Every Sponsored Products campaign starts with one choice: automatic or manual targeting. Automatic lets Amazon decide which searches and products your ad appears against, based on your listing. Manual lets you pick the keywords and products yourself. New sellers often treat this as a one-time decision. It is closer to a division of labor.
This comparison covers how each type works, what each is good and bad at, and the setup most accounts use to get the benefits of both.
How automatic campaigns work
In an automatic campaign, Amazon reads your listing (title, bullets, backend terms, category) and matches your ad to searches and product pages it judges relevant. You set a default bid and can adjust bids for four targeting groups: close match, loose match, substitutes and complements.
Close match targets searches closely related to your product. Loose match reaches more distantly related searches. Substitutes show your ad on product pages for similar items. Complements show it on pages for items bought alongside yours.
You do not choose the keywords, but you can see which search terms triggered your ads in the search term report, and you can add negatives to block the ones that do not fit.
How manual campaigns work
In a manual campaign you choose exactly what to target. Keyword targeting uses broad, phrase or exact match. Product targeting lets you pick individual ASINs or whole categories, with optional refinements by brand, price or rating. Keyword match types covers how each match type behaves.
Manual campaigns give you control over bids at the keyword level. A keyword that converts well can get a higher bid. One that converts poorly can get a lower one. That control is the main reason manual campaigns tend to scale better.
What automatic is good at
Discovery. Automatic campaigns find search terms you would not think to target: odd phrasings, misspellings, long-tail variations and product pages you did not know were relevant. For a new product with little keyword research, this is the fastest way to learn how shoppers search.
Low setup effort. An automatic campaign can be live in minutes. That makes it a reasonable starting point for a seller learning the console.
Where automatic wastes money
Loose matches. Amazon's idea of relevance is broader than yours. Loose match and substitute targets in particular can spend on searches and products that never convert.
Limited bid control. You can bid by targeting group, but not by individual search term. A great term and a poor term in the same group get the same bid.
Competition with your own manual campaigns. If an automatic campaign and a manual campaign both target the same search, they can compete in the same auction, which muddles your data and can raise what you pay.
What manual is good at
Control and scale. Once you know which terms convert, exact match campaigns let you bid precisely on them. You can raise bids on winners and protect their budget from weaker terms.
Clean reporting. Each keyword has its own row and its own numbers. You can see what each target does and change it individually. Campaign structure covers how to organize manual campaigns so the reporting stays readable.
Where manual falls short
It only finds what you think to target. A manual campaign built from your own keyword list misses the searches you did not think of. Broad and phrase match help, but they still start from your list.
It takes more work. Manual campaigns need regular bid changes and keyword additions. Without that attention they drift, and the control that makes them powerful goes unused.
Running both: the harvest pattern
Most well-run accounts use both types together. The automatic campaign runs at a moderate bid and acts as a discovery engine. Every week or two, review its search term report. Terms that convert get added to a manual exact match campaign, where they can be bid on directly. Then add those same terms as negative exact keywords in the automatic campaign, so it stops competing for them and keeps searching for new ones.
Terms that spend without converting get added as negatives in the automatic campaign. Negative keywords covers how to do this without blocking good traffic.
Illustrative example: Northlane Goods launches a new water bottle with an automatic campaign and a small exact match campaign on five keywords it is confident about. After three weeks the automatic campaign has surfaced a dozen converting terms Northlane had not listed. Those move into exact match. The automatic campaign keeps running at a lower bid to find the next batch.
When to use each
New product with little keyword data: lead with automatic, add manual as terms appear.
Established product with known converting keywords: lead with manual exact and phrase, keep a low-bid automatic campaign for discovery.
Tight budget: put most of it behind proven manual keywords, with a small automatic budget so discovery does not stop. Amazon PPC on a small budget covers the trade-offs in more depth.
Frequently asked questions
Should a new product start with automatic or manual campaigns?
Most new products benefit from starting with both: an automatic campaign to discover search terms and a small manual campaign on the keywords you are already confident in. If you have no keyword research yet, start with automatic and add manual campaigns as converting terms appear.
Can I turn off automatic campaigns once manual campaigns are running?
You can, but many sellers keep a low-bid automatic campaign running indefinitely because it keeps finding new search terms and product targets. If you keep it, add your proven manual keywords as negatives in it so the two campaigns do not compete for the same searches.
Why does my automatic campaign have a higher ACoS than my manual campaigns?
Automatic campaigns test many search terms and products, and many of those tests do not convert. That cost is the price of discovery. Manual campaigns run on terms already proven to convert, so they usually show a better ACoS. Judge automatic campaigns partly on how many good terms they find.
Off Hours performance rules watch automatic and manual campaigns on a 15-minute cadence and act when either drifts past the targets you set. Start a free 14-day trial.