Placement adjustments and bidding strategies

You set bids on targets. Two campaign settings then change those bids, for every keyword and every product in the campaign.

Placement adjustments

Each placement can raise your bids by 0% to 900% when your ad competes for that spot. A 0% adjustment leaves the bid alone, 100% doubles it. Adjustments only go up, and setting 0% doesn’t remove the placement, it just doesn’t add anything.

They’re useful because placements convert differently. Product pages often convert lower than search, and can still be profitable at a lower effective bid. Top of search often converts better and can earn a higher one.

Bidding strategies

The bidding strategy tells Amazon what to do with your bid in each auction.

• Fixed bids. Amazon uses your bid as it is, plus any placement adjustment.
• Dynamic bids, down only. Amazon lowers your bid in real time when it thinks a click is less likely to convert, by as much as 100%. It never raises it. If a keyword gets almost no impressions no matter how high you set the bid, this is one of the first things to check, because down only can be cutting the bid far below what you set.
• Dynamic bids, up and down. Same as down only, but Amazon can also raise the bid when it thinks a sale is likely. Up to 100% at top of search. For other placements Amazon’s own guides disagree (one says up to 50%, another says up to 100%), so plan for the higher number.
• Rule-based bidding. You give Amazon a ROAS goal and it raises bids to try to hit it, up to five times your bid after the placement adjustment. Amazon suggests letting a campaign run at least two weeks before you set the goal, and it doesn’t promise to hit it.

How they stack

The placement adjustment applies first, then the bidding strategy works on the adjusted bid. Amazon’s own example is a $1.00 bid with a 50% top of search adjustment. That’s $1.50 for top of search, and with up and down bidding it can go up to $3.00.

Stack a big adjustment with up and down and the numbers get large fast. A 900% adjustment turns $1.00 into $10.00 before the strategy touches it. Audience and video bid boosts, if you turn them on, stack on top of that too. Check every setting together before you raise any one of them.