Sponsored Ads

Monitoring Your Sponsored Ads Performance

Amazon Ads has nine screens in TrackIQ, and they all share the same layout: six headline tiles, a trend chart, a table. Learn it once here and every other screen — keywords, targets, placements, audiences — reads the same way. Watch the Sponsored Ads walkthrough Prefer to watch? Seventy-six seconds on the layout every Ads screen shares. The six tiles The six headline tiles Total Spend, Ad Sales, ROAS, ACoS, Impressions and Clicks for your selected period. Each carries a sparkline and the change against the previous period. Colour means better or worse, not up or down. A falling ACoS shows green because lower ACoS is better. Do not read the arrow direction on its own. The pairing worth watching is Spend and Ad Sales. If spend is up more than ad sales, your ROAS tile will already be red — but the two tiles tell you by how much and whether it is a volume change or an efficiency change. Performance trends The performance trends chart Two series on two axes: money on the left, counts on the right, so ad sales and clicks can share one chart without one flattening the other. Three controls worth using deliberately: - Day / Week / Month — Day to find the exact date something changed, Week to see a trend without weekend noise. - vs previous — overlays the preceding period of the same length. - Values / % change — the fastest way to answer “what moved?” rather than “what is biggest?” That last toggle is under-used. A big campaign that moved 2% matters less than a small one that moved 60%, and % change surfaces the second one instantly. The table The campaigns table with an active filter chip Note the filter chip above the table — here, Type is Sponsored Brands. Active filters are always shown as removable chips, so you can never be misled by a filter you forgot was on. If a total looks wrong, check the chips first. Columns include Campaign Group, Status, Start Date, Type, and the Placement and Audience Adjustments applied to each campaign — the bid multipliers that explain why two similar campaigns perform differently. Campaign views default to enabled campaigns only. If spend looks lower than you expect for a month where you paused things, that is why. The nine screens | Screen | Answers | |---|---| | Optimization Groups | how are my portfolios doing? | | Campaigns | which campaigns are working? | | Ad Groups | where inside a campaign? | | Keywords | which search terms am I bidding on, and how do they perform? | | Targets | product and category targeting | | Product Ads | which ASINs are being advertised? | | Search Terms | what people actually typed | | Placements | top of search versus rest of search | | Audiences | which segments respond? | How to actually use this When a number moves, work downward — the layout makes it the same three steps every time: 1. Campaigns — sort by % change to find the campaign that moved. 2. Keywords or Targets — filter to that campaign, find the target inside it responsible. 3. Search Terms — see what people actually typed to trigger it. That third step is where wasted spend usually hides: a broad-match keyword performing fine on average while one expensive search term inside it converts nothing. When you find one, Rule-Based Optimization can stop it happening again without you checking daily. A note on comparing channels Sponsored Products, Brands and Display use different attribution windows, so their efficiency figures are not directly comparable. See Why Sponsored Products, Brands and Display Numbers Do Not Simply Add Up. Related - Campaigns: Budgets, Placement and Audience Adjustments — budgets, placement and audience adjustments. - Optimization Groups: Organising Campaigns for Automation — organising campaigns for automation. - Ad Groups — the layer beneath campaigns. - Keywords and Match Types — what you bid on. - Targets: Product and Category Targeting — targeting products rather than phrases. - Product Ads: ASIN-Level Ad Performance — ASIN-level ad performance. - Search Terms and Aggregated Search Terms — what shoppers actually typed. - Placements: Top of Search vs Rest of Search — where the ad appeared, and what that costs. - Audiences: Segment Performance — Sponsored Display, which targets people. - Amazon PPC: Core Terms and Metrics — the vocabulary this screen assumes. - Create a Sponsored Products Campaign — building a Sponsored Products campaign from scratch. - Score Your PPC Performance — scoring the account before you change it.

