Automatic vs Manual Campaigns – Amazon PPC Optimization

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Automatic Amazon PPC vs Manual PPC Campaigns. Both Automatic and Manual campaigns have their strengths as well as weakness. Depending on the goal of the PPC campaign, leverage the benefits of the campaigns.

It is often suggested to run both Automatic campaigns as well as Manual Campaigns for the same product to reap the benefits of both.

Automatic Campaigns

Automatic Campaigns is where Amazon decides when to display your product ad based on the keywords identified from the title, description and other sections from your product listing.

Advantages of Automatic Campaigns

Automatic Campaigns are easy to set up, especially for PPC beginners
They do not require the homework for keyword bidding nor Keyword Research to identify the most optimal keywords
Automatic campaigns help you identify the long tail search terms for future campaigns which are relatively difficult to identify even by very efficient Keyword Research Tools

Disadvantages of Automatic Campaigns

The page rank of the product ad is not optimized based on the relevance and the profitability of the keyword. Since you have no control on the bids, you bid the same for high converting keywords, low converting keywords and non converting keywords.
Amazon automatically defines the search terms for which your product ad must be displayed. Though this is based on the relevancy of the search term, it might not necessarily be profitable.
Amazon sometimes displays product ads for irrelevant search terms.

Manual Campaigns

The Seller manually defines the keywords and the bid rates in Manual campaigns. Depending on the keyword match type the product ad is displayed for the search term.

Advantages of Manual keywords

Manual campaigns have a more precise target audience since the keywords are manually identified by the seller
They help you attain the target ACoS value and maximize the sales
They are especially beneficial for PPC experts

Manual campaigns provide the advantage of different bid rates for keywords of different conversion rates; High converting keywords can be bid high and optimized for high targeting, whereas low converting keywords can be bid at a lower rate.

Disadvantages of Manual Campaigns

Prone to human errors. Since the keywords and bids are manually defined, there is a heavy risk of losing money. Also, it requires additional strategies to harvest seasonal trends.
It is enormously time-consuming and requires a lot of effort in Amazon Keyword Research and bid rates. Even a tiny 0.3 difference in the ROI would require tons of homework. Constant vigilance is necessary to run a healthy campaign structure.