Setting up an Amazon Ads campaign involves more than selecting a product, entering a budget and clicking publish. Your campaign type, structure, targeting, bidding and advertised products all affect how efficiently Amazon can generate sales.

There is also no single setup process covering every Amazon advertising campaign. Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and display ads use different targeting methods, creative formats and campaign settings.

This guide explains how to select the appropriate Amazon campaign type, prepare your products and build a properly structured campaign.

How Setup Amazon Ads Campaign

Amazon Ads Campaign Types

Before creating a campaign, decide which advertising format matches your objective. Amazon’s principal self-service campaign options include Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and display ads, formerly known as Sponsored Display.

Campaign type	Primary purpose	What it promotes	Main targeting options
Sponsored Products	Generate product sales	Individual product listings	Automatic, keywords, products and categories
Sponsored Brands	Build brand awareness and consideration	Brands, Stores, collections and products	Keywords and product targeting
Display ads	Prospect, cross-sell and re-engage	Products and branded creative	Contextual targeting and Amazon audiences

Sponsored Products are usually the best starting point for sellers because they target shoppers who are searching for or viewing relevant products.

Sponsored Brands provide more prominent image, collection and video formats. Display ads extend the strategy through contextual targeting, audience prospecting and remarketing.

Amazon DSP is a separate programmatic platform with different inventory, targeting and campaign-management requirements. It should not be confused with the self-service sponsored ad campaigns covered in this guide.

Product views remarketing
Purchase remarketing
Category prospecting
Competitor product targeting
Cross-selling
Repeat-purchase campaigns
New product awareness
Brand consideration

Contextual and audience campaigns should normally be separated because they reach people at different stages of the buying journey.

Prepare Your Products Before Advertising

An Amazon campaign sends traffic to your product detail page. Advertising cannot sustainably compensate for a weak listing, unsuitable price or unavailable product.

Review each product before adding it to a campaign.

Product eligibility and availability

Confirm that the product is eligible for advertising in the selected marketplace and has sufficient inventory.

Increasing demand for a product that cannot be replenished can cause stock problems and interrupt sales momentum.

Product detail page quality

Review the complete product detail page, including:

Product title
Main product image
Secondary images
Product video
Bullet points
Product description
A+ Content
Product variations
Price
Delivery information
Reviews and rating
Stock availability
Frequently asked questions

The listing should clearly explain what the product is, who it is for, how it differs from competing products and why somebody should purchase it.

Featured Offer eligibility

Where applicable, check whether the advertised offer is capable of winning the Featured Offer. Price, availability, delivery and seller performance can all affect competitiveness.

Product economics

Calculate how much you can afford to spend acquiring a sale.

A simplified break-even ACoS calculation is:

Break-even ACoS = contribution profit before advertising ÷ product revenue × 100

If a product sells for £50 and generates £15 in contribution profit before advertising, its simplified break-even ACoS is 30%.

Advertising at a 30% ACoS would consume the entire £15 contribution in this example. A profitable target would normally need to be lower unless the campaign has a deliberate growth, ranking or customer-acquisition objective.

Your calculation should account for:

Cost of goods
Amazon fees
Fulfilment
Shipping
Discounts
Expected returns
Taxes where relevant
Other variable costs

Target ACoS should reflect actual unit economics rather than an arbitrary account-wide percentage.

Plan the Campaign Structure

Campaign structure should be planned before opening the campaign builder.

A useful Sponsored Products structure might include:

Automatic targeting for discovery
Manual exact keywords
Manual phrase keywords
Manual broad keywords
Category product targeting
Competitor ASIN targeting
Own-product defence
Complementary-product targeting

A broader account could also include:

Sponsored Brands category keywords
Sponsored Brands branded defence
Sponsored Brands video
Display contextual prospecting
Display views remarketing
Display purchase remarketing

This does not mean every account needs all these campaigns. Smaller accounts should avoid spreading a limited budget across too many campaigns. Larger catalogues usually need more separation because products can have different margins, conversion rates and commercial priorities.

The objective is to create enough separation to control performance without producing an unnecessarily fragmented account.

Create a Campaign Naming Convention

A consistent naming convention makes campaigns easier to manage, filter and report.

A campaign name could include:

Marketplace | Ad Type | Product | Targeting | Objective

For example:

UK | SP | Garden Chairs | Keywords Exact | Profit

or:

UK | Display | Garden Chairs | Views Remarketing | Growth

Avoid generic names such as “Campaign 1”, “New Campaign” or “Sponsored Products”. These provide no useful information when the account contains dozens or hundreds of campaigns.