Understanding ROAS and Key Amazon Advertising Metrics

Most people can define ACoS, ROAS, TACoS, CTR and CVR and still not say which one to act on. Each answers a different question, and reaching for the wrong one leads to the wrong decision. Watch the metrics walkthrough Prefer to watch? A minute on which metric answers which question. ACoS and ROAS are the same thing The headline tiles ACoS is spend ÷ ad sales. ROAS is ad sales ÷ spend. They describe one relationship from opposite ends. If your ACoS is 50%, your ROAS is 2.0. Always. Watching both is watching the same number twice. Use whichever your team thinks in. What neither tells you is whether the business is becoming more dependent on advertising. TACoS is the one to watch over time TACoS is spend ÷ total sales — everything you sold, advertised or not. This is the number that shows a slow problem: | | ACoS | TACoS | |---|---|---| | Measures | how efficient the advertising was | how dependent the business is on it | | Moves when | a campaign's performance changes | your organic sales change relative to paid | | Best used | week to week | month to month | A healthy ACoS can sit alongside a climbing TACoS, and that combination is worth catching. It means advertising is working fine, but a larger share of your revenue now requires paying for it — organic demand is eroding underneath a perfectly good campaign. ACoS will never show you this. Only TACoS will. When efficiency drops, the diagnosis is CTR and CVR The trend chart ACoS rising tells you something is wrong. It does not tell you what. These two do: | What moved | Where the problem is | What to change | |---|---|---| | CTR fell | the ad | creative, keyword relevance, or you are showing to the wrong searches | | CVR fell | the listing | images, price, reviews, availability | | CPC rose, both steady | the auction | competitors bidding up — a business decision, not a fault | That third row is worth naming, because it is often misread as a performance problem. If your click and conversion rates are unchanged and your ACoS still rose, nothing broke — the market got more expensive. Your decision is whether the traffic is still worth the new price. The trap: comparing across ad types Sponsored Products uses a 7-day attribution window. Sponsored Brands and Display use 14 days. So Sponsored Brands has twice as long to be credited with a conversion, and its ACoS will tend to look better for that reason alone. Compare like with like — SP against SP, SB against SB. See Why Sponsored Products, Brands and Display Numbers Do Not Simply Add Up. The same applies to recent data: a Sponsored Brands campaign from three days ago has eleven days left to accumulate sales, so judging it today will make it look far worse than it is. What good looks like There is no universal target. A correct ACoS depends on your margin, and on what you are trying to do: - Defending a position — a higher ACoS can be rational; you are paying to hold ground. - Harvesting profit — ACoS should sit comfortably inside your margin. - Launching — ACoS is expected to be poor. You are buying sales history and rank. The useful question is not “is 45% good?” but “is this campaign doing the job I set it?” And if the answer is that you want a target enforced automatically, Rule-Based Optimization has a Hit my Target ACoS recipe that scales each bid by how far it sits from your target. Related - Monitoring Your Sponsored Ads Performance — the screens these metrics appear on. - Amazon PPC: Core Terms and Metrics — the same metrics, taught from the ground up. - What Amazon PPC Is Actually For — why TACoS is the honest measure of an account. - Setting Target TACoS per Product — choosing a target rather than reading one.

Why Sponsored Products, Brands and Display Numbers Do Not Simply Add Up

If you add up Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display separately and compare that against a combined total, the figures will not always reconcile cleanly. That is expected, and it is Amazon's doing rather than TrackIQ's. Watch the attribution walkthrough Prefer to watch? Fifty-one seconds on why the totals blend rather than sum. Different channels, different attribution windows Amazon credits a sale back to an ad for a fixed period after the click. That period is not the same for every channel: | Channel | Attribution window | |---|---| | Sponsored Products (SP) | 7 days | | Sponsored Brands (SB) | 14 days | | Sponsored Display (SD) | 14 days | So a combined, cross-channel view is a blend of two different windows. Sponsored Brands and Display get a fortnight to claim a sale; Sponsored Products gets a week. The headline tiles What this means in practice Do not compare SP efficiency directly against SB or SD efficiency. Sponsored Brands has twice as long to be credited with a conversion. Its ACoS will tend to look better for that reason alone, before any real difference in performance. Recent days are unstable for SB and SD. A Sponsored Brands campaign from three days ago has eleven days left to accumulate attributed sales. Its ACoS today will improve on its own. Judging a fortnight-window channel on three days of data will make it look far worse than it is. Totals shift as windows close. A number you screenshotted last week can legitimately be different this week, because sales were still being attributed backwards into it. The rule of thumb Compare like with like: SP against SP, SB against SB. When you do need one combined figure — for a monthly total, say — use a period that closed at least two weeks ago, so every channel's window has fully elapsed. The trend chart, where recent days are still filling in One more thing that trips people up Campaign views default to showing enabled campaigns only. A month where you paused several campaigns will look like it lost spend that a full view would still show. If a total looks lower than you expect, check whether paused and archived campaigns are being counted. Amazon DSP is a separate system again, with its own reporting. It is not part of the Sponsored Ads totals at all — see the Amazon DSP section for that. Related - Understanding ROAS and Key Amazon Advertising Metrics — the metrics themselves. - Time to Conversion: Checking Your Attribution Window — the attribution windows behind the overlap. - Spot Cannibalisation Between Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products — the playbook for testing real overlap. - Create a Sponsored Brands Video Campaign — the fourth thing people try to add in. - Ad Type and Placement Mix — rebalancing the mix without adding the ad types together.

