Amazon Ads success story · Two-person, veteran-owned publisher

How a two-person publisher doubled its revenue with Amazon Sponsored Products, without spending more on ads.

Name: Overtop Media Digital Marketing
Address: 933 Louise Ave Suite 101-18, Charlotte, NC, 28204, US
Telephone: (704) 237-0707
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Front Line Publishing, a husband-and-wife team writing military thrillers and science fiction, stopped paying for clicks from the wrong readers. Tighter targeting, a long list of blocked searches and a clear rule about which book to advertise took yearly revenue from $316,547 to $634,542.

Business: Front Line Publishing
Market: United States
Goal: More readers and more revenue from the same ad budget

Stack of hardcover books on a dark table

The results.

Yearly revenue in 2022 compared with 2020, with no increase in ad spend.

2Xyearly revenue, from $316,547 to $634,542
0%increase in ad spend over the same period
Up to 90%of the marketing budget now goes to Amazon Ads

Revenue figures provided by the publisher to Amazon Ads, United States, 2019 to 2022.

The challenge.

Front Line Publishing is a two-person, veteran-owned company that has published military technothrillers and science fiction since 2015. Like most independent publishers, it competes for attention with thousands of other titles every time a reader searches for a new book.

The goal was simple to state and hard to do: put each series in front of the readers most likely to enjoy it, at the moment they are shopping for their next book, without paying for clicks from people who were never going to buy.

Illustration of a search term report with each reader search marked keep or block

What they did.

Sponsored Products · Automatic and manual targeting · Negative keywords

Let Amazon find the first buyers: The first Sponsored Products campaign used automatic targeting and ran for two months as a learning campaign, so Amazon could show which searches and books brought real sales.
Kept what worked, by hand: They downloaded the search term report, picked the keywords, phrases and competing books that matched best, and built a manual campaign around them.
Blocked the wrong readers: A long list of negative keywords removed searches that wasted money and kept science fiction readers seeing science fiction ads and thriller readers seeing thriller ads. The founder calls this his top tip.
Advertised book one, sold the series: Only the first book in each series was advertised. The first book earns $3.49, while a reader who buys all eight books in one series is worth $42, so the ad cost was treated as the price of a series reader, not a single sale.
Started ads at the right moment: Series ads usually begin once the second book is out and the third is on preorder, so a new reader always has a next book to buy.

Why it worked.

Our read on the decisions behind the numbers, and what any business can take from them.

Every blocked search saved money: Most wasted spend on Amazon comes from searches that look relevant but never buy. Removing them is how revenue doubled while the budget stayed flat.
Data first, then control: The automatic campaign did the research; the manual campaign put money only behind proven searches. Neither alone would have done both jobs.
They knew what a customer was worth: Judging ads on the whole series a reader buys, not one $3.49 sale, let them bid confidently where competitors gave up.
Readers saw the right genre: Matching each ad to the reader’s taste raised the chance of a sale and kept the brand’s reputation clean with readers who would never like the book.

How we would run this play for your business.

You do not need a national budget to use the same ideas. This is how Overtop Media Digital Marketing puts them to work in our amazon ads management.

Research, then lock it down: We start with automatic campaigns to learn what your buyers search, then move the money into tightly controlled manual campaigns.
Negative keywords every week: Search terms are reviewed weekly from day one. Anything that spends without selling is blocked before it adds up.
Bid on lifetime value: We work out what a customer is really worth to you, repeat orders and add-ons included, and set your targets from that number.
Bring outside buyers in: Readers and shoppers who find you on Google or social media can be sent to Amazon and measured with Amazon Attribution. Our Google Ads management and Meta ads teams plan that traffic with you.