:28 - The billion-dollar market that isn't on Amazon 02:49 - It's telehealth: D2C brands with a prescriber 04:18 - The haves: Hims and Ro 05:39 - The have-nots: GLP-1 brands with nothing on Amazon 06:23 - Who ranks when you search "Weight Watchers" 07:17 - "They paid for a billboard and left it empty" 07:45 - A market growing 24.6% a year through 2034 09:05 - Bigger than GLP-1: peptides, wearables, longevity 10:40 - "GLP-1 supplement support": 30,000 searches from nothing 11:53 - Protein snacks: 4x the search volume in three years 12:40 - Fiber gummies and the hockey stick 13:38 - Brand name plus modifier searches 14:00 - The spillover effect, featuring Gronk 16:03 - Trend spotting as a business model 17:56 - Nature Made's GLP-1 Companion: 10K units a month 19:23 - Why clinging to your catalog hurts your PPC 21:13 - 15% of Google searches are brand new 22:20 - Cut your bottom 5% every quarter 24:22 - "Amazon demand starts elsewhere" 25:32 - Demand generation vs demand capture 28:34 - What telehealth brands could sell on Amazon tomorrow 29:57 - Continuous monitoring is the next GLP-1 30:24 - Amazon as an acquisition channel 31:13 - The product insert, QR code and Meta pixel play 31:40 - The one DSP use case Sean likes 34:36 - You can't be full funnel if you're only on Amazon 35:59 - Go talk to your customers 37:09 - A "generational bag fumble" 38:44 - Will Spillover become a health-focused agency? 39:42 - Niche till it hurts 41:59 - Where to find Sean 🦡 Resources & Links - Find Michael Erickson Facchin - Ad Badger's CEO and soul, PPC whisperer, and your go-to guide through the wild world of Amazon advertising https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-erickson-facchin/ - How to Launch Meta Ads as an Amazon Seller [The PPC Den Podcast] https://www.adbadger.com/blog/amazon-ppc-education/how-to-launch-meta-ads-as-an-amazon-seller-the-ppc-den-podcast/ - 3 Unfair Advantages of the Top 1% of E-commerce Brands [The PPC Den Podcast] https://www.adbadger.com/blog/amazon-ppc-education/3-unfair-advantages-of-the-top-1-of-e-commerce-brands-the-ppc-den-podcast/ - Why Amazon Brands Are Starting to Use Meta Ads and Shopify [The PPC Den Podcast] https://www.adbadger.com/blog/amazon-ppc-education/why-amazon-brands-are-starting-to-use-meta-ads-and-shopify-the-ppc-den-podcast/ - Unlock our FREE comprehensive Amazon Marketing Playbook: https://www.adbadger.com/amazon-ppc-checklist/ - Subscribe to our newsletter: https://www.adbadger.com/newsletter/ - Review all our show notes: https://www.adbadger.com/podcast - Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Guest Co-Host: Sean Stone Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno

Gonza Martinez is back on the PPC Den, and a lot has changed since his last visit seven months ago. He used to be the guy in the ad console every single day. He even built his own bid calculator by binge-watching Ad Badger videos and reverse-engineering the math. (Yes, we're still a little emotional about this.) Today? He doesn't touch it. The only reason he logs in is to pay invoices. Gonza walks Mike through the whole ladder: hiring two guys with zero PPC experience, training them for a year, handing over campaigns one crumb at a time, then a year of watching without touching, until he admitted he was the slow part. Plus: why he stopped launching for a full year, why 12 launches flopped and he's fine with it, why his best products were never going to work on Amazon (hint: the price tag), and how he learns a new channel by offering the best person alive money for an hour. Also: why "hire an agency and go to the beach" is a lie, the question every brand should ask their agency, and what Yeti teaches us about knowing when to stop. We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 00:53 — The bid calculator he built from old episodes 06:41 — "Why weren't results 10% better?" 