A two-month diagnosis of the VetSet, ChlorVet and PureFlax advertising account – what the automation does well, where the structure has stopped growing the brand, and the offer and listing changes that will. Built on Scale Insights and Amazon Ads data. No vanity numbers.
This audit covers 1 July – 31 August 2026 across all 326 Sponsored Products campaigns, using the Scale Insights and Amazon Ads reports. Every figure is measured, none is estimated. Where we don't have the data to prove something, we say so rather than guess. Market and competitor sales data and Seller Central business reports were outside the access for this audit, so there is no market-share section.
| # | Finding | The number | What to do | Section |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sales flat since July while ad spend rises | Ad share of sales 52% → 59%; organic units/day −18% | Fix conversion and offers before bids | 01 |
| 2 | ChlorVet converts less on more traffic | 32.7% → 27.5% conversion; sessions +10% | Title, images, coupons | 02 |
| 3 | Highest-margin products barely advertised | Both 2-packs: 33–34% margin, £18 of ad spend | Give them campaigns | 02 |
| 4 | Campaign names don’t show what campaigns do | 13 “Product SI” campaigns are really own-ASIN defense | Rename in week 1 | 03 |
| 5 | Same search terms served by many campaigns | 41.5% of spend on overlapping terms | Collapse bid ladders, track rank | 03 |
| 6 | One rule template for every product | Conversion 9.5–48.9% and margin −6.6% to 31.7% on one strategy | Rules per product | 03 |
| 7 | Product pages lose money | £3,356 at 43.1% ACOS vs ~29% break-even | Reduce with base bids and modifiers – can’t be removed fully | 04 |
| 8 | No brand formats, no competitor targeting | 0 Sponsored Brands / Video / Display; £11 on competitor ASINs | Launch SBV and ASIN targeting | 03 · 06 |
| 9 | Winning search terms not harvested | 99 terms: £931 → £10,006 at 9.3% ACOS | Promote to exact, track rank | 07 |
| 10 | Hero campaigns run out of budget at the peak | Out of budget 3pm–9pm, when 38.7% of orders land | Pause 12am–6am, budgets to 9pm | 08 |
| 11 | Ads allowed to serve off Amazon | Every campaign on “Increase reach off-Amazon” | Limit reach to Amazon | 08 |
| 12 | Customers buy one unit at a time | 1.03 units per order; no quantity or S&S coupons | Tiered and Subscribe & Save coupons | 10 |
| 13 | Stock-outs cap growth | Supplier delays reported over the period | Sellerboard, reorder points, second supplier | 11 |
| 14 | Launches aren’t run from one playbook | A new product every 8–12 weeks | One launch checklist and group | 11 |
1. Sales peaked at £78.7k in July; August and September to date run flat at about £2,430–2,450 a day, while daily ad spend rose from £246 (July) to £275 and organic units per day fell four months in a row, from 48.1 to 39.6 – part of that is the supplier stock issue.
2. ChlorVet Scrub 500ml carries most of the slide: in August its sessions rose 10% but its conversion rate fell from 32.7% to 27.5%, and its organic units dropped from 382 in June to 230 – almost the entire organic decline of the account.
3. Waste control is genuinely good – no zero-order search term reached £20, and brand defense returns £10.70 for every £1 – but 21% of spend goes to product pages at 43.1% ACOS, above the account's break-even of about 29% – only partly controllable while broad, phrase and auto do so much of the work.
4. Most of the spend runs on Scale Insights rules, with one template on every product regardless of margin or conversion rate, 41.5% of spend on search terms served by two or more campaigns, and no harvesting rule on any auto campaign.
5. Several of the largest growth levers aren’t switched on yet – no Sponsored Brands or video, no competitor ASIN targeting, no quantity or Subscribe & Save coupons – and customers buy 1.03 units per order of products they re-buy.
The long-run story is excellent: product launches every few months, revenue up month after month, ad cost under control. The last three months are where the questions start – and they are questions worth asking before spend grows further.
