Has anyone else noticed amazon ads are NOT converting like past
As the title says…
We have been running ads for nearly a decade, consistently and with our campaigns professionally managed by a third party. For years, we’ve had relatively predictable performance.
But over the last two months, something has changed dramatically.
Our account is healthy. We have no sanctions, restrictions, or policy issues, and everything shows as “good to go.” Nothing significant has changed on our end. We recently updated our storefronts and optimized product titles for the current marketplace, while our pricing has remained steady.
Yet somehow, we are experiencing the **worst organic traffic, ad performance, and conversion rates we have seen in nearly 10 years.**
Our current ROAS is around **1.0**, which is essentially unsustainable. At that level, we are spending $1 in advertising to generate $1 in revenue—before accounting for product costs, fulfillment, marketplace fees, overhead, and everything else required to actually operate a business.
So the obvious question is:
**WHAT HAS CHANGED?**
Has there been a significant change to the advertising algorithm, search visibility, placement, attribution, traffic quality, or conversion metrics?
We have been doing this long enough to recognize when something is off. Our business, products, pricing, and advertising strategy have not suddenly changed after years of consistent performance.
Something has changed—and we need to understand what it is.
Has anyone else experienced a similar dramatic decline in both **organic conversion and ad performance over the past two months?** If so, what have you identified as the cause?
Has anyone else noticed amazon ads are NOT converting like past
As the title says…
We have been running ads for nearly a decade, consistently and with our campaigns professionally managed by a third party. For years, we’ve had relatively predictable performance.
But over the last two months, something has changed dramatically.
Our account is healthy. We have no sanctions, restrictions, or policy issues, and everything shows as “good to go.” Nothing significant has changed on our end. We recently updated our storefronts and optimized product titles for the current marketplace, while our pricing has remained steady.
Yet somehow, we are experiencing the **worst organic traffic, ad performance, and conversion rates we have seen in nearly 10 years.**
Our current ROAS is around **1.0**, which is essentially unsustainable. At that level, we are spending $1 in advertising to generate $1 in revenue—before accounting for product costs, fulfillment, marketplace fees, overhead, and everything else required to actually operate a business.
So the obvious question is:
**WHAT HAS CHANGED?**
Has there been a significant change to the advertising algorithm, search visibility, placement, attribution, traffic quality, or conversion metrics?
We have been doing this long enough to recognize when something is off. Our business, products, pricing, and advertising strategy have not suddenly changed after years of consistent performance.
Something has changed—and we need to understand what it is.
Has anyone else experienced a similar dramatic decline in both **organic conversion and ad performance over the past two months?** If so, what have you identified as the cause?
30 replies
Seller_0EiTWTPC4Lbig
To answer the main question: almost EVERYTHING has changed.
What worked on Amazon a year ago, or even a few months ago, does not necessarily work the same way today.
PPC is much more dependent on the underlying PDP and Amazon’s confidence that the product is relevant and likely to convert.
So before assuming the Ads system is broken, I would ask:
Is the PDP fully optimized for how Amazon works TODAY?
Is the title written for context rather than old-school keyword stuffing?
Are the bullets complete and useful?
Are the images answering the major buying questions?
Do you have video?
Is the A+ complete and using meaningful text rather than just a wall of images?
Is the Brand Story complete?
Are the backend attributes and search terms filled out properly?
Is the page giving Amazon, Rufus, and its search systems enough context to understand exactly what the product is, who it is for, and why someone should buy it?
Years ago PPC could sometimes brute-force a mediocre page into visibility.
That is becoming much less effective.
Today PPC works best when the PDP is already strong, relevant, and converting. If Amazon’s system does not believe the page will convert, simply raising bids is not going to fix it.
Share the ASIN.
I would be happy to look at the actual page and give you some specific pointers.
Seller_AoQS0eDAZrtnh
Yes, Since Aug. 31st performance has dropped across all my ads.
