Can we use Google to drive traffic to our Amazon listings?

You can, and it sometimes makes sense for launch velocity or ranking momentum. Understand what you are buying: you are paying for a click and handing the customer relationship away at the end of it. As a deliberate tactic for a specific window it is defensible; as a standing strategy it is paying to grow someone else's customer base.

How should we split the budget?

Start by separating defensive spend from growth spend. Defending your own listings is closer to a cost of doing business than an investment, and it should be sized as such. What is left is the real allocation question, and it should be settled on contribution margin plus a lifetime value assumption rather than on the two platforms' reported returns.

Comparison

One buys a customer. One buys an order.

The difference is not intent or cost per click. It is whether you end up with a customer you can contact again, or a transaction Amazon owns the relationship for.

Our bias, declared

If your product sells on Amazon, Amazon Ads will usually show better in-platform efficiency, and that number is genuinely real. The reason we still push most brands to fund direct-site acquisition is ownership: an Amazon order gives you revenue and almost nothing else — no email address, no retention channel, no ability to raise lifetime value. Fund Amazon for the demand that is already there, and fund Google and your own site for the customers you want to keep.

Side by side

Google Ads vs Amazon Ads comparison
Factor	Amazon Ads	Google Ads
Buyer intent	Extremely high — already shopping	Ranges from research to ready
Typical conversion rate	Much higher	Lower, varies by query type
Who owns the customer	Amazon	You
Customer contact details	None	Yours at checkout
Ability to build lifetime value	Very limited	Full — email, SMS, retention
Margin after fees	Referral and fulfilment fees compress it hard	Your own cost structure
Reaching demand that does not know you	Weak — it is a search engine for buyers	Strong across the funnel
Operational simplicity	High — they handle fulfilment	You own the whole chain
Competitive exposure	Competitors advertise on your listing	You control the landing experience
Speed to revenue	Fast	Slower to tune

Choose amazon ads when

Your category is where people already search

For replenishable and commodity products, a large share of buying starts on Amazon rather than a search engine. Refusing to advertise where the demand physically is costs you volume for a principle.

You need defensive coverage on your own listings

Competitors will advertise against your product page. Sponsored placement on your own branded terms is partly a tax rather than growth, and it is one most sellers end up paying.

Operations are the constraint

If fulfilment capability rather than demand is what limits you, the platform handling storage, shipping and returns has real value that does not show up in a ROAS comparison.

Choose google ads when

You want customers rather than orders

The checkout gives you an email address and permission to build a relationship. Everything about lifetime value, repeat purchase and retention economics depends on that one difference, and it is invisible in a channel efficiency comparison.

Your margin cannot absorb marketplace fees

Referral plus fulfilment fees can consume a large share of the order before advertising cost. Run the contribution margin on both routes — for plenty of products the marketplace order is barely profitable at any ad efficiency.

You need to create demand, not just capture it

Amazon is a place people go having decided to buy something. Reaching people earlier, or introducing a product nobody is searching for, is work only the open web can do.

The buying experience is part of the product

Bundles, subscriptions, configuration, education, brand — none of these survive a marketplace listing. If your differentiation lives in the experience, a marketplace flattens it into a price comparison.

Comparing them fairly

The two ROAS figures are not comparable and are routinely compared anyway. Marketplace efficiency is calculated before referral fees, fulfilment fees and storage, all of which are variable costs of that order. Direct-site efficiency sits on your own cost structure. Put both on contribution margin per order and the gap narrows substantially, and in thin-margin categories it can invert.

The larger omission is lifetime value. A direct customer can be emailed, offered a subscription, and sold to again at near-zero acquisition cost. A marketplace order usually cannot. Comparing first-order economics between a channel that produces customers and one that produces transactions systematically undervalues the first.

The split we recommend for most brands: fund the marketplace to capture demand already searching there and to defend your listings, and fund direct acquisition against lifetime value rather than first-order return. Judging both on the same first-order ROAS target will move all your budget to the marketplace and quietly cap the business at whatever the platform allows.

Related questions

Because the numbers are calculated differently and measure different things. Marketplace ROAS excludes referral and fulfilment fees, and it excludes the fact that you cannot contact the buyer again. Recompute both on contribution margin and add a lifetime value assumption to the direct channel — the comparison usually looks quite different, and in some categories it reverses outright.

Other comparisons

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Services referenced

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