| Month | Sales | PPC spend | ACOS | TACOS | ROAS | Organic units | Ad share of sales |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 2025 | £18,365 | £2,134 | 21.8% | 11.6% | 4.60× | 582 | 53.4% |
| Oct 2025 | £14,389 | £1,217 | 17.7% | 8.5% | 5.66× | 543 | 47.9% |
| Nov 2025 | £18,374 | £1,880 | 22.2% | 10.2% | 4.50× | 647 | 46.1% |
| Dec 2025 | £23,302 | £1,863 | 18.7% | 8.0% | 5.35× | 737 | 42.8% |
| Jan 2026 | £35,330 | £3,757 | 20.9% | 10.6% | 4.78× | 856 | 50.8% |
| Feb 2026 | £36,690 | £3,611 | 18.3% | 9.8% | 5.46× | 844 | 53.7% |
| Mar 2026 | £50,112 | £6,123 | 21.3% | 12.2% | 4.70× | 984 | 57.4% |
| Apr 2026 | £54,391 | £5,584 | 19.0% | 10.3% | 5.27× | 1,146 | 54.1% |
| May 2026 | £57,114 | £5,445 | 16.9% | 9.5% | 5.92× | 1,057 | 56.4% |
| Jun 2026 | £68,542 | £5,915 | 16.6% | 8.6% | 6.04× | 1,444 | 52.1% |
| Jul 2026Audit | £78,662 | £7,625 | 17.5% | 9.7% | 5.73× | 1,440 | 55.5% |
| Aug 2026Audit | £76,065 | £8,291 | 18.6% | 10.9% | 5.38× | 1,296 | 58.7% |
| 1–12 Sep 2026 | £29,145 | £3,300 | 19.3% | 11.3% | 5.18× | 475 | 58.7% |
| Per day | June | July | August | 1–12 Sep |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales per day | £2,285 | £2,537 | £2,454 | £2,429 |
| Ad spend per day | £197 | £246 | £267 | £275 |
| TACOS | 8.6% | 9.7% | 10.9% | 11.3% |
| Organic units per day | 48.1 | 46.5 | 41.8 | 39.6 |
In June ads produced 52% of sales. By August it was 58.7%, and September to date holds there. Daily sales have not grown since July, but daily ad spend has, and organic units per day have fallen for four straight months. Growth is turning into paid growth.
You've told us about stock issues from your China supplier over this period. We don't have the dates or ASINs affected, so part of this dip is supply, not advertising – we won't attribute all of it to PPC. What supply doesn't explain is ad spend rising while sales flattened: when a product runs short, ads should pull back, not push harder. Section 11 covers how to keep stock ahead of demand.
The account refund rate ran at about 2% from February to August. In 1–12 September it is 3.08%, and on ChlorVet Scrub 500ml it is 4.03% – double its usual level. We don't know the cause from the data we have access to.
Profit figures use the Jul–Aug Scale Insights report, with cost of goods entered by you. Break-even ACOS is a product's margin before ad spend – the highest ACOS it can run before advertising it loses money. Account break-even is about 29%.
| Portfolio · Jul–Aug | Campaigns | Spend | % Spend | Sales | ACOS | ROAS | Conv. rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| scrub (ChlorVet) | 11 | £5,065 | 31.8% | £27,408 | 18.5% | 5.41× | 27.5% |
| silver & blue spray | 14 | £3,393 | 21.3% | £19,228 | 17.6% | 5.67× | 32.7% |
| wound powder | 12 | £991 | 6.2% | £4,510 | 22.0% | 4.55× | 21.2% |
| brand defense | 2 | £726 | 4.6% | £7,779 | 9.3% | 10.72× | 26.9% |
| liquid para | 10 | £593 | 3.7% | £3,116 | 19.0% | 5.25× | 34.1% |
| flax oil | 16 | £540 | 3.4% | £3,708 | 14.6% | 6.86× | 34.3% |
| softec | 8 | £361 | 2.3% | £2,045 | 17.6% | 5.67× | 15.4% |
| cottonwool | 7 | £346 | 2.2% | £1,282 | 27.0% | 3.70× | 17.4% |
| supermint | 6 | £344 | 2.2% | £1,614 | 21.3% | 4.69× | 13.7% |
| gelotec + melatec | 4 | £286 | 1.8% | £1,400 | 20.4% | 4.90× | 18.6% |
| poultice 5 pack | 8 | £280 | 1.8% | £2,035 | 13.8% | 7.26× | 26.0% |
| sanizorb | 14 | £261 | 1.6% | £1,095 | 23.8% | 4.19× | 15.1% |
| wound gel | 5 | £242 | 1.5% | £1,503 | 16.1% | 6.20× | 17.1% |
| bandage 12 pack | 8 | £236 | 1.5% | £1,300 | 18.2% | 5.50× | 21.4% |
| uddercream1kg | 6 | £177 | 1.1% | £866 | 20.5% | 4.88× | 10.8% |
Top 15 portfolios by spend, from the campaign report. The two hero portfolios take 53% of spend. A further £451 went to 53 campaigns outside any portfolio that were paused during the window (63% ACOS) – switching them off was the right call.
| ChlorVet 500ml | June | July | August | Sep (12-day pace) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | £16,858 | £22,065 | £20,450 | ~£18,930 |
| PPC spend | £1,251 | £2,292 | £2,850 | ~£2,623 |
| Sessions | 3,093 | 3,975 | 4,382 | ~4,105 |
| Conversion rate | 31.8% | 32.7% | 27.5% | 27.2% |
| Organic units | 382 | 333 | 230 | ~200 |
| Ad share of sales | 52.6% | 63.3% | 70.3% | 70.8% |
| ACOS | 14.1% | 16.4% | 19.8% | 19.6% |
| TACOS | 7.4% | 10.4% | 13.9% | 13.9% |
September pace = 1–12 September figures scaled to 30 days. Arithmetic on actuals, not a forecast.
