What Really Happens When You Stop Amazon PPC (And Why It Impacts Organic Sales)
I posted recently on LinkedIn about a client who took it upon themselves to pause a well structured PPC campaign that was bringing in decent results. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to name and shame, but I’ve become pretty tired of saying the same thing over and over again and really want to hammer home the message…
“Amazon PPC STILL has a MASSIVE impact on organic SEO. Period”
We’ve proven this time and time again, yet sometimes clients still go against our advice and end up paying the price.
The client in question simply wanted to cut costs, and PPC seemed like a good place to start. They naturally assumed that because of the strong PPC results, the account would hold its own organically, too. And for the first week, it did. Good for them.
However, by week three, things started to go south quickly. Not only did overall traffic and organic ranking positions fall sharply, but their overall revenue also dropped by more than half. That’s a bit hit to be taking.
That’s the reality most sellers don’t see coming. Amazon PPC doesn’t just generate paid sales; it feeds the algorithm with the sales velocity and conversion data that physically drives your organic rankings. When you stop or reduce your ad spend too sharply, you’re not just cutting visibility on ads; you’re cutting the fuel source that keeps your organic listings stable.
How Does Amazon PPC Affect Organic SEO?
You see, the thing is, sales generated by PPC can directly affect your organic SEO because those sales are actually feeding Amazon’s ranking algorithm. Every sale, every click and every conversion you generate tells Amazon that your product deserves to be seen more often. This is what helps it rise in organic search.
The idea is simple. When your ads perform well, they create steady sales velocity and engagement, which are the two signals Amazon relies on to decide which listings to push higher, and this is what keeps your product visible and competitive. When visibility is high, your products get more clicks, more conversions, and more reviews, all of which feed back into the system and strengthen your organic position.
In our client’s case, those steady PPC-driven conversions were what held their organic ranking in place, and once the campaigns stopped, that momentum disappeared altogether. Traffic slowed, keyword positions dropped, and their best-performing listings began to slide. What you need to remember here is that Amazon doesn’t separate paid from organic performance. It uses BOTH of them together to judge which products are worth showing first.
What Happens When You Pause Amazon PPC Campaigns?
Cutting PPC can lead to a drop in both ad-driven and organic sales, which are almost certainly going to disrupt your ranking stability almost immediately.
When you stop or reduce your ad spend, you’re removing the activity that drives sales velocity and keyword data back into the system. Amazon’s algorithm depends on that data to decide which listings deserve visibility, and without it, your products WILL start to slip down the rankings, even if they performed well before. The longer you keep the ads off, the harder it then becomes for organic sales to recover because the listing loses relevance in Amazon’s search results.
That’s exactly what happened with our client. They reduced spend by around fifteen per cent to save costs and assumed their organic sales would hold up. Within three weeks, organic sales had dropped by twenty per cent, and overall revenue was down by more than half. The short-term gain in ad savings costs far more in lost visibility and sales momentum in the long run, and it’s an expensive lesson to learn.
Why You Should Track TaCOS, Not Just ACOS
TaCOS gives a full picture of your total sales health, while ACOS only measures how efficient your ads actually are.
ACOS looks purely at how much you spend on ads versus what you make directly from them. It’s a useful metric, but it doesn’t really tell you how those ads influence your overall sales performance.
TaCOS does. Since it includes both paid and organic revenue, you get to see the full relationship between ad spend and total account growth. A balanced TaCOS means your PPC investment is supporting healthy organic sales too, not just paid clicks.
For the client in question, their data showed this perfectly. While they did in fact save around £600 per week on ad spend, that “saving” actually resulted in a £25,000 drop in weekly sales. It may well have been their ACOS looked better on paper, but it was in fact the TaCOS data that showed lower spend meant weaker organic growth and a significant loss in total revenue.
If you really want to understand your profitability on Amazon, track TaCOS first and use ACOS as context, not the other way around.
How to Balance Ad Spend and Organic Growth
It’s been proven time and time again that running consistent, well-structured Amazon PPC campaigns will keep both your paid and organic sales stable.
It really comes down to finding balance. You can’t rely purely on ads to drive your sales, but you also can’t expect organic performance to hold strong in the long term without them. If you can avoid sudden pauses in spending, you’ll avoid breaking the flow of data Amazon uses to measure performance. Instead, try to only make gradual adjustments while monitoring blended metrics like TaCOS and overall revenue, then test campaign structures to find where efficiency and visibility meet.
Strategic PPC investment has and always will help build long-term organic strength. Not only does it keep your listings active, but your keywords remain visible, and your ranking signals become more consistent. Sellers who treat PPC as an ongoing optimisation rather than a cost to cut always perform better over time. The short-term savings from turning ads off will never outweigh the long-term gains that come from consistent, data-led management.
So, to conclude things…
Amazon PPC and organic Amazon SEO are not separate strategies. They work together to build and maintain visibility. When your ads stop, your organic performance almost always suffers, and the recovery takes longer than most sellers expect.
The takeaway is simple. Keep your campaigns active, track your blended metrics, and treat PPC as an investment in organic growth, not just a sales driver. Cutting ad spend might save money for a week, but it will cost far more in lost visibility and revenue long-term.
If you want help structuring campaigns that drive both paid and organic results, get in touch with Ecommerce Intelligence. Our team can show you how to build strategies that deliver consistent growth across your entire Amazon account.
