10 Amazon Ads Campaign Tips You Need to Know

Amazon Advertising has become an increasingly competitive battlefield for sellers looking to stand out in the vast e-commerce landscape. As 2025 approaches, mastering your advertising strategy isn’t just advantageous—it’s essential for sustainable business growth. The difference between profitable campaigns and costly experiments often comes down to understanding the platform’s nuances and implementing data-driven optimizations.

In this comprehensive guide, you’ll discover practical, actionable strategies to lower your Advertising Cost of Sale (ACoS), boost Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), and scale your Amazon business profitably. These tips apply whether you’re just starting your advertising journey or looking to refine existing campaigns that need a performance boost.

Prioritize high-performing products (ASIN prioritization)

One of the most common mistakes sellers make is distributing their advertising budget equally across all products. This approach significantly diminishes your potential return on investment and ignores the fundamental 80/20 principle—where approximately 20% of your catalog drives 80% of your results.

To identify your star performers, start by reviewing your Amazon Business Reports and Sales Dashboard. Focus on metrics like conversion rate, organic ranking, and profit margin rather than just total sales volume. Products with high margins, strong conversion rates, and reasonable competition levels make ideal candidates for increased ad spend.

Analyze your sales-to-spend ratio per ASIN over the last 30-90 days. Products that consistently generate profitable sales with lower advertising costs deserve additional investment. This data-driven approach ensures your budget flows toward items with proven conversion potential rather than underperforming inventory that drains resources.

Data-driven SKU analysis example

Consider a seller with 50 products who discovered that 12 SKUs generated 78% of their profitable sales. By reallocating budget from their bottom 20 performers to these top products, they increased overall ROAS by 37% within just three weeks—without spending additional money. The key was concentrating resources where data showed the highest probability of success.

Optimize for profitable keyword targeting

Keyword selection fundamentally determines who sees your ads and whether they convert into customers. Rather than casting an overly wide net, focus on building a strategic keyword portfolio that balances discovery and precision.

Start your keyword research by examining customer search behavior through tools like Amazon’s Search Term Report, Brand Analytics (if available to your account), and third-party research tools. Look for terms with clear purchase intent rather than informational searches. For instance, “waterproof bluetooth speaker with bass” signals stronger buying intent than simply “bluetooth speakers.”

Match types play a crucial role in campaign structure and budget efficiency. Broad match terms cast the widest net and are excellent for keyword discovery but typically result in higher ACoS. Phrase match balances reach with relevance, while exact match provides precision targeting for your proven converters. A strategic approach incorporates all three types but allocates budget proportionately based on performance data.

Continuously harvest converting search terms from your automatic campaigns and promote them to manual campaigns with appropriate match types. This creates a refinement cycle where broad terms identify opportunities, and exact matches maximize the efficiency of proven performers.

Using search term reports for optimization

Search term reports reveal exactly what customers typed when they saw and clicked your ads. Review these reports bi-weekly to identify high-converting search terms worth targeting directly, as well as irrelevant terms consuming your budget without driving sales. This ongoing refinement process ensures your keyword targeting evolves with changing market conditions and customer behavior.

Structure campaigns for control and clarity

Campaign organization might seem like mere housekeeping, but it profoundly impacts your ability to analyze performance and make data-driven decisions. A logical campaign structure creates clarity and enables precise budget control.

Several structural approaches have proven effective depending on business goals:

Product-based structure: Separate campaigns for each main product or product family
Keyword intent structure: Different campaigns for branded, category, and competitor terms
Goal-based structure: Distinct campaigns for awareness, conversion, and defensive positioning

Regardless of your chosen framework, limit each ad group to 10-15 closely related keywords maximum. This granularity allows for more precise bid management and clearer performance analysis. When campaigns become overstuffed with hundreds of keywords across various match types, identifying what’s actually working becomes nearly impossible.

Another best practice is separating automatic and manual campaigns to prevent Amazon’s algorithm from competing against itself. This separation creates a clear path for keyword discovery (automatic) and optimization (manual), allowing each campaign type to fulfill its strategic purpose.

Set and monitor clear goals (ACoS/ROAS/visibility)

Without defined objectives, even technically sound campaigns will struggle to deliver business value. Different products and business stages require different advertising goals that should determine your campaign structure and bidding strategy.

First, calculate your break-even ACoS for each product by using this formula: (Profit Margin ÷ Product Price) × 100. This figure represents the maximum advertising spend per sale where you neither make nor lose money. For mature products with established sales velocity, you’ll typically want to target an ACoS below this break-even point to ensure profitability.

However, new product launches, seasonal items, or inventory you’re looking to liquidate might justify a higher ACoS temporarily. New products often require aggressive advertising to build initial momentum, reviews, and ranking, justifying a higher customer acquisition cost in the short term.