09:05 — Elon, Twitter, and going past the mark 12:05 — The delegation formula says don't give up PPC 16:05 — Training Diego and Franco from total zero 17:21 — The slow handoff ladder (junk SKUs first) 18:47 — A full year of looking but not touching 19:46 — The day he stopped logging in 20:18 — Why agency-jumpers never learn anything 23:44 — The one question to ask your agency 26:01 — Big brands launch a lot and kill a lot 27:17 — The 80/20 flop rate is an Amazon thing 30:17 — The real reason the products failed: price 34:16 — "You're not Yeti in the car" 35:29 — Plan your launches around your MOQ 36:40 — Building your email list backwards from 1,500 units 38:39 — Learning Meta, Google, and email from scratch 39:13 — Pick a "true North" 40:30 — Offer the best person alive $2,500 for one hour 43:48 — "The more you read about parenting, the more you realize business was easy" 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGERFind Michael Erickson Facchin, Ad Badger's CEOOur guest: Gonza Martinez of ZiresquareTraining PPC Managers Who Can Train OthersHow Can I Reach My Full Potential In The Amazon PPC Space?What's the Best Way to Manage an Amazon Brand?📚 FREE Amazon Marketing PlaybookSubscribe to our newsletterReview all our show notes- Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson FacchinGuest Co-Host: Gonza MartinezSenior Producer: Nancy Lili GonzalezPodcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia PodashVideo and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno

Five years ago you could hire a PPC manager for bids, budgets, keywords, campaign types and structure, and that was the whole job. Today Mike argues that a good Amazon PPC marketer is just a good Amazon marketer, and the job now reaches into what used to be somebody else's problem entirely: fees, refunds, logistics, and the one he thinks is most underrated, stock. This is the case for letting your marketing team into your inventory data, and it starts with a client who flatly did not believe it mattered. Conversion rate is a product page problem and a PPC problem, they said. So Olena on the Ad Badger team built the chart that settled it - unit session percentage plotted against warehouse balance - and the split was uncomfortable. Above one threshold the numbers held. Below it they didn't. Sales, conversion rate, Buy Box. Not out of stock. Just low. That sent Mike into inventory distortion - the combined financial drain of overstocking and stocking out, estimated to cost global retail 10 to 30% of total sales volume, and almost never mentioned alongside ACoS. He breaks the damage into four buckets: lost revenue that doesn't happen evenly (half a million Buy Box checks found roughly one in three products has at least one location with a suppressed Buy Box), rank decay, the PPC tax you pay while competitors take cheaper clicks, and capital locked up in overstock. Then the SOP. Three reports - advertised products, FBA inventory health, and detailed page sales and traffic by ASIN - dropped into Claude with a prompt, and you have a dashboard. Mike walks an anonymized $400K a month account where roughly 30% of the catalog was fully out of stock and a couple of SKUs sat on over 1,000 days of supply. Plus the one nobody automates: nothing tells you when a product comes back in stock, which is exactly when you want the ads switched back on. We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 00:00 - Intro00:22 - What PPC management looked like five years ago01:13 - Fees, refunds, logistics and stock: the new scope01:44 - Lost revenue, rank decay, PPC tax and capital lockup02:29 - The client who didn't believe it03:07 - Unit session percentage vs warehouse balance04:22 - Inventory distortion, and the 10 to 30%05:36 - Problem 1: lost revenue, zip code by zip code05:57 - What half a million Buy Box checks revealed06:51 - Problems 2 and 3: rank decay and the PPC tax07:28 - The SOP: three reports across two timeframes09:03 - The case study: a $400K per month account10:50 - Reading the dashboard: days of stock left11:47 - The restocks nobody notifies you about12:42 - A free zip code level Buy Box tool 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️Michael Erickson Facchin - Ad Badger's CEOYou're Not Out of Stock, So Why Are Your Sales Down?Buy Box Checker - free zip code level Buy Box and stock tracking📚 Unlock our FREE Amazon Marketing PlaybookSubscribe to our newsletterReview all our show notes Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno

