Glossary

ACoS — Advertising cost of sale. Ad spend divided by ad-attributed sales. It says what an ad cost, not whether it was worth it. See break-even ACoS.

Ad group — A container inside a campaign holding targets and the products they advertise.

Ad coverage — Whether a product has advertising of its own, is only reached through a shared campaign, or has none at all.

ASIN — Amazon's identifier for one product. On Merch a single design has a different ASIN in each marketplace and product type.

Break-even ACoS — The share of a sale you actually keep: royalty divided by sale price. The threshold above which an ad sale loses money. Differs per product and per marketplace.

Campaign — The top level of advertising structure. Holds a budget and one or more ad groups.

Complete day — A day that has ended in Los Angeles and been fetched afterwards. Comparisons only use complete days. Distinct from report day, which is the same boundary seen from the advertising side.

Design — Your artwork, independent of where it is listed. One design becomes many listings.

Gap — A design missing from a marketplace or product type it could be in. A row that does not exist, which is why it needs its own grain to find it.

Grain — The level something is being talked about: campaign, ad group, target, ad, search term, negative, product, variant, gap.

Held back — A proposal a Lookout made and then withheld, because a guard said the evidence was not safe to act on. It tells you which guard, every time.

Interlock — One of the three guards: the price moved inside the judged period, ads are still feeding it, or it is out of season.

Lookout — A rule that watches one part of your advertising and proposes a change. It never applies one.

Lottery campaign — An automatically-targeted Sponsored Products campaign carrying more than one product, where spend goes wherever Amazon decides. Cheap to run and impossible to attribute cleanly, which is why the extension counts them separately. It is an inference from the campaign's shape, not something Amazon labels.

Marketplace — One Amazon storefront: amazon.com, amazon.de, amazon.co.uk and the rest. Prices, royalties and advertising are all per marketplace.

Negative — A keyword or product you have told Amazon not to show your ad against.

Product type — Shirt, hoodie, pop socket, and so on. A design can exist in some and not others.

Proposal — A staged change sitting in the Publish queue, waiting for you.

Publish queue — Where every change waits. Four groups: Pending, Approved, Done, Failed.

Report day — The day boundary Amazon's advertising reports use, in Los Angeles time. Lookout schedules are counted in these.

Royalty — What you are actually paid for a sale, after Amazon's costs. The number that makes break-even ACoS computable.

Search term — What a shopper actually typed. Distinct from the keyword you bid on, which is what you hoped they would type.

TACoS — Total advertising cost of sale: ad spend against all sales, not just ad-attributed ones. Useful when advertising is meant to lift organic sales too.

Target — A keyword or a product you bid on. The grain at which money is spent.

Variant — One size or colour of a listing. Advertising attaches to variants, not to the parent.