An **ad group** sits between a campaign and the things you actually bid on. It holds a set of keywords or targets, a set of advertised products, and a **default bid** they inherit.

It is the level most people skip — and the level where structural problems show up first.

[Watch the walkthrough](https://kb.trackiq.com/kb-assets/kbvideo-adgroups-explainer-e2805b6e.mp4)

*Prefer to watch? Sixty-eight seconds on the default bid, and why a promoted keyword sometimes never spends.*

## **The screen**

![The Ad Groups screen](/kb-assets/shot-b23-adgroups-view-af05a4.png)

The layout is the one every Amazon Ads screen shares — six tiles, Performance Trends with Day/Week/Month and the Values / % change toggles, then the table. See [**Campaigns: Budgets, Placement and Audience Adjustments**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/advertising-campaigns) for the anatomy.

What is specific here is the table:

| Column | |
|---|---|
| **Campaign** | which campaign it belongs to |
| **Ad group** | its name |
| **Status** | enabled, paused, archived |
| **Type** | the ad type — SP, SB, SD |
| **Bid** | the ad group's default bid |
| **Ad sales**, spend and the rest | performance |

## **Why the bid column matters**

The **Bid** column is the ad group's default. Keywords inside it can carry their own bid, but anything without one inherits this.

So an ad group with a badly-set default quietly affects every target that has not been tuned individually — and those are exactly the targets nobody is watching. Sorting by bid across ad groups is a quick way to spot one that was set once and forgotten.

## **What ad groups are actually for**

Structurally, an ad group is **a bid and a set of products applied to a set of targets**. That gives you two reasons to split one:

**Different products need different bids.** A $12 item and a $60 item cannot share a sensible bid, because the same ACoS target implies very different maximums.

**Different intents need different treatment.** Your defended brand terms and your exploratory broad keywords should not sit in one ad group inheriting one bid.

The naming in a well-run account shows this — product line, ad type, then intent, so an ad group name tells you what it is for before you open it.

## **Reading the table**

**Sort by spend.** An ad group at 200% ACoS on $30 is noise; one at 60% on $9,000 is where the money is.

**Compare ad groups within a campaign** rather than across the account. Across campaigns you are comparing different products, budgets and intents.

**Watch for one ad group dominating a campaign.** That usually means the others are starved — either their bids are too low to compete, or the campaign budget is being consumed before they run.

**Check the state filter.** Enabled-only is the default.

## **Where ad group problems show up**

The symptom is usually noticed somewhere else:

| Symptom | Often an ad group problem |
|---|---|
| A keyword you promoted never spends | it landed in an ad group with a low default bid |
| A campaign's ACoS is fine but one product is unprofitable | mixed price points in one ad group |
| A new product gets no impressions | it is in an ad group tuned for something else |

That first row is the common one after harvesting search terms. Promoting a winner into an existing ad group means it inherits that group's bid, which may be far below what the term needs. See [**Search Terms and Aggregated Search Terms**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/search-terms-and-aggregated-search-terms).

## **Rules act below this level**

Targeting rules act on **keywords and product targets**, not on ad groups. An **Adgroup** rule type is listed in the rule chooser but is **not yet available**.

So today, ad group structure is something you set up well rather than something you automate. Getting it right is what makes the bid rules beneath it behave sensibly — a rule cannot fix two products that should never have shared a bid.

See [**Targeting Rules: Adjusting Bids and Pausing Targets**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/targeting-rules-bids-and-pausing).

## **Related**

- [**Keywords and Match Types**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/keywords-and-match-types) — what lives inside an ad group.
- [**Targets: Product and Category Targeting**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/product-and-category-targeting) — the other thing that lives inside one.
- [**Product Ads: ASIN-Level Ad Performance**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/product-ads) — the products an ad group advertises.