Campaigns: Budgets, Placement and Audience Adjustments

Amazon Ads → Campaigns is the entry point to advertising, and it establishes a layout that every screen under Amazon Ads repeats. Learn it once here and Ad Groups, Keywords, Targets, Product Ads, Search Terms, Placements and Audiences all read the same way. Watch the walkthrough Prefer to watch? Sixty-eight seconds on the layout every Amazon Ads screen repeats. The layout, top to bottom The Campaigns screen Six headline tiles. Total Spend, Ad Sales, ROAS, ACoS, Impressions and Clicks — each with its own sparkline and a vs prev change figure. Each carries an info icon giving its definition, which is worth reading once per metric. Performance Trends, labelled Daily · left axis $, right axis count. Two axes, because money and counts do not share a scale. The table, with Search, Filters, Manage Columns and Export. Plus a date range and a Settings control in the header. The four controls above the chart These are the ones people miss, and they change what the chart means. | Control | What it does | |---|---| | Day / Week / Month | granularity of the series | | vs previous | overlays the preceding period as a dashed line | | Values | plots the actual numbers | | % change | plots movement instead | Day is noisy on advertising. Weekly smooths out the weekday pattern that makes every daily chart look volatile, and it is usually the better read for anything longer than a fortnight. vs previous is how you answer “is this better than it was?” without opening two tabs. See Values vs % Change: The Comparison Toggle for when to use each. Filters persist, and they show as chips An active filter appears as a removable chip The Filters button carries a count when filters are active, and each one appears as a removable chip below the toolbar — for example Type is Sponsored Brands. Two things follow: Filters survive between sessions. A filter set last week is still applied today, on this screen and on the tiles above it. The headline figures respect your filters, so a filtered view shows filtered totals — which is right, and surprising if you have forgotten the chip is there. Tables show enabled campaigns by default. Paused and archived keep their history but are not in the default view. That is the single most common cause of “half my campaigns vanished”. The columns worth knowing Beyond the obvious spend and sales columns, the Campaigns table carries Placement and Audience — the two adjustment levers that live at campaign level in Amazon. For what those adjustments do, see Placements: Top of Search vs Rest of Search and Audiences: Segment Performance. Reading the tiles honestly ROAS and ACoS are the same relationship. ACoS 44.95% is ROAS 2.22. Watching both is watching one number twice — use whichever your team thinks in. Spend up and ACoS down is the good combination. Spending more while getting more efficient means you found headroom. Spending more with ACoS also rising means you are buying worse traffic. Impressions falling with ACoS improving is often deliberate — a bid cut trading volume for efficiency. Check whether that was you or a rule. See The Change Log. The right-hand edge is unreliable. The last day or two is still accruing, because Sponsored Products is credited over 7 days and Brands and Display over 14. See My Ad Data Is Missing or Looks Wrong. Comparing ad types If your filter includes more than one ad type, the totals blend two attribution windows. That is fine for size and misleading for efficiency — Sponsored Brands has twice as long to be credited with a sale, so it flatters against Sponsored Products. Filter to one type when comparing efficiency. See Why SP, SB and SD Numbers Don't Add Up. Where to go from here | You want | Screen | |---|---| | What customers actually typed | Search Terms | | Which keywords you bid on | Keywords | | Which ASINs are advertised | Product Ads | | Campaigns grouped for automation | Optimization Groups | | To act on all this automatically | Rule-Based Optimization | Related - Monitoring Your Sponsored Ads Performance — the overview these screens sit under. - Create a Sponsored Products Campaign — building the campaigns this screen reports on. - Amazon PPC: Core Terms and Metrics — the vocabulary behind every column here. - Ad Type and Placement Mix — the two ratios worth checking on this screen. - Restructure Your Campaigns Before You Optimise — the structure this screen is easier to read with.

