**Analytics → Category Insights** groups your products into categories you define, and reports each one as its own line of business.

One column makes it different from every advertising screen: **Total Sales** sits beside Ad Sales, so you see the whole category rather than just the advertised part.

[Watch the walkthrough](https://kb.trackiq.com/kb-assets/kbvideo-categories-explainer-6a9f323c.mp4)

*Prefer to watch? Sixty-seven seconds on why Total Sales beside Ad Sales changes what you can see.*

## **The screen**

![Category Insights, with Total Sales alongside Ad Sales](/kb-assets/shot-b24-cats-view-cfe6c9.png)

The standard Analytics layout — six headline tiles, Performance Trends with Day/Week/Month and the Values / % change toggles — plus **+ Add Category**.

The table gives you, per category:

**Total Sales · Ad Sales · Spend · Impressions · Clicks · Total Units · ACoS**

## **Total Sales is the column that matters**

Every Amazon Ads screen reports **ad sales** — what advertising was credited with. This screen reports **total sales** as well, which lets you compute the thing advertising reporting cannot show you: **how much of a category is paid**.

That is TACoS at category level, and it answers a question ACoS never does:

| Pattern | Reading |
|---|---|
| Ad sales rising, total sales flat | advertising is **replacing** organic, not adding to it |
| Both rising together | advertising is genuinely growing the category |
| Total sales strong, ad sales small | a healthy organic category — do not over-invest |
| Total sales falling, ad sales holding | organic erosion hidden behind steady ad performance |

The first and last rows are the ones worth catching, and neither is visible on any advertising screen. See [**Understanding ROAS and Key Amazon Advertising Metrics**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/understanding-roas-and-key-amazon-advertising-metrics).

## **Categories are yours to define**

**+ Add Category** creates one. These are **your** groupings, not Amazon's browse nodes — which means they are only as useful as the thinking behind them.

Group by something you would make a **budget decision** about:

- A product line you fund as a unit.
- A price tier, where the margin maths is similar.
- A use case, if that is how your customers shop.

Grouping by something you would never act on separately produces numbers you will never use. And a category that mixes a hero product with a long tail averages the hero away.

## **Reading it**

**Compare categories against each other**, not against a single target. A launch category should look worse than a mature one.

**Watch Total Units beside Total Sales.** Units rising while sales fall is a pricing or mix change, not a demand change.

**Use vs previous.** A category whose ACoS moved while spend did not is the one to open.

**Read categories before products.** Six category rows tell you where to look faster than two hundred product rows — the same argument as **Optimization Groups**, applied to what you sell rather than how you buy it.

## **How this differs from Optimization Groups**

Both group things and report per group. They group **different things**:

| | **Category Insights** | **Optimization Groups** |
|---|---|---|
| Groups | **products** | **campaigns** |
| Lives under | Analytics | Amazon Ads |
| Shows | total **and** ad sales | ad performance |
| Answers | how is this part of the business? | how is this part of the advertising? |

Most accounts want both, and they will not line up perfectly — one campaign often advertises products from several categories. That mismatch is normal, and it is why the two screens answer different questions.

## **Availability**

Category Insights starts at **PRO**. On Starter the section is not in the sidebar at all. See **What's Included in Each Plan**.

## **Related**

- [**Sales Performance: Product-Level Reporting**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/understanding-the-product-details-insights-page) — the level below this one.
- [**Optimization Groups**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/optimization-groups) — the advertising-side equivalent.
- [**Benchmark yourself against your own category**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/benchmark-against-your-category) — the playbook.
- [**Before You Add a Product**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/before-you-add-a-product) — reading category traction as a product-research signal.