Document specific, measurable objectives for each campaign: awareness (impressions and clicks), growth (sales volume regardless of profitability), or profit maximization (keeping ACoS below target thresholds). Establishing these benchmarks upfront prevents confusion when analyzing performance and makes decision-making more objective.

Leverage both automatic and manual campaigns

Automatic and manual campaigns serve distinct but complementary purposes in an effective Amazon advertising strategy. Rather than choosing between them, implement both in a coordinated discovery-to-optimization workflow.

Automatic campaigns allow Amazon’s algorithm to match your ads with relevant customer searches based on your product listing content. Their primary value lies in discovery—identifying search terms you hadn’t considered that convert well for your products. Set these campaigns with moderate daily budgets and review their search term reports regularly.

Manual campaigns give you precise control over which keywords trigger your ads and how much you’re willing to bid for each one. Their strength is optimization—focusing spend on proven performers while eliminating waste. Structure these campaigns around keywords harvested from automatic campaigns that have demonstrated good conversion rates.

The most effective workflow involves starting broader with automatic campaigns, then progressively refining through manual campaigns. When you identify converting keywords in automatic campaigns, add them as negative exact matches there while simultaneously adding them to manual campaigns with more aggressive bidding. This prevents the campaigns from competing against each other while ensuring your budget flows toward your highest-performing terms.

Master bid optimization and dayparting

Strategic bid management distinguishes profitable campaigns from budget drains. Rather than setting bids once and forgetting them, implement a regular review and adjustment cycle based on performance data.

Start by establishing baseline bids based on keyword competitiveness and your target ACoS. For high-intent keywords with strong conversion rates, you can typically justify higher bids since they deliver better return on spend. For broader discovery terms, keep bids lower until they prove their value through conversions.

Review keyword performance every 7-14 days—enough time to gather statistically significant data without letting underperformers drain your budget. For keywords with excessive ACoS, reduce bids by 10-20% at a time. For well-performing keywords with good ad placement, consider incremental 5-10% increases to capture more volume while monitoring conversion rates.

Dayparting—the practice of adjusting bids based on time of day or day of week—provides another optimization layer. Most products show clear patterns in when customers browse versus when they buy. By analyzing your campaign reports segmented by time, you can identify high-conversion windows where increased bids make sense, and low-conversion periods where reduced bids preserve budget.

Several third-party tools now offer AI-driven bid management that can automate these adjustments based on historical performance data and real-time competitive dynamics. These solutions can be particularly valuable for accounts with extensive product catalogs or highly seasonal sales patterns.

Use negative keywords to prevent wasted spend

Negative keywords serve as protective filters for your advertising budget, blocking irrelevant impressions and clicks that are unlikely to convert. Implementing a robust negative keyword strategy is often the fastest way to improve campaign efficiency.

Start by analyzing search term reports for terms that received clicks but no conversions, especially those with multiple clicks and high spend. Common categories for negative keywords include:

Incompatible use cases (e.g., “outdoor” for indoor-only products)
Competitor brand terms (unless you have competitive offerings)
Unrelated product categories (e.g., “wooden” for plastic products)
Informational queries (“how to,” “instructions,” “manual”)
Price qualifiers below your price point (“cheap,” “under $10”)

Add these terms as negative exact matches to prevent wasteful spending while maintaining coverage for relevant variations. For particularly problematic terms, consider negative phrase matches to block broader inclusion of the term.

Make negative keyword management a regular part of your campaign maintenance routine. Every two weeks, review search term reports specifically looking for non-converting terms with multiple clicks. Each optimization cycle should identify at least 5-10 new negative keywords that improve your campaign efficiency.

Harness Amazon’s latest ad types (Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, DSP)

While Sponsored Products ads remain the foundation of most Amazon advertising strategies, expanding into complementary ad formats creates full-funnel coverage and captures customers at different stages of their buying journey.

Sponsored Brands ads appear at the top of search results and feature your logo, a custom headline, and multiple products. They excel at building brand awareness and are particularly effective for shoppers in the discovery phase. The video variant of Sponsored Brands has shown significantly higher engagement rates, making it ideal for products that benefit from demonstration.

Sponsored Display ads extend your reach beyond search results to product detail pages, customer review pages, and even off-Amazon sites. Their contextual targeting capabilities make them excellent for reaching customers browsing similar or complementary products. Use these ads for cross-selling within your product line or capturing customers considering competitive offerings.

For sellers with larger budgets, Amazon DSP (Demand-Side Platform) offers sophisticated audience targeting based on shopping behavior and demographics. DSP enables retargeting customers who viewed your products but didn’t purchase, as well as reaching relevant audiences across Amazon’s network and third-party sites. While more complex to manage, DSP campaigns typically deliver strong results for brand building and customer acquisition.

