Guide to dynamic bidding - up and down, with Sponsored Products

Choosing the right bidding strategy is an important part of your campaign set-up when thinking about how to help boost sales.

In this guide, we’ll deep dive on dynamic bids - up and down. After reading, you’ll know what dynamic bidding - up and down is, why it’s a good option for your Sponsored Products campaigns, as well as when and how to use it.

In the US, 'up and down' campaigns delivered 119% more ad-attributed sales per campaign, at a 5% lower return on ad spend (ROAS) compared to ‘down only’ campaigns. *

If you’re looking for information on all bidding strategies before getting into up-and-down dynamic bidding, check out this page.

Let’s get into it.

What is dynamic bids - up and down?

When setting up a Sponsored Products campaign, you will have an option to select the type of bidding strategy. One of the options is dynamic bids - up and down.

When you select dynamic bids - up and down, we will raise or lower your bid based on the likelihood of the potential click converting to a sale. That means we will increase your bids in real time to help win impressions that may be more likely to convert to a sale, such as when your ad appears for a highly relevant shopping query. In contrast, we will reduce your bids for impressions that are less likely to convert to a sale, to focus your spend on quality clicks and help reduce spend in less impactful placements.

If I have a bid of $1.00, how much could I spend?

For Sponsored Products, we will increase your bids by up to 100% for placements at the top of the first page of shopping results. This is because a placement at the top of shopping results is more likely to get clicks and impressions than one lower down the page. For all other placements, we won’t increase your bids by more than 50%, as these placements may be less likely to convert to a sale.

Let’s take an example: imagine you have a bid of $1.00. Currently, we can increase this bid by up to 100%, so that would be a maximum of $2.00 for opportunities on top of the first page of shopping results. For an opportunity on all other placements, we’re able to increase that by up to 50%, so that would be up to $1.50.

What are the main benefits of using dynamic bids - up and down?

There are several benefits, including:

  • Gives you more control over how and where you place your advertisements, allowing you to customize your campaigns to suit your specific advertising strategy.
  • Helps increase impressions, clicks, and sales opportunities by focusing your bids on opportunities more likely to convert to a sale, while preventing you spending budget on clicks that are less likely to convert to a sale.
  • The flexibility of your bids means you’re able to learn what an effective bid is for your brand, which can help inform the optimization of your other campaigns. Take time to test and learn to find what the best approach is for you and your products.
  • You can get started in just a few clicks.

When should I use dynamic bids - up and down?

A dynamic bids - up and down strategy is best to use when:

  • Your key objective is sales
  • You want to win the ad placements at the top of the page for keywords within your selected campaign
  • You have a high-performing campaign and want to help maximize results
  • You have a campaign that features ASINs with excess inventor
  • You have a campaign that features deal ASINs

When selecting your bid, take into account how the dynamic elements of an up and down bidding strategy will effect that bid. Ensure you are prepared to potentially spend double the amount of the bid you input. Since this strategy adjusts your bid up and down in proportion to the likelihood of a conversion, it may deliver more conversions for your ad spend, compared to the fixed and dynamic bids - down only bidding strategies.

How can I use dynamic bids - up and down in my automatic and manual campaigns?

Creating and adjusting your campaigns to use dynamic bids - up and down is easy. You can update or create a new campaign with dynamic bids - up and down using one of the following methods:

  • When creating a new campaign with automatic or manual targeting, select dynamic bids - up and down under the Campaign Bidding Strategy section.
  • To update the bidding strategy for existing campaigns, go to the Campaign Settings page of the campaign you’d like to update and select dynamic bids - up and down under the Campaign Bidding Strategy section, and click Save to apply the update to your campaign.

How should I monitor/optimize campaigns after launching a dynamic bids - up and down strategy?

You should review your bids often, about once every two weeks.

For campaigns that use automatic targeting, review the performance of the automatic targeting defaults (i.e., close match, loose match, substitutes, and complements) in campaign manager and make adjustments to your bids to meet your campaign objectives.

For campaigns that use manual targeting, monitor for high-performing keywords, categories, or products and raise your bids for a chance to increase your impressions.

You can use the Targeting Report and sort by highest to lowest sales to determine which targeted keywords, categories, or products are meeting your business goals. For targets that generate conversions that meet your business goals, consider raising your bids. You can also identify keywords, categories, or products that are not meeting your conversion goals and consider lowering your bids for these targets.

We recommend that you limit your changes while testing strategies, so that you can attribute the difference in performance to a specific change.

Great! I’m ready to get started.

Head to campaign manager to begin optimizing your existing campaigns or to create a new campaign, using the dynamic bids - up and down strategy.

Get started

* Amazon internal data, US, August 2020