In August ChlorVet got 10% more sessions but converted at 27.5%, down from 32.7%. Ad spend more than doubled from June to August while organic units fell 40%. Across the whole account organic units fell by 148 from June to August; ChlorVet alone fell by 152 – the rest of the catalogue held steady.
The listing has real strengths – 4.7 stars from 137 ratings, 1K+ bought last month, £16.96 – and real gaps: the title says “for Dogs” while the bullets cover dogs, cats, horses and livestock; the images are AI-generated and show few animals; there is no quantity or Subscribe & Save coupon on a product people buy again. More traffic is arriving at a page that isn't closing it as well as it did in July.
| Silver Spray 250ml | July | August | Sep (12-day pace) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | £13,600 | £16,407 | ~£12,008 |
| Sessions | 2,044 | 2,631 | ~2,193 |
| Conversion rate | 37.0% | 34.7% | 30.4% |
| ACOS | 16.2% | 17.8% | 21.3% |
| TACOS | 10.6% | 12.1% | 14.4% |
Silver Spray went from £1,776 (Oct-25) to £16,407 (Aug-26) at 8–12% TACOS for most of that run, with an Amazon's Choice badge, 4.8 stars from 90 ratings and 600+ bought last month. But conversion has fallen two months running, from 37.0% to 30.4% – the same pattern as ChlorVet. Twelve days is early; the direction still matters.
On the listing itself, a competitor's Sponsored Products ad – Purple Spray at £10.49 with 248 ratings – sits under the bullets, 42% cheaper than VetSet's £17.99. Every shopper who reaches the page is shown a cheaper alternative.
| Product · Jul–Aug | Sales | Conv. rate | PPC spend | TACOS | Margin | Break-even ACOS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue Spray 250mlTop pick | £6,584 | 22.2% | £164 | 2.5% | 29.5% | 32% (runs 7.2%) |
| Silver Spray 2-packTop pick | £3,897 | 46.1% | £7 | 0.2% | 33.5% | 34% |
| ChlorVet 2-packTop pick | £3,554 | 27.9% | £11 | 0.3% | 34.2% | 35% |
| Liquid Paraffin 500ml | £6,801 | 35.6% | £600 | 8.8% | 17.1% | 26% |
| PolDress Hoof Dressing 5 Pack | £1,928 | 23.6% | £199 | 10.3% | 31.7% | 42% |
| Digital Vet Thermometer | £1,215 | 39.1% | £82 | 6.8% | 17.2% | 24% |
| SofTec Padding 150mm | £1,712 | 25.2% | £62 | 3.6% | 22.9% | 27% |
| PureFlax Flaxseed Oil 1L | £4,498 | 48.9% | £168 | 3.7% | 14.0% | 18% (less room) |
Both 2-packs carry the best margins in the catalogue (33.5% and 34.2%) and together received £18 of ad spend in two months – neither has a single ad group of its own. The multi-buy offer exists; shoppers just aren't being shown it. The ChlorVet 2-pack already works out 20% cheaper per bottle (£13.48 vs £16.96).
Blue Spray shows 7.2% ACOS against a 32% break-even. Its only campaigns of its own are three small exact-match campaigns started 18 August, which spent £15 in Jul–Aug – most of its £2,266 of ad-attributed sales came from shoppers who clicked other VetSet ads. It has no auto, phrase or broad campaign. It can carry many times its current spend and still make money.
| Product · Jul–Aug | Sales | PPC spend | ACOS | Margin | What stands out |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SuperMint Udder Mint Cream 500ml | £3,005 | £445 | 22.2% | 0.3% | Rules strategy set to “GROWTH – High Margin” |
| Udder Cream 1kg | £1,237 | £178 | 20.6% | −3.3% | “GROWTH” strategy on 7 ad groups |
| PureFlax Flaxseed Oil 500ml | £853 | £214 | 21.9% | −4.1% | 60 of 61 units came from ads |
| PureFlax Turmeric & Black Pepper 750g | £766 | £161 | 38.2% | −12.0% | Already on a protect/recovery strategy |
| RechargeR Electrolyte Paste 30ml | £300 | £90 | 25.0% | −15.4% | Zero organic units |
| Horse Hoof Dressing 1L | £227 | £51 | 27.1% | −22.4% | Zero organic units |
Udder Mint Cream makes 0.3% after ads yet runs on a “High Margin” growth strategy. Udder Cream 1kg and PureFlax 500ml lose money and are set to grow. Small in pounds today – but these are the rules that will spend more as the account scales.
326 Sponsored Products campaigns, 234 enabled, most of them run through Scale Insights strategies, with the hero and brand-defense campaigns built by hand. Together they keep waste low, and that deserves real credit. The same setup also makes the account hard to read from the outside, lets campaigns overlap, and applies one logic to every product.
