One ACoS target across a whole portfolio is the most common bad idea in Amazon advertising. Products have different margins, different lifecycles and different jobs, and a single number holds all of them to the standard of the average one.

This is how to set targets that mean something — and then let rules hold them without you.

**Time: half a day to set up, then it maintains itself.**

[Watch the walkthrough](https://kb.trackiq.com/kb-assets/kbvideo-portfolio-target-explainer-655a7fdf.mp4)

*Prefer to watch? Eighty-six seconds on grouping by job, and letting the formula size the correction.*

## **Step 1 — Work out your break-even, once**

Before any target, you need the ceiling:

> **Break-even ACoS = your contribution margin before advertising**

If a product sells for $30 with $19 of product, fee and shipping cost, you have $11 — roughly **37%**. At 37% ACoS that product makes nothing. Above it you are buying revenue with your own money.

Everything else in this playbook is expressed as a position relative to that number, per product. Do this per **product family**, not per SKU, unless your margins genuinely differ by variant.

## **Step 2 — Group by the job, not the product**

**Automations → Rule Groups.**

![Rule groups, with the campaign count on each](/kb-assets/shot-auto-rule-groups-view-651d68.png)

A portfolio target only works if the portfolio is divided by **what you want each part to do**. Four groups cover most accounts:

| Group | Job | Target, relative to break-even |
|---|---|---|
| **Defend** | branded terms, hold what is yours | far below — these convert cheaply |
| **Harvest** | proven exact terms, make money | comfortably below |
| **Grow** | generic terms, win new customers | at or slightly below |
| **Launch** | new products, buy rank and reviews | **above** — deliberately |

Launch above break-even is not a mistake. You are buying velocity and reviews for a period you have decided in advance, and you should decide the end date at the same time as the target.

**Gateway products belong in their own group too**, with a deliberately looser target — you are buying a customer, not a transaction. See [**Protect the Products That Bring You New Customers**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/protect-your-gateway-products).

The **campaign count** on each rule group is your blast radius. Check it before attaching a rule.

## **Step 3 — Set the target where the rules can read it**

**Automations → the rule → Cadence & Guardrails.**

![Target ACOS, the change cap and bid bounds](/kb-assets/shot-b26-form-b-ff65cb.png)

**Target ACOS** is a field on the rule, and the *Set bid to hit Target ACOS* action reads it:

> **new bid = current bid × (Target ACOS ÷ actual ACOS)**

This is why goal-seeking beats a fixed percentage nudge across a portfolio. A target at 100% ACoS against a 50% goal halves; one at 55% barely moves. **The size of the correction matches the size of the problem**, which is exactly what you want when one rule is managing hundreds of targets at once.

The panel's own guidance is worth heeding: *stay under your pre-ad margin for profit; go above it only while launching.*

## **Step 4 — Bound what the rule may do**

Same panel, **Bounds & Change Cap**:

**Max change per run** — 10–15% for a daily rule. The formula can want a large correction; this stops it taking one in a single step.

**Min bid** and **Max bid** — absolute floors and ceilings. These are the backstop against a bad calculation on thin data. A target with two clicks and a freak conversion will produce an enormous suggested bid, and the cap is what stops it being applied.

**Look-back 14 days, ignore the freshest day.** Fourteen days holds two complete weekly cycles; ignoring the newest day keeps the rule from reacting to sales Amazon has not attributed yet. See [**Look-back Windows and Adjustment Frequency**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/lookback-windows-and-adjustment-frequency).

## **Step 5 — Build the rule as a branch list**

One rule per group, and the branch order does the work. A shape that holds up:

| # | When | Then |
|---|---|---|
| **IF 1** | Clicks > 50 **and** Orders = 0 | Pause targeting |
| **ELSE IF 2** | Spend ≥ $50 **and** Orders = 0 | Pause targeting |
| **ELSE IF 3** | Orders > 1 | Set bid to hit Target ACoS |
| **ELSE IF 4** | Clicks < 50 **or** Orders ≤ 1 | Increase bid by 15% |

Read it as a decision list: kill what has proved it does not work, steer what has proved it does, and give everything else room because it has not been tested yet.

**Branch order is the logic** — branches are walked in order and only the first match fires. The catch-all belongs last, or it swallows the entities the specific branches were meant to catch. See [**Building a Rule from Scratch**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/building-a-rule-from-scratch).

## **Step 6 — Dry-run every group before enabling**

**Dry-run preview** computes every change and applies none, and it shows **which branch claimed each target**.

Two things to check per group:

**Is the changed count plausible?** Half of everything, every day, means the thresholds are too loose. Zero means the rule is decoration.

**Is the branch distribution what you expected?** If every row says branch 4, branches 1–3 are unreachable and the order is wrong.

See **Dry-Run Preview**.

## **Step 7 — Review monthly, not daily**

Once running, the review is short:

**Changed count per rule.** A rule changing nothing is not protecting you.

**Actual ACoS per group against its target.** Consistently above means the target is unreachable at your conversion rate, not that the rule is failing.

**Launch groups against their end date.** A launch target that nobody switched off is just an expensive group.

## **What not to do**

**Do not set one target for everything.** That is the problem this playbook exists to fix.

**Do not set a target above break-even outside a launch**, and write the end date down when you set it.

**Do not run daily on a 30-day window with a large cap.** Every run re-reacts to the same month and the changes compound on evidence that has not moved.

**Do not let a pause rule touch gateway products or launches.** Put them in groups your pause rules do not run on.

**Do not change target and cadence in the same week.** Move one, watch, then the other.

## **Related**

- [**Rule Groups: Applying One Rule Across Many Campaigns**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/rule-groups) — step 2.
- [**Building a Rule from Scratch**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/building-a-rule-from-scratch) — steps 3 to 5.
- [**Guardrails to Set Before You Automate Anything**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/guardrails-before-you-automate) — step 4 in full.
- [**Understanding ROAS and Key Amazon Advertising Metrics**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/understanding-roas-and-key-amazon-advertising-metrics) — the break-even maths.
- [**Spot Cannibalisation Between Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/spot-sb-sp-cannibalisation) — before you blame one ad type for another.