Amazon Sponsored Ads cheat sheet

Hierarchy: Campaign (daily budget, targeting type, placement modifiers) → Ad group (default bid, keywords or product targets, negatives) → Product ad (ASIN). Budgets exist only at campaign level.

Automatic targeting exposes four match groups - close match, loose match, substitutes, complements - each with its own ad-group bid.

Manual ad groups can mix keyword and product targets; negatives can be set at campaign level (applies to all ad groups) and at ad group level.

Product targeting expressions: individual ASINs or categories, with refinements for brand, price range, star rating, Prime badge, and genre.

Campaign-level negative keywords override ad group negatives and are the correct place to block a term across an entire campaign.

Decision rule: one ad group per closely related product set; mixing price tiers or categories inside one ad group distorts bids and ACOS.

Decision rule: isolate branded and non-branded traffic into separate campaigns so ACOS and TACOS can be interpreted correctly.

Eligibility: active professional seller, new-condition product, Buy Box eligible, and a category that supports Sponsored Products.

Three formats: Product Collection (three or more products), Store Spotlight (links to Store subpages), and Sponsored Brands Video.

Eligibility: Brand Registry enrollment, active seller or vendor account, an Amazon Store, and products in eligible categories.

Headline character limit is 50; a Product Collection shows three products with custom images and headlines.

SB Video specs: 6–45 seconds, 1280x720 or 1920x1080, maximum 500 MB, no letterboxing; audio is optional but recommended.

Sponsored Brands and SB Video are billed on CPC; budget is set at campaign level and bids at ad group or keyword level.

SB ads serve in search results (top of search and rest of search) and on product detail pages; SB Video serves in search results.

Store Spotlight requires at least three Store subpages; Product Collection can link to a Store or to a custom landing page.

Decision rule: use SB Video for upper-funnel awareness and Product Collection for direct product consideration within the same brand.

Two targeting families: product targeting (ASIN or category) and audience targeting (views remarketing, purchases remarketing, similar audiences, in-market and lifestyle).

Product targeting supports refinements for brand, price range, star rating, and Prime badge on both ASIN and category expressions.

Views remarketing re-engages shoppers who viewed the advertised product or related products inside the lookback window.

Purchases remarketing targets previous purchasers; similar audiences targets shoppers whose behavior resembles the product's audience.

Bidding: CPC for product targeting; vCPM (cost per thousand viewable impressions) is available for audience campaigns.

SD placements include product detail pages, search results, the Amazon homepage, and third-party sites in the Amazon network.

Decision rule: use defensive ASIN targeting on your own detail pages and offensive targeting on competitor ASINs with weaker ratings or higher prices.

Eligibility: brand-registered sellers and vendors; audience targeting requires a brand-registered account.

Broad match: synonyms, related terms, any word order. Phrase match: exact phrase plus words before or after, including close variants. Exact match: exact term plus close variants such as plurals, misspellings, and hyphens.

Negative exact blocks only the identical query; negative phrase blocks any query containing the phrase in any order.

Standard bid ladder: exact > phrase > broad, because broad traffic is less qualified and converts at a lower rate.

The search term report is the primary mining source: converting terms move to exact-match campaigns; non-converting spend moves to negatives.

Amazon Brand Analytics supplies Top Search Terms, Search Query Performance, and Market Basket Analysis for keyword discovery.

Decision rule: run a low-budget automatic campaign as a discovery engine and feed harvested terms into manual exact campaigns.

Decision rule: add a negative exact of a harvested term to the source broad or automatic campaign to prevent internal competition.

Campaign-level negatives apply to every ad group in the campaign; ad group negatives apply only within that ad group.

Dynamic bidding 'down only' (default) lowers bids for low-conversion-likelihood clicks; 'up and down' can raise bids up to +100% for top-of-search and product-page placements.

Placement adjustments: top of search, product pages, rest of search; multipliers run from 0% to 900% and apply on top of the base bid.

Daily budget is set at campaign level and is an average across the calendar month; spend can exceed the daily figure on individual days.

Break-even ACOS equals profit margin before ad spend. Max CPC = target ACOS × average order value × conversion rate.

ACOS = spend ÷ attributed sales; ROAS = attributed sales ÷ spend; TACOS = total ad spend ÷ total sales.

Budget rules raise the campaign budget during specified time windows, such as Prime Day, without changing the base daily budget.

Portfolio budgets cap combined spend across campaigns; a cap that is too tight can throttle the best-performing campaigns.

Decision rule: scale budget and bid on campaigns below target ACOS; reduce bid or add negatives on campaigns above target ACOS.

Main image: pure white RGB (255,255,255) background, product fills at least 85% of frame, no text, logos, watermarks, or borders.

Retail readiness inputs: 3.5+ star rating, review volume, A+ Content, competitive price, in-stock status, Prime eligibility, complete title and bullets.

SB headline maximum is 50 characters; ad copy must match the landing page and avoid unverifiable superlatives or regulated claims.

SB Video creative: product visible in the first two seconds, brand logo, captions for sound-off viewing, end card with a call to action.

A+ Content and a complete Brand Store raise conversion rate on Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display traffic.

Out-of-stock or Buy Box-lost ASINs stop serving; creative and bid changes cannot compensate for a lost Buy Box.

Decision rule: fix retail readiness before scaling spend - low CVR from a weak detail page inflates ACOS regardless of bid level.

Prohibited copy: 'best seller', guaranteed results, FDA or medical claims, and competitor trademarks in ad text.

Core metrics: impressions, clicks, CTR (clicks ÷ impressions), CPC (spend ÷ clicks), spend, sales, ACOS, ROAS, conversion rate (orders ÷ clicks), TACOS.

Attribution: Sponsored Products 7-day click + 1-day view; Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display 14-day click + 1-day view.

View-through conversions count only inside the 1-day view window; click windows are longer and vary by ad product.

New-to-brand (NTB) metrics report orders from customers who have not purchased the brand in the prior 12 months.

The placement report splits performance by top of search, product pages, and rest of search - the input for placement multipliers.

The search term report shows actual customer queries; it is not the same as the keyword report, which shows targeted terms.

Decision rule: compare campaigns only within the same attribution window; SP versus SB ACOS is not apples-to-apples.

Decision rule: an ASIN advertised in multiple campaigns splits attribution; keep a unique campaign-to-ASIN mapping for clean reads.

Diagnostic: high impressions with low CTR points to a weak main image, title, price, or coupon visibility in the search result.

Diagnostic: high CTR with low CVR points to a detail page problem - price, reviews, images, A+ Content, or stock.

Diagnostic: high ACOS with acceptable CVR means the bid is too high or targeting is too broad; cut the bid or add negatives.

Optimization cadence: weekly search term review, biweekly bid and placement adjustments, monthly budget reallocation.

Naming convention: brand_campaign type_targeting_match type_date; enables filtering, pivoting, and portfolio roll-ups.

Account structure: separate prospecting (automatic and broad) from harvesting (exact and phrase), and branded from non-branded.

Decision rule: pause an ad group only after enough data - typically 10+ clicks or 1,000+ impressions - to avoid false negatives.

Decision rule: reallocate budget from campaigns above target ACOS to campaigns below target ACOS before raising total spend.