The 56 enabled campaigns with zero sales cost £75 combined over two months. The 723 active targets that have never made a sale have cost £350 in total, over their lifetime – well under 1% of spend. Every enabled campaign sits in a portfolio. The pause and negative rules are doing their job, and it shows.
“vetset brand defense” turned £725 into £7,759 at 9.3% ACOS and a £0.40 CPC, holding 7.6–11% ACOS on every placement. It averaged £11.69 a day against a £15 budget (78%) – and it runs with no automation rules at all.
| Jul–Aug | Campaigns | Spend | % Spend | % Clicks | Sales | ACOS | Conv. rate | CPC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SP Manual | 197 | £11,488 | 72.2% | 64.5% | £65,960 | 17.4% | 29.3% | £0.78 |
| SP Auto | 129 | £4,427 | 27.8% | 35.5% | £22,347 | 19.8% | 16.9% | £0.55 |
| Total | 326 | £15,916 | 100% | 100% | £88,308 | 18.0% | 24.9% | £0.70 |
In 12 of 29 portfolios the top-spending campaign is an auto – mostly smaller lines (Wound Gel 99% auto, LiquidLife Gold 92%, Sanizorb 88%, SofTec 71%, Wound Powder 69%). ChlorVet (16%) and Silver & Blue Spray (23%) are manual-led.
All 326 campaigns are Sponsored Products. There is no Sponsored Brands, no Sponsored Brands Video and no Sponsored Display. Sponsored Products captures shoppers who are already searching; the brand formats are how shoppers learn the name VetSet – and right now very few search for it. In Jul–Aug, searches containing “vetset” drew £132 of ad spend and “chlorvet” £44, while searches for a competitor's brand name drew £2,876 (section 07).
You can't tell what a campaign does without opening it. Three examples:
“Product SI” campaigns look like competitor targeting. They are not: 13 of them target the product's own listing – defense under another name. ChlorVet's alone spent £902. Together they spent £1,333 for £8,017.
“Bulk Auto 0.85” is one step of a bid ladder: Black Wound Powder has six auto campaigns stepped from £0.45 to £0.95, all doing the same job.
Brand keywords are scattered across product campaigns: “pureflax” exact sits in two different campaigns, “chlorvet scrub” in three.
In Jul–Aug, 556 search-term and product pairs were served by two or more campaigns – £6,272, or 41.5% of search-term spend. £2,004 of it ran through campaigns other than the best one for that pair. 208 pairs were served by two or more auto campaigns of the same product (£891 – the bid ladders). And £940 went through broad, phrase or auto on terms that already have their own exact keyword.
To be precise: Amazon doesn't charge twice when your campaigns overlap – it picks one of your ads per search. The cost is control. You can't see which bid won, the data is split across campaigns, and the rules make decisions on thin slices of it.
129 search terms earned two or more orders inside auto campaigns. Only 35 became manual keywords, and only 20 as exact. The other 94 were never promoted (£260 of spend, £4,134 of sales). The reason is in the rules: none of the 65 auto ad groups has an import rule. Import rules exist only on 34 Discovery ad groups.
| Scale Insights rule type | Ad groups with spend (of 224) | Share of 30-day spend covered |
|---|---|---|
| Strategy + bidding rules | 213 | 94% |
| Placement rules (top of search only) | 184 | 92% |
| Negative rules | 140 | 75% |
| Status (pause) rules | 140 | 75% |
| Import (harvest) rules | 34 | 27% |
| Daily budget rules | 0 | 0% |
| Dayparting rules | 0 | 0% |
| Strategy | Products using it | Their conversion rates | Their margins |
|---|---|---|---|
| GROWTH – Hero Exact | 18 | 9.5% to 48.9% | −6.6% to 31.7% |
| GROWTH – Discovery Auto | 12 | 10.9% to 48.9% | −3.3% to 31.7% |
| GROWTH – Discovery Phrase | 12 | 10.9% to 48.9% | −3.3% to 31.7% |
| GROWTH – Product Targeting | 10 | 10.9% to 35.6% | −20.5% to 25.3% |
A product converting at 9.5% and one converting at 48.9% get the same bid logic. So does a product losing money and one making 32%. Each ad group carries five bidding rules (hard, medium and soft trim, scale, zero orders) – 112 distinct bidding rules in total. The placement rules only move top-of-search modifiers; nothing controls product pages, which is exactly where the account loses money (section 04).
That template keeps the account safe – it is why waste is low and ACOS is stable. It can't recognise the products with room to grow, and it can't hold back the ones that shouldn't. Ideally every product runs rules tuned to its own conversion rate and margin. That is heavy work, and because the current setup is stable, it comes after the offers, listings and structure.
