Amazon Competitor Analysis: A Practical 2025 Playbook for Beating Your Category

You are not just fighting “other brands” on Amazon.

You are fighting whoever shows up next to you when a shopper types your main keyword. You are fighting the brand that quietly refreshed their hero images, tightened their bullets, turned on a new Sponsored Brand ad, or dropped a coupon while you were stuck in back-to-back meetings.

Most brands only notice any of this when sessions fall off a cliff and yesterday’s hero ASIN suddenly looks broken.

Here is the good news: your competitors are running experiments in public all day, every day. Amazon competitor analysis is just the habit of watching those experiments with intent, then using what you see to make smarter moves on your own listings, ads and offers.

In this post, we will walk through:

• What Amazon competitor analysis actually is

• The small set of signals that matter most

• A weekly ritual you can realistically maintain

• How to turn intel into real changes in SEO, creative, PPC and product

• Where a partner like Darkroom fits if you want this to run in the background, every week, without you babysitting it

So what is Amazon competitor analysis, really?

Strip away the “spy on your rivals” language and you are left with something pretty simple.

Amazon competitor analysis is:

A regular habit of looking at the brands fighting for the same clicks as you, noticing what is working for them, and using that information to improve your own SEO, creative, pricing and ads.

It is not:

• Copying the category leader pixel for pixel

• Sitting there refreshing BSR like a stock ticker

• Collecting dashboards you never log into

If you are doing it well, competitor analysis should answer three questions for you every single week:

1. Who is Amazon clearly favoring right now in your space?

2. What are they doing differently across keywords, pricing, reviews, creative and ads?

3. Where are the gaps - keywords, claims, offers - that let you grow without just out-spending them?

If your current “analysis” does not lead to any decisions, it is not analysis. It is just browsing.

Six signals that actually tell you what competitors are doing

There is endless Amazon data you could look at. Most of it will not change what you do tomorrow.

These six things will.

1. Where they win in search

Think of a competitor’s keyword footprint as the map of:

• Which search terms they show up for

• How high they rank

• Whether they show up organically, as Sponsored, or both

If someone is on page one for every high intent term you care about, you are in a real contest. If they only show up on a few random long tails, they are background noise.

Reverse ASIN tools make it pretty easy to see this. Plug in their best ASIN and you will get a list of keywords they rank for, along with positions. Compare that to your own footprint and a story emerges.

Questions worth asking:

• Which money terms are they winning that you are barely present on?

• Are they leaning into different angles, like “for beginners,” “for kids,” “for travel,” that you have ignored?

• Are you overspending on broad, expensive queries they seem happy to ignore?

If you want to go deeper here, Darkroom’s guide to advanced Amazon keyword research walks through how we combine keyword data, category trends and real search behavior into a usable map, not just a list of words.

2. How they price and run offers

Price is not just a number. It is a strategy.

When you scan competitor pricing, look beyond the main number:

• Is there a coupon, and is it always on or only for big moments?

• Do you see Lightning Deals or regular discount patterns?

• Are they only selling single units, or have they leaned into bundles and multipacks at specific price tiers?

If someone is running a coupon 24/7, it often means:

• They are trying to buy market share

• They are quietly responding to a review or ranking problem

• They are covering for a recent price increase

If another brand almost never discounts and still grows, that tells you there is room for stronger pricing if you are differentiated enough.

You do not have to copy any of this, but you should understand what game your closest rivals are playing.

3. How reviews are growing and what they say

Everyone looks at star ratings. Fewer people look at review velocity and the words inside those reviews.

With each serious competitor, check:

• How many new reviews they are adding each week

• Whether their average rating is steady, climbing or sliding

• What their last 50 to 100 reviews actually say

If a rival is sitting at 4.3 stars but adding reviews at 5 times your pace, that tells you they are capturing demand, even if the experience is a bit messy. If someone is at 4.8 stars but reviews have flatlined, they might be at the ceiling of their current positioning.

The content of those reviews is gold:

• Repeated complaints are a product roadmap

• Repeated praise is copy you should be using

• Persistent confusion is a sign that either they or you need to explain things better on the page

Those inputs should flow straight into your listing updates and even your next version of the product.

4. How their creative tells the story

If you open the best performing ASINs in your space, you will notice something pretty quickly.

The winners rarely have the prettiest photos. They have the clearest story.

When you pull up a competitor’s product page, ask yourself:

• Would I know who this is for and why it is better just from the first three images?

• Do the infographics answer real questions, or are they just restating features?

• Does the A plus content flow, or does it feel like a collage?

