Free Tips for a High-Performing Amazon PPC Campaign Structure

While creating and launching an ad campaign is no rocket science, the real trick is to fine-tune it further with every iteration for greater visibility, higher RoAS, and enhanced performance. This is where most sellers tend to go wrong, paying large sums while seeing little ROI. Even if your listing and the content to go with it are brilliant, you will still need a high-performing Amazon PPC campaign structure to get the most out of your ad campaigns. This is where this article comes in.

What you can expect to learn here: 

What is Amazon PPC?

Amazon Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is a powerful ad system where sellers bid on search terms to secure ad spots. Sellers are charged each time a customer clicks on these Sponsored Ads, making it an auction-based model. These ads drive traffic to product pages, helping sellers boost their SERP rankings and outpace competitors quickly.

Amazon determines ad rank based on factors like CPC, conversion rate, revenue per click, ratings, reviews, and other related metrics.

Automatic vs. Manual Campaigns 

Once you log in to Amazon’s Seller Central Account, you can see the option to “Create a New Amazon PPC Campaign”. When you click on this, you can either select Automatic or Manual Campaigns. Which one you choose depends on your goals and budget. Here’s what they do:

Automatic Campaigns

Amazon Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is an effective auction-based ad system where sellers bid on search terms to gain ad spots, paying only when customers click. These Sponsored Ads drive traffic to product pages, helping sellers improve SERP rankings and outperform competitors swiftly.

Ad rank is determined by factors like CPC, conversion rate, revenue per click, ratings, reviews, and other key metrics.

A downside to automatic campaigns is that they are not as effective as manual campaigns, because you have less control over where your ad is shown. Instead, the algorithm chooses where your ads pop up. In other words, if you are aiming for specific audiences, don’t go for automatic campaigns.

Manual Campaigns 

Under “Manual Campaigns”, you can handpick the keywords you want to bid on, giving you more control over how your ad budget is spent.

This approach works well for those who are experienced with PPC ads and have the time to manage manual campaigns.

Better targeting often leads to more sales when done right. With manual campaigns, you gain greater control over your ad groups, helping boost sales volume and improve ACOS. It’s also simpler to lower bids or pause underperforming keywords.

Amazon suggests bid amounts for each keyword, making it even easier for sellers. You can also pull relevant keywords from past campaigns to use in your manual campaigns.

Type of Sponsored Ads 

There are three types of Amazon Sponsored Ads.  

Sponsored Product Ads 

Sponsored Product Ads show your products on product details pages and Amazon SERP.

Sponsored Product ads on Amazon are popular and should be part of your Amazon PPC campaign structure since they result in high-end shopper traffic and good conversion rates. 

Like other Amazon PPC advertising options, you have to pay Amazon for your Sponsored Product ads every time a customer clicks on them. This feature provides you with complete control over your advertising budget allocation and keyword bids.

Sponsored Product ads appear in the following areas:

In the example above, you can easily see which ad is sponsored, due to it being labeled “Sponsored.” Very straightforward.

Sponsored Brand Ads

Sponsored Brand ads address top-of-the-funnel shoppers, making sure that your listing gets the opportunity to grab a shopper’s attention before they even know what they want themselves.

Sponsored Brand ads appear in the following areas on desktop devices:

As you can see, Sponsored Brand ads show multiple items of the same brand. This enables you to promote your complimentary listings side-by-side when you create your Amazon PPC campaign structure.

Sponsored Display Ads 

Sponsored Display ads re-target potential customers who recently viewed your product detail pages, your competitor’s listing pages, or used the search terms related to your listing.

What makes these ads so attractive is that they are not limited to the Amazon platform, but can be shown anywhere.

Amazon Sponsored Display ads are amazing for increasing your impressions, grabbing top-funnel shoppers’ attention, and retargeting interested shoppers to convert one-time viewers into buyers. 

Sponsored Display ads appear in:

Sponsored Display is a great option when you have enough budget, and you want to capture conversions from your competitors, increase product views or help new product launches get off the ground at the speed of light.

Match Types 

Amazon keywords can be filed into three different categories. Two types of negative keywords, and one type of positive keywords. These categories are: 

Broad match is not applicable for negative keywords and is only a positive keyword option. 

Note: Phrase match and exact match work the same way for both “negative” and “positive”, but inversely. A positive exact match keyword bid will display your ad for that search term while a negative exact match keyword will restrict your ad from appearing whenever that search query is used by shoppers.   

What are Negative Keywords in Amazon PPC?