Where the ads showed in Jul–Aug: top of search results, the rest of search results, or on other products' pages. This is the single biggest efficiency leak in the account – and, honestly, only partly controllable.
| Placement · Jul–Aug | Spend | % Spend | Sales | % Sales | ACOS | Conv. rate | CPC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top of SearchBest | £7,550 | 47.4% | £54,962 | 62.2% | 13.7% | 33.9% | £0.72 |
| Rest of Search | £5,009 | 31.5% | £25,559 | 28.9% | 19.6% | 19.4% | £0.59 |
| Product PagesLeak | £3,356 | 21.1% | £7,786 | 8.8% | 43.1% | 12.5% | £0.87 |
| Total | £15,916 | 100% | £88,308 | 100% | 18.0% | 24.9% | £0.70 |
One pound in five goes to product pages and returns less than one pound in eleven of sales. The account's break-even ACOS is about 29%, so this placement loses money on average.
The keyword campaigns even pay more per click on product pages than at the top of search: Discovery campaigns £1.24 vs £0.78, Sales campaigns £1.11 vs £0.75 – and convert at roughly a third of the rate. The cause is structural: 203 of 206 enabled campaigns have no product-page adjustment, so product pages receive the full base bid, and base bids are set high enough to compete for top of search. The automation's placement rules only move the top-of-search modifier.
An honest limit: this account relies heavily on broad, phrase and auto targeting, and those match types serve on product pages by design – a real share of sales comes from there too. Product pages can't be switched off or fully controlled from campaign settings, and some placements will always cost more per click than others. The realistic goal is to reduce the product-page loss, not to remove the placement.
| Campaign type | Top of search ACOS | Product pages spend | Product pages ACOS | Product pages CPC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Discovery (broad / phrase / exact) | 14.5% | £1,220 | 55.0% | £1.24 |
| Hero keyword campaigns | 16.0% | £501 | 40.4% | £1.09 |
| Sales (phrase / exact) | 12.7% | £332 | 71.4% | £1.11 |
| Auto | 12.1% | £550 | 41.5% | £0.60 |
| Bulk Auto (bid ladders) | 12.8% | £410 | 49.1% | £0.64 |
| Brand defense | 7.6% | £67 | 10.9% | £0.44 |
Keyword campaigns account for £2,053 of the £3,356 – auto for about 29%. Broad keywords are part of the problem; auto is the smaller part.
| Campaign | Product-page spend | Product-page ACOS | Top-of-search ACOS |
|---|---|---|---|
| silver 250 – Sales SI | £157 | 81.9% | 13.1% |
| scrub B0FJZWCX71 – Sales SI | £108 | 77.5% | 11.8% |
| silver 250 – Discovery SI | £338 | 73.3% | 15.4% |
| scrub B0FJZWCX71 – Discovery SI | £385 | 47.4% | 11.8% |
| CVscrub hero hibiscrub dog | £245 | 43.9% | 16.7% |
How each targeting type turned spend into sales in Jul–Aug. “Cost per order” is spend divided by orders – what one ad-driven order cost.
| Match type | Spend | % Spend | Sales | % Sales | ACOS | Conv. rate | CPC | Cost / order |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exact | £5,052 | 31.7% | £28,956 | 32.8% | 17.4% | 32.0% | £0.86 | £2.68 |
| Broad | £2,822 | 17.7% | £13,248 | 15.0% | 21.3% | 27.8% | £0.91 | £3.27 |
| Phrase | £1,350 | 8.5% | £6,287 | 7.1% | 21.5% | 27.2% | £0.85 | £3.10 |
| Product (ASIN)99% own | £2,069 | 13.0% | £15,844 | 17.9% | 13.1% | 27.4% | £0.55 | £2.02 |
| Category | £195 | 1.2% | £1,605 | 1.8% | 12.1% | 25.9% | £0.59 | £2.26 |
| Auto – Loose match | £1,955 | 12.3% | £10,125 | 11.5% | 19.3% | 17.8% | £0.54 | £3.03 |
| Auto – Substitutes | £1,186 | 7.5% | £5,996 | 6.8% | 19.8% | 15.0% | £0.50 | £3.32 |
| Auto – Close match | £1,150 | 7.2% | £5,966 | 6.8% | 19.3% | 18.5% | £0.62 | £3.34 |
| Auto – Complements | £137 | 0.9% | £260 | 0.3% | 52.7% | 8.2% | £0.66 | £8.06 |
| Total | £15,916 | 100% | £88,308 | 100% | 18.0% | 24.9% | £0.70 | £2.81 |
Two negligible rows omitted from the table but included in the total: expanded product targeting (£0.74) and theme targeting (£0.29).
| By group | % Spend | % Sales | ACOS | Conv. rate | Cost / order |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exact | 31.7% | 32.8% | 17.4% | 32.0% | £2.68 |
| Broad + Phrase | 26.2% | 22.1% | 21.4% | 27.6% | £3.21 |
| Product + Category | 14.2% | 19.8% | 13.0% | 27.3% | £2.04 |
| Auto | 27.8% | 25.3% | 19.8% | 16.9% | £3.25 |
ASIN targeting looks like the most efficient type in the account. Look inside and 99% of it targets VetSet's own listings: £726 in the brand-defense campaign and £1,333 in the “Product SI” campaigns, together £2,059 for £15,796 of sales. Targeting of competitor listings came to £11 for £68 – in two months.
