Introduction: Amazon as a Coordinated System
For many mid–big brands, Amazon has evolved beyond a channel that can be managed through incremental optimisations. It is now a core commercial ecosystem where retail execution, media investment, brand presence and operational constraints interact continuously.
In most organisations, these responsibilities are distributed across multiple teams. A retail or e-commerce function may own forecasting, availability and revenue commitments. A media or performance team—often supported by an external partner—manages Sponsored Ads and budget allocation. Content and brand teams oversee product detail pages and messaging, while pricing, promotions and profitability typically sit with trade or revenue management.
This structure is common and often sensible, especially as organisations scale. The challenge is that Amazon behaves as a connected system. Decisions taken in one area frequently influence outcomes in another. When teams optimise within their own scope without a shared operating lens, performance can become harder to interpret, more volatile, and less efficient to scale over time.
This article explores why these coordination gaps tend to emerge on Amazon, how incentives and information flows shape decision-making, and what a more holistic operating model can look like for mid–big brands aiming to improve performance quality and long-term sustainability.
Amazon Is Not a Channel, It Is a System
Amazon does not behave like traditional retail, nor like classic digital media. It operates as a system in which multiple levers influence each other continuously. Availability determines whether advertising budgets can actually deliver. Pricing decisions affect conversion rates, cost per click and efficiency. Content quality shapes both click-through rate and downstream performance. Paid visibility feeds back into organic ranking, influencing future demand and competitive dynamics.
Because of this interdependence, optimising any single element in isolation often produces unintended effects elsewhere. Media activity can generate demand that retail operations struggle to support. Retail decisions can limit the effectiveness of media. Brand investments in content may fail to translate into performance if they are disconnected from search behaviour and traffic quality.
At smaller scale, these effects may remain manageable. As investment and portfolio complexity increase, they tend to compound and become more structural.
The Organisational Reality Behind Amazon Management
Most organisations were not originally designed around Amazon. Responsibilities were added gradually, often mapped onto existing structures created for wholesale, brand marketing or digital performance. As a result, Amazon typically sits between functions rather than clearly belonging to one.
This creates a situation in which different teams legitimately view Amazon through different lenses. Retail teams focus on revenue delivery, stock health and operational stability. Media teams see an advertising environment governed by performance metrics. Brand teams approach Amazon as a digital shelf that must reflect brand identity and consistency.
Each perspective is valid. The challenge arises when these views are not connected through a shared operating framework. In that case, optimisations can coexist without converging into a coherent strategy.
How Coordination Gaps Take Shape in Practice
Retail or e-commerce teams usually carry commercial accountability. Their focus is on forecasting accuracy, availability, buy box control and revenue commitments. Performance is evaluated through operational stability and sell-in results. What is often less visible is how demand is generated and shaped upstream. Media budgets, keyword strategies and traffic dynamics may remain abstract rather than integrated inputs into retail planning.
Media teams, whether internal or agency-led, operate within a different logic. Their work is structured around Sponsored Ads, bidding strategies, pacing and efficiency. Metrics such as ROAS and ACoS dominate discussions because they are readily available and consistently reported. At the same time, media specialists often have limited visibility into margin structure, profit contribution or portfolio-level priorities. Optimisation therefore focuses on efficiency signals rather than on broader business value.
Brand and content teams play a critical role in shaping product detail pages, imagery and messaging. Their work underpins both organic and paid performance. However, feedback loops are frequently weak. Content decisions are not always informed by live search behaviour, traffic quality or media outcomes, which can limit their impact on overall performance.
Pricing and trade teams add a further layer. They manage promotions, discounts and margin protection with strong financial logic, but often with limited coordination with media and retail execution. Without alignment, price changes may stabilise margins while introducing volatility into demand generation and advertising efficiency.
Individually, these functions operate effectively. The opportunity lies in improving how they connect.
The Role of Agencies in a Multi-Team Environment
Agencies play an important role in Amazon execution for many mid–big brands, particularly where internal teams seek additional capacity, specialised expertise or multi-market coverage. In most setups, agencies are engaged to deliver media outcomes, which naturally places advertising KPIs such as pacing, efficiency and account health at the centre of their activity.
This dynamic is not a limitation in itself. It reflects how scope and success criteria are defined. Agencies optimise what they are contracted and measured on, using the information that is shared with them. Coordination challenges tend to emerge when key retail signals—such as margin priorities, availability risk or portfolio strategy—sit outside the shared context that guides advertising decisions.
Some boutique or hybrid partners operate with broader exposure to retail and commercial planning, which can reduce this gap. More broadly, alignment often improves when brands provide clearer strategic direction, translate profitability objectives into usable prioritisation frameworks, and adopt reporting structures that connect media outcomes to retail reality.
