Every dollar of Amazon ad spend goes to one decision: who sees your ad. Get targeting right and the same budget buys shoppers who are ready to buy. Get it wrong and you pay for clicks from people looking for something else.
This guide is for brands already running Amazon ads that want more of their spend going to the searches and shoppers that turn into sales. It covers every way Amazon lets you target, how we decide which to use, and the routine that keeps an account clean as it grows.
The short version
- Amazon gives you four ways to target: automatic, keywords, products and audiences. Most accounts need all four, each with a different job.
- Let automatic and broad campaigns find new searches, then move the ones that sell into exact match, where you control the bid.
- Don’t cut a search term too early. Our rule: wait until it has 2.5 times the clicks your listing normally needs to make a sale.
- Competitors are targeting your product pages right now. Decide whether you defend them, and which of their pages you go after.
In this guide
- The Four Ways to Target on Amazon
- Keyword Research: Start With What Shoppers Buy From
- Match Types: How Closely a Search Must Match
- The Harvest Loop: Find With Broad, Earn With Exact
- Negative Keywords Without Cutting Sales
- Product Targeting: Your Pages and Your Competitors’
- Audiences: Reaching Shoppers Who Already Know You
- How to Analyze Competitors’ Ads
- Structure Campaigns Around Products, Not Ad Types
- FAQ
1. The Four Ways to Target on Amazon
Every Amazon ad campaign targets in one of four ways. Each answers a different question about who should see the ad.
| Targeting | How it works | Best for | Available in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Automatic | Amazon chooses searches and products based on your listing | Finding search terms you didn’t know about | Sponsored Products |
| Keywords | You choose the searches, with a match type for each | Controlling bids on searches you know sell | Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands |
| Products | You choose product pages, brands or categories to appear on | Taking sales from competitors and defending your own pages | Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display |
| Audiences | You choose shoppers by what they’ve viewed or bought | Bringing back shoppers who looked but didn’t buy | Sponsored Display |
Sponsored Products is where most budgets go, and where most of this guide applies. Sponsored Brands shows your logo, a headline or a video above the results. Sponsored Display reaches shoppers on product pages, on Amazon’s home page and off Amazon.
The mistake we see most often isn’t picking the wrong type. It’s running everything in one place: automatic, broad and exact keywords, and competitor products in the same few campaigns, with one budget and no way to tell which part is working.
2. Keyword Research: Start With What Shoppers Buy From
Good targeting starts with a list of the searches your customers use, grouped by how close each search is to a purchase.
- High intent: the shopper is describing your product closely, such as “stainless steel dog bowl with stand”. These convert best and deserve their own bids.
- Mid intent: the shopper knows the category but not the product, such as “dog bowl”. More traffic, lower conversion.
- Discovery: the shopper is earlier in the journey, such as “puppy essentials”. Cheap reach that sometimes surprises you.
The best sources are your own data, not a tool’s estimate: the search term report from your campaigns, and Search Query Performance in Brand Analytics, which shows how often shoppers search a term and how many of them click and buy your product.
We cover the full process, from building the list to grouping it, in Amazon PPC Keyword Research: How to Group Keywords by Buyer Intent.
3. Match Types: How Closely a Search Must Match
Each keyword you target has a match type. It decides how closely a shopper’s search has to match your keyword before your ad can show.
| Match type | Your ad can show for | Use it to |
|---|---|---|
| Exact | That search, plus close variants such as plurals | Control bids on proven searches, and on searches you must rank for |
| Phrase | Searches that contain your phrase in that order | Capture longer searches around a known phrase |
| Broad | Searches related to your keyword, in any order, including synonyms | Find new searches, at the cost of some irrelevant clicks |
There’s also a fourth option Amazon doesn’t advertise, the broad match modifier, which sits between broad and phrase. We explain when each one wins, with real campaign numbers, in Amazon PPC Match Types: Broad, Phrase, Exact, and the 4th Type Amazon Hides.
4. The Harvest Loop: Find With Broad, Earn With Exact
The core routine behind most well-run accounts is simple:
- Find. Automatic, broad and phrase campaigns show your ads for searches you didn’t think of.