Amazon portfolios can also be used to group campaigns by:

Brand
Marketplace
Product category
Seasonal promotion
Commercial objective
Product launch
Business division

How to Set Up a Sponsored Products Campaign

Sponsored Products provide the most appropriate setup example because they are commonly used by both new and established Amazon sellers.

The interface may change, but the underlying campaign decisions remain broadly consistent.

1. Create the campaign

Choose Sponsored Products as the campaign type.

Confirm that Sponsored Products match the objective. They are primarily designed to promote individual product listings and generate product sales.

2. Enter the campaign name

Use your naming convention to identify the marketplace, product, targeting method and objective.

The name should be understandable without opening the campaign settings.

Examples include:

UK | SP | Office Chairs | Automatic | Research
UK | SP | Office Chairs | Keywords Exact | Profit
UK | SP | Office Chairs | Competitor ASINs | Growth

3. Select the portfolio

Add the campaign to the relevant portfolio if portfolios are being used.

For example, every Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and display campaign for the same product range could sit inside one portfolio. This makes combined performance and spending easier to review.

4. Set the campaign dates

Evergreen campaigns can normally run without a fixed end date. This prevents profitable advertising from stopping because an end date was overlooked.

Fixed end dates can be useful for:

Seasonal ranges
Temporary promotions
Stock clearance
Events
Product launches
Campaigns with a defined test period

An end date should not replace active campaign monitoring.

5. Set the daily budget

Choose a budget based on commercial priority, expected traffic and acceptable acquisition cost.

Consider:

Expected CPC
Expected conversion rate
Target ACoS
Product margin
Available stock
Search volume
Data requirements
Total account budget
Seasonal demand

A budget that is too low may cause the campaign to stop serving during valuable periods. However, increasing the budget of an inefficient campaign will normally produce more inefficient spending.

Budget should follow profitable opportunity.

If a campaign regularly exhausts its budget while generating profitable incremental sales, increasing its budget may be justified. If it generates expensive clicks without commercially acceptable sales, the targeting, bids, listing or product proposition should be fixed first.

6. Create the ad group

An ad group contains the advertised products and the targeting applied to them.

Group together products with similar:

Search intent
Product type
Price
Margin
Conversion rate
Target customer
Target ACoS
Commercial objective

Avoid adding unrelated products to the same ad group merely because they share a brand.

Combining products with very different prices or margins makes bid control more difficult. A £20 product and a £200 product may not be able to support the same CPC or target ACoS.

Closely related product variations can sometimes be grouped where their search intent and economics are comparable.

7. Select the advertised products

Choose products that are ready to receive paid traffic.

Suitable candidates may include:

Bestselling products
High-margin products
Products with strong reviews
Competitively priced products
Products with sufficient inventory
New products with a defined launch strategy
Products with high-quality detail pages
Products capable of generating repeat sales

Do not select products solely because Amazon recommends them. Amazon’s recommendations can identify opportunities, but they do not account for every detail of your margins, inventory risks or wider commercial priorities.

8. Choose automatic or manual targeting

Sponsored Products campaigns can use automatic or manual targeting.

Automatic targeting allows Amazon to match the product with relevant shopping queries and product pages using listing information and shopping signals.

Manual targeting allows the advertiser to select keywords, products or categories directly.

The targeting method is a fundamental campaign setting. If you need both automatic and manual targeting, create separate campaigns rather than trying to combine both objectives into one structure.

For a deeper comparison, read our Amazon Ads Targeting guide.

Automatic Targeting Campaign Setup

Automatic targeting is useful for new products, keyword discovery and unfamiliar categories.

Amazon uses four principal automatic targeting groups:

Close match
Loose match
Substitutes
Complements

Close match

Close match can show the ad for shopping terms closely related to the advertised product.

This group often captures relatively specific searches, although the actual search terms must still be reviewed.

Loose match

Loose match can reach shopping terms that are more broadly related to the product.

It can uncover new demand but may also produce less relevant traffic than close match. Bids should reflect this additional uncertainty.

Substitutes

Substitutes can place ads against products that shoppers might consider instead of the advertised product.

This can help target competing products, alternative brands and comparable options.

Complements

Complements can place ads against products that are related to or purchased alongside the advertised item.

For example, an accessory might be advertised alongside the main product it supports.

Set bids by automatic targeting group

Amazon may allow a default bid across the automatic campaign or different bids for each targeting group.