Keywords and Match Types

Amazon Ads → Keywords lists every keyword you bid on, across campaigns and ad groups, with its match type beside it. Match type is the column that changes how you read everything else on the row — and it is the one people skim past. Watch the walkthrough Prefer to watch? Seventy-two seconds on match types, and why you act on exact but investigate broad. The screen The Keywords screen Same layout as the rest of Amazon Ads: six headline tiles with sparklines, Performance Trends with Day / Week / Month, vs previous, and Values / % change, then the table. The table identifies each keyword by where it lives: | Column | | |---|---| | Campaign | which campaign | | Ad group | which ad group inside it | | Keyword | the term you bid on | | Status | enabled, paused, archived | | Type | the ad type — SP, SB | | Match type | broad, phrase or exact | A keyword is not unique. The same word can appear several times at different match types, in different ad groups, at different bids — and each row is a separate thing you are buying. Sorting by keyword rather than by spend makes that obvious, and is worth doing once. What match type actually controls Match type governs how far Amazon may stray from your keyword when deciding whether to show your ad. | Match type | Amazon shows your ad for | |---|---| | Exact | that term, and close variants of it | | Phrase | that term as part of a longer search | | Broad | searches it judges related | Reading them as a range of control against reach is the useful framing: exact is precise and limited, broad is wide and speculative. Why that changes how you read a row A broad keyword's performance is not really about the keyword. It is about the pile of searches Amazon matched to it. A broad keyword with poor ACoS may contain excellent searches and terrible ones averaged together. So a bad broad keyword is a prompt to look at search terms, not a prompt to cut the bid. The bid change applies to everything it matched, good and bad. See Search Terms and Aggregated Search Terms. An exact keyword's performance is about that keyword, so acting on it directly makes sense. That is the practical rule: act on exact, investigate broad. What good structure looks like Most well-run accounts run the same loop: 1. Broad and phrase keywords discover which searches convert. 2. Winning searches are promoted to exact keywords, usually in their own ad group where the bid can be set deliberately. 3. Losing searches become negatives, so the broad keyword stops paying for them. The Keywords screen is where step 2 lands and step 3 gets checked. The Search Terms screen is where steps 1 and 3 start. Reading the table Sort by spend, not by ACoS. A keyword at 300% ACoS on $4 is not the problem; one at 60% on $4,000 is. Watch the click count before believing a rate. ACoS on six clicks is not a measurement. This is the same threshold logic the rule engine uses — see Guardrails to Set Before You Automate Anything. Check the state filter. Enabled-only is the default, so paused keywords with history are hidden. Note the ad type. A Sponsored Brands keyword is judged on a 14-day window against Sponsored Products' 7. Do not rank them against each other on efficiency. Acting on what you find Manual bid changes here are fine for one-off decisions. For anything recurring, the rule engine does the same judgement continuously: - Hit my Target ACOS scales every bid by distance from your target. - Pause dead keywords stops targets that have spent enough clicks to prove they will not convert. - Rescue impression-starved winners raises bids on keywords that convert well but rarely show. See Targeting Rules: Adjusting Bids and Pausing Targets. Related - Search Terms and Aggregated Search Terms — what customers actually typed. - SQP & Keywords: Finding Queries You Convert On But Don't Bid On — demand you are not buying at all. - Understanding ROAS and Key Amazon Advertising Metrics — what the tiles mean. - Amazon PPC: Core Terms and Metrics — match types defined, with the rule that matters most. - Create a Sponsored Products Campaign — choosing them at campaign creation. - Bid Optimisation: Six Rules — the rules applied to these targets each week. - Outlier and Trending Keywords — two sources of keywords worth adding. - Grouping and Prioritising Keywords — organising them into launch groups.

Search Terms and Aggregated Search Terms

Keywords are what you bid on. Search terms are what customers actually typed. The gap between the two is where most wasted spend and most missed opportunity live. This screen holds two views of that, switched by one button. Watch the walkthrough Prefer to watch? Seventy-four seconds on the two views, and how they differ from SQP. The screen The Search Terms screen, with the Aggregated Search Terms toggle Standard Amazon Ads layout, plus one extra control in the header: Aggregated Search Terms. The default table shows one row per search term in its context: | Column | | |---|---| | Campaign | where it ran | | Ad group | which ad group | | Keyword | the keyword it matched | | Match type | how loosely it matched | | Bid | what you were paying | | Search term | what the customer typed | | Type | the ad type | That Keyword → Match type → Search term chain is the whole point of the default view. It shows you not just that a term performed badly, but which keyword let it in and how loosely. The two views | View | One row per | Answers | |---|---|---| | Search Terms (default) | term per keyword, per ad group | where did this come from, and what do I change? | | Aggregated Search Terms | term, totalled across the account | how much is this term worth to me overall? | The same search can appear many times in the default view — matched by several keywords, in several campaigns. That is accurate but makes a term look smaller than it is. Aggregated adds it up. Use it when you want the real size of a term before deciding whether to build a campaign around it. Use the default view when you are about to act, because that is the one that tells you which keyword to change. A practical order: find the term in Aggregated, then switch to the default view to see where it is coming from. The three things to look for Wasted spend. Terms with real clicks and no orders. These become negative keywords — and note the keyword and match type that let them in, because that is what you attach the negative to. Winners you are not bidding on directly. A search term converting well through a broad keyword is a candidate for its own exact keyword, where you can set the bid deliberately instead of inheriting one. Irrelevant matches. Terms that have nothing to do with your product. These point at a match type that is too loose rather than at a bad keyword — the fix is upstream. That third one is worth separating. A broad keyword producing junk is not a bad keyword; it is a keyword doing what broad does. See Keywords and Match Types. Sort by spend A term at 400% ACoS on $3 is noise. One at 70% on $2,000 is the afternoon's work. And check the click count before trusting any rate — conversion on four clicks tells you nothing. Search terms versus Search Query Performance These are different reports, and the difference is the useful part. | | Search Terms | Search Query Performance | |---|---|---| | Covers | searches your ads ran on | all search activity for your products | | Shows | your spend and results | the whole market, and your share of it | | Answers | what did I buy? | what was there to be won? | If you were not bidding, it is not in Search Terms at all. SQP is where you find demand you are missing entirely. Use both: Search Terms to fix what you are running, SQP to find what you are not. See Understanding Search Query Performance and SQP & Keywords: Finding Queries You Convert On But Don't Bid On. Automating the loop The harvest-and-negate cycle is exactly what the rule engine is for. The Harvest Keywords, Harvest Product Targetings and Negative Targeting rule types are listed in the rule chooser but not yet available — so for now this is a manual pass, supported by Cut wasted ad spend and Pause dead keywords on the targeting side. See Targeting Rules: Adjusting Bids and Pausing Targets. Related - SQP & Search Terms: Matching Demand to What You Actually Ran — the same searches, against market demand. - Harvest Winning Search Terms into Exact-Match Campaigns — turning a term into a keyword. - Create a Sponsored Products Campaign — the campaign structure that makes harvesting possible. - The Bleeder Reports — finding the terms that spend and never convert. - Search Term Harvesting: Criteria and Bids — promoting what this screen surfaces.

