Create an Amazon PPC Campaign: A 10-Minute Guide

Prerequisites: what you need before you start

Before you create your first campaign, a few basics have to be in place. If these prerequisites aren't met, you'll either be unable to create a campaign or burn through your budget without seeing results.

A professional seller account

Amazon PPC is only available to sellers with a professional selling plan. The individual plan (individual seller) has no access to the advertising program. If you're still on the individual plan, you can switch to the professional plan in your account settings under "Account info".

An active listing with the Buy Box

Your product must have an active offer on Amazon, and you must own the Buy Box. Without the Buy Box, your ads won't be served, even if the campaign is active. For private-label products, you usually own the Buy Box automatically. For resale goods with multiple sellers, this isn't always the case.

An optimized listing

Before you invest money in advertising, your listing should be convincing. Because PPC brings visitors to your product page, but the conversion happens on the listing. Make sure the following elements are in place:

• Main image: A professional product photo on a white background
• Additional images: At least 5 high-quality images, ideally with infographics and lifestyle shots
• Title: Relevant keywords integrated, easy to read, under 200 characters
• Bullet points: The five most important product benefits clearly stated
• Description / A+ Content: Detailed product information with images (if you have Brand Registry)
• Reviews: At least 10 to 15 reviews help the conversion rate considerably

Choosing the right campaign type

Amazon offers three campaign types: Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display. For your first campaign, I recommend Sponsored Products. This campaign type is the easiest to set up, delivers the most direct results and doesn't require brand registration.

Campaign type	Best for	For beginners?
Sponsored Products	Direct product sales, keyword targeting	Yes, ideal to start with
Sponsored Brands	Brand awareness, Brand Registry required	Only as a second step
Sponsored Display	Retargeting, audience targeting	For advanced users

Step 1: Create the campaign in Seller Central

Open Seller Central and navigate to "Advertising" > "Campaign Manager". Click "Create campaign" and select "Sponsored Products".

Now you configure the basic settings:

1. Campaign name: Choose a meaningful name that will later help you identify the campaign quickly. A proven scheme: [product name] - [targeting type] - [match type]. Example: "Premium Yoga Mat - Manual - Exact".
2. Start date: Immediately or on a specific date. If you want to set up the campaign without going live right away, you can set the start date in the future.
3. End date: Leave the end date open (no end date). You want the campaign to run until you pause it manually. Fixed end dates cause campaigns to expire unnoticed.

Step 2: Set the budget

The daily budget determines how much Amazon may spend on this campaign per day at most. Don't set it too low at the beginning so the campaign can collect enough data.

Recommended starting budget

• Products under $20: $10 to $15 daily budget
• Products $20 to $50: $15 to $25 daily budget
• Products over $50: $25 to $50 daily budget

These values are benchmarks. The budget should be high enough that the campaign isn't already exhausted by midday. If the budget is depleted early, you miss the important afternoon and evening hours when many purchases happen.

Step 3: Set up targeting

Now it gets interesting: you decide how Amazon serves your ads. With Sponsored Products you have two basic options.

Automatic targeting

With an automatic campaign, Amazon takes over the targeting. The algorithm analyzes your listing (title, bullet points, backend keywords) and shows your ad for relevant search queries. Automatic campaigns have four targeting groups:

• Close Match: Search queries closely related to your product
• Loose Match: Search queries that are broader but can still be relevant
• Substitutes: Your ad appears on detail pages of similar products
• Complements: Your ad appears on detail pages of complementary products

Manual targeting

With a manual campaign, you choose the keywords or products for which your ad should appear yourself. You have full control, but need keyword research and experience.

For beginners I recommend the following approach: start with an automatic campaign to collect data. In parallel, or after 2 to 3 weeks, create a manual campaign with the best keywords from the automatic search term report.

Step 4: Set keywords and bids

If you choose manual targeting, you now need to add keywords and set bids.

Selecting keywords

Start with 15 to 25 relevant keywords. Think about which search terms a customer would enter who is looking for exactly your product. Use for this:

• The Amazon search bar (autocomplete shows popular search terms)
• Keywords from your listing (title, bullet points)
• The suggestions Amazon shows when creating the campaign
• The search term report of a previous automatic campaign

Understanding match types

For each keyword you choose a match type:

• Broad match: Your ad appears for search queries that contain your keyword in any order, including synonyms and related terms. Highest reach, but less precise.
• Phrase match: Your ad appears when the search query contains your keyword as a connected phrase, with possible additions before or after.
• Exact match: Your ad appears only for search queries that exactly match your keyword (plus very close variants). Highest precision, lowest reach.

