Amazon PPC agency: when should you hire one?

A small brand should hire an Amazon PPC agency only when the extra profit the agency can add each month is bigger than its fee. Published fees in India start around ₹25,000 to ₹35,000 a month. On a ₹50,000 monthly ad budget, that fee adds half as much again on top of the spend, so the agency has to add a lot of profit just to break even. On ₹2 lakh of spend, the same fee is a much easier bar to clear.

So before asking whether you need an agency, work out how much profit it has to add just to cover its fee.

What Amazon PPC agencies in India charge small brands

Agencies that publish prices put their entry plans in the same range. Mediaverse Digital, for example, publishes a management fee from ₹30,000 a month for up to 25 ASINs and ₹2 lakh of monthly ad spend, with the ad budget paid separately from your own seller account (Mediaverse Digital).

Our own revenue share plan is a fixed fee of ₹25,000 a month plus GST, which is half our usual rate, plus 5% to 10% of marketplace revenue, set per brand. That fee covers ads on every platform, Amazon, Flipkart, Meesho and Meta or Google for your own site, because most of what we earn is the share and we need to be free to move budget to wherever the product sells. Additional services cost extra.

The ad budget is never part of any of these fees. You pay Amazon for clicks and the agency separately.

Work out the break-even before you sign

Run this with your own numbers. It takes five minutes.

1. Take the agency's monthly fee. Say ₹25,000.
2. Take your contribution margin on a sale after Amazon's fees, shipping and returns, before ad spend. Say 30%.
3. Divide the fee by the margin. ₹25,000 ÷ 0.30 = about ₹83,000.

That ₹83,000 is the extra monthly sales the agency has to bring in, at the same ad spend, just to pay for itself. Or it has to cut that much wasted spend, or some mix of the two.

The last column doesn't move. The bar the agency has to clear is the same whatever you spend. It just gets easier to clear when there is more spend to fix. Finding ₹83,000 of extra sales inside a ₹25,000 budget is close to impossible. Inside ₹2 lakh there is far more wasted spend to cut and far more traffic to convert, so the same target becomes realistic.

Below about ₹50,000 of monthly spend, fix the listing before paying anyone

At small budgets, most of what an agency would do in month one is work you can do yourself: turn off search terms that spend and never sell, pause ASINs that lose money after returns, and fix the listing that the ads send people to. Ads can't rescue a listing with weak images, few reviews or a price that is out of line. They make it lose money faster.

Our view: if your monthly Amazon ad spend is under about ₹50,000 and your listing hasn't been fixed, spend the fee on the listing and your own time first. Hire when the budget is big enough for the break-even above to look reachable.

What the fee should buy a small brand: break-even ACoS per product, in writing

If you do hire, the fee should buy more than bid changes. Ask for these in writing before you sign:

• The break-even ACoS for each ASIN, worked out from your margins with returns taken off, before any campaign goes live. Our ACoS calculator does the first part.
• TACoS next to ACoS every month, so you can see whether ads are growing total sales or only buying sales you would have got anyway.
• Your Seller Central and ad accounts staying in your name. The agency gets user access, nothing more.
• A short trial or a one-month notice period, so you aren't locked in.
• Which ad types are covered: Sponsored Products only, or Sponsored Brands and Display too.

An agency that promises a ROAS or ACoS number before it has seen your margins is quoting a figure from someone else's account. This is how we run Amazon PPC ourselves: break-even first, then campaigns.

When a small brand should hire anyway

There are two cases where the maths above undersells the agency.

The first is a launch. A new ASIN has no sales history, and the early weeks of ads are when wrong keywords and wrong bids burn the most money. Getting that stretch right can be worth more than the fee.

The second is a brand selling on more than one marketplace. If you're on Amazon and Flipkart, or Amazon and your own site, one team that sees all of it can move budget to whichever channel is making money this month. Two separate agencies each optimise their own channel and neither sees the whole.

FAQ

How much does an Amazon PPC agency cost in India?

Published entry fees run from about ₹25,000 to ₹35,000 a month, plus GST, with ad spend paid separately to Amazon. Larger catalogues and budgets cost more, and some agencies charge a percentage of ad spend above a certain level.

Is it worth hiring an Amazon PPC agency with a small budget?

Only if the extra profit it can add is bigger than its fee. Divide the monthly fee by your margin after fees and returns. If the resulting sales figure looks unreachable at your ad spend, fix the listing yourself first.

What should an Amazon PPC agency report every month?

ACoS by ASIN against each product's break-even, TACoS, wasted spend it has cut, and total sales, organic plus ad-driven. A report that shows only ROAS hides whether the business grew.

Should I give an agency my Seller Central login?

No. Add the agency as a user with the permissions it needs. The account should stay in your name.