Published November 2, 2026
The pitch deck reaches its results slide. A line climbs steeply to the right, a large percentage sits beside a logo you don't recognize, and the axis has no dates on it.
You're about to trust that slide with your brand, your first stock order and months of ad budget. If you can't tell what the number measures or when it happened, you can't tell whether the same team would do it for you.
Results worth your trust come with a period, a starting point and a published client story you can read. They show cost next to growth, and they're measured in what you care about as an owner, which is the margin each product keeps, not ACoS alone.
An Amazon partner should show you dated results from brands in a situation like yours, each with a starting point, a period and the cost of getting there. A launch from zero, a restart after a failed launch and the scaling of a brand that already sells are different jobs, so ask for proof of the one you need.
Check the following details in every result you're shown.
Our Amazon launch services page shows each result with its period for this reason. Proof is one part of a longer selection process, and how to choose an Amazon growth partner sets out the rest. For now, ask every candidate for two results that match your situation, with dates.
You read an Amazon case study by looking for the situation at the start, what the team changed, the period and the figures on both sides of the ledger. If one is missing, treat the result as a claim rather than proof.
Start with the situation, and ask yourself whether it looks like yours. A brand that was already selling well and grew 50% is a different story from a launch that was losing money and reached break-even on ads. Both can be good work, but only one may look like your business.
Then check what changed. A good one should say whether the team rebuilt the listings, restructured the ads, changed the product or packaging, or only spent more. Growth bought with more spend is the easiest result to produce and the least useful to you.
Finally, read the figures in pairs, the way your finance lead would. Revenue next to ad cost, conversion before and after, ROAS at the start and the end. When you see a single number standing alone, it's usually the most flattering one the partner had. Before you accept any client story, write down which of these it shows and which it leaves out.
You compare Amazon partner proposals on profit by asking each one to project the contribution margin of every product, meaning what's left after the factory cost, freight, duty, Amazon's fees and ads. ACoS can sit in the plan, but it can't be the target.
ACoS, advertising cost of sales, is the share of ad-driven sales that went back into the ads. Amazon Ads says you only make money while ACoS stays below your profit margin, and it warns against making ACoS the only number you watch. A low ACoS can hide an ad budget too small to grow, and a high one in launch months can be the price of building rank.
Here's why ACoS alone misleads. Take a $25 product that keeps about $8 a unit before ads. If half its sales come from ads at an ACoS of 20%, your ad cost works out to about $2.50 a unit across all sales and you keep around $5.50. If ads drive nearly every sale at the same 20%, the ad cost is about $5 a unit and you keep around $3. The same ACoS leaves you with very different profit in the two cases.
That's why total ad cost as a share of all sales, often called TACoS, belongs next to ACoS in any proposal. Margin per product belongs at the top of your comparison. For the unit math with every Amazon fee, read when a new Amazon US brand breaks even. Ask each partner to fill in the same margin table for one of your products, then compare the bottom lines rather than the ad targets.
After you sign, results should reach you every week as sales, ad spend and margin for each product, compared with the plan and with the leading sellers in each niche. A monthly slide of total revenue isn't enough to run a launch on.
Weekly matters because Amazon moves fast. A competitor cuts its price, a product runs low on stock or a keyword gets expensive, and a month of waiting costs you rank and cash.
The comparison with the market matters too. Your conversion rate, rating and price only mean something next to the page-one sellers you're trying to beat. A partner measuring you against its own past results can always find a reason to call the month good.
The questions to put to a candidate about reporting are part of a longer list in what to ask an Amazon growth partner before signing. Ask each candidate to send you a sample weekly report with the client details removed, and judge it before you judge the pitch.
CB/I Digital's Amazon results include launches, restarts and the scaling of brands that already sold, and we quote each one with its period. Our public Amazon case studies are Flip-It Cap, Foodmap, Uncle Todd's and Vinamit, a dried fruit manufacturer with its own factory.
Two of them show you how to read a result. At Flip-It Cap, revenue rose 74% in the first three months while ad cost rose only 5.8%. The cost sits next to the growth, so you can see the growth wasn't bought with spend.
Foodmap is a restart. We took over in month five of a first launch that had failed, and in the second month after that, revenue doubled while conversion rose from 7.43% to 11.68%. Read that honestly and it shows a launch turning in the right direction on sales and conversion, not a profit figure.
We don't quote a $1 million result for any client, because that's a question your own P&L has to test. Run our figures through the four checks above too, and ask us for the starting point behind any of them before you take our word for it.
We report every product against its P&L and against the top sellers on page one of its niche, so you can judge our work on the margin each product earns.
Share the products you're weighing and the prices you have in mind. The Amazon US Launch Audit gives you a P&L for each product to use when assessing any proposal, including ours.
Get Your Amazon US Launch AuditYes, and ask for one whose situation matches yours, such as a manufacturer launching its own brand. A reference call is the best way to hear how the team behaves when a month goes badly, which no case study shows.
Some clients don't allow their names to be used, which is fair. A partner can still show figures as percentages with periods and the brand's category, and walk you through what it changed. If it can show nothing at all, weigh the audit it does for you more heavily.
A high ROAS alone tells you little. ROAS is sales from ads divided by ad spend, and it can look strong when a brand barely advertises or only bids on its own brand name. Check it against total sales and margin, and against how many new customers the ads reached.
Rank, conversion and ad efficiency can move within about three months of going live. Profit takes longer, because launch costs have to be paid back first. Agree on what each milestone looks like before work starts so you can judge the partner against a plan you both signed.
Mike Le
Co-Founder, CB/I Digital and Conative AI
Mike Le co-founded CB/I Digital in New York in 2007 and has helped brands grow through search, paid media and data ever since. He started the agency's AI team in 2019 and later started Conative AI. He writes about how customers find and choose brands now that AI answers sit between them and the search results.
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