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Which Amazon products lose money after ads

To find which Amazon products lose money after ads, the assistant needs live access to your sales, fees, product costs and ad spend, and Nova's MCP connector gives Claude, ChatGPT and other assistants that access to Seller Central and Amazon Ads. Through Nova, the assistant checks your costs are complete, lists the products with negative profit, says whether each loss comes from price, fees, product cost or ads, and gives one action per product.

Updated

Connect your AI Copy the playbook

The playbook

Every step calls a Nova tool that reads your live Amazon data, so paste this into Claude, ChatGPT or any assistant connected to Nova's MCP server. Change the period if you need to.

This needs an assistant connected to Nova. Start the 14-day free trial, then connect your assistant.

Use Nova to find which of my Amazon products lose money after ads, and why.

Period: the last 90 complete days. If I name other dates, use those.

1. Check the costs first. Call Nova's get_setup with domain "cogs". If soldSkusMissingCogs is above 0 in a region, say so: products without a cost show a profit that is too high, and a product can look profitable when it is not.

2. List the losers. Call Nova's query_metrics with groupBy "childAsin", the metrics netSales, units, netProfit, netProfitMargin, adSpend and sponsoredTacos, metricFilters netProfit below 0, sorted by netProfit ascending, limit 20, and costCategories ["variable", "product", "account"] so one-off costs and reimbursements do not hide the recurring loss. If cogsNotice appears, say what share of units has no cost.

3. Separate ads from the product. For each product, profit before ads = netProfit + adSpend. A product that loses money before ads has a price, cost or fee problem. One that turns negative only after ads has an advertising problem.

4. Read the fees. For the five biggest losses, call Nova's query_metrics with groupBy "childAsin", the same costCategories, and the metrics cogs, totalAmazonFees, commissionFee, fbaFulfillmentFee, fbaStorageFee and fbaLongTermStorageFee. Divide by units and say which cost weighs most per unit.

5. Read the ads. Call Nova's query_advertising with groupBy "childAsin" for those products, with spend, sales, acos, breakEvenAcos and profitAfterAds. Say where ACOS sits above break-even ACOS.

6. Check the trend. Call Nova's query_metrics with groupBy "month" over the last 6 months for the five biggest losses, with netProfit. Say whether the loss is new or has lasted.

7. Report, one row per product: net sales, net profit, margin, whether the loss comes before or after ads, the cost that weighs most, and one action: raise the price, cut the bid, renegotiate the cost, or stop selling. Then the total loss.

Rules: these are correlations. Never call a product unprofitable when its cost is missing: say the cost is missing. Relay every notice Nova returns (P&L rules, cost categories, marketplaces added up, COGS gaps, currency, ad history). You cannot change prices or bids. Edit a Seller Central listing only when I ask and an Admin or Workspace owner confirms the preview.

Raw markdown

How Nova customers use this

Real requests from Nova customers, names removed.

  • “Where does our ad spend make or lose money, product by product?”

    What the assistant did

    It read profit after ads per product over four weeks, then pulled search terms with spend and no sales as negatives and profitable auto terms to move to exact match.

    Nova tools used (2)
    1. query_search_terms
    2. query_advertising

  • “Why did margin fall in one marketplace over the last two months, and which product families lose money once ads are counted?”

    What the assistant did

    It read the monthly P&L, then product and parent level P&L so ad spend across sizes and colours counted, then checked stock-outs and the keywords that convert.

    Nova tools used (5)
    1. list_metrics
    2. query_metrics
    3. query_inventory
    4. query_advertising
    5. query_sqp

  • “The brand is losing money. Net profit per marketplace and per ASIN for the last 7 days, and what beyond ads drives it.”

    What the assistant did

    It found the day ad cost started climbing, checked logged changes and the campaigns behind the extra spend, then read net profit per marketplace and ASIN and split the one-off cost lines such as coupons, deals and Vine fees.

    Nova tools used (4)
    1. query_metrics
    2. list_events
    3. query_advertising
    4. list_metrics

How to read the result

Loss before ads

What it usually means

Price, product cost or fees are too high for the price

What to do

Raise the price or renegotiate the cost

Profit before ads, loss after

What it usually means

Ads cost more than the margin

What to do

Lower bids where ACOS is above break-even

Storage fees weigh most

What it usually means

Too much stock for the sales

What to do

Slow the next order, consider a removal

Loss only in the last month

What it usually means

A recent change

What to do

Check price, fee or ad changes with list_events

Product without a cost

What it usually means

The profit shown is wrong

What to do

Add the cost before deciding

Limits

  • Profit is only as right as the costs you entered. Units with no cost read a cost of 0.
  • One-off costs and reimbursements are left out in step 2 on purpose, so a product's recurring economics show.
  • Break-even ACOS covers Sponsored Products and Sponsored Display, not Sponsored Brands.
  • Ad history starts about 60 days before you connected Amazon Ads.
  • Nova reads your data. It does not change prices or bids; it edits a Seller Central listing only when you ask and an Admin or Workspace owner confirms the preview.