Manual Ad Campaigns

Introduction to Manual Campaigns

• Manual campaigns give advertisers control over targeting, allowing them to select keywords and products.
• Manual campaigns need detailed setup and ongoing management.
• Compared to automated campaigns, manual campaigns offer better precision and customizability.

Targeting Options in Manual Campaigns

• Keyword Targeting: Ads trigger from specific keywords selected by the advertiser.
• Product Targeting: Ads show on product detail pages or related categories chosen by the advertiser.

Who Should Use Manual Campaigns?

• Best for advertisers refining targeting and focusing on high-performing keywords/products.
• Useful for brands seeking more ad placement control.
• Ideal for businesses applying insights gathered from automatic campaigns.

How Manual Campaigns Complement Automatic Campaigns

• Automatic campaigns help discover new keywords, categories, and product opportunities.
• Manual campaigns allow focus on chosen keywords/targets to optimize conversions.
• Automatic campaigns are a research phase, and manual campaigns are an execution phase.

Visualizing the Transition: Auto to Manual Campaigns

• Discover: Automatic campaigns collect broad data, like keywords, search terms, and categories.
• Refine: Helps identify high-converting keywords/products.
• Optimize: Transitions elements into manual campaigns for precise targeting

Keywords and Their Importance

• A keyword is a word/phrase triggering an ad when a customer searches for it.

Keyword vs. Search Query

• Keyword: The word/phrase chosen to target.
• Search Query: Actual phrase typed in the search bar by a customer.
• Example: Keyword is "Red lipstick" while the Search Query is "Best red lipstick for dry lips".

Types of Keywords

• Generic keywords have a broad term with high volume, are nonspecific to a brand, and have high impressions, lower CTR and higher CPC. An example is "Lipstick".
• Branded keywords are specific to a brand. "Sugar lipstick" has a high CTR, and lower CPC and ACOS.
• Competitor keywords are specific to competitor brands. "Maybelline lipstick" has a high CPC, lower CTR, and higher ACOS.

Match Types of Keywords

• Broad Match: Ads appear for variations of the keyword(s). Conditions are singular/plural, synonyms, related terms, or any order. Performance has high impressions, low CTR, and high CPC.
• Phrase Match: Ads appear for searches containing the exact keyword(s) phrase in the same order. Conditions includes additional words before or after with balanced impressions and a moderate CTR/CPC.
• Exact Match: Ads appear only for the exact keyword(s) and includes no additional words. Performance includes low impressions, high CTR, and lower CPC.

Second Price Auction and Ad Rank

• Amazon utilizes a second-price auction model. The winning advertiser pays slightly more than the next highest bid.

How Ad Rank Works

• Bid is the maximum amount an advertiser is willing to pay for a click.
• Quality Score determines the relevance/performance of the ad.
• Ad Rank = Bid x Quality Score

How Auctions Determine the Winner

• Ads are ranked based on Ad Rank.
• The highest-ranking ad wins top placement paying slightly more than the next highest bid.
• The ad with the higher Quality Score wins if two advertisers have the same bid.
• Example: Advertiser A bids ₹50 with a Quality Score of 8 (Ad Rank = 400), vs Advertiser B who bids ₹60 and a Quality Score of 5 (Ad Rank = 300). Advertiser A wins the auction and pays slightly more than the Ad Rank below.

How to Do Keyword Research for a Campaign

• Utilize Amazon’s Search Term Report to analyze terms from automatic campaigns.
• Use third-party tools for insights like Helium 10 or Jungle Scout.
• Perform Competitor Analysis, find keywords your competitors are ranking for.
• Implement Amazon Auto-Suggestions using search bar predictions for trending terms.

How Many Keywords are Enough

• Start with 20-30 keywords per ad group, expanding as performance data is collected.

Campaign Structure for Manual Targeting

• Provides a refined campaign structure for "Sugar Lipstick" including Ad Group Names (Pure Brand, Sugar Lipstick), ASINs (B07ABC123), Keywords(Sugar, Sugar Lipstick, Sugar matt lipstick, Matt lipstick sugar), and Negative Keywords (NA).

Campaign Hierarchy in Sponsored Product Campaigns

• Understanding the hierarchy of a campaign improves effective management and optimization.
• The Campaign level is the top level, defining the budget, targeting and bid strategies.
• Ad Group is a subgroup within the campaign, grouping keywords and targets allowing granular control.
• Ads are the actual product listings, inheriting settings from the ad group and campaign

Why Create a New Ad Group?

• Improves data analysis and isolate performance metrics like CTR, CPC, and ACOS.
• Improves alignment, ensuring better targeting for different themes or categories.
• Enables easier adjustments to bids/targeting settings at a granular level for easier management.

Why Create Multiple Campaigns?

• Each campaign has separate budgets that ensures controls over ad spend.
• Uses specific bid strategies, tailored based on objectives, (awareness vs. conversions).
• Helps prioritize placements with better control over placement bid adjustments like top of Search,
• Offers clear performance insights via segmentation to identify top performing categories/strategies.

Bid Strategies in Sponsored Product Campaigns

• Bid strategies control how Amazon adjusts bids using real-time conversion likelihood

Types of Bid Strategies

• Dynamic Bids - Up and Down: Amazon increases bids by up to 100% when conversion likelihood is high/decreases it when it’s low. It works on maximizing conversions and high priority campaigns (festive sales) but results in higher CTR and increased CPC.
• Dynamic Bids - Down Only lowers bids for low-conversion opportunities but does not increase bids. It works best on cost-conscious campaigns/testing new products with stable CPC and moderate conversions.
• Fixed Bids maintains bids without adjustment. Provides best results when spend is critical, for campaigns targeting branded keywords, and predictable results with controlled CPC.

Bids: Setting and Adjusting

• It's important to understand how to determine the right initial bids.
• Use Amazon's suggested bid as a baseline.
• Research the competitor's analysis to understand average CPCs to stay competitive.
• Historical data can use past campaign performance to inform bid levels.
• Make sure the product margin can set bids that align with a product’s profitability. For example: For a ₹500 lipstick, a ₹10-₹15 bid might be appropriate if the margin is high.

How to Change Bids? What Basis?

• Performance Metrics allows for increased bids for keywords/products with high CTR and low ACOS. It will also decrease bids for keywords with low CTR and high ACOS terms.
• Placement Adjustments allows an increase in bids at the Top of Search placement if the conversion rate is higher.
• Market Trends allows bids to be set for major sale events/seasonally to stay competitive.

Sponsored Product Campaign Placements

• Each placement features different descriptions and benefits
• Top of Search gets ads at top-of-search results for high visibility for intent-driven customers.
• Rest of Search places ads appear below TOS placements, and is cost-effective for broad reach.
• Product Pages is set to ads that appear on product detail pages to target users comparing similar products.

Placement Bid Adjustments

• Placement Bid allows you to adjust bids for each specific placement.
• It is strategic to increase bids at Top of Search on high-priority campaigns and to increase sales. Additionally, use lower bids for the Rest of Search to maintain efficiency.

Closing notes.

• Utilizing manual campaigns refines advertisers' targeting for more efficiency and allows optimization via precise keyword types, match types, and bid strategies.