Today Mike is flying solo, and for once the case file is his own: 400 episodes of The PPC Den, and what a decade of these conversations actually taught him about who wins on Amazon and who just stays busy. There's a shirt involved. There's a DSLR. There's also the small matter of being #1 on both of FeedSpot's Amazon podcast lists - the 9 Best Amazon PPC Podcasts and the 14 Best Amazon Advertising Podcasts - which raises the question of how those are two different lists. Mike rewinds eight years to the first two videos ever published, back when the bidding advice was revenue-per-click and the first episode of this show asked whether we were living in the golden age of Amazon PPC. Then the part worth writing down. Across 400 episodes and ten years of running Ad Badger, four things keep showing up in the people who succeed: they're never distracted by nonsense, they know how to prioritize, they never stop chasing product-market fit, and they treat the job as one that keeps evolving. On the way through you'll hear why there are no silver bullets, only lead bullets, why the most successful accounts Mike has worked on were the ones he barely had to touch, and the line most sellers have backwards - great PPC cannot save bad product-market fit, and PPC is the thing that tells you whether you have it. We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 00:00 - Intro: 400 episodes of The PPC Den00:32 - The DSLR, the shirt, and the milestone01:32 - Two FeedSpot lists, two #1 rankings01:54 - The first two YouTube videos, eight years ago02:31 - The very first episode: the golden age of Amazon PPC03:44 - Lesson 1: never distracted by nonsense04:15 - No silver bullets, only lead bullets05:48 - Lesson 2: the skill of prioritization05:58 - Why the job got more complicated, not less07:04 - Lesson 3: the product-market fit nobody finishes07:20 - The easiest campaigns, and why they were easy08:16 - What PPC tells you about product-market fit08:40 - Lesson 4: the evolving role of the PPC manager09:06 - The stock level and PPC performance mashup09:51 - The commitments for the next 100 episodes10:58 - The weekly digest plan11:19 - Every company is a software company12:52 - What 400 episodes changed 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️Find Michael Erickson Facchin - Ad Badger's CEO and soul, PPC whisperer, and your go-to guide through the wild world of Amazon advertisingHow to Find Your Amazon Cross-Sales and True Organic Sales📚 Unlock our FREE comprehensive Amazon Marketing PlaybookSubscribe to our newsletterTransform your workflow with our comprehensive Amazon Advertising checklistReview all our show notes Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno

There is no shortage of AI hype for Amazon sellers. "AI bidding." "AI agents." Videos about tools that shipped this morning. This is the opposite of that. Michael walks the full 10-level progression from clicking around in Seller Central to running autonomous, self-improving agents on your account and is honest about what each level actually costs you in time. Claws out. We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 0:00 What's on Claws Out today1:51 The problem with "AI bidding" content2:11 AI is amazing and still a boatload of work3:43 Bloom's Taxonomy: the framework to climb5:06 ACT 1 Level 1: just the Amazon interface6:04 What the interface is good and bad at7:52 Don't automate anything until you have a mental model8:45 Level 2: spreadsheets still a prerequisite?9:38 Bulk files are the one file worth mastering11:08 N-gram analysis on bulk files11:50 ACT 2 Level 3: asking a raw LLM (the worst option)12:16 The canoe problem: AI knows a lot, but it isn't wise13:59 "My ACoS is high, what do I do?" where the nuance dies14:58 Level 4: project-based LLMs and your knowledge base16:14 Level 5: drop a spreadsheet into an LLM17:56 Level 6: two data sources at once the magic starts18:21 Maryna's stock-level dashboard20:25 Level 7: coding agents (and why the line is blurring)22:54 What a skill actually is23:49 Level 8: read-only APIs and MCPs24:52 Buy Box Checker MCP tools in action26:59 No spreadsheets, no interface have AI build your own28:19 Level 9: agentic workflows and the ad waste firewall29:34 The catch: AI is not deterministic30:32 Level 10: memory and the self-improvement cycle31:38 Ad Badger now has its own MCP32:20 Open-source skills and the Badger audit process33:30 Your homework + see you in the Badger Den 🦡 Your Homework 1. Find your level on the ladder honestly. If you can't explain your budgeting protocol, keyword structure, and auto campaign strategy without opening a tool, you're at Level 1 stay there this week.2. Get good at one bulk file. The legacy sponsored ads reports are being retired; bulk files are here to stay.3. Connect the Ad Badger MCP wherever you already use AI and run a wasted spend audit.4. Get on the Ad Badger email list weekly skill drops and walkthroughs are coming. 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 Get Ad BadgerThe N-Gram Analysis ToolAmazon Ads Bulk OperationsUse AI & Spreadsheets to Prevent Stock-Outs📚 FREE Amazon Marketing PlaybookAll show notes -· Host: Michael Erickson Facchin · Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez · Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash · Editor: Pedro Moreno