Optimization Groups: Organising Campaigns for Automation

An Optimization Group is a named set of campaigns you want to see and manage together. It sits under Amazon Ads, at the top of the section — above Campaigns, because it is the layer you organise everything else with. First, a name clash worth clearing up. Watch the walkthrough Prefer to watch? Seventy-two seconds on the name clash with rule groups, and grouping by intent. Optimization Groups are not Rule Groups Two different features, two different screens, similar names. | | Optimization Group | Rule Group | |---|---|---| | Lives under | Amazon Ads | Automations | | Is for | reporting on a set of campaigns | targeting a set with a rule | | Screen shows | performance totals | a campaign count | An Optimization Group answers “how is this part of my account doing?” A Rule Group answers “what should automation act on?” Most accounts want both, organised the same way. See Rule Groups. The screen Optimization Groups, with performance per group Standard Amazon Ads layout — six headline tiles, Performance Trends with the Day/Week/Month and Values/% change controls — plus + Add Optimization Group. The table gives you performance per group: Optimization Group, Ad Sales, Spend, Impressions, Clicks, ACoS, CPC, CTR. That is the value in one line: a P&L per part of your account, rather than per campaign. A campaign list of two hundred rows does not tell you whether your hero product line is working. A grouped view does. Group by intent, not by convenience The same argument as rule groups, and it matters more here because these groupings usually become your rule groups too. Campaigns do different jobs, and a group that mixes them produces an average that describes nothing: | Job | What good looks like | |---|---| | Defending a term you own | a higher ACoS is the price of holding ground | | Launching | ACoS is expected to be poor — you are buying rank | | Harvesting | the efficiency target genuinely applies | Put all three in one group and its ACoS is a blend of three intentions. It will look stable while each part drifts. Group instead by product line, and then split defended campaigns out from the rest. That is the structure well-run accounts converge on. What to do with it Read groups before campaigns. Six group rows tell you where to look faster than two hundred campaign rows. Compare groups against each other, not against a single target. Your launch group should look worse than your harvest group. Use vs previous. A group whose ACoS moved while its spend did not is the one to open. Then point rules at the same structure. Once a group reflects a real intent, a rule scoped to the matching rule group inherits that intent. See Targeting Rules and Campaign Rules. Two cautions A campaign in the wrong group corrupts two numbers — the group it left and the group it joined. Worth a check when performance moves for no obvious reason. Groups do not change what a rule sees. A rule acts on its rule group, not on an optimization group with the same name. Keeping the two aligned is a discipline, not something the product enforces. Related - The Automations Screen — where rules and rule groups live. - Rule Groups — the automation-side equivalent. - Campaigns: Budgets, Placement and Audience Adjustments — the level below this one. - Restructure Your Campaigns Before You Optimise — portfolios, naming and one parent ASIN per campaign.