Separate bids provide greater control because close match, loose match, substitutes and complements may generate substantially different conversion rates.

Automatic targeting should not be treated as a campaign that manages itself. Review its search terms, product targets, bids and negative targeting regularly.

Manual Keyword Campaign Setup

Manual keyword targeting allows you to specify the terms associated with your ads.

Amazon provides three principal keyword match types:

Broad match
Phrase match
Exact match

Broad match

Broad match provides the widest interpretation of the selected keyword. It can identify searches that were not included in the original keyword research.

The increased reach also creates a greater risk of irrelevant or weakly related traffic. Broad-match campaigns need active search-term reviews and negative targeting.

Phrase match

Phrase match provides more control while retaining some discovery capability.

It can be useful when the advertiser understands the central search phrase but still wants to capture qualifying variations.

Exact match

Exact match provides the closest relationship between the selected keyword and the shopper’s search.

It is particularly useful for:

Proven search terms
High-value category searches
Branded keywords
Product-specific searches
Search terms harvested from automatic campaigns

Exact match should not automatically receive the highest bid. The bid should reflect expected conversion value, competition and profit.

Separate branded and non-branded keywords

Branded searches often convert differently from generic category searches because the shopper may already know the business or product.

Separating them provides a clearer view of:

Brand defence
New customer acquisition
Category demand
Incremental advertising performance
Campaign efficiency

An account can appear highly efficient when branded sales are mixed with less familiar category traffic. Separation helps reveal what is actually driving growth.

Manual Product Targeting Setup

Product targeting allows you to target specific products or broader Amazon categories.

Individual product targeting

Individual ASIN targeting can be used to:

Target competing products
Appear beside more expensive alternatives
Target lower-rated alternatives
Cross-sell complementary products
Defend your own product pages
Promote an upgraded product
Target products discovered through automatic campaigns

Product targets should be selected strategically. A long list of loosely related ASINs may generate reach without producing profitable sales.

Category targeting

Category targeting provides broader coverage across a relevant Amazon product category.

Depending on availability, categories may be refined by criteria such as:

Brand
Price
Review rating
Product characteristics
Prime eligibility

Category targeting can be effective for discovery, but it provides less control than carefully selected individual product targets.

Keep broad category targeting and precise ASIN targeting sufficiently separated to evaluate them independently.

Add Negative Targeting

Negative targeting helps prevent ads from appearing for undesirable searches, products or brands.

Depending on the campaign and targeting method, options can include:

Negative exact keywords
Negative phrase keywords
Negative products
Negative brands

Negative targeting can help:

Exclude irrelevant searches
Reduce wasted expenditure
Separate branded and non-branded traffic
Direct proven searches into manual campaigns
Prevent unsuitable product placements
Control overlap between campaigns

Negatives should be based on search-term evidence and campaign structure.

Do not exclude a potentially relevant search solely because it failed to convert after one click. Conversely, clearly irrelevant searches should not be allowed to continue consuming budget.

The search term report shows what shoppers entered before interacting with the ad. This is different from the keyword or automatic targeting group used to enter the auction.

Select the Sponsored Products Bidding Strategy

Sponsored Products provide three established campaign bidding strategies:

Dynamic bids – down only
Dynamic bids – up and down
Fixed bids

Dynamic bids – down only

Amazon can reduce the bid when an auction appears less likely to generate a sale.

This can be a sensible starting point when:

The product is new
Conversion data is limited
Efficiency is important
The campaign is being tested
The advertiser wants more protection against weaker auctions

It does not guarantee profitability. Amazon can assess conversion probability, but it does not know the advertiser’s complete contribution margin or wider business economics.

Dynamic bids – up and down

Amazon can increase or decrease bids using its predicted likelihood of a sale.

This strategy may be useful for:

Proven campaigns
High-converting products
Important product launches
Promotional periods
Campaigns seeking additional sales volume
Products with sufficient margin and inventory

The base bid is not necessarily the highest possible effective bid. Dynamic increases and placement adjustments can significantly increase the amount entered into an auction.

Fixed bids

Fixed bidding uses the entered bid, together with any placement adjustments, without conversion-probability adjustments through dynamic bidding.

This provides a different form of bid control but can expose more budget to auctions that Amazon might otherwise have discounted.

No bidding strategy should be selected and forgotten. Compare performance using conversion rate, CPC, ACoS, ROAS, sales volume and profit.

Our Amazon Ads Bidding Strategies guide examines these controls in greater detail.

