Most Amazon PPC agencies charge a percentage of ad spend or a flat monthly fee. Here is every pricing model in plain English, what you should get for the money, our own published prices, and the red flags that should make you walk away.
Agency and Pricing
Amazon PPC agency cost comes down to two models: most agencies charge either a percentage of your ad spend, usually 10% to 20%, or a flat monthly fee, commonly $800 to $5,000 depending on account size. A few stack a percentage of sales on top. Epsilon Ads charges a flat fee from $995 a month, and unlike almost everybody else in this industry, we publish every price openly.
This guide explains each model in plain English, what you should get for the money, and the red flags that should make you walk away from an otherwise convincing pitch.
What is on this page
The four ways agencies charge
Percentage of ad spend. You pay a slice of whatever you spend on ads, typically 10% to 20%. Spend $10,000 at a 15% rate and you pay $1,500 that month. Simple, and with a catch we come to next.
Flat monthly fee. A fixed amount, usually based on the size and complexity of your account. Predictable, and it does not punish you for growing.
Percentage of sales. A cut of the revenue the advertising generates. It can align incentives well and it can also get expensive faster than anybody expected once the account works.
Hybrid. A smaller flat fee plus a performance percentage. Common, reasonable in principle, and the hardest of the four to forecast.
The problem with percentage of spend
Percentage of spend sounds fair until you think about what it rewards. The agency’s income rises when your spend rises, not when your profit rises.
Consider the single most valuable thing an agency can do in a new account: find the fifth to the third of the budget sitting on search terms that never convert, and cut it. Under percentage of spend pricing, doing that job well reduces the agency’s own income. Nobody has to behave badly for that to matter. The incentive simply points away from the work that helps you most.
There is a second problem. Managing a $30,000 account is not three times the work of managing a $10,000 one. The structure, the reporting and the thinking are broadly the same, so a percentage fee charges you three times as much for something closer to the same job.
The right question is not what the fee is. It is what the fee rewards, because that decides which work actually gets done.
Amazon PPC agency cost, ours published in full
We publish our prices because pricing per prospect is how this industry has historically charged whatever each buyer would bear. Here are the tiers.
| Monthly ad spend | Management fee | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| $1,000 to $50,000 | $995 flat | No percentage of anything |
| $50,000 to $100,000 | $495 plus 1% of sales | Of total sales in the business report |
| $100,000 to $300,000 | $1,250 plus 1% of sales | Same 1%, larger fixed part |
| $300,000 and above | $1,750 plus 1% of sales | Enterprise scope, same principle |
Two things to notice. The percentage is of total sales rather than ad spend, so it rises when the business grows rather than when the budget does. And at the smallest tier there is no percentage at all, because a brand spending $3,000 a month should not be paying for a variable structure it does not need.
Want to know what your account would actually cost to run?
Every price is published. Send the reports and we will tell you the tier and what we would do first.
What should be included
Fees are only comparable once you know what sits inside them. At minimum, expect campaign management across Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display, search term and negative keyword work on a stated cadence, bid and placement management, reporting a human can read, and a named person who answers.
Ask specifically about four things that are often extra: creative production, listing and A plus content work, Amazon DSP, and additional marketplaces. Any of those can be a legitimate separate line, but discovering it in month two is unpleasant.
Also ask what the cadence actually is. An agency that touches the account monthly is charging a management fee for maintenance. Search term work needs doing weekly to be worth anything, for the reasons in the search term report guide.
What the fee has to earn back
A fee is only expensive relative to what it produces, so do the arithmetic before the conversation. On a $20,000 monthly budget, a fee of $995 is five percent of spend. If the account is currently running a fifth of that budget on search terms that never convert, which is the low end of what we typically find, the waste is $4,000 a month. Cutting it pays the fee four times over before anything else improves.
That is why the first question to ask any agency is what they will do in the first thirty days. If the answer involves finding and cutting waste before touching bids, they are starting where the money is. If the answer is a strategy document and a plan for month three, the fee is buying process rather than results.
