A bid-discovery tactic for Automatic Campaign Four-Way Split (Close Match, Loose Match, Substitutes, Complements) auto campaigns: launch four otherwise-identical copies of the same auto campaign, each at a different bid, to find which bid produces a disproportionately high-performing 'sweet spot' — one campaign can end up carrying most of the sales at a far lower ACoS than the others, rather than performance scaling smoothly with bid size.
Protocol: start the lowest campaign at Amazon's minimum suggested bid, then step up by 10 cents per campaign (e.g. 30¢, 40¢, 50¢, 60¢) up to just below Amazon's maximum suggested bid. Let all four run and compare ACoS/performance once data accumulates, then kill the losers and scale the winning bid.
Reported result: a brand with a 35% ACoS target got an 18% ACoS from its auto campaigns by finding the right bid this way. The tactic was discovered internally by Sophie Society teammates (Chris Pollock and Patrick) rather than being an Amazon-documented practice, and it's caveated as not working identically for every brand/product — it needs testing per listing.
The claimed mechanism: different bid amounts place the same auto campaign into different competitive 'inventory placements' on Amazon's ad auction, so the ladder works by changing who you compete against, not simply by spending more or less — "you never know what bid is going to produce the best results."
Setup: start at Amazon's minimum suggested bid, increase by 10 cents per campaign, up to just below the maximum suggested bid (e.g., 30¢/40¢/50¢/60¢ within a given suggested range), run all four in parallel, then scale whichever bid wins.
Worked example (Sophie Society, internal): the 40¢ bid produced 18% ACoS against a 35% target — dramatically outperforming the 30¢, 50¢, and 60¢ bids combined, defying the assumption that the lowest or highest bid should win.
Caveat: originators Chris Pollock and Patrick explicitly note this doesn't work on every brand or product — "when it does work, it can help you find a real gemstone of just a slot that works super well for you," but it's a high-upside, inconsistent tactic, not a guaranteed win.
Start auto campaign bids around 50p-£1. If the daily budget isn't being fully spent, the bid is too low — raise it in 10-20p increments until spend catches up to budget. Set the daily budget to at least £10 so the campaign generates a meaningful volume of data to judge.
Simple tell that the default bid is too low: if an auto campaign isn't spending through its full daily budget, the bid is too low to win enough auctions — raise it rather than assuming demand is exhausted.
Из тем: PPC Campaign Structure & Bidding