Seller_6YmLhPNq8KwM9
you should use Claude paired with an MCP to diagnose and run your ads. I had to completely ditch all my long running ads for new ones and then I optimized my product copy. I stay on top of the ads every week. Also there is a setting where they show “off Amazon” you need to turn that off unless you want it. Clause suggested that and I shut them off and I did after researching on reditt. Often there is an irrelevant search where you need to add negative keywords to the ad or more current search terms to the product copy and key words because the searches by the customers change
We continually follow what is searched and get new product ideas and tweak product copy as well as the negative search terms for the ads
Maybe optimize a lot at first then you can coast a while but it only takes me a few minutes each day with claude.
Seller_yXKVrmwrlZkmn
HI,Have you found the reason of your ads converting problem? Has your advertisement come back to iprevious order status? We also suddenly encountered this situation.
Seller_yWLX9tfRcnDpZ
Same pattern here over the last couple of months ROAS dropped CPCs stayed the same or went up, but conversion rate is what really shifted.
A few things I noticed Amazon has been pushing more ad placements into search results, which means more competition for the same eyeballs and lower quality clicks overall. Organic ranking suppression on certain keywords also pushes sellers into spending more on ads just to hold positions they used to hold organically for free.
Worth checking if your branded term campaigns are getting cannibalized by your own broad/auto campaigns that alone can tank blended ROAS without any real external cause.
Not a you problem Seeing this across multiple categories right now.
Seller_Ggt6s7zXEwLbA
Since organic traffic is down too this doesn't seem to be an Ad issue.
I went to the source - instead of getting opinions from others who do not not know your product, business and sales history - and asked the Alexa AI: "what are the reasons why I should not buy this product?"
Amazon's response:
"Based on customer reviews of the Liz Jordan Hill Luxury Velvet Upholstery Fabric, here are some reasons you might want to reconsider:
•
Color accuracy issues – Multiple customers report the fabric appears different in person than online photos. Some found it too orange or much lighter than expected, which is concerning for a project where color matching matters
•
Texture concerns – A few reviewers noted the fabric feels less luxurious or textured than advertised, describing it as "plain" rather than true velvet
•
Higher cost – At around $44 per yard, it's on the expensive side, especially if color mismatches mean returning it (which some customers found costly)
•
Return costs – One customer paid $37 to return 3 yards, making returns potentially expensive
The good news: Many others love the quality, durability, and stain resistance. The key is ordering a sample swatch first (which this product offers at $5.20) to verify the color and texture match your expectations before committing to full yardage."
Seller_X2xqmzcv6gqZ7
When organic and paid drop together over the same window, I stop looking at the campaigns first and start looking at what changed on the demand and page side, because the ads are usually just the loudest symptom. You mentioned you recently updated your storefront and product titles. That is the first thing I would roll back mentally and check against the timeline. A title rewrite can quietly drop you out of the keyword clusters you were indexed for, and then your exact match campaigns are still spending but landing on a page that Amazon now scores as less relevant for that query. Pull the search term report for the 30 days before the title change and the 30 days after and compare click share on your top 20 terms. If the same terms are getting fewer impressions at the same bids, that points at relevance, not the auction.
Second thing I would do is split the ROAS decline into its two parts. Is CPC up, or is conversion rate down? Those need different fixes. If CPC is flat and conversion fell, that is a page or price problem and more spend just makes it more expensive. If CPC jumped, check your placement report, because a lot of accounts I manage have been getting pushed into more product page placements this summer, which convert worse and drag blended ROAS down even when nothing else changed.
One more honest note. If a third party has been running the account for years, ask them for the change log from the last 90 days. Bid rules, budget caps, and negative lists drift over time and sometimes the "nothing changed on our end" turns out to be a rule that has been slowly tightening.
Have you checked whether the conversion rate drop is concentrated on your branded terms or spread across generic ones?
Seller_PdZU7nl2R3LtB
Worth treating this as a diagnostic problem rather than a mystery — a few places to dig in:
Start with what actually changed. Pull your Search Query Performance report and search term/keyword data from a couple months back (before the drop) and compare it side-by-side with the current period. You're looking for which specific search terms or targets used to convert and have since gone quiet — impressions still coming in but clicks/conversions falling off, or impression share shifting away from your top converting terms entirely. That comparison is the fastest way to isolate whether this is a targeting problem, a ranking problem, or both. (This is also a good use case for dumping both periods into whatever AI tool you're comfortable with and asking it to flag the biggest deltas — much faster than eyeballing rows in a spreadsheet.)
