Amazon PPC - Campaign Bidding Strategy Explained (Rule-Based Bidding, Schedule Rules)

Hey everyone! Have you ever wished you could tell Amazon exactly when you want your ads to shine the brightest?

Well, guess what?

There's a way to do just that, and it's all thanks to some awesome new features in Amazon PPC!

A few months back, I chatted with Szymon Sekski, the brain behind AMZ Guardian, on my YouTube channel.

Book a Free Consultation with Szymon

We dove deep into the world of Amazon PPC, specifically focusing on these new features: rule-based bidding and schedule rules (also known as day parting).

Intrigued?

If you're looking to take your Amazon advertising to the next level, then keep reading!

This article includes our conversation, where we dive into all the essential details about these exciting developments and how they can help you reach more of the right customers at the perfect time.

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Introduction

Vova: Hey everyone! Today, we're diving into some exciting new features for Amazon PPC campaigns – strategies that can give your campaigns a bit of an edge.

We'll be explaining what these features are and how they can benefit your Amazon PPC efforts and ultimately, your business.

The goal?

To help you see better results from your Amazon PPC campaigns.

Meet My Guest

Vova: Joining me today is Szymon from AMZ Guardian.

These guys are experts in helping sellers with six and seven-figure businesses leverage PPC to its full potential.

Basically, they take the reins of your PPC campaigns, manage them for you, and ensure you get the best results possible.

I've also got a free consultation offer with Szymon below.

If you're a seller already hitting those six and seven-figure marks, definitely check it out through the button below. 🔽

Book a Free Consultation with Szymon

I'm optimistic that Szymon can help you take things to the next level.

But even if you're a smaller seller right now, don't worry!

AMZ Guardian creates a ton of free educational resources designed to help you grow your business and reach those higher levels.

So, they've got something for everyone!

Alright Szymon, what's going on? 

Let's jump in!

Szymon: Hey Vova, good to see you again!

Vova: Likewise, man!

Szymon: Absolutely thrilled to be here and chat with you and the audience today.

I'm really looking forward to sharing some valuable information with everyone about these new features.

Introducing New Features of Amazon PPC

Szymon: So, guys! Amazon's Campaign Manager just introduced some exciting new features that are set to be game-changers for PPC campaigns.

These are major updates that have only been around for a few weeks, and they're being rolled out gradually.

This means they might not be available in every seller account just yet.

Here at AMZ Guardian, we manage a lot of accounts, and so far, we've only seen these features pop up in a select few.

So, where can we find these features? You might ask…

Well, they're tucked away under your campaign settings.

Whenever you want to adjust a specific campaign, simply head over to "Campaign Settings" – you'll also find them when you're creating a new campaign from scratch.

Let's take a closer look specifically, under "Campaign Bidding Strategies."

Here, you'll see some new additions – these came out in October 2023, so they're quite fresh!

One thing important to remember is that new features on Amazon often get rolled out gradually, so you might not see them in your account just yet.

But don't worry, they'll be available to everyone eventually.

Now, what are these exciting new features?

There are actually two new sections: "Rule-Based Bidding" and "Other Bidding Strategies."

We'll dive deeper into the specifics of each one in a moment, but let me just say – these features have the potential to significantly improve your PPC campaigns.

Vova, how about we jump right in and explore them?

Vova: Absolutely! Sounds like it's time to learn something new.

Thanks for walking us through this, Szymon.

Let's get down to business and see what these new bidding strategies are all about!

Rule-Based Bidding

Szymon: Alright, let's take a closer look at the first option: Rule-Based Bidding.

This feature allows you to set a specific rule for adjusting your bids automatically.

The goal?

To maintain a target ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) that you set yourself.

On the screenshot below, you can see an example where the desired ROAS is set to 2.28.

But that's just an example, you can easily adjust this number to reflect your own goals.

Remember, ROAS and ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sale) are basically opposites.

So, if you aim for a 33% ACOS, you'd enter a 3.3 here for your desired ROAS.

Once you set this rule, Amazon will automatically tweak your bids in real time.

The goal is to get you as close as possible to your target ROAS, while still staying within your budget.

This is a big deal because it means Amazon is taking a more hands-on approach to bid adjustments, helping you stay on track with your campaign goals.

By the way, it's important to remember that rule-based bidding is a new feature still under development.

While it shows a lot of promise, we don't have extensive results on its effectiveness just yet.

So, it's a good idea to approach it with a bit of caution as you experiment.

Like any new feature in beta testing, it might have some bumps along the way before it reaches its full potential.

