How do you use Amazon’s New Budget Tab and Report?

September 27, 2021
By The Badger

Amazon is quickly rolling out new API features within the AMS console to provide sellers and advertisers with more data to operate from throughout the last few weeks.

Relatively new to the game is the budget report as well as the column “Budgets,” currently in beta and found between “Drafts” and “Targeting,” both of which are also new.

Both of the new budget tab and new budget report are exclusively available on Sponsored Products for now. If the new feature proves to be effective, we suspect this may change and be introduced later down the road for Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display.

The new budget tab and new budget report offer important glimpses into a campaign’s performance, including how much time any given campaign spends in or out of budget and its estimated missed impressions, clicks, sales, and more. There’s even hidden data in the downloadable report with something we’ve long wanted at Ad Badger.

How the New Features Improve Budget Management

If you’re new to Amazon Advertising, then we recommend you pause here and read our Amazon PPC Budgets: How- To Guide first.

If you have been relatively long in the PPC game and have seen the lifecycle of dozens to hundreds of campaigns, then you know the pain better than most people. You log into your account, and there it is. The notorious “Some Campaigns Are Almost Out Of Budgets” notification pops up, and you immediately hit the filter. Depending on how the campaigns performed during the day, your reaction may, of course, be different.

Budget optimization, and conversely running out of budget, is one of the most crucial elements of PPC success. Budget optimization leads to scaling campaigns and greater performance, while running out of budget inhibits that.

If account-level performance is the first budget level of Amazon Advertising , then the portfolio-level is most certainly the second. This is followed by campaign-level at three, and Keyword/Product/Audience/Category target at level four.

Lastly, the ultimate level, the search term level is level five. The search term level is important to understand how the new metrics help the interdependence between each level and how they interact when optimized.

The search term level also assists in improving our overall month-over-month performance and fine-tunes campaigns into fine-tuned machines. This is where we can see valuable micro-data. Look for search terms that are wasting your ad spend and nip them in the bud.

With budget rules, you can allow campaigns to increase during more active time frames.

Alternatively, if you have a budget constraint, shift the budget to the campaigns with the best sweet spot between revenue, conversion rate, CPC, and ACOS, and make sure they stay within budget. No missed clicks here.

After that, go a level deeper and identify targets utilizing funding over your performance threshold and free up that ad spend through pausing, CPC, and search term optimization, depending on the spend/ performance relationship so you can direct more campaigns and keywords that drive your performance more efficiently.

Understanding what your budget is doing at the most granular level ensures greater budget management.

What is the Sponsored Products Budget Report?

Let’s look at the new report type. Accessible by navigating to the “Reports” section in your advertising console, you will be presented with the time units Summary, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, and Quarterly.

Decide which time frame you’d like to examine. Generally speaking, the more data, the better, so we recommend Monthly or Quarterly.

If, however, you are looking for trends, then the Daily or Weekly time unit is precisely insightful.

The new key metrics that Amazon introduced cover Impressions, Last Year’s Clicks, Last Year’s Spend, and Estimated Missed Sales Range.

Within the new bubble of Impressions, Amazon shares information regarding Last Year’s Impressions, Estimated Missed Impressions Minimum and Maximum Range.

Within the new bubble of Last Year’s Clicks, Amazon shares in the report information regarding estimated missed clicks, recommended budget, and the average time in budget, or how long you stayed within budget.

Within the new bubble of Last Year’s Spend in the new budget report, Amazon Shares information regarding average CPC, and last year’s CPC.

Lastly, the new budget report also shares information regarding the minimum and maximum estimated missed sales range.

As you can see, Amazon presented us with a range of estimated minimum to maximum values. As you might observe, the difference between both values is great.

Take the numbers with some consideration. Because of this range, it might be more insightful to get monthly cumulative data to even out any weekly fluctuations.

Either way, we recommend sorting by conversion rate descending or spend descending and then scanning for campaigns that have missed clicks during a period.

The campaigns with the highest CVR should ideally have no missed clicks, and if your report reveals that fact, then your focus should be on the missed clicks since they show the highest probability of conversion.

Of course, your CPC, RPC, AOV, ACoS, and TACoS play a significant role in the equation as well.

Here’s an example of what we mean. If campaign ACoS is high, but CVR performance is above average, then this indicates going into that specific campaign and optimizing by CPC and bid placement to allocate your budget more effectively on levels four and five, the Keyword/Product/Audience/Category level and the Search Term level. You could either increase the budget for the missed clicks or cut away old search terms that fit into that value range– or, ideally, both.

This is where the meticulous upfront work of segmenting your match types into desiccated campaigns, as well as installing a clean, structured naming scheme, pays off since you can identify and filter by ASIN, ad type, or match type quickly while looking at the report. This approach clarifies what ad types utilize their ad budget most effectively and where you should allocate more attention.

We love data, and this new report is no exception!

Back to the Future: Download Reports for Historical Data

Another thing we love about the report is last year’s reference to each metric. It is fascinating. (Or the opposite of fascinating, depending on how the metrics have evolved. Of course, this only applies to campaigns that have run for that long.)

What’s changing in your report? Why is it changing? What’s different? Did you do something different, or did the market do something different? There’s plenty to investigate as well as compare and contrast.

Generally speaking, CPCs and COGs are on the rise due to multiple factors like supply chain overload, increased competition, and overall more money dumped into PPC.

Paying attention and being aware of the year-over-year difference in impression, clicks, CPC, and RPC can potentially help you identify the most effective campaign types in order to duplicate them and shift more budget to the best performers.

Download the reports at least once a month to preserve the historical data and identify times in the year where you can utilize the new “Budget Rules.”

Downloading the reports for historical data is somewhat of a counter solution from Amazon for this problem since you can select time frames where the budget increases automatically by a certain percentage.

This is extremely helpful for seasonality. Seasonality requires different Amazon PPC techniques, of course, and the new budget reports help build a “safety net” for your best-performing campaigns so they never run out of budget. Plan ahead accordingly!

Pro tip: The downloadable reports’ historical data contains more information that ranges further back than anything else Amazon currently offers.

If you heavily rely on data, then you’ll be thrilled with Amazon’s new downloadable report.

Is There New Budget Report and New Budget Tab Synergy?

The new budget tool displays the same data, just as a remix with the Management tab. You already have everything in you that you need, and this report is just another word in the repertoire—more clarity in the whirlwind of your data and a valuable tool for budget optimization in general.

Treat recommended budgets with a grain of salt but, then again, make your own experience.

Concluding, definitely all of your campaigns should have enough firepower to stay within budget all of the time. If they don’t, then change something!

With budget rules, you can allow campaigns to increase during more active time frames.

If you have a budget constraint, shift the budget to the campaigns with the best sweet spot between revenue, conversion rate, CPC, and ACOS, and make sure they stay within budget. No missed clicks here.

After that, go a level deeper and identify targets utilizing funding over your performance threshold and free up that ad spend through Pausing, CPC, and search term optimization, depending on the spend/performance relationship so you can direct more campaigns and keywords that drive your performance more efficiently.

Until next time, we’ll see you in The Badger Den.