Information Asymmetry and Decision Quality
One of the recurring challenges in siloed models is information asymmetry. In many organisations, media teams and external partners do not have access to margin data or profit and loss statements. Portfolio profitability is managed elsewhere, often with limited translation into day-to-day media decisions.
In this context, optimisation relies on proxy metrics such as ROAS, ACoS and conversion rate. These indicators are valuable, but they describe efficiency rather than contribution. A low-margin product may appear highly efficient, while a higher-margin or strategically important product may look less attractive from a purely media perspective.
Decisions taken under these conditions are not incorrect; they are incomplete. Improving decision quality often requires modest increases in shared context rather than full financial transparency.
Interaction Between Retail and Media Decisions
Without a shared operating model, retail and media decisions can occasionally work at cross-purposes. Media teams may increase pressure on products with fragile availability, while retail teams manage replenishment risk. Retail teams may prioritise launches or strategic categories without sufficient media support to build visibility.
These situations are rarely the result of poor collaboration. They reflect a system that does not consistently align priorities upstream. When alignment improves, these tensions tend to diminish.
Why Scale Increases the Importance of Coordination
As Amazon investment grows, the cost of misalignment increases. Media inefficiency translates into larger absolute budget impact. Stock issues propagate faster. Competitive visibility gaps become more consequential. Internal discussions focus more heavily on attribution rather than on contribution.
At scale, Amazon tends to reward brands that behave as integrated systems. Coordination does not eliminate trade-offs, but it improves how those trade-offs are managed.
What a Holistic Operating Model Looks Like in Practice
A holistic Amazon operating model does not require centralisation or heavy governance. It is primarily about shared context. Teams align on priorities, constraints and acceptable trade-offs, while retaining clear ownership within their respective functions.
In practice, this often involves agreeing on which categories and products matter most, distinguishing between short-term efficiency objectives and longer-term strategic investments, and planning media activity in line with retail realities. When these elements are explicit, decision-making becomes more consistent across the system.
Objectives as a Common Reference Point
One effective way to improve alignment is to organise planning around objectives rather than around functional KPIs. Product launches, category expansion, brand protection and stock management each require different balances between retail readiness, media investment and efficiency expectations.
When objectives are clearly articulated, collaboration becomes a natural requirement. Success is no longer owned by a single team, but by the system as a whole.
Reporting as an Alignment Tool
Reporting plays a central role in shaping behaviour. When each function reports in isolation, performance is interpreted through narrow lenses. When reporting follows a shared narrative, alignment improves.
A holistic Amazon report typically starts with objectives and retail health, then connects media delivery and efficiency to conversion, profitability and category impact. In this context, ROAS and ACoS remain important, but they are read as part of a broader picture rather than as standalone verdicts.
Conclusion: Integrated Thinking as a Performance Enabler
Amazon does not respond to organisational charts. It responds to signals related to availability, pricing, relevance, visibility and shopper behaviour. Brands that approach Amazon through isolated optimisations may achieve local efficiency, but often struggle to scale performance quality over time.
A holistic operating model helps teams work with shared context while preserving functional expertise. Even a light alignment layer—clear priorities, basic profitability signals and a common reporting structure—can improve decision quality and reduce friction.
For mid–big brands, the opportunity is not to redesign organisations around Amazon, but to ensure that Amazon is managed as the integrated system that it is.
Extended FAQ: Amazon Holistic Operating Model
A holistic operating model means managing retail, media, brand and profitability as interconnected elements of the same system. Decisions are taken with shared context, ensuring that Sponsored Ads, availability, pricing and content support each other rather than compete internally.
Because most organisations were not designed around Amazon. Responsibilities were added over time and mapped onto existing retail, media and brand structures, each with its own KPIs and incentives.
Agencies are usually contracted and evaluated on delivery, pacing and efficiency metrics such as ROAS and ACoS. This structurally encourages a media-centric view, even when broader retail context exists.
Without margin or P&L visibility, media teams optimise based on proxy metrics. This can lead to over-investment in low-margin products and under-investment in high-margin or strategic SKUs.
In most cases, it is a coordination problem. Performance issues often arise from misalignment between retail priorities and media execution rather than from failures in one single area.
No. It requires shared objectives, transparency on constraints and aligned reporting. Execution can remain distributed as long as decisions are informed by the same strategic framework.
Reporting should follow a system-based narrative, starting from objectives and retail health and connecting media performance to conversion, profitability and category impact.
Retail Media & Commerce Growth Leader with 8+ years across Amazon and leading marketplaces. I design full-funnel strategy, governance, and measurement—building operating models and developing teams to scale performance across markets. I share practical frameworks and tools for sustainable growth.