The good news is that Amazon is constantly working on improvements, and this feature could eventually make bid adjustment software obsolete.

Overall, the introduction of rule-based bidding is a significant development in the world of Amazon PPC.

Vova: Hold on a second, Szymon.

Can you explain ROAS, especially for those who might be new to this?

So, ROAS stands for Return On Ad Spend.

In the example on the screen, you have it set to 3.3.

Let's break down what that means for us sellers.

Szymon: Sure, I'd be happy to explain that.

For most Amazon sellers, the concept of ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sale) is familiar.

It basically tells you how much you spend on advertising for every dollar you make in sales from those ads.

Here's how ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) connects to that: it's basically the flip side of the coin.

Instead of a cost, it shows you the return you're getting on your ad spend.

So, if you set your ROAS target at 3.3, it means you're aiming to get back $3.30 for every $1.00 you invest in advertising.

Let's say your typical profit margin on a product is 30%.

In this scenario, you might not be looking to make a profit directly from your ads, but rather use them to improve your ranking for relevant keywords.

In that case, setting your ROAS target around 3.3 (which translates to a 30% ACOS) would be a good strategy.

However, if you do want to make some profit directly from your advertising, you can adjust this target accordingly.

The exciting part about rule-based bidding is that it automates this process.

Once you set your target ROAS, Amazon will automatically adjust your bids in real-time to try and get you as close to that target as possible.

This can save you a lot of time and effort compared to manually adjusting bids yourself.

Vova: That's a pretty neat feature, Szymon.

It will be interesting to see how well rule-based bidding performs in the real world.

We'll definitely have to keep an eye on it!

Szymon: Absolutely! We're excited about this new addition as well.

We'll be sure to share our findings as we test it out, including some concrete results.

Feel free to leave a comment below the video of this article and let us know your thoughts on rule-based bidding – we'd love to hear from you!

Now, are you ready to dive into the second new feature?

Vova: Absolutely, let's do it!

Schedule Rules (Day Parting)

Szymon: Now let's move on to the second exciting feature: schedule rules.

This is basically Amazon's way of letting you set up dayparting within your campaigns.

Dayparting is a strategy where you adjust your bids based on the time of day.

So, with schedule rules, you can create guidelines based on your campaign's performance.

To activate this feature, you'll need to select "Other Bidding Strategies" in the settings. ⚙️

The good news is this works with any bidding strategy you already use, whether it's upward adjustments, downward adjustments only, or fixed bids.

For safety reasons, we usually recommend using downward adjustments only.

This means your bids won't accidentally go too high.

Once you've activated schedule rules, you can start adding them.

I've already added one as an example, but you can actually stack multiple rules on top of each other.

This lets you create more complex dayparting strategies.

Here's an example of how schedule rules can be helpful.

When Does Your PPC Campaign Perform The Best

Let's say you sell office products.

You might notice that your sales perform best during weekdays, specifically during typical working hours (9 to 5).

Keep in mind that Amazon's default time zone is Pacific Time (PT), so you'll need to adjust the schedule accordingly if you're in a different time zone.

To set up a schedule rule, let's say you want to focus on weekdays only.

You'd click on "Weekly" and then choose Monday through Friday, deselecting Saturday and Sunday.

Amazon offers two options for scheduling: run the rule all day or choose a specific start and end time.

Since you know your sales peak between 9 AM and 5 PM, you'd pick those times as your start and end.

The next step is to adjust your bids for this time period.

Let's say you want to increase your bids by 20%.

You can create a rule name like "Weekdays 9 AM to 5 PM" and enter "+20%" for the adjustment.

This tells Amazon to automatically increase your bids by 20% during those specific weekdays and times.

The beauty of schedule rules is that you can create multiple rules and even edit them later on.

You can activate or deactivate these rules whenever you want.

Let's create another one as an example.

I know weekdays are my best performing days overall, but sales are also strong throughout the day.

So, I'll create a separate rule for a flat 10% increase across all weekdays.

This rule would be called "Weekdays 10% Increase."

Now, let's add another rule on top of that for the specific window of 9 AM to 5 PM.

We know sales are even better during those working hours, so we can create a rule called "Weekdays 9 AM to 5 PM" with a 20% increase.

Here's what this means in action: Your bids will get a 10% boost throughout all weekdays (Monday to Friday).

But during the peak hours of 9 AM to 5 PM on those weekdays, your bids will actually see a total increase of 30% (the 10% base increase + the additional 20% increase stacked on top).

It's important to remember that these schedule rules will apply to all placements – including top of search, product pages, and rest of search.

So, your bids will be adjusted everywhere during the times you set.