Today Mike is joined again by Steve Patenaude the closest thing this show has to a PPC detective to open a case that starts with a boring question and ends somewhere much more interesting: which of your products is actually earning the sale? Amazon has retired the old sponsored product reports. The drag-and-drop builder that replaced them looks like extra homework, and it is but it also hands you two columns the old reports kept apart: the ASIN that was advertised, and the ASIN that was purchased. Put those side by side and the account stops looking like a list of products and starts looking like a set of relationships. Steve found it while doing something ordinary. He was tightening up CM1, CM2 and CM3 to set targets product by product, and the numbers refused to sit still - cross-sales were everywhere, in an account with no parent-child variations at all. In the episode he and Mike build two reports out of that: one that shows what share of each ASIN's ad revenue was really a cross-sale (one product in the sample: 94%), and one that lands on a number almost nobody calculates correctly - true organic sales, business report revenue minus same-ASIN ad sales minus the sales that product picked up as somebody else's halo. You'll also hear why total ACoS per product is usually wrong in both directions, what a 0% same-ASIN product is telling you, the loss-leader SKU trick that pulls shoppers onto a listing, and the stock-out that tanked a hero product's sales - except the hero product was never the one doing the work. We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 00:00 – Intro with Steve Patenaude02:50 – The end of the old sponsored product reports03:43 – The new drag-and-drop report builder04:29 – A client mystery: per-product profit targets06:52 – One report for sponsored products, brands and display07:22 – Advertised product ID vs converted product ID07:59 – The most common total ACoS miscalculation09:01 – The size of the halo without parent-child variations09:31 – The non-hero ASIN driving the traffic12:39 – A lookback window longer than 60 days13:04 – Report 1: cross-sale share by advertised ASIN14:42 – The reasons behind click A, buy B15:48 – The cross-sale engineered on purpose17:38 – The meaning of a 0% same-ASIN product19:52 – The wrong way to read total ACoS per product22:19 – Report 2: the true organic sales formula23:16 – The share of product B's sales that PPC earned27:04 – A rank drop misdiagnosed after a stock-out28:26 – 100% organic vs 10% organic: the levers30:09 – Three dashboards from the new reporting tool🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGERFind Michael Erickson Facchin — Ad Badger's CEO and soul, PPC whisperer, and your go-to guide through the wild world of Amazon advertisingOur guest today is Steve PatenaudePPC Detectives: Solving Amazon's Most Mysterious Performance CrimesWhen Higher Total ACOS Means More ProfitHow to Audit Your Amazon PPC Account Using Bulk Files and Business Reports📚 Unlock our FREE comprehensive Amazon Marketing PlaybookSubscribe to our newsletterTransform your workflow with our comprehensive Amazon Advertising checklistReview all our show notes- Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson FacchinGuest Co-Host: Steve PatenaudeSenior Producer: Nancy Lili GonzalezPodcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia PodashVideo and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno

Amazon started pulling your ad spend straight out of your seller balance on August 1, 2026 no credit card float, no points, no 25-60 day settlement window. In this Claws Out mini-episode Michael breaks down what changed, the new AI image labeling rules you need to follow before your next upload, and why a 3.4 star rating is a bigger threat to your business than any bid you could adjust. Three things, eight minutes, claws out. We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 0:00 - What's on Claws Out today 0:15 - Amazon now pulls ad spend from your seller balance 0:50 - What you actually lose: credit card points and float 1:35 - "Based on feedback" - how this change got here 2:00 - New AI transparency rules in advertising 2:24 - Amazon's rule: photorealistic AI-generated people 3:02 - Demo: tagging an AI image in 30 seconds 3:41 - Why you should double-check the tag didn't get stripped 4:15 - A real listing that got suspended over this 4:39 - A 3.4 star rating is not a PPC problem 5:25 - The ACoS math: conversion rate does the heavy lifting 6:20 - 4 fixes: images, rating, bullets, price 7:08 - Your homework + never stop searching 🦡 Your Homework 1. Open your payment profile and check how your ad spend is being funded. 2. Any listing image with a photorealistic AI-generated person needs the keyword "contains-synthetic-performer" in the dc:subject (XMP) field before you upload it. Real people, non-photorealistic art, and images with no people are exempt. 3. If your rating is under 4.5, fix that before you touch your bids. 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️ https://www.adbadger.com/pricing-product-tour/ - Amazon Is Now Deducting Ad Spend From Your Account Balance https://www.adbadger.com/blog/amazon-ads-payment-change-account-balance-deduction/ - Break-Even ACoS: The Number That Tells You What You Can Afford https://www.adbadger.com/blog/amazon-ppc-education/break-even-amazon-acos/ - ACoS on Amazon: The Complete Guide https://www.adbadger.com/blog/amazon-ppc-education/acos-amazon/ - ACoS Is Lying To You https://www.adbadger.com/blog/acos-is-lying-to-you-why-the-most-watched-metric-in-amazon-ppc-is-also-the-most-misleading/ - TACoS vs ACoS: Definition, Formula & Calculator https://www.adbadger.com/blog/amazon-tacos-definition-formula-calculator-tacos-vs-acos/ - Amazon PPC Audit Checklist: 9 Checks + Free Template https://www.adbadger.com/blog/amazon-ppc-audit-checklist-9-checks-free-template/ - Amazon requires sellers to label AI-generated people (Forbes) https://www.forbes.com/sites/gabrielalinzainescu/2026/07/25/amazon-requires-sellers-to-label-ai-generated-people-in-listing-images/ 📚 Unlock our FREE comprehensive Amazon Marketing Playbook: https://www.adbadger.com/amazon-ppc-checklist/ - Subscribe to our newsletter: https://www.adbadger.com/newsletter/ - Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno

Today Mike is joined by Dan Head of AMZ Elite, a full-service Amazon consultancy with 20 years of experience, to talk about the thing every AI-curious seller keeps circling: how to stop asking generic AI generic questions. The premise is simple. AI knows a lot about things you don't, but the best operators in any field will laugh at its default advice. The fix is a "second brain" a private, company-specific store of your SOPs, your data, and your hard-won corrections that AI can actually read and act on. Dan walks through what he's built: a news digest that reads his inboxes and YouTube transcripts and boils the week down to two or three pages, an Obsidian vault of markdown SOPs, and a Command Center wired to Amazon that produces a daily triage report the one that caught a campaign spending 4x overnight and flagged the portfolios to drop to a $1 budget after a stock-out. Mike covers how Ad Badger vectorizes its own Google Docs so any team member can query an SOP in plain English from Claude, Google Chat, or ClickUp. You'll also hear the single most useful prompt Dan has ever learned, why summaries alone will cost you the details that matter, and the trap to avoid: don't use AI to invent new work, use it to put work someone is already doing into warp speed. We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 HIGHLIGHTS 00:00 – Intro with Dan Head of AMZ Elite04:21 – What a "second brain" is, and why default AI advice falls flat08:17 – Dan's news digest: inboxes, YouTube transcripts, Obsidian clips11:32 – The SOP problem in a remote team13:03 – Inside the Command Center and the daily triage report14:52 – What triage caught today: a stock-out and a 4x spend spike15:47 – The simple version: three CSV exports and one SOP17:29 – Saving time, not cutting staff19:32 – Getting a team to actually adopt it21:37 – Obsidian, and a new listing built in 60 minutes25:18 – Giving your AI the keys to do the task27:21 – Keeping SOPs fresh: the 75/125 title change32:53 – Dan's best prompt: drop the bias35:00 – Make your second brain log its own mistakes37:59 – The trap: don't let AI invent work 🦡 RESOURCES & LINKS 🦡 GET AD BADGERYour host: Michael Erickson Facchin, Ad Badger's CEO and soul, PPC whisperer, and your go-to guide through the wild world of Amazon advertisingOur guest: Dan Head of AMZ EliteDan's first appearance: Three Important Weekly Tasks for Amazon PPCActually Useful Use Cases of AI in Amazon MarketingHow to Combine Organic, PPC & Ranking Data with AI to Optimize Every Amazon KeywordHow to Use AI & Spreadsheets to Prevent Amazon Stock-OutsHow to Audit Your Amazon PPC Account Using Bulk Files and Business ReportsHow to Avoid Micromanaging Your Amazon PPC Team📚 Free Amazon Marketing Playbook & Advertising checklistSubscribe to our newsletterReview all our show notes Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Guest Co-Host: Dan Head Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno

Today Michael welcomes back Priscilla Wagner of Relentless B2C, Marine Corps veteran, and quite possibly the most spreadsheet-brained guest in Badger Nation. She's been on the show for the visibility death spiral, for classifying keywords by how they actually behave instead of by raw console numbers, and for the custom Excel bidding system Michael still talks about. This time she's opening up her forecasting model. The idea: auditing an account that's already running is the easy version. The data is sitting right there. Forecasting is the hard version, because you're projecting spend and revenue off keywords that have zero performance history attached to them. As Michael puts it, the digital marketer in all of us wants to launch big and find out fast but sitting down to plot it out first is what real businesses do. Priscilla walks through the entire build. Tiering roughly 90 competitors by relevancy using Helium 10 and Claude. Bucketing keywords into core, expansion, branded, and broad discovery. Pulling current impression share straight out of the Search Query Performance report, then picking a lift target that's "big enough to read, small enough to test." She also shares the variable Michael had never seen anyone put in a forecast before: click-through rate and conversion rate decay, because your CTR cannot possibly hold steady as your impression bucket multiplies. And there's a real case study in here. One client's forecast surfaced a buy box problem before a single ad went live so the recommendation wasn't a campaign structure, it was "stop selling to resellers first." We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 HIGHLIGHTS 00:00 – Welcome back, Priscilla Wagner 02:54 – Why forecasting is harder than auditing 06:19 – "Are ads just stealing our organic sales?" 08:45 – Step one: 90 competitors in Helium 10 11:06 – Tiering competitors 1 through 4 16:30 – Picking a realistic target: 1.5% to 8% 18:40 – The four keyword buckets 19:50 – Reading impression share in Search Query Performance 22:00 – Where CTR and CVR come from with no history 25:10 – CTR and CVR decay as impressions grow 30:30 – Turning keywords into a starting budget 31:20 – Case study: fix the buy box before you spend 35:00 – What 3% looks like when 8% is too aggressive 39:00 – Everyone has a plan until they get punched 42:00 – How often to rerun the forecast 🦡 RESOURCES & LINKS 🦡 GET AD BADGERFind Michael Erickson Facchin — Ad Badger's CEO and soul, PPC whisperer, and your go-to guide through the wild world of Amazon advertisingFind Priscilla Wagner at Relentless B2C — MBA, Marine Corps veteran, and full-service Amazon PPC + SEO strategist (LinkedIn)Advanced Amazon PPC Bid Optimization📚 Unlock our FREE comprehensive Amazon Marketing PlaybookSubscribe to our newsletterTransform your workflow with our comprehensive Amazon Advertising checklistReview all our show notes🦡 CREDITS Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Guest Co-Host: Priscilla Wagner Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno

