Amazon PPC bid calculator
The next bid for a Sponsored Products keyword or product target. Enter its last 30 days from the Ads console and your target ACoS: the calculator works out what a click sells and what it costs, moves the bid one step towards your target, and tells you why. It also gives the starting bid for a keyword with no history yet.
How the next bid is worked out
- What a click sells. Sales ÷ clicks. At your target ACoS a click is worth that × the target: the most a click can cost and still hit it.
- What a click costs. Spend ÷ clicks. Amazon usually charges less than the bid, so the calculator scales the bid you have rather than bidding the click's worth: bid × (what a click is worth ÷ what it costs now).
- One step at a time. The bid moves at most the step you choose (20% by default), then waits a week, so each change can be judged before the next.
- Never against its own ACoS. A keyword over target only comes down, one under target only goes up.
- Few clicks. Under 10 clicks one sale says little: the bid holds, unless the keyword has already spent 1.5 orders' worth at your target without a sale, when it comes down a step.
In the example, 60 clicks cost $57.00 ($0.95 a click) and sold $149.95 ($2.50 a click): ACoS 38% against a 30% target. At 30% a click is worth $0.75; the bid that would cost that is about $0.87, more than one step down, so the next bid is $0.88, -20%. A new keyword for a $29.99 product converting 10% starts at $0.90.
This is the same rule MyProfit's profit autopilot applies to every keyword each day, with one difference: the autopilot also leans on the whole ad group's sales per click when a keyword has few clicks of its own. The PPC bid optimization guide walks through it.
Questions
How often should I change bids?
About once a week per keyword. Sales are attributed to clicks for 7 days, so the last week's numbers are still filling in.
What target ACoS should I use?
Your breakeven ACoS, the share of the price left after landed cost and Amazon's fees, less the profit you want to keep: a product with a 40% breakeven and 10 points kept aims at 30%. For a launch, aim at breakeven.
The keyword gets no impressions at all.
Then its sales can't tell you anything yet: the no impressions checker goes through why, and compares the bid with Amazon's suggested range.
What about top of search?
Placement increases multiply the bid on top of search, the rest of search and product pages. The placement bid calculator sets them from what a click sells on each.
Let the profit autopilot set every bid from your real profit
Connect your Amazon Ads account and within a few hours MyProfit audits your Sponsored Products: the searches your ad groups bid against each other on, searches and competitor pages that never sell, searches that deserve a keyword of their own, and keywords Amazon barely shows. Free, and no Seller Central password needed.