There's one important thing to keep in mind about stacking these rules.

Remember that we also have separate adjustments for placements like top of search.

So, for example, if you set a top of search adjustment of +10% on top of your existing schedule rules, that would be an additional 10% increase specifically for top of search ads between 9 AM and 5 PM on weekdays.

In that case, your total increase for those peak hours would jump to 40% (the 10% base increase + the 20% schedule rule increase + the 10% top of search adjustment).

The key takeaway here is that these adjustments can stack up, so it's important to be mindful when setting them.

Now, some of you might be wondering: how do you figure out your peak performance times?

There's a handy tool within Amazon Seller Central that can help you with this.

Here's how to access it: Go to the Reports section.

Select “Sponsored Ads Reports”

Click on "Create Report." 

Pick “Sponsored Products” from “Report Category”

Go to "Report Type."

Select "Campaign."

Now, here's the exciting part: a new feature is now available!

You'll see an option to segment by time.

This powerful feature lets you see how your campaigns perform throughout the day, giving you valuable insights into peak sales times.

We'll select "Hourly" for the segment, but it's important to note that there's a limit on the data you can view at once.

While you can set the look-back window to 30 days, you'll only be able to see data for a 14-day period within that time frame. 

In simpler terms, you can either look at the first 14 days of the most recent 30 days, or the last 14 days of the most recent 40 days.

As you can see on the screenshot below, the tool currently only allows me to select a two-week window.

This is because the report can generate a massive amount of information – for example, the report I just downloaded has over 119,000 lines of data!

While the data limit might seem restrictive, it's important to remember that analyzing that much information can be overwhelming.

To make the data easier to understand, you'll typically need to organize it using a tool called a pivot table (which goes beyond the scope of this article).

In essence, a pivot table allows you to group and summarize your data in a way that highlights trends and patterns.

For instance, you might want to separate the data by product to see which ones perform best at certain times of day.

This way, you can create even more targeted ad campaigns that are more likely to reach the right people at the right time.

Let's take a closer look at a specific example from the report.

We can see details like clicks and impressions for different time periods.

By organizing this data by day of the week, you can identify which days tend to be most successful for your campaigns.

For example, you might find that you receive more clicks on Sundays in the evening.

The next step is to use this information to set up your schedule rules.

So, if you see that your campaigns perform best on Sunday evenings, you can come back to Amazon Seller Central and create a rule specifically for that time.

The rule would automatically increase your bids during those evenings, potentially leading to more exposure and, in turn, more sales.

This new hourly segmentation feature in Amazon Seller Central reports is a powerful tool.

By understanding your peak performance times, you can create more strategic ad campaigns and potentially increase your sales.

We're excited to test this feature out and see the results!

Vova: That's a really interesting feature, Szymon!

To remind everyone reading, below is a link to Szymon's website.

If you're a larger seller (making six or seven figures or more) and need help setting up these features, Szymon and his agency can assist you.

Of course, you can also manage them yourself if you prefer.

For smaller sellers just starting out, this new functionality can still be a valuable tool to help you grow your business.

If you're a larger seller who needs help getting started with these features, click on the button below to schedule a free consultation with Szymon.

Book a Free Consultation with Szymon

He can assess your needs and see if he can be of assistance.

I also recommend checking out my other videos with Szymon on Amazon PPC.

There are many free resources available if you'd like to learn how to manage your campaigns yourself, whether you're a virtual assistant or just looking to expand your knowledge.

Access my Complete Playlist on Amazon PPC

Thanks again for all the insights, Szymon!

Would you like to add anything before I wrap it up?

Szymon: Thanks everyone for tuning in!

We covered a lot of ground, and I know the data can seem like a lot to handle at first.

In a future article, we'll walk you through how to create a pivot table.

This is a helpful tool that can organize and summarize the information you get from these reports, making it easier to identify trends and patterns.

Trust me, taking the time to organize this data is well worth the effort.

It will give you valuable insights into your campaign performance and help you make smarter bidding decisions.

Vova: Thanks, Szymon!

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All Wrapped Up!

So there you have it!

This conversation with Szymon gave you a great introduction to Amazon Seller Central's new hourly segmentation feature.

You learned how to find your peak performance times and how to use that information to set up schedule rules for your campaigns.

By making these adjustments, you can potentially reach more of the right people at the right time, which could lead to more sales.

We also talked about how to organize the data you get from these reports, and Szymon mentioned he'll cover that in more detail in a future video.

Stay tuned for that, and in the meantime, don't forget to check out my playlist for more helpful resources from Szymon!