Set the Default and Target-Level Bids

The default bid acts as the starting bid for targets without an individual bid.

Where sufficient information is available, set bids at keyword, product or targeting-group level. Different targets can have very different conversion rates and commercial values.

A bid can be estimated using:

Affordable CPC = target cost per order × expected conversion rate

If a product can afford £10 in advertising per order and the expected conversion rate is 10%, the estimated affordable CPC is £1.

The calculation is only a starting point. Actual performance depends on factors including:

Competition
Product price
Reviews
Listing quality
Placement
Search intent
Seasonality
Delivery proposition
Conversion rate
Attribution settings

Amazon’s suggested bids can provide useful auction context, but they are not profitability recommendations.

Adjust Bids by Placement

Sponsored Products performance can be analysed across placements such as:

Top of search
Rest of search
Product pages

Placement adjustments allow advertisers to increase bids for selected placement groups.

Before applying an adjustment, calculate the potential effective bid after combining:

Base bid
Dynamic bidding
Placement adjustment
Other eligible bid controls

A high placement adjustment should not be applied merely because top-of-search traffic has a higher click-through rate. The placement must generate enough additional conversion value to justify the higher CPC.

Review placement performance using:

Conversion rate
ACoS
ROAS
Orders
Revenue
CPC
Contribution profit

A placement can have an impressive CTR while remaining unprofitable.

Add Sponsored Products Video

Eligible Sponsored Products campaigns can support product video using the same campaign targeting and budget controls.

Video can help demonstrate:

Product features
Product operation
Size and scale
Materials
Real-world use
Differences between models
Product benefits
Problems the product solves

Video availability can vary by marketplace, account and placement. Creative must comply with Amazon’s advertising policies and may require moderation before it can serve.

Video should communicate the product quickly and clearly. Avoid relying on sound because shoppers may initially encounter the video without audio.

Review the Campaign Before Publishing

Check every important setting before launching the campaign.

Review:

Campaign type
Marketplace
Portfolio
Campaign name
Advertised products
Product eligibility
Inventory
Start and end dates
Daily budget
Automatic or manual targeting
Keywords
Match types
Products and categories
Negative targeting
Default bids
Target-level bids
Bidding strategy
Placement adjustments
Video or creative assets

Pay particular attention to the relationship between the base bid, bidding strategy and placement adjustments. An incorrect bid or misplaced decimal can change expenditure quickly.

Publishing the campaign begins the optimisation process. It does not complete it.

How Sponsored Brands Setup Differs

Sponsored Brands require additional decisions around brand presentation and creative.

The setup may include:

Campaign objective
Ad format
Advertised products
Amazon Store destination
Product detail page destination
Brand logo
Headline
Custom image
Video
Keyword targeting
Product targeting
Bidding or cost controls
Negative targeting

Creative and destination should support the same objective.

For example, a Sponsored Brands video promoting one hero product may direct shoppers to that product’s detail page. A product collection campaign could introduce several related products and direct shoppers to a relevant Store page.

Headlines and creative assets may require moderation. Submit campaigns sufficiently early when they support product launches, seasonal promotions or major retail events.

How Display Campaign Setup Differs

Display ads can use contextual targeting and Amazon audience signals rather than the standard Sponsored Products automatic or manual targeting structure.

Contextual targeting

Contextual targeting can place ads against relevant products, categories and content environments.

It can be used for:

Competitor targeting
Category prospecting
Complementary-product targeting
Product-detail-page visibility
Brand defence

Audience targeting

Audience targeting can reach or re-engage shoppers based on Amazon signals and previous interactions.

Available strategies can include:

Views remarketing
Purchase remarketing
Interest-based audiences
Lifestyle audiences
In-market audiences
Life-event audiences

Availability can differ across accounts and marketplaces.

Keep prospecting, remarketing and customer-retention strategies separate. They address different audiences and should not necessarily share the same target ACoS, budget or performance expectations.

What to Check Immediately After Launch

Do not make major strategic decisions from a handful of impressions or clicks. However, check new campaigns early for technical and structural problems.

Look for:

No impressions
Ineligible products
Rejected creative
Incorrect products
Unexpected search terms
Excessive CPC
Rapid budget exhaustion
Stock problems
Incorrect marketplace
Unsuitable placements
Featured Offer problems
Incorrect campaign dates

A campaign receiving no impressions may have bids that are too low, extremely restrictive targeting, ineligible products or limited search demand.