Look at:

• The main image - does it pop in search, or disappear into a sea of lookalikes?

• The first two or three graphics - are they about benefits and outcomes, or just dimensions and icons?

• Lifestyle shots - do they show real use, or awkward stock scenes?

These are the same levers we pull in our Amazon SEO best practices and Amazon conversion rate optimization playbook. Your creative is your pitch. Competitor pages are free examples of pitches that are working right now.

5. How much they are paying to show up

You do not need access to anyone’s ad account to know whether they are spending.

Search your main terms and notice:

• Who keeps showing up at the top of Sponsored results

• Who is running Sponsored Brands, especially with video and Store ads

• Who is conquesting you on your own product pages with Sponsored placements

Then click into their ASINs and scroll. Do you see their brand aggressively conquesting others? Are they everywhere, or only in a few select spots?

Combine that with the search term and ranking data you already have, and you get a good sense of:

• Which keywords they consider worth fighting for

• Where they might be overspending

• Where they are leaving the door open for you

This is the kind of pattern Darkroom bakes into our Amazon PPC strategy and Prime Day playbooks, because the point is not to “spend more.” The point is to spend smarter than the brands next to you.

6. How stable their operations look

This one is not glamorous, but it quietly wins you money.

Watch for:

• ASINs that keep going out of stock

• Fulfilled by Merchant fallback on items that used to be FBA

• Long shipping times

• Sudden big price spikes that do not match any obvious promotion

Those are hints that:

• They have inventory or cash flow challenges

• They misjudged demand

• Their internal ops are struggling to keep up

You do not need them to fail. You just need to be ready to capture the demand when they wobble.

A 5 step weekly competitor ritual you might actually stick with

You do not need a 60 page “competitive landscape analysis” every quarter.

What you need is a short, consistent ritual that keeps you from waking up surprised.

Here is a simple version that fits in 30 to 60 minutes.

1. Pick your real competitors

Not the ones you are annoyed by. The ones you actually collide with.

Start by:

• Listing the 3 to 7 brands that consistently rank for your top keywords

• Cross-checking who shows up in Brand Analytics for those search terms

• Noting which ASINs you see over and over in your search term reports

Everyone else is noise.

2. Take a quick “creative snapshot”

Once a week:

• Search your two or three highest value keywords

• Open your key rivals’ listings

• Screenshot or record their main image area and full image strip

• Jot down anything that looks new or different

You are building a running mental picture of how the category is moving. Over a month or two, those little changes add up.

3. Check ranks, prices and promos

In that same session:

• Note where you and your rivals sit for your main terms

• Spot any big ranking jumps or drops

• Record obvious coupon changes, deals and price moves

You can absolutely layer a keyword tracking tool on top to make this easier. The important part is that you are actually looking, not assuming.

4. Skim recent reviews like a product owner

Next, spend 10 to 15 minutes reading:

• The latest 50 to 100 reviews for your top competitors

• A mix of 5 star, 3 star and 1 star feedback

You will quickly see:

• Three or four complaints that keep repeating

• A few benefits people rave about

• Questions that no one seems to answer well

Turn that into a short list:

• Pain points you can solve in your product or instructions

• Claims and benefits you should emphasize in your own copy

• Objections you can head off in your bullets, images or A plus

This is exactly the type of work we did with DedCool before building their Amazon presence - you can see how that translated into creative choices in our DedCool Amazon launch story.

5. Pick one to three actions and actually do them

This is where most teams fall down. They collect notes and screenshots, then go back to business as usual.

At the end of your review, force yourself to choose one to three concrete moves. For example:

• Update your hero image to tell a clearer story

• Add a new cluster of long tail keywords you know your buyers use

• Pull back bids on a crowded, unprofitable term and lean into a more specific one

• Test a bundle or pack size you keep seeing in competitor reviews

Put those into your sprint or your calendar like any other task. Then, in a week, see what changed.

How to turn competitor intel into actual wins

All of this observation only matters if it shows up in three places: SEO, creative and PPC. Product decisions are a bonus.

Sharpen your Amazon SEO

Competitor keyword data should push you to:

• Chase the right long tails, not just obvious head terms

• Fix gaps where you are not even in the conversation

• Rewrite titles and bullets so they actually reflect how people search

If you see a rival climbing steadily on a term you care about, figure out why:

• Did they move that phrase into the title?

• Did they build a whole image around that use case?

• Are they getting more clicks because their main image better matches the search intent?

Then adjust. Our Amazon SEO guide and advanced keyword research framework show how we do this at scale, but the principle is simple: let the market, not your brainstorm doc, decide which terms matter.