Run the same maths in reverse if your spend is small. On a $3,000 monthly budget, the same fee is a third of your spend, and no amount of optimisation reliably returns that. The honest advice at that level is usually to learn it yourself for six months first.
When an agency is worth it
Honestly, not always. Below roughly $2,000 of monthly ad spend, the fee is a large share of the budget and most brands are better off learning the fundamentals themselves. The pillar for that is Amazon PPC explained.
It starts to make sense when one of three things is true: the spend is large enough that a few points of efficiency exceed the fee, the account has grown complex enough that nobody internally has time to do it properly, or you are missing specialist ground such as DSP or international marketplaces. The full comparison against hiring is in agency vs in house.
Red flags worth walking away from
Guaranteed ACOS or guaranteed rankings. Nobody controls the auction or the algorithm. A guarantee is either meaningless or about to be met by cutting spend on the terms holding your rank.
No named person. If you cannot find out who actually touches the account, the answer is usually a rotating pool or an automated tool with a monthly summary attached.
Refusal to quote until they have seen your revenue. Fee based on what you can afford rather than the work involved.
Twelve month lock in with no exit. Three to six months is fair given the work takes a quarter to show. A year with no break clause is protecting them, not you.
They will not tell you who owns the campaign structure if you leave. The answer should be you, plainly, in writing.
Reporting that leads with ROAS and nothing else. One number, chosen because it looks best. Ask for total sales, spend, ACOS and total advertising cost of sale together, which is the case in ACOS vs TACOS.
Want a price before a sales call rather than after one?
Every tier is published. Read it, then decide whether the conversation is worth having.
Seven questions to ask on the call
Print these. They separate serious agencies from good salespeople quickly.
One. What is the fee, exactly, at my spend level, and what changes it?
Two. What is included and what is billed separately?
Three. Who works on my account, and how often do they touch it?
Four. What will you do in the first thirty days?
Five. Which numbers will you report, and how often?
Six. What is the notice period, and who owns the campaigns if I leave?
Seven. Tell me about an account where it did not work, and why.
That last one is the most useful question on the list. Every agency has accounts that did not work. The ones worth hiring will tell you about them.
Send us the reports and we will tell you what we would do, before you pay anything
Free, no card, written answer in three working days, and yours to keep either way.
Frequently asked questions
Most charge either a percentage of ad spend, usually 10% to 20%, or a flat monthly fee, commonly $800 to $5,000 depending on account size. Some add a percentage of sales on top. Epsilon Ads charges a flat fee from $995 a month and publishes every price openly.
A flat fee is better for most brands, because percentage of spend rewards the agency for spending more rather than for making you more profit. If cutting your wasted spend by a third lowers the agency’s own income, you have built a conflict into the contract on day one.
Because pricing per prospect lets them charge what each one will bear. Published pricing removes that, which is uncomfortable for the seller and useful for the buyer. It is also increasingly how AI assistants surface recommendations, since they cite what is actually stated.
Campaign management across Sponsored Products, Brands and Display, search term and negative keyword work, bid and placement management, reporting you can actually read, and a named person to talk to. Ask specifically whether creative, listing work and DSP are included or extra.
Three to six months is common, and it is not unreasonable given the work takes a quarter to show. Be wary of twelve month lock ins with no exit, and always check the notice period and who owns the campaign structure if you leave.
For a brand spending a few thousand a month, anything above roughly a thousand a month in fees needs to be justified by results you can point at. Below about $2,000 of monthly ad spend, most brands are better off learning it themselves or using a very light touch arrangement.
Usually yes, because it needs a seat, different skills and creative production. Ask for the DSP fee separately and check whether there is a media minimum attached, since that is often the larger number.
Send the right reports. Get a straight answer back.
We read the account properly and write back with where the money is going, what it is buying, and the three things we would change first. You keep it either way.
No obligation · no card · a person replies, usually the same working day