Ad Groups

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 Prefer to watch? Sixty-eight seconds on the default bid, and why a promoted keyword sometimes never spends. The screen The Ad Groups screen 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 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. 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. Related - Keywords and Match Types — what lives inside an ad group. - Targets: Product and Category Targeting — the other thing that lives inside one. - Product Ads: ASIN-Level Ad Performance — the products an ad group advertises.

Targets: Product and Category Targeting

Keywords buy searches. Targets buy placements on product pages — your ad shown beside a specific ASIN, or across a category. They live on their own screen because they behave differently, and judging them by keyword standards leads you to cut the wrong ones. Watch the walkthrough Prefer to watch? Sixty-seven seconds on why targets need different judgement from keywords. The screen The Targets screen Same layout as the rest of Amazon Ads. The table identifies each target by where it lives and what it points at: | Column | | |---|---| | Campaign | which campaign | | Ad group | which ad group | | Targeting | the expression — e.g. Asin="B0..." | | Status | enabled, paused, archived | | Type | the ad type | | Match type | how the target resolves | The Targeting column holds an expression, not a word. An ASIN target reads as Asin="B0...", which is why this screen looks more technical than Keywords. It is naming a product, not a phrase. Two kinds of target Product targeting puts your ad on one specific ASIN's detail page. You choose the product. Category targeting puts it across a category, optionally narrowed by attributes like price band or review rating. You choose the shelf. The difference in practice: product targeting is a list you maintain, category targeting is a rule that keeps finding new products. Why targets need different judgement Intent is weaker. Someone searching “manuka honey 525” has told you what they want. Someone looking at a competitor's page has told you far less. Expect lower conversion, and set expectations accordingly. Position matters more than volume. A target on a high-traffic competitor with a much better price will spend and not convert. A target on a comparable product where you are cheaper or better-reviewed can convert well on modest volume. Category targets drift. The category keeps changing underneath you as products come and go. A category target that worked six months ago may now be reaching a different set of products entirely — which is the main reason to re-check them periodically rather than set and forget. What to look for Sort by spend, then look at conversion rather than ACoS alone. A target that gets clicks and never converts is usually a mismatch of product rather than a bid problem. Compare targets to each other, not to keywords. Targets should look worse than your best exact-match keywords. That is the nature of the placement, not a failure. Watch for one ASIN target consuming the ad group. A single high-traffic competitor can absorb the budget that ten better-matched targets needed. Defensive targeting on your own ASINs is legitimate and will look odd on efficiency — you are paying to occupy your own page so a competitor cannot. Judge it as defence, not harvest. This is exactly why campaigns doing different jobs belong in different groups — see Optimization Groups. Automating them Targeting rules act on keywords and product targets together — the rule type is called Targeting for that reason. So everything in Targeting Rules: Adjusting Bids and Pausing Targets applies here: - Pause dead keywords works on targets too — the classic 25-click cutoff. - Rein in high ACOS steps bids down in tiers. - Boost profitable winners raises bids on converters. One caution: if a group mixes keywords and targets, a single ACoS threshold judges both by the same standard, and targets will fail it more often. Scope target-heavy ad groups into their own rule group if you want them judged fairly. A Harvest Product Targetings rule type is listed in the chooser but not yet available. Related - Keywords and Match Types — the other thing you bid on. - Ad Groups — where targets inherit their default bid. - Rule Groups — scoping so targets are judged on their own terms.