As seen in the “Exact match” example above, negative keywords stop ads from being displayed for search queries that you have marked as negative – mainly because they are irrelevant or of low priority to your Amazon PPC campaign structure. The trick is finding out the right search terms to add to your negative keyword list. For example, if you are selling wooden spoons, you wouldn’t want your ad to be displayed to audiences looking for compostable spoons as this would be money out the window for you. 

The example below illustrates this quite well:

The search query in the example above was “plastic combs.” However, because negative keywords weren’t used, the seller highlighted in red ended up on this page despite selling wooden combs.

In simple terms, negative keywords help advertisers tell Amazon when not to show their ads.

What are Negative ASINs? 

The introduction of negative ASINs in Amazon PPC campaigns is a game-changer. Similar to negative keywords, advertisers can block irrelevant listings from getting displayed and get the most out of their ad spend while creating auto campaigns.

Adding negative targets is one of the best ways to improve your conversion probability, click-through rate, and ACOS on Amazon.

Free Tips for Structuring highly-optimized PPC Campaigns

To structure the best PPC campaigns, we have listed some key strategies for you. 

Tip 1: Leverage Long-Tail Keywords 

Whether you’re launching a new product or just starting your Amazon business, it’s best to begin your PPC journey with long-tail keywords. Once you’ve gained some experience and profitability with these, you can gradually incorporate more generic, high-competition keywords into your campaigns.

For newcomers, competing with established sellers can be tough, which is why long-tail keywords are a smart starting point. Here are a few examples: “men’s black polo t-shirts,” “long wooden spoon,” or “blue satin women dress.” These specific phrases have lower competition and CPC, making it easier to rank and convert.

Jumping straight into highly competitive, broad keywords can drain your ad budget quickly, offering little exposure, clicks, or conversions. Even if your products get impressions, converting shoppers is harder when competitors dominate those generic terms.

The strategy is simple: start with long-tail keywords. They’re easier to rank for, have lower competition, and align closely with shopper intent, helping you drive conversions and boost sales velocity. For instance, if you sell wooden spoons, begin with specific queries like “handmade wooden spoons” or “brown resin wooden spoon” to build momentum effectively.

Pro Tip: The search terms you target in every step must be related directly to your product. Otherwise, you may end up losing a lot of money on ads without any conversion. 

Tip 2: Rank Optimization Through Amazon PPC

This strategy aims to boost your product’s rank and position on Amazon’s SERP for specific search terms. The goal is to create three distinct sets of ad campaigns, each with different bids and budgets tailored to the product’s current search ranking for those keywords.

The key is to track your top keywords, identify their rankings, and monitor your product’s page position. Based on this data, you can implement a targeted plan to optimize your campaigns effectively.

Beyond Page Five

If your listing ranks beyond page five or six on Amazon, focus on adding only a handful of high-converting keywords instead of targeting all available ones. This approach helps save your ad budget while concentrating on search terms that drive sales but have lower visibility in the SERP. Keep your bidding amount moderate to low in this scenario.

Page Two-Five

Similarly, for those search terms that are ranked in the third, fourth, and fifth pages, you can follow a more straightforward strategy that addresses the top-performing keywords. You have to keep bidding consistently over time and identify which of the search terms are bringing in the most conversions. Now, optimize your advertising campaigns according to these search terms. Amazon will automatically improve the organic ranking of your product for these keywords as they begin to generate sales.

Page One and Two

If your keywords are ranking on pages one and two, you need to bid aggressively. Since you are just a few spots away from the prime positions, you can easily win those positions and improve your product’s discoverability by bidding a little higher than your competitors.

In this case, you should also account for variations of these search terms to boost sales further. Launch a secondary campaign specifically for this purpose, using phrase match as the match type. This will help capture as many relevant variations as possible, broadening your reach while staying focused on high-converting terms.

Tip 3: Negative Targeting 

While enhancing the campaigns, focus on keywords that are not bringing in any sales but are costing you money for clicks. This usually happens when those keywords are not relevant to your products. These keywords need to be marked as negative but take a long time and effort to finally identify them.

Negative keywords are essential in Amazon PPC and should not be underestimated.

Negative keywords are significant to your Amazon PPC campaigns. They reduce wasted spend, raise listing rankings, and eliminate keyword cannibalization. The quicker you begin to implement them, the faster you reach your goal of maximum ad revenue generation.