- Read. Every week or two, open the search term report and see which searches produced sales.
- Move. Add the searches that sell as exact-match keywords in their own campaign, with their own bid.
- Block. Add the same searches as negatives in the discovery campaigns, so the two campaigns don’t compete.
- Cut. Add searches that spend and never convert as negatives, once they’ve had a fair chance (section 5).
This is how a water bottle brand we worked with ran its account. Automatic and phrase or broad campaigns found the search terms, which then “graduated” into exact-match campaigns. Along with new video ads and competitor targeting, monthly revenue went from $225K/Month to $674K/Month, and orders from 1,500 to 4,400 a month. Read the case study
The cadence matters. An education brand ran a fixed bi-weekly cycle: harvest new terms, filter out the ones that weren’t converting. Its most valuable searches got single-keyword campaigns, which gave tight control over bids, budgets and placements. Average sales went from 10 to 50 units a day. Read the case study
Not sure where your ad spend is leaking? We’ll look at your account and show you where the margin is going. You decide what to do with it. Get my free audit
5. Negative Keywords Without Cutting Sales
Negative keywords stop your ad from showing for searches you choose. They’re the fastest way to cut waste, and the fastest way to cut sales by accident.
The usual mistake is cutting a search term after a handful of clicks with no sale. A few clicks don’t tell you much. Our rule is to wait until a search term has had 2.5 times the clicks your listing normally needs to make a sale.
Clicks before negating = (1 ÷ conversion rate) × 2.5
| Your conversion rate | Clicks per sale | Negate after (no sale) |
|---|---|---|
| 20% | 5 | about 13 clicks |
| 12.9% (median in our benchmarks) | about 8 | about 19 clicks |
| 8% | about 13 | about 31 clicks |
| 5% | 20 | 50 clicks |
The median ad conversion rate among the 198 largest US accounts in Sophie Hub was 12.9% in September 2026, so a typical listing should give a search term about 19 clicks before cutting it. A listing that converts at 5% needs 50.
A few more rules we follow:
- Review terms one by one. Never bulk-negate a whole report. A term that looks irrelevant sometimes converts.
- Use exact negatives first. A phrase negative on a short word can block hundreds of good searches.
- Check the listing before blaming the term. If many relevant searches get clicks but no sales, the problem is probably the listing, not the targeting. See how to improve product visibility on Amazon.
When a search term does convert, but at an ACoS above your target, lower the bid instead of negating it. How to set that target is in What Is a Good ACoS on Amazon?
6. Product Targeting: Your Pages and Your Competitors’
Product targeting puts your ad on specific product pages and in search results related to those products. It has two jobs: taking sales from competitors and protecting your own pages.
Offense: target competitors you can beat. Choose competitors where you have a clear advantage a shopper can see: a better rating, a lower price, more reviews or a stronger offer. A kitchen products brand we worked with used Sponsored Display to target lower-rated, higher-priced competitors and take their market share. Read the case study
Defense: cover your own pages. If you don’t advertise on your own product pages, competitors will. When we took over the water bottle brand above, competitors’ ads sat on its pages and the brand wasn’t targeting theirs. Covering both sides was part of the turnaround.
How to pick product targets:
- Start with the products that show up alongside yours for your best searches.
- Check each one’s rating, review count and price against yours. Target the ones where yours wins on at least one.
- Add your own products as targets, so your other products fill the ad slots on your pages.
- Give product targets their own campaign. They behave differently from keywords and need different bids.
7. Audiences: Reaching Shoppers Who Already Know You
Audience targeting reaches shoppers based on what they’ve done, not what they’re searching for right now. On Amazon it runs through Sponsored Display.
The audiences most brands should start with:
- Viewed your product but didn’t buy. The cheapest sale is usually the one you nearly made already.
- Bought your product before. Best for consumables, refills and products people buy again.
- Viewed similar products. Shoppers comparing options in your category.
