How do bid adjustments by placement work in Amazon PPC?
Amazon lets you multiply bids on Top of Search, Product Pages, and Rest of Search, up to 900% on each. Top of Search converts best on brand and high-intent keywords. Product Pages work for competitor conquest. Rest of Search is often the least profitable and rarely deserves a positive adjustment.
How the multipliers work
You set a base bid. Amazon applies your placement multiplier on top. A +100% multiplier on Top of Search means Amazon can bid up to 2x your base for that placement.
What to actually set
Pull the placement report at campaign level. For any campaign where Top of Search has better CVR and lower ACoS than the average, start with +25% and watch for 2 weeks. Avoid multipliers on Rest of Search unless CVR clearly justifies it.
Frequently asked questions
Can I set placement multipliers per keyword?
No. Multipliers are set at the campaign level in the current UI.
Should I use dynamic bidding with placement multipliers?
Yes, but understand the interaction: dynamic down-only plus a Top of Search multiplier is a common conservative combo.
Does the same multiplier make sense across all SKUs in a campaign?
Only if the SKUs behave similarly. Split campaigns by CVR profile if not.
See this in Nova
Nova surfaces this metric per SKU in near real time so you can act before your next monthly close catches it.
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How often should I harvest keywords from Amazon PPC?
Weekly for active accounts, bi-weekly for smaller ones. Pull the search-term report from the last 7 to 14 days, promote high-converting search terms into exact-match campaigns, and add wasteful ones as negatives. Any longer than 2 weeks and you burn budget on losers.
Do I need branded defense PPC campaigns on Amazon?
Yes, if competitors bid on your brand terms or you are brand-registered with real branded search volume. A dedicated Sponsored Products exact campaign on your brand keywords is cheap insurance. Add Sponsored Brands headline on your top brand queries to own the fold.
How do I find wasted Amazon PPC spend?
Pull 60 days of search-term reports. Flag any search term with 15+ clicks and 0 orders as negative candidates. Flag campaigns whose 30-day ACoS is 2x your target with no volume gain as pause candidates. Between the two, most accounts recover 5% to 15% of budget in a week.
Should I run ASIN targeting on competitor listings?
Yes for defensive and conquest campaigns. Sponsored Products ASIN targeting on your own catalog defends your detail pages. Targeting competitor ASINs works best when your product has a clear differentiator (price, rating, bundle) that shows up in the sponsored slot.