Tip 4: Adjust Your Bids by Ad Placements

Amazon is continuously improving its platform to enhance user experience, and always introduces new features to refine how sellers bid in PPC auctions. One such feature is Custom Rule Bidding, which allows sellers to go beyond dynamic and fixed bidding. With this, sellers can manually set the frequency and intensity of bid changes. However, this advanced feature is currently available only for expert PPC sellers in the US marketplace.

Another useful tool is the ad placements feature, which gives sellers more control over where their ads appear and how much they spend. This strategy involves adjusting bids based on ad positions, which can significantly impact performance.

Amazon PPC ads typically appear in one of three placements:

By analyzing the placement report for each campaign, you can identify which positions drive the most exposure and sales. Based on this data, you can set a placement bidding multiplier (ranging from 0% to 900%) to optimize conversions and boost brand awareness.

For example:

If your ads perform best on product detail pages, consider increasing the bid multiplier for this placement. However, if your ACoS is already high, limit the multiplier to around 50%.

If your ads achieve the highest Click-Through Rate (CTR) at the top of search results and your ACoS is low, you can aggressively increase the multiplier by 100-200%.

Now, you might wonder: What should my default bid amount be? The answer requires some planning and depends on the bidding strategy you choose. There are four main types:

Dynamic Bids – Down Only: Amazon reduces your bids by up to 100% if your ad isn’t converting well.

Dynamic Bids – Up and Down: Amazon increases bids by up to 100% for top-of-page placements (50% for others) if your ad performs well, and decreases them if it doesn’t.

Fixed Bids: You pay exactly what you bid, with no adjustments by Amazon.

Rule-Based Bidding (US only): You set custom “if/then” rules to trigger bid and keyword adjustments, with Amazon optimizing bids to meet your ROAS goals.

To calculate your default bid amount, start with the base bid, add the placement multiplier, and then apply the dynamic bidding increment (if applicable). The table below summarizes the calculation for a $1 bid.

This approach ensures you maximize your ad performance while maintaining control over your budget and strategy. 

Placement	Placementmultiplier	DynamicBids-Up & Down	FinalAmount
Top of theSearch	400%	+100%	$0 – $10
Product Pages	100%	+50%	$0 – $3

Tip 5: Experiment with different Bid amounts and Match Types

Take the time to experiment with different strategies. For instance, the CPC for a specific keyword in an automatic campaign is often much cheaper than the same keyword in an exact match manual campaign. Similarly, a broad keyword in a manual campaign will cost more than in an automatic campaign but less than an exact match keyword. You might also find that phrase match performs better than exact match in certain cases.

A profitable Amazon PPC strategy involves creating multiple campaigns for the same set of keywords but with different parameters. This could include automatic and manual campaigns, various match types, different bid amounts, and even testing ads at different times of the day. Running campaigns at various times helps identify the most favorable window for clicks and sales—a process called dayparting. Once you pinpoint this window, you can bid more aggressively during those hours. You can also combine this approach with Headline Search ads and Product Display ads tailored to your target audience.

The goal is to figure out which factors drive the most traffic and conversions. By analyzing metrics like ACoS, orders, keyword performance, ad performance, and CTR, you can identify what works and what doesn’t. While this process involves trial and error, having a strong set of keywords to target makes the job much easier. The key is to uncover the sweet spot that maximizes your campaign’s effectiveness.

Tip 6: Relevance and Performance metrics 

Amazon’s ad ranking algorithm, or A9, prefers listings with greater sales, higher reviews, and more transparent product copies. 

Amazon leverages performance and relevance metrics to determine the ad ranking. These metrics are

We always recommend Amazon sellers optimize their product detail page with the best-clicked images and A+ Content with the right keywords before running ads to get the most optimum results. If your product page isn’t optimized with finesse, you will end up getting bad reviews for the product’s misleading description. 

In addition to boosting your performance and relevance metrics, you can also target competitor keywords in your single keyword campaigns to attract their traffic. Keep in mind, bidding on competitor keywords often requires higher bids, and they may not always generate significant sales. However, it’s a worthwhile strategy if you aim to secure your competitor’s spot on Amazon SERP.

Final Thoughts 

By curating a definite structuring for your Amazon PPC campaigns that includes long-tail keywords, negative targeting, dayparting, and so on, you are saving yourself from incurring high advertising costs. Additionally, you are also making sure that you optimize your campaigns in the best way possible.

In the end, it is the performance of your campaign and how well it’s optimized that matters the most. Once you have your budget set, you should focus on managing and fine-tuning your campaign to meet your business goals. It is a constant process that, if done rightly, will yield you brilliant outputs.

FAQs

Image credits in order of appearance: ©Johannes / ©Screenshots @ Amazon