Keep audience campaigns small and separate at first, and judge them on total sales, not only on attributed ad sales, because their job is often to bring a shopper back to buy later. For consumables, pair them with Subscribe & Save so a returning customer becomes a recurring one.
8. How to Analyze Competitors’ Ads
You can’t see a competitor’s ad account, but you can see a lot of what it does.
| What to check | Where | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Sponsored placements on your top searches | Amazon search results | Which competitors bid on the searches that matter to you |
| Ads on your product pages | Your own listings | Who is targeting your shoppers directly |
| Search Query Performance | Brand Analytics | Searches where shoppers click and buy someone else |
| Reviews and ratings | Their listings | What shoppers complain about, which your listing can answer |
| Price and deal history | Their listings, or a price-history tool | When they discount, and how often |
Then act on it. A hydration brand studied its top competitors and rebuilt its product images to look more professional and trustworthy. Conversion went from 7% to 10.6%, and monthly sales tripled. Read the case study
Sometimes the competition isn’t fair. A brand with a patent-pending product was hit by more than 1,000 copycat listings. Even after 90% of them were removed, its organic rank didn’t recover on its own. Rebuilding sales and rank through advertising is what brought it back to #1. Read the case study
A one-hour monthly competitor review
- Search your five most valuable keywords and note who advertises in the top positions.
- Open your three best-selling listings and note whose ads appear on them.
- Check Search Query Performance for searches with strong click share but weak purchase share.
- Read the newest one-star and two-star reviews on your top two competitors.
- Decide on one change: a new product target, a defensive campaign or a listing fix.
9. Structure Campaigns Around Products, Not Ad Types
How you group campaigns decides what you can see and control. We build around products and keyword groups, not around ad types.
A popcorn brand we worked with gave every flavor its own campaign structure, so each flavor’s spend and results could be judged on its own. Read the case study A health brand launching a new product had campaigns built from the ground up, segmented by match type, search volume and keyword theme. Read the case study
When a product needs to rank for one search, it gets a campaign built for that. A health testing brand focused on the product with the clearest demand, its methylation test, and pushed it to #1 in both organic and paid results, going from $0 to over $100K in its best month. Read the case study Our step-by-step approach is in Amazon Ranking Strategy 2026: How We Ranked #1 for a Highly Competitive Keyword, and the campaign types we use most are in Top 5 Amazon PPC Campaigns That Are Actually Working in 2026.
Not sure where your ad spend is leaking? We’ll look at your account and show you where the margin is going. You decide what to do with it. Get my free audit
10. FAQ
Targeting decides who sees your ad. Amazon offers four types: automatic, where Amazon chooses; keywords, where you choose searches; products, where you choose product pages; and audiences, where you choose shoppers by what they’ve viewed or bought.
Both. Automatic campaigns find search terms you wouldn’t think of. Manual campaigns give you control over the ones that sell. Move winning terms from automatic into manual exact match.
It’s product targeting by individual product (ASIN). Your ad shows on that product’s page and in related placements. Use it to target competitors you beat on rating, price or reviews, and to defend your own pages.
When a search term is clearly irrelevant, or when it has had 2.5 times the clicks your listing normally needs for a sale without converting. At a 12.9% conversion rate, that’s about 19 clicks.
Every one to two weeks for most accounts. High-spend accounts may need a weekly review.
You can see where they appear: in search results and on product pages, including yours. Search Query Performance in Brand Analytics shows searches where shoppers buy from someone else. You can’t see their bids or budgets.
Related Guides
- Amazon PPC Bidding and Budget Strategy
- 12 Amazon PPC Mistakes We Find in Almost Every Account Audit
- The Amazon PPC Tools We Actually Use
- Amazon Seller Fees Explained: Every Fee and Your Real Margin
Chris Rawlings is the founder of Sophie Society and an Amazon Ads Verified Partner. Sophie Society manages $5M/Month in Amazon ad spend and has worked with 800+ brands.
Data note: Sophie Hub figures cover the 198 largest US-marketplace accounts connected to Sophie Hub in September 2026, each spending $5K/Month or more on ads. These are accounts connected to the platform, not only accounts Sophie Society manages.