Product Ads: ASIN-Level Ad Performance

Every other advertising screen is organised by how you buy — campaigns, ad groups, keywords, targets. Product Ads is organised by what you sell. One row per advertised ASIN. It is the screen that answers “is advertising this product actually working?”, which no amount of campaign-level reporting will tell you. Watch the walkthrough Prefer to watch? Seventy-seven seconds on the one screen organised by what you sell. The screen The Product Ads screen Standard Amazon Ads layout above, and a table identified by product rather than by campaign: | Column | | |---|---| | Product details | thumbnail and title, expandable | | ASIN | the Amazon identifier | | SKU | your own identifier | | Status | enabled, paused, archived | | Type | the ad type | | Ad sales, spend and the rest | performance | Both ASIN and SKU are shown, which matters more than it looks. Sellers think in SKUs and Amazon thinks in ASINs, and the same product can carry several SKUs. Having both on the row is what lets you reconcile an advertising figure against your own systems. Why product-level is a different question A campaign can look healthy while one product inside it loses money. Campaign reporting averages across every product it advertises, so a strong seller can carry two weak ones indefinitely. This screen breaks that average open. The same ASIN usually appears in several campaigns — and its row here is the total across all of them, which is the figure that actually matters when you are deciding whether to keep advertising it. What to look for Spend with no sales. The clearest signal on the screen. A product taking real clicks and producing nothing is either mispriced, out of stock, or has a detail page problem — none of which a bid change fixes. High spend, acceptable ACoS, thin margin. TrackIQ knows your revenue, not your cost of goods. A product at 45% ACoS may be fine or may be underwater, and only you know which. See What Aria Can and Cannot Answer. Products you did not mean to advertise. Catalogue-wide campaigns pick up products you have stopped caring about. This is the screen where you notice. Your gateway products. A product with an unremarkable ACoS may be the one bringing in new customers. Check NTB ASINs before cutting it — see What 'New to Brand' Actually Means. The check nothing else gives you Cross-reference this against inventory. A product advertising well and about to run out is the most expensive combination in the account: you pay for clicks, then cannot ship. And a scaling rule will actively make it worse, because a product performing well is exactly what it funds. No single screen joins these two, which is why it is worth asking Aria directly: “Which products am I still advertising that will run out this month?” See Aria Prompt Library and Inventory Forecasting. Reading it fairly Sort by spend. As everywhere. Note the ad type. A product advertised through Sponsored Brands is judged on a 14-day window against Sponsored Products' 7, so its row flatters if you have mixed types. Check the state filter. Enabled-only by default, so a product you paused last quarter is not shown. Recent days are still accruing. The usual caveat. Acting on it There is no product-level rule type. Automation acts on keywords and targets (Targeting Rules) or campaigns (Campaign Rules). So a product-level decision usually becomes a campaign or ad group decision: - Stop advertising it — pause its ads, or the ad group if it is alone in one. - Advertise it differently — move it to an ad group whose bid suits its price point. See Ad Groups. - Protect it — if it is a gateway product, keep funding it and watch stock instead. Related - Sales Performance: Product-Level Reporting — the same products, total sales rather than ad sales. - Ad Groups — where a product's bid actually comes from. - Inventory Forecasting — the other half of the check above.

Placements: Top of Search vs Rest of Search

Amazon shows your ads in several places, and they do not perform alike. Top of Search converts better and costs more; product pages convert worse and cost less. The Placements screen is where that difference becomes a number. Watch the walkthrough Prefer to watch? A hundred and seventeen seconds on three placements that behave like three products, and why revenue per click reads cleanest. Where it is Amazon Ads → Placements. The Placements screen It uses the same anatomy as every other Amazon Ads screen: six KPI tiles, Performance Trends with Day / Week / Month, a vs previous toggle and Values / % change, then a table with Search, Filters, Manage Columns and Export. See Campaigns: Budgets, Placement and Audience Adjustments. If the screen is empty, that is expected until your campaigns have placement-level data for the selected period. The tiles read $0.00 and the table says There is no data for the selected period. Widen the range, and confirm you are running campaign types that report placement. The table One row per campaign per placement: | Column | | |---|---| | Campaign name | | | Placement | where the ad appeared | | Ad type | SP, SB, SD | | Status | | | Spend, Sales, ACoS | the money | | CPC, CTR, Clicks, Impressions | the traffic | | Orders, CR, RPC, ROAS | the outcome | The row is campaign × placement, so one campaign appears several times. Totals at the top are the campaign; the rows are how that total split. What the placements are Top of Search — the first row of results. The most valuable position on Amazon and priced accordingly. Highest CTR, highest conversion, highest CPC. Rest of Search — further down the results page. Cheaper, less converting, and usually the bulk of your impressions. Product Pages — on a detail page rather than a search results page. A different intent: the shopper was looking at something else. Lower conversion, often much cheaper, and where competitor-conquesting spend lands. Read them as three different products, not three strengths of the same thing. What to do with it The reason to open this screen is that Amazon lets you bid differently by placement, and this is the evidence for how much. 1. Compare ACoS by placement, within one campaign. Not across campaigns — that confounds placement with everything else. 2. Find the placement that beats your target. If Top of Search runs at 25% ACoS against a 35% target, you are under-buying the best position. 3. Find the placement that misses it. Product Pages at 60% on a 35% target is spend to reduce. 4. Adjust the multiplier in Amazon, then come back and check. TrackIQ reports placement performance; the multipliers themselves are set in Amazon Ads. See Audit Your Placement Multipliers. Read conversion, not just ACoS ACoS blends price and conversion, so it can hide the mechanism. High CPC, high conversion — usually Top of Search. Expensive traffic that closes. Frequently worth it. Low CPC, low conversion — usually Product Pages. Cheap traffic that mostly does not. Sometimes worth it for reach; often not. High CPC, low conversion — the one to fix. You are paying premium prices for traffic that does not convert, which points at relevance rather than placement. RPC (revenue per click) is the cleanest single comparison across placements, because it collapses price and conversion into one number in your own currency. Cautions Placement is not the only difference. Match type, keyword and time of day all move with it. Small placements are noisy. A placement with forty clicks does not have a reliable ACoS. Multipliers compound with bids. A 100% Top-of-Search multiplier doubles that placement's bid, so raise the base bid and the multiplier together and the result is not what you expected. Attribution lag applies here too. The last few days under-report. See Time to Conversion: Checking Your Attribution Window. Related - Audit Your Placement Multipliers — the playbook. - Campaigns: Budgets, Placement and Audience Adjustments — where multipliers are set. - Understanding ROAS and Key Amazon Advertising Metrics — the columns. - Why SP, SB and SD Numbers Don't Simply Add Up — before you total anything. - Create a Sponsored Products Campaign — setting placement adjustments at creation. - Ad Type and Placement Mix — how much of your spend should sit here, and why. - Placement Bid Optimisation — shifting spend toward the placement that performs. - Running a Launch: Stabilise, Scale, Scale Back — the impression-share ladder a launch climbs.

