Auto and broad match campaigns exist for keyword discovery and organic ranking research, not as the intended long-term profit driver — see Auto Campaign as ~10%-of-Budget Keyword-Harvesting Cap. Left unmanaged they get expensive fast, because they keep spending broadly instead of concentrating budget on proven winners.
Broad/auto campaigns and the Amazon Search Term Report surface search terms with no obvious relation to the product (e.g. "CBD cream" showing up for a non-CBD product) that the listing would never otherwise be indexed for, since customers search that way regardless of the product's actual formulation. The fix is to proactively harvest winning search terms out of broad/auto into their own exact match campaigns, which concentrates budget on proven converters and enables per-keyword placement control.
How many sales a search term needs before it's worth harvesting into exact match depends on the seller's customer acquisition economics: a high-LTV brand can justify harvesting after a single sale, while the general rule of thumb for most sellers is three to five sales before harvesting.
Branded search terms surfacing inside generic broad/phrase/auto campaigns are a special case: they indicate brand-aware demand rather than open discovery, and should be segregated into their own campaign — see Buyer/Shopper Intent Segregation for PPC Campaigns.
Set an explicit sales threshold before promoting a broad/auto search term into its own exact match campaign. Three to five sales is a reasonable default for most sellers, but a brand with a high allowable customer-acquisition cost — because its lifetime value supports it — can justify harvesting off as little as one sale. Treat the number as a starting point: raise or lower it based on whether the harvested term stays profitable afterward.
Auto and broad campaigns work as discovery tools precisely because the A9 algorithm indexes and serves ads based on observed customer search behavior, not on the product listing's own literal attributes — a listing can convert on a search term (e.g. "CBD cream") that it isn't even legally allowed to use in its own copy: "That doesn't stop customers from searching it." That mismatch is why winning terms have to be found in the Amazon Search Term Report rather than assumed from the product's attributes, then moved into dedicated exact match campaigns to concentrate budget and gain placement control.
Из тем: PPC Campaign Structure & Bidding