Defense is worth every penny – it returns almost twice its share of spend. But it protects sales you already have; it doesn't win new ones.
Broad has the highest CPC in the account (£0.91) and phrase the highest ACOS (21.5%). Auto clicks are cheap, but they convert at 16.9% against 27–32% for manual types. Auto Complements is a clear loss at 52.7% ACOS and £8.06 per order – small at £137, and an easy cut.
1,240 keywords and targets, Jul–Aug, measured on spend, sales, ACOS and conversion rate. The keyword layer itself is clean; the gaps are in where the demand comes from and where VetSet doesn't show up.
The single biggest keyword in the account is “hibiscrub dog”: £1,210 of spend, £6,425 of sales. Across 50 keywords containing “hibiscrub”, the account spent £2,900 – 18% of all ad spend – for £15,363 at 18.9% ACOS and a strong 31.7% conversion rate.
It converts, so it should stay. The risk is dependence: ChlorVet's demand is being found through another brand's name rather than its own. Own-brand keywords are tiny by comparison – VetSet £33, ChlorVet £48, PureFlax £324 of spend.
Only 18 competitor listings are targeted, and they spent £11 in two months. Auto campaigns did reach 824 competitor listings, but by accident: £960 for £3,957 at 24.2% ACOS and a 12.9% conversion rate, with no control over which listings.
Meanwhile competitors target VetSet: Purple Spray advertises directly on the Silver Spray listing. Nothing in the account targets it back.
300 keywords and targets spent money without an order in Jul–Aug – £697 combined, 4.4% of spend. That is a clean keyword layer by any standard.
What shoppers actually typed, 1 July – 31 August 2026: 8,150 search-term rows covering £15,126 of spend – 95% of campaign spend (Amazon's search-term report always leaves some clicks out).
| Search term | Product | Organic rank | Ad spend | Ad sales | ACOS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| hibiscrub for dogs | ChlorVet 500ml | #3 | £1,547 | £8,314 | 18.6% |
| silver spray for wounds | Silver Spray 250ml | #1 | £404 | £2,057 | 19.6% |
| hibiscrub dogs | ChlorVet 500ml | #3 | £67 | £297 | 22.6% |
Organic rank = Scale Insights 7-day average for tracked keywords.
When a product already ranks in the top three for a term, pushing harder for top of search mostly buys clicks the listing would have received anyway. It costs margin without improving rank. Some ad presence is still worth holding so a competitor doesn't take the slot – but this is the one place where spending less at the top of search is the growth move.
| Search term | Orders | Spend | Sales | ACOS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| surgical spirit | 79 | £120 | £828 | 14.5% |
| vetset silver spray | 32 | £38 | £488 | 7.7% |
| chlorhexidine for dogs | 27 | £62 | £382 | 16.3% |
| flax oil for dogs | 22 | £50 | £468 | 10.7% |
| aluspray for horses | 20 | £29 | £314 | 9.2% |
| flaxseed oil | 17 | £34 | £306 | 11.0% |
| vet set silver spray | 17 | £13 | £266 | 4.9% |
| silver spray horses | 16 | £17 | £283 | 5.9% |
| silver aluminium spray for animal wounds | 16 | £17 | £266 | 6.2% |
| All 99 terms (3+ orders, ≤20% ACOS) | — | £931 | £10,006 | 9.3% |
“vetset silver spray” and “vet set silver spray” brought 49 orders at 4.9–7.7% ACOS and are only caught by phrase, broad and auto campaigns. Brand coverage for ChlorVet exists (“CVscrub Brand Exact”, live since around 18 August) and PureFlax has exact brand terms – but spread across several product campaigns rather than one brand campaign.
| Search term | Campaigns | Spend | Sales | ACOS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| horse first aid kit | 21 | £82 | £212 | 38.8% |
| vetset | 14 | £24 | £247 | 9.9% |
| dog wound care | 14 | £45 | £92 | 49.3% |
| equine first aid kit for horse | 12 | £54 | £233 | 23.3% |
| horse first aid | 12 | £19 | £49 | 38.1% |
| vet wrap for horses | 11 | £55 | £260 | 21.2% |
| poultice | 11 | £17 | £17 | 104.5% |
| purple spray for horses | 10 | £45 | £353 | 12.7% |
| Search term | Spend | Sales | ACOS |
|---|---|---|---|
| hibiscrub for dogs skin | £110 | £268 | 40.9% |
| dog antiseptic spray | £90 | £162 | 55.7% |
| hibi scrub for dog | £84 | £271 | 31.1% |
| turmeric for dogs | £84 | £129 | 64.9% |
| colloidal silver spray for dogs | £61 | £75 | 81.1% |
| All 55 terms (≥30% ACOS, ≥£10 spend) | £1,661 | £3,684 | 45.1% |
3,603 search terms with no order cost £3,107 – 20.5% of search-term spend. That sounds large, so here is the honest version: only 28 of those terms cost £5 or more, and none reached £20. The negatives are tight. What's left is thousands of one- and two-click searches such as “iodine spray for horses” (£17), “kaolin poultice” (£16) and “hibiscrub for humans” (£8).