Audiences: Segment Performance

Sponsored Display does not target keywords. It targets people — shoppers who viewed something, bought something, or fit a lifestyle Amazon has inferred. The Audiences screen reports how each of those segments performed. Watch the walkthrough Prefer to watch? A hundred and five seconds on the four segment families, and the target that cuts the one that was working. Where it is Amazon Ads → Audiences. The Audiences screen Same anatomy as the rest of Amazon Ads: six KPI tiles, Performance Trends with Day / Week / Month, vs previous, Values / % change, then a table with Search, Filters, Manage Columns and Export. If it is empty, that is expected on an account not running audience-targeted campaigns. The tiles read $0.00 and the table reports There is no data for the selected period. Audiences populates from Sponsored Display and audience-targeted Sponsored Brands — without those, there is nothing to report. This screen is not Amazon DSP. DSP audiences are separate and live under Amazon DSP → Audience. The table One row per campaign per audience segment: | Column | | |---|---| | Campaign name | | | Audience segment | the segment targeted | | Segment type | which family it belongs to | | Ad type | SD, SB | | Status | | | Spend, Sales, ACoS | | | CPC, CTR, Clicks, Impressions | | | Orders, CR, RPC, ROAS | | Segment type is the column that makes the screen readable. Without it you are looking at a list of names; with it you can group performance by targeting strategy, which is the level decisions are actually made at. The families, and what they are for Remarketing / views — shoppers who viewed your product, or a similar one, and did not buy. The warmest audience available, the smallest, and usually the best ACoS. Where to start. Purchases — shoppers who bought. Used for replenishment on consumables, and for cross-sell onto a complementary product. Wasted on a once-in-a-decade purchase. In-market — Amazon's inference that someone is shopping this category now. Broad, cold, and useful for reach rather than efficiency. Lifestyle — long-run behavioural groupings. The coldest and broadest of the four; upper-funnel spend, and it should not be judged on last-click ACoS. Judge each family against its own job. Remarketing should convert. Lifestyle should reach people who have never heard of you. Holding both to a 25% ACoS target guarantees you cut the one that was working. How to read it 1. Group by segment type. Read families first, individual segments second. 2. Compare within a family, not across. Remarketing beating Lifestyle on ACoS is not a finding; it is arithmetic. 3. Look at CTR for relevance. A segment with impressions and no clicks is the wrong audience, whatever the ACoS eventually says. 4. Check the new-to-brand split for the cold families. Reach spend is supposed to bring new customers. If it is not, it is not doing its job, and ACoS is the wrong measure to have judged it by. See NTB Customers: New vs Repeat, Counted as People. 5. Cut on evidence, not on rank. The worst segment in a list is not automatically bad — it is just last. Cautions Cold audiences look terrible on last-click. Views-remarketing will always beat lifestyle on ACoS, and cutting lifestyle on that basis removes the thing that fed remarketing its audience in the first place. See Decide Whether Your Upper-Funnel DSP Is Worth Keeping. Segments overlap. One shopper can sit in several. Adding segment sales together double-counts. Small segments are noise. A segment with a handful of clicks has no reliable rate. Attribution lag applies, and Sponsored Display uses the longer fourteen-day window — so recent days under-report more here than on Sponsored Products. See Time to Conversion: Checking Your Attribution Window. Related - NTB Customers: New vs Repeat, Counted as People — the right measure for cold audiences. - Shift Budget from Harvesting to Acquisition — acting on the split. - Why SP, SB and SD Numbers Don't Simply Add Up — before totalling anything. - Create a Sponsored Display Campaign — creating the campaign these segments belong to.