Each of these formats serves different objectives within your marketing funnel. Sponsored Products excel at capturing high-intent shoppers ready to purchase, Sponsored Brands build awareness and consideration, while Sponsored Display and DSP extend reach and facilitate remarketing opportunities.

Continuously audit, pause, and refine campaigns

Even well-structured campaigns require ongoing maintenance to maintain optimal performance. Implement a systematic audit process to identify and address underperforming elements before they significantly impact your advertising efficiency.

Establish clear performance thresholds that trigger intervention. For example, keywords with ACoS exceeding 50% above your target for two consecutive weeks, or those with more than 20 clicks and zero conversions, may warrant pausing or bid reduction. Similarly, campaigns consistently spending less than 80% of their daily budget might benefit from bid increases or expanded keyword targeting.

Don’t make reactive changes based on single-day fluctuations. Amazon’s attribution window and customer behavior patterns require looking at performance over at least 7-14 days to identify meaningful trends versus normal variation. This measured approach prevents overreaction to temporary market changes.

When you identify underperforming campaigns or keywords, don’t immediately delete them. Instead, pause them and document the reason in your campaign notes. This creates an institutional memory of what didn’t work and why, preventing future repetition of unsuccessful strategies.

Schedule comprehensive quarterly reviews of your entire advertising structure. These deeper audits should examine not just performance metrics but also alignment with business objectives, seasonal adjustments, and competitive positioning. Use these quarterly checkpoints to implement larger structural changes based on accumulated learnings.

Leverage AI and automation tools for scale

As Amazon’s marketplace grows increasingly competitive, manual campaign management becomes unsustainable at scale. AI-powered tools and automation capabilities now offer significant advantages for sellers looking to maintain optimal performance across extensive product catalogs.

Automated bidding solutions adjust bids in real-time based on conversion probability, competitive dynamics, and your specified performance targets. These systems can implement dayparting, device-specific bidding, and placement adjustments more efficiently than manual management, especially across hundreds or thousands of keywords.

Creative optimization tools help test multiple image and copy variations to identify the highest-performing combinations. Some advanced solutions can even generate and test AI-created product images, highlighting different features or usage scenarios to determine which drive the highest click-through and conversion rates.

Budget allocation automation ensures your advertising spend flows dynamically to the highest-performing campaigns and products. Rather than manually adjusting budgets across campaigns, these systems shift resources automatically based on real-time performance data, preventing high-performing campaigns from being budget-constrained while limiting spend on underperformers.

Voice search optimization is becoming increasingly important as more shoppers use Alexa and other voice assistants for product discovery. AI tools can identify conversational keyword patterns and natural language queries that traditional keyword research might miss, helping you capture this growing segment of search traffic.

When evaluating automation tools, prioritize solutions that maintain transparency and allow human oversight. The most effective approach combines AI efficiency with human strategic direction, letting automation handle repetitive optimizations while you focus on higher-level strategy and business objectives.

Conclusion

Successful Amazon advertising requires a holistic approach that combines thoughtful campaign structure, continuous optimization, and strategic use of the platform’s various ad formats. By prioritizing your strongest products, implementing systematic keyword refinement, and maintaining clear performance objectives, you can transform advertising from a necessary expense into a powerful growth driver for your business.

The competitive landscape will continue evolving, but these fundamental principles of data-driven campaign management remain constant. Focus your efforts on understanding customer search behavior, eliminating wasted spend, and progressively refining your approach based on performance data. With consistent application of these strategies, you’ll develop advertising campaigns that sustainably drive visibility, sales, and profitability.

Take action today by reviewing your existing campaigns through the lens of these ten tips. Implement at least two new optimization strategies this week, then measure the impact on your advertising efficiency. Small, systematic improvements compound over time, creating significant competitive advantages in the marketplace.

Frequently asked questions

What’s the best way to lower my ACoS with Amazon Ads?

Focus budget on your highest-converting products and keywords, use negative keywords to remove waste, and refine bids regularly.

Should I use automatic or manual campaigns on Amazon?

Start with automatic campaigns to discover converting keywords, then migrate winners to manual for tighter control and optimization.

How often should I change bids or campaign structure?

Review performance data every 1–2 weeks for adjustments; major structure or keyword changes should be monthly after sufficient data collection.

Which match type works best for Amazon PPC?

Use broad match for discovery, phrase for moderate intent, and exact for best profitability. Regularly test and reallocate based on conversion data.

How can AI help me with Amazon ads?

AI automates keyword harvesting/negation, bid management, and creative testing, saving time and improving long-term results.