More negative keywords won't fix this. Fewer overlapping broad and auto campaigns will.
This section shows how the account runs today, so it goes slightly past the audit window: campaign budget history for 6–14 September, hourly order timing over the 10 weeks to 12 September, and current campaign settings.
| Campaign | Daily budget | Ran out of budget at (6–14 Sep) | Budget changes | ACOS, 15 Aug–13 Sep |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| scrub B0FJZWCX71 – Discovery SI | £25 | 11:33am, 2:42pm, 3:42pm, 4:06pm | £20→£16 (11 Sep), £16→£25 (12 Sep) | 24.2% |
| silver 250 – Discovery SI | £30 | 12:36am, 5:21pm, 5:49pm, 7:10pm, 8:56pm | £25→£30 (12 Sep) | 27.5% |
| silver 250 – Auto SI | £25 | 6:55pm, 8:49pm, 8:56pm, 9:15pm | £25→£15 (6 Sep), £15→£25 (12 Sep) | 22.2% |
| scrub B0FJZWCX71 – Auto SI | £25 | 7:10pm, 7:55pm, 9:30pm, 9:35pm | £22→£18 (10 Sep), £18→£25 (12 Sep) | 31.7% |
From Amazon Ads campaign history (visible entries). In August, “scrub B0FJZWCX71 – Product SI” also climbed from about £6 a day to £20–28 a day against its £25 budget.
All four hero campaigns ran out of budget on most days, mostly between 3pm and 9pm – the hours that bring in 38.7% of VetSet's orders. ChlorVet Discovery ran dry as early as 11:33am. Budgets reset around 1am, so part of each day's budget is spent overnight, when very few people buy.
Budgets are changed by hand – no Scale Insights budget rule is assigned – and they swing: cut on 6, 10 and 11 September, then all four raised at the same minute, 11:21pm on 12 September.
An honest caveat: over 15 August – 13 September these four ran at 22–32% ACOS, above the account's 18%, and ChlorVet Auto is close to break-even. So the fix isn't simply more budget. Close the product-page leak first, then fund them through the evening.
All orders (organic and ads), UK time, averaged over the 10 weeks to 12 September 2026 (Scale Insights). Peak hour: 6pm, 7.2% of daily orders.
No dayparting rule is assigned in Scale Insights, and the hourly bid fields are empty on all 1,240 keywords and targets. Every campaign runs 24 hours a day, including the six hours (12am–6am) that bring in just 3.6% of orders.
This chart shows when people buy, not ad conversion by hour, so we won't put a pound figure on the saving until two weeks of data are in.
This setting lets Sponsored Products ads serve on third-party sites and apps outside Amazon's own properties. Amazon is actively expanding off-Amazon placements: on 10 September 2026 it announced a ChatGPT advertising pilot (US, select advertisers). Product ad budget is best spent on shoppers who are already on Amazon; awareness beyond Amazon should be a deliberate choice, made through Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display.
We can't put a number on it today — the Jul–Aug placement report shows no off-Amazon spend line. That makes it a risk to lock down before spend grows, not a current leak.
Source: Amazon Ads – ChatGPT advertising integration (10 Sep 2026)
Today some products have a dozen campaigns and others have one. We recommend every advertised product carries the same readable set: a basic layer that covers every way shoppers find a product, and an easy-win layer that picks up cheap traffic.
| Campaign | Job | Products that have it today (of 42) |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | ||
| Auto | Finds new search terms and listings | 35 |
| Keyword – Exact | Proven terms, full control | 34 |
| Keyword – Phrase | Controlled discovery | 22 |
| Keyword – Broad | Wide discovery at lower bids | 21 |
| Category | Placements across the category shelf | 9 |
| ASIN target (competitors) | Ads on competitor listings | 4 |
| Sponsored Brands Video | Awareness and new-to-brand customers | 0 |
| Easy win | ||
| Auto – Low bid | Cheap long-tail traffic | 0 |
| Auto – Top of search | Auto traffic pushed to the top slot | 0 |
| Auto – Catch all | Every product at a floor bid | 0 (1 account-wide) |
| Single match-type autos | Close, loose, substitutes, complements bid separately | 15 of 75 autos |
One account-wide low-bid auto campaign (“capture all”, fixed bid) turned £13 into £838 at 1.6% ACOS and a £0.06 CPC in Jul–Aug. The blueprint gives every product its own version.
