Amazon Ads in the First Two Weeks: From Auto Campaigns to Manual Control

\1 The videos in this article were produced in partnership with Amazon Ads. #Ad

You listed your product on Amazon. You decided to advertise. And now you are staring at an empty box asking which keywords you want to target.

Most sellers start guessing here. They type in whatever comes to mind, set a budget, and hope. A few days later the money is gone, the orders are not, and the conclusion is “Amazon ads don’t work.”

The ads are not the problem. The sequence is.

The short version

• Start with an \1 — the goal is data, not sales
• After launching, \1 for a few days
• The real asset is the \1: it shows what customers actually typed
• Add the spenders that never convert as \1 keywords
• Move the proven winners into a \1 and take back control
• Then negate those same words in auto, so you stop bidding against yourself

1. Why auto comes first

Amazon gives you two basic campaign types. In a manual campaign you choose the keywords. In an auto campaign, Amazon reads your product page and decides who to show the ad to.

Starting a brand-new product with a manual campaign is like driving through an unfamiliar city without a map. You do not yet know which words bring you buyers. The auto campaign draws that map for you.

Auto campaigns have four targeting groups:

• \1 — searches that directly match your product
• \1 — broader, adjacent searches
• \1 — shoppers looking at products that could replace yours
• \1 — shoppers looking at products that pair with yours

Each returns a different kind of signal. Leaving all four on at the start is usually the sensible choice.

2. Three details that matter at setup

Naming. Give the campaign a name you will still understand in three months. Not “Campaign 1” — something that states the product and the type. Once you have five campaigns running, this stops being cosmetic.

Daily budget. Start small. The job of week one is not a sales spike; it is learning which words work. Keep the cost of learning low.

Default bid. Start near the category average. Too low and your ad never shows, so you collect no data. Too high and the learning phase gets expensive.

3. What not to do after launch

This is the most common mistake in Amazon advertising: the campaign goes live, a few clicks come in, no sales appear, and two days later the seller switches it off saying it does not work.

You cannot make any decision before data accumulates. To call a keyword bad, it needs enough impressions and clicks to justify the verdict. Decisions made on a handful of clicks are still guesses — just more expensive ones.

Launch it, then let it run.

4. The Search Term Report is the real asset

The value of an auto campaign is not in the sales it makes. It is in the report it produces. The Search Term Report shows what shoppers actually typed into Amazon.

When you download it, read these columns:

Read it line by line. You are building two lists: winners (terms that produced orders) and losers (terms that spent money and produced nothing).

5. Negative keywords protect the budget

Once you have identified the losers, add them as negative keywords so you stop paying for them.

Negative exact is usually the right choice, because it blocks only that precise term. Broader negative match types risk shutting out related phrases that might still convert.

Skip this step and a slice of your budget keeps flowing every month into searches that never turn into sales.

6. Moving to manual

The auto campaign handed you proven keywords. Now you take control back from Amazon.

Manual campaigns offer three match types:

• \1 — most traffic, least control
• \1 — middle ground, the phrase order is preserved
• \1 — least traffic, most control

Use a separate ad group per match type. Keep them together and you cannot tell which type is performing, nor manage bids independently.

When you add a proven keyword to a manual campaign, set the bid based on how that keyword actually performed in auto — not on a guess.

One caution: when a keyword performs well, do not double the bid overnight. Move in steps and measure after each change.

7. Product targeting — the part most sellers skip

Manual campaigns are not limited to keywords. Product targeting lets you target listings directly:

• \1 — the shopper is looking at a rival and sees you
• \1 — you show up beside items that pair with yours

In categories where keyword competition is brutal, this opens a second door.

8. Do not switch auto off — negate instead

After building the manual campaign, many sellers leave the auto campaign running untouched. That puts you in competition with yourself: both campaigns bid on the same term and your costs rise.

The correct move is to negate, in the auto campaign, every keyword you moved to manual. Auto keeps discovering new terms; manual manages the proven ones.

The six-step loop

1. Launch an auto campaign on a small budget
2. Do not touch it until data accumulates
3. Download and read the Search Term Report
4. Negate the terms that spend without converting
5. Move the winners into a manual campaign
6. Negate those same winners in auto

Then you start again. Auto discovers, you select, manual scales.

An honest closing note

This system tells you which keywords work. But advertising only brings traffic — the thing that closes the sale is your product page. If your price is not competitive, your images are weak, or you have no reviews, no campaign structure will rescue that.

Put ads on top of a product page that already converts. It does not work the other way round.

The videos in this article were produced in partnership with Amazon Ads. This content is educational; Amazon advertising costs and results vary by product, category and marketplace. No sales or earnings are guaranteed.