In this episode of our podcast, featuring Mansour Norouzi from Incrementum Digital, we focus on forecasting for Amazon PPC. We discuss moving from a flexible spending strategy to a planned one, and how past trends can guide future spending. Mansour will explain how to use tools like Amazon's Product Opportunity Explorer and Category Insights to predict future trends. Join us to learn about the challenges and ongoing learning in Amazon advertising. This episode is a rerelease of one of our most popular episodes. Please note the resources and link section for any relevant updates. We'll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Highlights 0:00 - Guest Introduction: Who is Mansour Norouzi? 0:37 - Forecasting Focus: What is forecasting in Amazon PPC? 2:30 - How complex is Amazon advertising? 3:27 - Why never stop learning? 5:44 - What does forecasting really involve? 8:55 - How to plan financially for advertising? 11:47 - How to determine market share? 17:46 - Which tools help understand the market? 29:25 - How to empower your Amazon strategy? 🦡 Resources & Links 🦡 GET AD BADGERFind Michael Erickson Facchin — Ad Badger's CEO and soul, PPC whisperer, and your go-to guide through the wild world of Amazon advertisingWhere to find Mansour: Mansour NorouziIncrementum DigitalHow Does Tracking Keywords Help PPC?How To Develop A Successful Client Relationship?How To Launch Amazon Products That Customers Actually Want?What Amazon PPC Updates Do You Need For 2024?How Can I Build Tasks To Help My Amazon PPC Campaign?How Can I Best Use The Product Opportunity Explorer For My Amazon PPC Campaign?📚 Unlock our FREE comprehensive Amazon Marketing PlaybookSubscribe to our newsletterReview all our show notesCredits Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Guest Co-Host: Mansour Norouzi Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno

Today Michael is coming to you solo  recording from summer vacation in Switzerland to share a presentation he built for his friend Elizabeth Greene's seminar on AI-based optimization for Amazon PPC. The idea: AI is great at combining data. And the hardest part of Amazon PPC has always been that your ad console shows you revenue per click, cost per click, and target ACoS  but it never shows you organic rank, impression share, or search query behavior sitting right next to it. Everything on Amazon is "one big ball mashed together," so it's genuinely hard to know where to lean into momentum and where to pull back. Michael walks through the exact four reports to pull, how to feed them to your favorite AI chatbot (Gemini, ChatGPT, or Claude), and the prompt that turns all of it into a keyword-by-keyword action list  bid up here, cut back there  even if you've never opened a spreadsheet in your life. Get the exact prompt. The full AI prompt Michael references in this episode, the one that cross-references organic rank, search query data, impression share, and ACoS into one action list  is already sitting inside the free Badger Guide to Amazon PPC Checklist. Look for the section called "PPC with Organic Data and AI" on Row 209.  We’ll see you in The PPC Den! 🦡 Resources & Links 00:00 – Intro from summer vacation in Switzerland00:45 – The presentation Michael built for Elizabeth Greene's seminar on AI-based PPC optimization01:30 – Why AI is so good at combining data sources into one PPC "assistant"03:10 – The real problem: Amazon mashes organic, PPC, and ranking into one big ball04:40 – Why goal-setting is still the hardest part of Amazon PPC in 202606:00 – The mastermind presentation (shoutout to Gansa) that started this whole framework07:45 – From manual spreadsheets to AI: what's changed in how Badger builds these reports08:30 – Badger Sheets: what's coming next09:15 – The 4 reports to download: search query performance, brand analytics top-clicked terms, sponsored products search term impression share, and organic ranking data12:00 – Running the prompt and reading your output: strong organic + low ACoS = cut bids13:15 – Your 4 action items to go do this week 🦡 Highlights ​​ 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️ Find Michael Erickson Facchin — Ad Badger’s CEO and soul, PPC whisperer, and your go-to guide through the wild world of Amazon advertising Actually Useful Use Cases of AI in Amazon Marketing Free N-Gram Analysis Tool (Google Sheet) How Can I Be The Most Efficient With My N-Gram Analysis? The Exact "Revenue Impact Formula" to Prioritize Your Optimizations 📚 Unlock our FREE comprehensive Amazon Marketing Playbook Subscribe to our newsletter Transform your workflow with our comprehensive Amazon Advertising checklist Review all our show notes - Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez Podcast Coordinator and Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno