04 Oct Amazon Ads hourly bids key features

Amazon Ads has finally launched an update to its advertising console that provides advertisers with greater flexibility and control over their bidding strategies. Now, it’s possible to adjust bids based on peak conversion hours, representing a significant opportunity to align campaign performance with customer buying trends.

Functionality and Limitations

With this new feature, advertisers can experiment with minimum bids and apply custom rules based on the time of day, increasing bids by a percentage. This bidding adjustment capability is specifically targeted at Sponsored Products campaigns, both in manual and automatic modes, offering an effective way to maximize return on investment.

However, it’s important to note some limitations of this feature. Firstly, as mentioned, it’s only available for Sponsored Products campaigns and does not extend to brand campaigns or display campaigns. Additionally, this feature’s configuration is campaign-level, meaning it cannot be applied to individual ad groups.

Another aspect to consider is that this functionality requires a minimum daily budget of 10 euros to activate and a minimum of 10 orders in the last 30 days. Campaigns that do not meet these requirements will not be able to take advantage of the benefits of hourly segmentation.

The versatility of this tool is impressive, as it can be applied to campaigns using different types of targeting, whether automatic, keyword-based, or product-based. This provides advertisers the freedom to tailor their bidding strategies to their specific needs.

A smart strategy that advertisers can implement using Amazon’s API is to analyze conversion patterns throughout the week and during different times of the day. The idea is to start with low or very low bids during low-demand periods, such as nighttime, and gradually increase them to the maximum bid during peak activity. This tactic allows for maximizing investment efficiency and ensuring resources are used optimally. At Nozama, we have the competitive advantage of having access to the API, so we can plan this part strategically in great detail.

Tips for Using Hourly Bid Adjustments

• Start with a data analysis. Before adjusting your bids, it’s essential to understand your customers’ behavior. Analyze your data to determine when your customers are most likely to search for your products.

• Set realistic bids. Avoid overbidding. Setting bids too high could lead to overspending.

• Run tests. Once you’ve set your bids, monitor your campaign’s performance. If you’re not satisfied with the results, conduct tests to fine-tune your bids.

Hourly Results Report

Following the launch of the hourly bidding feature, still in beta, Amazon Ads has introduced the hourly results report, allowing you to analyze the potential of hourly bid rules for your products and incrementally increase bids during the hours when your customers are active while keeping minimum bids during low-conversion hours.

The drawback is that this report only displays the last 14 days, which may be considered a short timeframe for making informed decisions. Therefore, Nozama’s Advertising team has been working with custom dashboards that provide information for periods of up to 180 days, offering more reliable insights.

Don’t hesitate to contact us to start benefiting from expert management to leverage the opportunities offered by this new Amazon Ads feature.