Most sellers learn Amazon Ads campaign manager by creating a campaign and then clicking around when something looks wrong. That works until the account has dozens of campaigns and the question is not "how do I make a campaign" but "where is this money going." The answers are all in campaign manager. They are just spread across levels and tabs that are easy to miss.
This tour walks through campaign manager from the top down: the campaign list, what lives at each level beneath it, and the settings that cause the most trouble when nobody checks them. Amazon updates the interface often, so labels may differ slightly, but the structure has been stable for years.
The campaign list
The first screen is a table of campaigns with a performance chart above it. Three things on this screen do more work than they appear to.
The date range. Everything on the page reflects it. A campaign that looks terrible over the last 7 days may look fine over 30, because recent days have not finished collecting attributed orders. Set the range deliberately every time.
The columns. The default set is not the most useful one. Add the columns you judge campaigns by, usually spend, sales, ACoS, orders, clicks, conversion rate and budget, and save the layout so it comes back.
Filters and portfolios. Filtering by status, type or name narrows the list. Portfolios group campaigns, often by brand or product line, and can carry their own budget cap. A clear naming convention makes filtering by name far more useful.
For a broader walk through the rest of the console, the console walkthrough covers the menus outside campaign manager.
Inside a campaign
Clicking a campaign opens its detail view. The left side lists tabs. For Sponsored Products, the ones that matter most are ad groups, settings, negative targeting, placements, budget rules and history.
Settings holds the campaign name, dates, daily budget and bidding strategy. The bidding strategy choice, fixed bids or dynamic bids that can move down or up and down, changes how every bid in the campaign behaves. Check it whenever a campaign's cost per click moves unexpectedly.
Placements shows how performance splits between top of search, rest of search and product pages, and lets you add a percentage adjustment for each. Many accounts have one placement doing most of the work and another quietly losing money. Sponsored Products placements covers how to read it.
Inside an ad group
An ad group holds the advertised products, the default bid and the targets. Its tabs show the ads (products), the targeting (keywords or products), negative targeting at the ad group level, and search terms.
The targeting tab is where most bid work happens. Each keyword or product target has its own bid, status and performance. Sort by spend to find the targets carrying the most cost, and by ACoS to find the ones costing the most per sale.
The search terms tab shows what shoppers typed before clicking. This is the single most useful view in campaign manager. It shows irrelevant queries that need to become negatives and converting queries that deserve their own targets. Negative keywords covers how to act on it.
The settings people miss
Campaign end dates. A campaign with an end date in the past stops without warning. Seasonal campaigns are the usual victims.
Portfolio budget caps. A portfolio cap can stop every campaign inside it even when each campaign has budget left. If a group of campaigns stops at the same time, check the portfolio.
Ad group default bids. Targets added without an explicit bid inherit the default. A default left at a launch-era level can quietly overbid on every new target.
Negatives at two levels. Negatives can be set at campaign level and ad group level. A negative at the wrong level either blocks too much or too little.
Bidding strategy on new campaigns. New Sponsored Products campaigns may default to a dynamic bidding option. If you meant to start with fixed bids while you gather data, check the setting before launch rather than after the first week of spend.
Bulk operations and reports
Campaign manager is built for one change at a time. For many changes, bulk operations lets you download a spreadsheet of campaigns, ad groups and targets, edit it, and upload it back. It is faster and less error-prone for large edits, as long as you keep a copy of the original file.
For analysis beyond what the tables show, the reporting section produces search term, targeting, placement, purchased product and other reports. The reports guide covers which report answers which question.
Using history when something changes
When performance shifts and nobody knows why, the history tab is the first place to look. It lists changes to budgets, bids, status and settings with dates. Most unexplained swings trace back to a change someone made and forgot.
The limitation is that history is per campaign. In an account with many people or tools making changes, it helps to keep a separate log across the whole account, so you can see everything that changed on a given day in one place.
Frequently asked questions
Where is campaign manager in the Amazon Ads console?
It is the main view you land on after signing in to the advertising console and choosing an account. Sellers can also reach it from the Advertising menu in Seller Central, which opens the same console. Amazon moves menu items from time to time, but the campaign list is always the starting point.
What is the difference between a campaign, an ad group and a target?
A campaign holds the budget, the bidding strategy and the schedule. An ad group inside it holds the products being advertised and a default bid. Targets inside the ad group are the keywords, products or categories you bid on, each of which can carry its own bid.
Can I see change history in campaign manager?
Yes. Campaigns have a history view that lists recent changes to budgets, bids, status and settings. It is useful for working out what changed before a shift in performance, though it is less convenient for reviewing changes across many campaigns at once.
Off Hours logs every change its rules make across the whole account, so you can see what moved without opening each campaign's history. Start a free 14-day trial.