Untangling two house brands that had been bidding against each other for two years

The company had bought a second brand two years earlier and merged it into the existing Seller Central account because it was easier. Both sold storage and organization products, both targeted the same twenty keywords, and both ran out of a single advertising budget managed by one person optimizing for account-level ACoS.

That single number hid the damage. The budget always flowed to whichever brand converted cheaper — the value line — so the premium brand slowly lost impression share on the terms that justified its price. Worse, the two brands frequently appeared on the same search page, where the shopper simply picked the cheaper one. The company was paying to move its own customers down to a lower margin.

The fix was strategic separation, not a bigger budget.

• Two positions, written down — the value brand plays on price-per-unit and multipacks; the premium brand plays on materials, warranty and design. Every listing decision now tests against one of those.
• Budget split and ring-fenced — each brand got its own budget, its own targets and its own reporting; neither can borrow from the other mid-month.
• Keyword separation where it mattered — the head terms both need stayed shared, but modifier sets were divided so the brands stop meeting on the same query.
• Margin, not ACoS, as the account metric — targets set per brand against contribution margin, which is what made the premium brand's higher ACoS acceptable.

Combined revenue grew from $264k to $348k a month — +32% on flat advertising spend — and the mix changed: the premium brand went from 29% to 51% of revenue.

That mix shift is where the money is. Blended gross margin rose eight points, so the same top line is worth considerably more than it was. No product changed; the account simply stopped funding the cheaper brand's growth with the expensive brand's demand.