A three-stage framework for an Amazon product's advertising trajectory: Launch, Expansion, and Harvest. Each stage carries its own expected PPC-share-of-sales, TACOS/ACOS benchmarks, and ad-budget-allocation mix — a product in Launch is expected to run a much higher ad-spend ratio than one in Harvest, where organic sales should carry most of the volume.
Diagnosing which stage a product is actually in — rather than applying one universal ACOS target across an entire catalog — is the framework's main practical use: it sets realistic expectations for spend and profitability and informs how aggressively to scale budget (see Revenue-Per-Click (RPC) Bid Formula for the launch vs. steady-state budgeting math).
During a 90-day product launch, weekly TACOS fell from 21% early on to 6.5% in the most recent week while weekly revenue held around $12,000 — read as the product transitioning from an expensive launch phase into a lean, self-sustaining 'cash cow': 'we continue to feed it, take more market share, and continue to pull cash out of it just like a real estate asset.' A falling TACOS trend during launch proxies organic sales share increasing relative to ad-driven sales, signaling the shift from Launch into Expansion/Harvest. See TACOS vs. ACOS.