Setting bids

The bid is the maximum amount you want to pay per click. Amazon suggests a recommended bid for each keyword. For the beginning, Amazon's suggestions are a good starting point.

Basic rule: don't set your bid below the lower end of Amazon's recommendation, or your campaign will barely get any impressions. Start in the middle of the recommended range and adjust after 1 to 2 weeks based on the results.

Choosing a bidding strategy

Amazon offers three bidding strategies:

• Dynamic bids - down only: Amazon lowers your bid when a conversion is unlikely. That's the safest option for beginners.
• Dynamic bids - up and down: Amazon raises or lowers bids depending on the conversion probability. Can lead to higher costs but brings more impressions.
• Fixed bids: Amazon always uses exactly the bid you set. Gives you the most control but allows no dynamic adjustment.

For your first campaign I recommend dynamic bids - down only. This strategy protects your budget because Amazon automatically bids less when a click is unlikely to lead to a purchase.

Step 5: Add products and launch the campaign

Select the products you want to advertise. For the beginning I recommend advertising only one product per campaign, or a very small group of closely related products. This makes later analysis and optimization considerably easier.

Create an ad group

Every campaign contains at least one ad group. The ad group connects your products with your keywords and bids. For the beginning, one ad group per campaign is enough. Give it a descriptive name, for example "Yoga Mat - Exact Keywords".

Review and launch the campaign

Before you click "Launch campaign", review all settings:

1. The campaign name is unique and descriptive
2. The daily budget is appropriate (not too low)
3. The targeting type is chosen correctly
4. The keywords are relevant (for manual targeting)
5. The bids are within the recommended range
6. The bidding strategy is set to "dynamic bids - down only"
7. No end date is set (unless you want one)

Click "Launch campaign". Your campaign is usually activated within a few minutes. Sometimes it can take up to an hour until Amazon has completed the first review.

What you should check after launch

Creating a campaign is the easy part. The real work begins afterward. Here's what you should watch in the first days and weeks.

The first 48 hours

After 24 to 48 hours, check whether your campaign is getting impressions. If not, the bids are probably too low. Increase them in steps of 10 to 20%. Note: Amazon shows data with a delay of up to 12 hours. So don't make hasty decisions on the first day.

The first week

After a week you should have first click and conversion data. Watch for:

• Impressions: Is the campaign getting enough visibility? If not, increase bids.
• Click-through rate (CTR): A CTR below 0.2% indicates that your listing (main image, title, price) isn't convincing enough compared to the competition.
• Costs: Is your daily budget used up every day? Then either increase the budget or pause inefficient keywords.

After 2 to 4 weeks

Now you have enough data for the first real optimizations:

• Analyze the search term report: Which actual search terms led to clicks and conversions? Move profitable search terms into manual campaigns as keywords.
• Set negative keywords: Add search terms without conversions but with many clicks as negative keywords to save budget.
• Adjust bids: Keywords with a good ACoS can get higher bids. Keywords with a poor ACoS should get lower bids or be paused.
• Evaluate ACoS: Compare your current ACoS with your break-even ACoS. If your ACoS is well above it, you need optimization. If it's below it, you can scale.

Common mistakes during campaign setup

Even experienced sellers make mistakes when creating new campaigns. Here are the most common ones you should avoid:

• Too many products in one campaign: If you put 20 different products in one campaign, you can't cleanly evaluate the performance of individual products. Keep campaigns lean.
• Budget too low: A daily budget of $2 barely brings any data and causes the campaign to be active only a few hours a day. Invest enough to collect meaningful data.
• No clear naming scheme: After a few months you'll have dozens of campaigns. Without a clear naming scheme you lose track. Define a scheme and stick to it.
• Listing not optimized: PPC brings traffic, but a poor listing doesn't convert. Invest in good images, a convincing title and strong bullet points first.
• Optimizing too early: After one day you have no reliable data. Give every campaign at least 7 to 14 days before you intervene.

Conclusion: just start, then optimize

Creating an Amazon PPC campaign takes less than 10 minutes once you know which settings to choose. The most important thing is to start at all. Perfection isn't the goal of the first setup. You collect data, learn what works and then optimize step by step.

Start with an automatic Sponsored Products campaign to identify the most important keywords for your product. After 2 to 3 weeks, create a manual campaign with the best search terms. And don't forget: regular optimization is more important than the perfect initial setup.