What’s your TACoS benchmark this quarter — and has tariff pressure changed what acceptable looks like for you?

With tariffs hitting landed costs and the 3.5% FBA surcharge now live, I’m curious how people are thinking about their TACoS targets right now.

Most sellers I talk to are still managing purely to ACoS. But TACoS (total ad spend / all revenue, not just ad-attributed) is almost always the more honest number.

Quick primer:

ACoS = ad spend / ad-attributed revenue. Can look great while your overall business is losing money.

TACoS = ad spend / total revenue including organic. Goes DOWN as organic ranking strengthens. Goes UP if ads are substituting for organic.

Benchmarks:

– Under 10%: strong organic mix, very efficient

– 10-15%: healthy for most categories

– 15-25%: elevated but sometimes justified

– Above 25%: investigate; usually means ads aren’t building lasting rank

What’s changing this quarter: for categories where COGS went up 20-30% from tariffs, the acceptable TACoS drops proportionally. A 15% TACoS that used to be fine on 30% margins is now marginal at 20% margins.

The sellers coming out of this in good shape are tracking TACoS weekly, adjusting PPC to hold rank on their top ASINs while cutting exploration campaigns that were nice-to-have before the margin squeeze.

What are you seeing? Has anyone shifted their TACoS benchmark down because of tariff pressure?