A campaign spending too quickly may have overly broad targeting, aggressive bids, large placement adjustments or an unsuitable budget.

Measure Campaign Performance

Once sufficient data is available, review performance at multiple levels:

Portfolio
Campaign
Ad group
Advertised product
Keyword
Product target
Search term
Placement
Audience
Purchased product

Important metrics include:

Impressions
Clicks
CTR
Spend
CPC
Orders
Units sold
Revenue
Conversion rate
ACoS
ROAS
New-to-brand metrics where available
Total advertising cost of sales
Contribution profit

The Amazon Ads Reporting guide explains how to use Amazon’s reports and performance metrics.

Use ACoS with Commercial Context

ACoS measures advertising spend as a percentage of attributed advertising sales:

ACoS = advertising spend ÷ attributed sales × 100

ROAS expresses the inverse relationship:

ROAS = attributed sales ÷ advertising spend

Neither metric provides a complete view of profitability by itself.

A campaign with a 20% ACoS might be unprofitable for a low-margin product. A campaign with a 40% ACoS could be acceptable for a high-margin product, a product launch or a strategy that generates valuable repeat purchases.

Also consider:

Organic sales
Total product sales
Product margin
Customer lifetime value
Repeat-purchase behaviour
Inventory
New customer acquisition
Product ranking
Cannibalisation of organic sales

The objective is not always to achieve the lowest possible ACoS. It is to generate the appropriate combination of profit, sales volume and sustainable growth.

Use Automatic Campaigns for Controlled Research

Automatic targeting can provide valuable information about how shoppers discover products.

A controlled research process can include:

Launching an automatic campaign
Setting different bids by targeting group
Reviewing customer search terms
Identifying converting search terms
Identifying productive ASIN targets
Adding proven targets to manual campaigns
Adding evidence-based negatives
Continuing to test new demand

Moving a search term into a manual exact campaign provides more bidding and budget control.

However, it does not always need to be immediately excluded from the automatic campaign. The decision depends on the desired account structure, available data and whether the manual campaign can reliably capture the traffic.

Common Amazon Campaign Setup Mistakes

Many technically valid campaigns are commercially poorly structured.

Common mistakes include:

Treating every Amazon advertising product as the same campaign type
Advertising products with weak detail pages
Ignoring product margin
Using the same target ACoS across the catalogue
Mixing unrelated products in one ad group
Using generic campaign names
Combining brand and non-brand traffic
Using one bid for targets with different values
Selecting every Amazon recommendation without review
Applying large placement adjustments without calculations
Launching broad targeting without negatives
Increasing budgets before addressing inefficient traffic
Evaluating performance only at campaign level
Making decisions with insufficient data
Focusing on attributed revenue instead of profit
Leaving automatic campaigns unmanaged

Campaign optimisation should cover products, search terms, targeting, placements, bids, budgets and product-page conversion rates. See our Amazon Ads Optimisation guide for the ongoing management process.

Amazon Ads Campaign Setup Checklist

Before publishing an Amazon Ads campaign, confirm that:

The campaign type matches the objective
Products are eligible and in stock
Product pages are ready to convert
Target and break-even ACoS have been calculated
Products are grouped logically
Campaign and ad group names are clear
Budgets reflect commercial priority
Automatic and manual targeting have defined roles
Brand and non-brand traffic are separated where necessary
Keyword, category and ASIN targeting are structured appropriately
Negative targeting has been considered
Bids reflect conversion value and margin
Placement adjustments have been calculated
Creative meets Amazon’s requirements
Campaign performance will be reviewed at the correct levels

Final Thoughts

There is no universal setup process covering every Amazon Ads campaign.

Sponsored Products use automatic, keyword and product targeting to promote individual product listings. Sponsored Brands add more prominent brand, collection, image and video formats. Display ads use contextual and audience targeting to prospect, cross-sell and re-engage shoppers.

For most sellers, Sponsored Products provide the most logical starting point. However, creating one automatic campaign and leaving Amazon to make every decision is not a complete strategy.

A stronger Amazon advertising account combines retail-ready products, controlled discovery, manual targeting, product targeting, structured bidding, negative targeting and commercially accurate measurement.

The Amazon campaign builder makes advertising easy to launch. Campaign structure, product economics and ongoing optimisation determine whether it becomes profitable.

Explore our complete collection of Amazon Ads guides or learn more about our Amazon Ads management services.

How to Set Up Amazon Ads Campaigns – The Step-by-Step Guide

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