Make creative and CRO changes that actually matter

When you have looked at competitor pages and reviews enough, it becomes obvious where your own listing is underweight.

Use that to:

• Re-sequence your images so the first three answer the biggest questions

• Add proof points your rivals are using and you are not

• Address recurring confusion directly in your graphics and A plus

If every competitor is getting slammed in reviews for “hard to open packaging,” and your product solves that, why is that not front and center in your images?

Darkroom’s Amazon conversion rate optimization playbook is built around this kind of thinking - your category is telling you what matters. Your job is to respond.

Clean up your PPC instead of throwing more money at it

Competitor analysis should also change how you think about ads.

Instead of “we need more impressions,” you start asking:

• Where is a bigger brand clearly willing to lose money, and should we step aside?

• Where do weak reviews or high prices open a door for smart conquesting?

• Where are new competitors encroaching on our brand terms and Store traffic?

You might decide to:

• Move budget away from a brutal broad term into a cluster of high intent long tails

• Target Sponsored placements on a couple of specific ASINs whose reviews are slipping

• Protect your own product pages more aggressively when new Sponsored placements pop up there

Darkroom’s Amazon PPC fundamentals and value guide to Amazon ads lean heavily on this idea: pick the right fights. Competitor behavior tells you where those fights are.

Feed your product and bundle roadmap

Lastly, do not ignore the product hints buried in competitor reviews and category trends.

If you keep seeing:

• The same complaint pop up across three brands

• Shoppers begging for a different size, flavor or material

• People buying two or three separate products that obviously belong together

That is all data you can use. It might become:

• Your next variation

• A bundle you test on Amazon first, then roll into other channels

• A reason to enter a related subcategory, after checking the demand in pieces like our breakdown of which Amazon categories are growing in 2025

Your competitors have basically paid to collect that feedback. You get to learn from it for free.

Tools that help (and what to skip)

You can run the ritual above with nothing more than a browser, screenshots and a simple spreadsheet.

If you want to layer tools on top, keep it light.

From Amazon itself:

• Brand Analytics shows who gets clicks and conversions on your important search terms.

• Search Query Performance shows how shoppers discover and move through your own funnel.

• Product Opportunity Explorer helps you see emerging niches and demand pockets in your category.

From third parties:

• Reverse ASIN tools and rank trackers (Helium 10, Jungle Scout, etc.) make it easier to see keyword footprints and ranking changes over time.

Pick one or two tools you will actually use every week. Depth beats breadth here.

Quick answers for the “no time” crowd

How often should I run competitor analysis?

Weekly is plenty for most brands. During big events or launches, you might look a bit more often, but a consistent weekly habit beats sporadic panicked deep dives.

How many competitors should I track?

Three to seven per hero product or core category. Enough to see patterns, not so many that you drown in screenshots.

What is the quickest win from doing this?

Most brands see fast movement from simple creative and keyword changes: a better hero image, clearer first bullets and two or three long tail keywords they should have been targeting all along.

Will this actually help my TACoS?

If it changes your listing, bids or pricing, yes. If it just adds more rows to a spreadsheet, no. The ritual should always end with actual changes, not just observations.

Do I need an agency for this?

You can absolutely run a lightweight version in house. Where an agency like Darkroom becomes useful is when you want competitor insights to flow into everything else - Amazon SEO, creative, PPC, DTC, retail media - without you having to coordinate it all.

Where Darkroom fits if you want this running in the background

Competitor analysis on its own is just information.

The real value is when it shapes how you:

• Build and test creative

• Set your Amazon marketing strategy for 2025

• Allocate budget between keywords, campaigns and even channels

• Plan products, bundles and launches

That is how we treat it at Darkroom.

In our Amazon Marketplace Management work and broader marketplace and retail media services, competitor monitoring is not a side project. It is built into how we manage catalog, creative, full funnel ads and operations every week.

For brands we partner with, that usually looks like:

• Regular competitor check-ins with a clear “here is what changed and here is what we are doing about it”

• Creative and SEO updates that respond to real category moves, not just internal opinions

• PPC and DSP strategies that are grounded in what is actually happening in the auction

• A tighter connection between what you see on Amazon and what you do on your own site, on Meta, on TikTok and in retail

If you are tired of learning about competitor moves only when your revenue drops, you can fix that.

Book a call with Darkroom. We will walk your category with you, show you what your top rivals are actually doing, and outline a weekly operating rhythm that turns their experiments into your advantage instead of into unpleasant surprises.