Placement multipliers are the highest-leverage setting most accounts never revisit. They were set once, at launch, from a guess — and they are still quietly multiplying every bid in the campaign.

An hour, once a quarter, on evidence you already have.

[Watch the walkthrough](https://kb.trackiq.com/kb-assets/kbvideo-multipliers-explainer-859be387.mp4)

*Prefer to watch? A hundred and ten seconds on the four decisions, and the two mistakes that make the result unreadable.*

## **What a multiplier actually does**

In Amazon Ads you can raise a campaign's bid for a specific placement by a percentage. A 50% Top-of-Search multiplier means a £1.00 base bid becomes £1.50 when your ad is eligible for the first row of results.

Two things follow, and both catch people out:

**It multiplies, it does not replace.** Raise the base bid and every multiplier's effect rises with it.

**The multiplier is set in Amazon Ads; the evidence is in TrackIQ.** This playbook is about producing the number, not about the control that consumes it.

## **Before you start**

**Set a window with enough clicks.** Thirty days, or long enough that every placement in a campaign has a few hundred clicks. Placement data is thin by construction, and a quarter's worth of decisions should not rest on forty clicks.

**End the window a fortnight ago, not today.** Attribution is still landing on recent days and will make every placement look worse than it is. See [**Time to Conversion: Checking Your Attribution Window**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/time-to-conversion).

**Know your target ACoS**, per campaign or portfolio. Without it there is nothing to compare against. See [**Set a Target ACoS Across a Whole Portfolio**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/set-a-portfolio-acos-target).

## **1. Pull the evidence**

**Amazon Ads → Placements**, with the window set.

![Placements, campaign by placement](/kb-assets/shot-b37-plc-top-f4803c.png)

The table gives one row per campaign per placement. Export it, or work on screen with the campaign filtered. See [**Placements: Top of Search vs Rest of Search**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/placements-top-of-search).

**Work campaign by campaign.** Comparing Top of Search in one campaign against Product Pages in another tells you nothing, because everything else differs too. The comparison is only valid inside a single campaign.

## **2. Score each placement**

For every campaign, write down four numbers per placement:

| | Why |
|---|---|
| **Clicks** | is this even decidable? |
| **ACoS** | against target |
| **Conversion rate** | the mechanism |
| **RPC** (revenue per click) | the cleanest single comparison |

**RPC is the number to sort on.** ACoS blends price and conversion; RPC collapses them into one figure in your own currency, which is exactly what a bid decision needs.

## **3. Decide, one placement at a time**

| What you see | Read | Do |
|---|---|---|
| ACoS well **under** target, high RPC | under-buying a good position | **raise** the multiplier |
| ACoS **near** target | correctly priced | leave it |
| ACoS **over** target, low conversion | paying premium for weak traffic | **lower** it |
| ACoS over target, **good** conversion | conversion is fine, the price is not | lower modestly, watch |
| Under 100 clicks | not decidable | **leave it and revisit** |

**The fourth row is the one people get wrong.** Good conversion with bad ACoS is a price problem, not a placement problem. Cutting hard there throws away traffic that was converting.

## **4. Move in steps you can attribute**

**Change one campaign at a time**, or a small set with the same shape.

**Move in increments of 25 percentage points**, not from 0% to 200%. A large jump changes what you win as well as what you pay, and the result is uninterpretable.

**Do not change the base bid in the same week.** If you change both, you cannot tell which did what — and the multiplier compounds on the new base, so the effect is larger than you intended.

**Write down what you changed and when.** This is the whole reason next quarter's audit will be quick.

## **5. Wait, then read it back**

**Give it two full weeks**, plus the attribution window. Three days tells you nothing.

**Re-pull the same view for the new period** and compare like with like:

**Did the placement's share of spend move as expected?**

**Did ACoS move toward target?**

**Did total campaign performance improve** — not just that placement's? Shifting spend between placements can leave the campaign exactly where it was, which is a useful thing to learn.

## **A quarterly rhythm**

**Once a quarter is right.** More often and you are reading noise; less often and you are leaving the setting to drift through a whole season.

**Also audit after any big change** — a price change, a new hero product, a category shift, a Prime Day. Placement economics move with them. See [**Run a Post-Event Teardown**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/run-a-post-event-teardown).

## **What not to do**

**Do not set the same multiplier across every campaign.** That is the guess you are trying to replace.

**Do not chase Top of Search unconditionally.** It is the most expensive position on Amazon and it is not always worth it. The data says whether it is for you.

**Do not audit placements when the campaign has a different problem.** If the whole campaign misses target on every placement, the issue is the base bid, the keywords or the listing — not the split. See [**Diagnose an ACoS Spike in Ten Minutes**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/diagnose-an-acos-spike).

**Do not read a placement with forty clicks.** Say "not decidable" and move on.

## **If the Placements screen is empty**

It populates once your campaigns have placement-level reporting for the window. An empty screen means either the range is wrong or the campaign types you are running do not report placement — not that something is broken. See [**Placements: Top of Search vs Rest of Search**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/placements-top-of-search).

## **Related**

- [**Placements: Top of Search vs Rest of Search**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/placements-top-of-search) — the screen, in full.
- [**Campaigns: Budgets, Placement and Audience Adjustments**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/advertising-campaigns) — where multipliers are set.
- [**Set a Target ACoS Across a Whole Portfolio**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/set-a-portfolio-acos-target) — the number you audit against.
- [**Time to Conversion: Checking Your Attribution Window**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/time-to-conversion) — why the window ends a fortnight ago.
- [**Create a Sponsored Products Campaign**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/create-a-sponsored-products-campaign) — where the multipliers are first set.
- [**Ad Type and Placement Mix**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/ad-type-and-placement-mix) — the benchmarks the multipliers should be serving.
- [**Placement Bid Optimisation**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/placement-bid-optimisation) — the weekly routine behind the audit.