| Product | Auto | Exact | Phrase | Broad | Category | Competitor ASIN | Video |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChlorVet Scrub 500ml | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – | – | – |
| Silver Spray 250ml | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – | ✓ | – |
| Liquid Paraffin 500ml | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – | – | – | – |
| Blue Spray 250ml | – | ✓ | – | – | – | – | – |
| Wound Powder 125g (White) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – | – | – |
| PureFlax Flaxseed Oil 1L | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – | – | – |
| SuperMint Udder Mint Cream | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – | – | – |
| Wound Gel | ✓ | ✓ | – | – | ✓ | – | – |
| PolDress Hoof Dressing 5 Pack | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – |
| Silver Spray 2-pack | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| ChlorVet 2-pack | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
Live, enabled campaigns in the Jul–Aug keyword and targeting report. Only 5 of 42 advertised products have all five of auto, exact, phrase, broad and category.
PPC can only send shoppers to the page. What they see, what they're offered and how much they buy is decided here. This is where the next step-change sits.
The product images are AI-generated from supplier photos. They're clean, but the infographics are weak and, for a range sold to dog, horse and livestock owners, very few images show the animals the product is for, or real-life use. ChlorVet's image stack is mostly the bottle and human hands. The listings convert well today – which means there is room above, not a fire to put out.
A research-led image process rebuilds the stack from evidence, not taste:
VetSet covers dog care, equine care and livestock care under one brand “…care with confidence”, and ChlorVet and PureFlax sit alongside it. Very little of that story reaches the product page. The Brand Story module – why the brand was started, who it's for, what it stands for – appears on every listing at once, so one piece of work lifts the whole catalogue. Premium A+ adds larger, interactive modules on top of the standard A+ already in place.
The title reads “…Antiseptic Scrub & Wash for Dogs 500ml”, while the subtitle and bullets cover dogs, cats, horses and livestock. Horse and livestock owners scanning search results may skip a product labelled for dogs.
VetSet grows by launching a new product every 8–12 weeks. Two things outside the ad account decide how much each launch is worth: whether the stock is there when demand arrives, and whether every launch goes out the same, proven way.
You've told us supplier delays from China left products short over this period. Those sales are gone, and advertising can't bring them back. Advertising can also make it worse: in August, ad spend kept rising while sales flattened – the pattern you see when ads keep pushing products that are running low. The fix sits in the supply chain, with the ads following it.
| Stage | Goal | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Product research | Pick products that can win | Check search demand and the leading competitors; read their reviews for what buyers value and what frustrates them. Choose products where VetSet's range, rating and price can compete. |
| 2 · Supply & stock | Never launch into a stock-out | Order enough to cover launch demand plus the supplier lead time, and line up a backup supplier before go-live. |
| 3 · Listing & images | A page that converts from day one | Keywords from competitor research into the title and bullets; the full image stack built through the research-led image process (section 10); A+ content and a place in the range comparison chart. The Brand Story appears automatically. |
| 4 · Launch offer | A reason to try a new product | A launch coupon; Subscribe & Save for repeat-use products; a multi-pack variation where it makes sense. |
| 5 · Day-one campaigns | The blueprint, from the start | Auto, exact, phrase, broad, category and competitor ASIN campaigns (section 09), named by the convention, dayparted, reach limited to Amazon. Brand-defense ads on sister listings to introduce the new product to existing buyers. |
| 6 · First 30 days | Learn fast, keep what works | Weekly harvest into exact with organic rank tracked on the main keywords; budgets live all day on what converts; Sponsored Brands Video once the product has reviews and a proven hero keyword. |
Each new VetSet product adds to the storefront, the comparison chart, the brand-defense layer and the Brand Story audience. Run through one playbook, launches stop being one-off efforts and start compounding – which is exactly how the account grew 4.3× in ten months.
This account doesn't need rescuing. It needs the layer that turns a well-run account into a growing brand. This audit is written so every finding can be actioned directly from these pages – no promised numbers, just what to change and when to check whether it worked.
Ten steps, in order. Each names what changes and when to check it. The review column is a measurement window, not a promised result.
Everything in this audit is transparent, so you can action every step yourself. You've built VetSet into a growing brand while launching a new product every 8–12 weeks, alongside a day job – and launching is where your time is worth the most. If you'd rather keep your focus there, we can help.
VetSet has what most brands spend years building: four-fold growth with TACOS held around 8–12%, Amazon's Choice badges, a storefront organised by animal, and waste control that genuinely works. What it's missing is the layer that turns a well-run account into a growing brand – offers that lift order value, pages that show the animals, brand formats that build the name, and a structure a person can read. That is the work, and it starts with settings that can change this week.
Questions on the audit – Rohail@ppcnest.co