Once you've flagged the keywords/terms that dropped off, check where you're actually ranking for them right now — search live on both mobile and desktop, since placement and rank can differ between the two. If you're tracking rank over time, lay that data next to your ad performance and search term reports for the same window. The goal is to get down to the granular level: is it a specific set of keywords losing rank/visibility, a placement shift (worth checking the placement report for on- vs. off-Amazon spend split), or something account-wide?
Also worth following up on the detail page comments already in this thread — if traffic/impressions are holding but conversion is what's cratering, that points away from targeting and toward the page itself (images, copy, reviews, stock/pricing signals). Worth ruling in or out alongside the targeting comparison rather than as a separate track.
Cross-referencing rank + search term performance + placement data + detail page health for the "before" and "after" periods should point you at the actual culprit rather than leaving it as a general "everything got worse" question.
Hope that is helpful.
Seller_dLxYHTa4QXRwM
Amazon Ads has an IVT click fraud issue. I have three open cases covering the past three months, and Amazon has confirmed the issue too, but there has still been no reimbursement or credit. It has been five weeks, and they keep saying they are actively working on it.
We have been running ads on Amazon since they became available, which I believe was around 2012.
They just want click and impression money because that money does not require any effort from them or involve any returns or refunds.
Next month, try typing “orange” in the search bar, and pumpkin-related items will be at the top, even though all you typed was “orange.” The ads are super irrelevant, and as an Amazon Prime shopper, I cannot find the product I am actually looking for at the top, and most of the time, not even on the first page. Since they removed the relevancy filter, things have gotten worse on this platform, both sales-wise and in terms of ad conversions. As a Prime member, I should have a filter to eliminate featured (sponsored) items so my search results are not flooded with items, Temu-style.
Organic traffic seems to be blocked, and organic conversion is gone because of this money-grab system. Advertising your Amazon listings outside Amazon, on Facebook or Instagram, works much better than Amazon’s own ads. Ever since the relevancy filter was removed, Amazon Ads feels like it is designed to drain your wallet.
It will generate a lot of profit for Amazon in the short term, but it will eventually backfire on them in the long run.
Also, this new 75-character limit has ruined things too. Whenever Amazon updates something, it makes things worse. With “glitchmas” season coming up, I am sure they will come up with another update during the busiest season to make things worse.
I also see a big decline in Amazon sales, and it is not only ad-related. People are now trying to avoid Amazon, especially the millions of sellers who are also customers on this platform and are steering away because of how unfair it is becoming to hardworking sellers.
Luckily, our physical store and our own website are getting many more orders than before, despite the economy getting worse faster than at any point since the pandemic. In my opinion, the end of the Bretton Woods system was the initial spark that set these financial problems in motion. It does not matter whether it is blue or red. The current financial and banking system needs a hard reset, in my opinion, because it is no longer sustainable.
As I keep mentioning in my posts and replies, Amazon is trying to make its shareholders richer at the expense of millions of hardworking sellers. This direction needs to change. Amazon needs to treat its sellers fairly and protect them just as it protects customers, even those who abuse the return system.
If Amazon does not make this a fair platform for sellers too, I believe this approach will eventually backfire in a massive way. Sellers are also customers, and losing their trust affects both sides of the business. There is still time for Amazon to make things right, but that opportunity will not last forever.
Seller_c7AY5UmbBC07I
I do not trust the ad program here at all. What ever I setup - the full amount was billed every month. THE ENTIRE AMOUNT. This should fluctuate especially is slow season like Summer. What I also discovered depending on how much you bid you were still only allowed to make XX more sales - my payout would reflect that.
Other platforms there is no set amount on sales and the ad sales fluctuate as you would expect. Not here. Then number crunching the ads were becoming insanely expensive compared to the sales.
also worth mentioning more competition, ai placement, the economy. Lots of lookers these days versus sales and don't expect anything great until after the midterms then sales will either be great or severely in the dumpster.
