Amazon Campaign Structure

Understanding how Amazon structures their campaigns is important when it comes to managing your advertising spend.

Your advertising account is broken down into a hierarchy of four different account levels which each have their own unique properties:

  • Portfolio

    • Campaign

      • Ad Group

        • Ad

Each account level acts as a container for the next one: portfolios contain campaigns, campaigns contain ad groups, and ad groups contain ads.

Portfolio

The portfolio is the highest level of your Amazon Advertising account. A portfolio is made of a group of campaigns for organization. Portfolios have limited functionality in optimizing ads and campaigns.

Merch Jar portfolios are currently under development.

Campaign

The campaign is the primary unit of your advertising account. Each campaign contains one or multiple ad groups.

  • Campaigns are set to either automatic or manual targeting, and cannot mix both targeting types.

  • Daily budgets are set at the campaign level.

  • Negative keywords can be added to the campaign level which will effect the targeting of all ad groups it contains.

  • Campaigns can be active, paused, or archived.

Ad Group

Ad groups are nested within campaigns and contain one or multiple ads.

  • Ad groups contain the targeting for all ads within it, e.g. the keywords or products the ads will target.

  • The targeting (keywords or products) is where the bids are set.

  • Manual targeting campaign ad groups can either be keyword or product targeting. A single campaign can contain both keyword and product targeting ad groups.

  • Automatic targeting campaigns have the following match types for targeting that can be enabled or paused: loose, close, compliment, and substitute.

  • Negative keywords can be added to the ad group level which will effect the targeting of all ads it contains, but not other ad groups within the campaign.

  • Search term data is collected at the ad group level.

  • Ad groups can be active, paused, or archived.

The ad is the lowest level of your advertising account and is the product (ASIN) that will be shown when the ad is displayed.

  • Ads can be active, paused, or archived.

Cameron Scot

Merch Jar Cofounder

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