Campaign rules

Campaign rules change your live campaigns in Amazon: they raise and lower bids, pause keywords and add negative keywords. Read a rule set before you choose ad groups for it.

Campaign rules are sets of if-then rules that run once a day on the ad groups you choose for them. There are two kinds, switched at the top of the page:

How a rule reads

• If ACoS, cost per click, sales or impressions is under or over a number. ACoS vs. Target ACoS compares with the ad group's Target ACoS plus or minus some points: "over the target + 10 points" with a 30% target means over 40%.
• After more than a number of clicks, orders or days with data, or more clicks than the ad group usually needs for an order (1×, 1.5× or 2× its clicks per order). This stops a rule acting on too little data.
• Then raise or lower the bid by a percentage, never past the limit you give (a raise stops at its maximum, a cut at its minimum), or pause the keyword / block the search term.

Spend with no sales counts as an ACoS over any limit, so "ACoS over 50%" catches keywords that spend and never sell. Nothing spent and nothing sold counts as neither.

When they run, and on what

• Once a day: automatic rules around noon Pacific, manual ones a couple of hours later.
• Only on enabled ad groups in enabled campaigns, while you're subscribed and your Amazon connections work.
• Numbers use Amazon's 30-day attribution and stop 7 days ago, so late-arriving ad sales are counted. They go back up to 97 days, or to the day after the same rule last changed that keyword or ad group, so a change is only judged on what happened after it. Search terms are judged on the last 40 days.
• Each keyword or ad group gets at most one change a day, pauses first.
• A rule with a missing number, or an ACoS vs. Target ACoS rule on an ad group without a target, is skipped. The page warns you when a rule set's ad groups are missing targets.

Setting one up

1. Edit the default set or choose New rule set, and write its rules. Paused rules are kept but don't run.
2. Choose Ad groups and tick the ones it should look after. Paused campaigns are hidden unless you ask for them.
3. Check Rule history over the next days: every change is listed with the numbers that triggered it, and any change Amazon refused, with Amazon's reason.

Start with one rule set on a few ad groups and read its history for a week before adding more.