Holiday advertising optimization: Perfect your next campaign

Launching an advertising campaign is an exciting first step, but the real work begins with optimization. This scenario-based guide shows you how to leverage insights to fine-tune campaigns, improve performance, and drive sales growth during key shopping events.

This guide includes content from the Ads Strategy Guidebook for holiday marketing 2025. View the entire guidebook here.

This root cause may apply to your campaign if you’re seeing high impressions and clicks, but few orders in your search term report, you may be targeting too broadly.

To fix this, use the following insights to refine your targeting.

• Search term or keywords report: Identify keywords with five or more orders and a healthy return on ad spend (ROAS) in the last 14 days and move them into their own campaigns.
• Search query performance (in Seller Central): Prioritize keywords with a high search query score to help improve conversion probability.
• Negative targeting to improve efficiency: If a search term is generating clicks but has zero sales, add it as a negative exact match.

To confirm this root cause, look for a gap between where impressions are concentrated and where conversions come from—for example, high spend on broad or generic terms with low ROAS versus underfunded exact match keywords with strong ROAS. Check if high-converting terms are losing top-of-search visibility, which indicates bids may not be aligned with conversion likelihood.

If you find these mismatches, adjust your bids based on how likely each keyword is to convert, using a mix of aggressive, moderate, and conservative bidding strategies.

• Aggressive bids: Use for exact match keywords and specific, high-intent queries. Apply these to high-converting terms that are losing top-of-search impressions but show healthy ROAS.
• Moderate bids: Apply to phrase match, branded, and long-tail terms to engage interested shoppers and expand reach with relevant queries.
• Conservative bids: Use for broad match keywords to discover new search terms and capture wider audiences without overspending.

When you examine your click-through rate (CTR) and see that you are getting a lot of clicks but few or zero orders, this could indicate your product detail page isn’t inspiring shoppers to buy.

To fix this, ensure your deal is immediately visible on desktop and mobile. Use high-quality images and A+ Content to highlight your product's benefits and reinforce its value. This is your moment to help turn browsers into customers.

If you see low engagement on your detail page, Brand Store, or ads, you might have not planned a strategy to bring back shoppers who viewed your product but didn't buy. Shoppers often compare multiple products before purchasing, and you may be losing them after the first click.

To fix this, reengage them with "Campaign Bid Adjustments" for built-in audiences on Sponsored Brands or remarketing audiences on Sponsored Display, using "optimize for conversion" strategy and high-quality video instead of image.

During high-traffic events, precision targeting is key. Focus your budget on high-intent shoppers to help maximize ROAS.

A sign that your campaigns weren’t prepared for the traffic surge could be if your results in the campaign manager show estimated missed impressions, clicks, and sales due to campaigns running out of budget.

How to fix it:

• Scale budgets proactively: Start increasing your daily budgets incrementally by 20–30%, three to five days before the event. This gives your campaigns time to adjust.
• Pre-set your rules: Set up your schedule-based budget rules to automatically increase budgets for the event before it begins. This ensures you're ready for the first wave of traffic.
• Increase baseline bids: Review your search term reports to identify top-performing keywords at least two weeks leading up to the event. During the event, consider increasing your baseline bids for campaigns that include these terms to account for the traffic surge.

Seeing low "average time in budget" in the "Budgets" (Beta) section of the campaign manager could indicate that your budget wasn’t paced to last. To fix it:

• Review conversions hourly during peak times. If you're spending heavily without seeing sales, it's a good signal to adjust your strategy.
• Set up performance-based rules to help your budget go further. For example, a rule like “If ROAS is greater than 4, increase budget by 30%” can help you efficiently capture more sales.
• For Sponsored Brands, consider increasing your target cost-per-click (CPC) or cost per mille (vCPM) by at least 30% for campaigns with high-performing keywords and deal ASINs, coupled with schedule-based budget rules.

High advertising cost of sales (ACOS) and low return on ad spend (ROAS) for specific keywords or campaigns is a key signal that your bids aren’t optimized for conversions.

Try these bidding strategies to fix it:

• For Sponsored Products: Consider switching high-priority campaigns (like those with deal ASINs) to the "dynamic bids - up and down" strategy to help capture sales when traffic surges.
• For Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display: Use cost controls to automatically manage bids, helping you drive conversions at a price that works for you.

If you’re noticing low impressions or visibility for campaigns targeting key placements despite sufficient budget, you may need to optimize to drive relevant traffic.

To fix this, leverage the top-of-search impression share report to find high-performing keywords where your impression share is low. Create a dedicated campaign for these search terms with Sponsored Products to help drive product discovery. Use exact match and select "Dynamic bids - up and down." Then, in the "Adjust bids by placement" section, apply an aggressive bid multiplier for "Top of search" (e.g., +200% or higher) to signal your priority to show up at the top of search results.

Ensure your ads run when it matters most by combining smart budget allocation, strategic bidding, and automated tools to fund your best performers.

On average, Sponsored Brands advertisers who increased their bids by 100% or more for new-to-brand (NTB) shoppers saw 2x more NTB orders than those who didn't increase their bids.²

A decline in total orders or units during the event compared to non-event periods could mean you need to improve cross-promotion tactics.

To help improve, use A+ Content on product pages to highlight complementary products and use Sponsored Brands product collection ads to link to your Brand Store, encouraging shoppers to explore your full catalog.

An indicator of poor audience segmentation is when your campaign setup shows broad targeting without specific audience segments like new versus existing customers or cart
abandoners.

How to fix it:

• Split your budgets between new-to-brand shoppers and audiences that have engaged with you before. Customize your ad creative and messaging for each group.
• Leverage remarketing audiences with Sponsored Display. This can be very effective for last-minute shoppers who are already familiar with your brand.

You might see low visitor engagement (dwell time or Store quality), sales, units sold, or orders attributed to Brand Store visits in the Brand Store Insights page. This can also include high average bounce rate within the Brand Store, suggesting shoppers aren't exploring.

How to fix it:

• Include an automated “All Deals page” in the Brand Store navigation menu, creating a promotional banner to help shoppers easily find all your current offers. It updates automatically when offers expire.
• Feature your historically successful products and current bestsellers on your homepage using a product collections or featured deals tile, ensuring these products are added to your pages first. For a more in-depth resource, including recommended font sizes for mobile, read our article on optimizing for mobile.

Sponsored Brands “Drive page visits” campaigns using Brand Store landing pages saw 28% higher sales attributed to advertising compared to other landing page options.³

If you’re seeing a low number of new customer reviews, low average star ratings post event, and low repeat purchase rates after the event, especially for customers acquired during the event, as seen in the Repeat Purchase Behavior report in Seller Central, consider optimizing your post-event engagement strategy.

Tips to improve your engagement strategy:

• Continue remarketing with Sponsored Display to stay top-of-mind with recent visitors.
• Use built-in audiences with Sponsored Brands to reach audiences with a high likelihood to purchase based on their recent shopping activity.

Sustainable growth comes from a full-funnel strategy. Combine new customer acquisition, remarketing, and brand-building to help increase immediate sales and long-term customer value.

Sources

¹ Amazon internal data, US. Baseline period is Jan 2024 to Dec 2024. Average growth of campaigns across all categories 2024 as compared to same time period in 2023.

² Amazon internal data, WW, Jan–Mar 2025.

³ Amazon internal data, WW, July–December 2024.

⁴ Amazon internal data, AE, AU, BE, BR, CA, DE, EG, ES, FR, IT, JP, MX, NL, PL, SA, SE, SG, TR, UK, US, ZA. ROAS is measured between Nov 11–Dec 7, 2024.