Introduction
Amazon Ad Scheduling, also known as dayparting, is a feature unique to the Marin platform, so you won't find this functionality on the Amazon Ads website.
This handy tool allows you to adjust your Amazon bids with more fine-grain control than ever before. With Ad Scheduling enabled for your Amazon accounts, you'll be able to increase or decrease your keyword bids not just on a certain day, but also by a specific hour – as precisely as 15-minute increments.
Ad Scheduling for Amazon accounts is currently available in the Marin Search platform, but we'll walk you through how to navigate there from your MarinOne login.
Read on to learn how to get started today.
Ad schedules are currently applied at the campaign level and can be used with any of your Sponsored Products campaigns.
Enabling Amazon Ad Scheduling for your account
Dayparting for Amazon accounts is currently in beta, but you can enable it for your account by simply getting in touch with your platform representative or our Customer Support team.
How to set up ad schedules for Amazon campaigns
Once the feature is enabled for your account, you'll be able to set up your first ad schedule for Amazon using either single-edit or multi-edit. Below we'll explain how to do each of these.
Single-edit
Using Marin's single-edit function, you'll be able to view, create, edit and delete ad schedules for any of your Amazon campaigns.
- The first step is to log into MarinOne.
- From there, navigate to the account Switcher in the top-righ corner and select Access Marin Search. This will navigate you to the Marin Search platform.
- From there, click into the main Campaigns tab.
- Click into any of your Amazon campaigns, then click on the Settings sub-tab for that campaign.
- Next, click the Ad Scheduling button. Note: If you don't see the button, ensure the feature is enabled for your account.
- You'll now see a grid showcasing any existing ad schedules for this campaign. It's here that you'll make the fine-grain hourly adjustments to your bids.
The important areas to note are the Adjust By column, where you can choose whether to make adjustments based on the entire day or a certain time within it. If you select Time, a set of new options will appear allowing you to select an hourly range, with 15-minute increments, within which to adjust your bid. You can use the + and – buttons to add further time ranges within a day.
- If you're adjusting bids for an entire day, you can simply use the text box in the Multiply bids by column to enter your percentage bid adjustment. For hourly ranges, enter your percentage bid adjustments in each specific row. For more information about how bid adjustments work, see the Understanding Bid Adjustments section below.
Multi-edit
You can also use the Marin Search multi-edit feature to create multiple ad schedules at once. When using multi-edit, you can create ad schedules but won't be able to view or edit them from this area of the platform.
Important note: Setting an ad schedule via multi-edit for any campaign will overwrite its existing ad schedules for all days.
- The first step is to log into MarinOne.
- From there, navigate to the account Switcher in the top-righ corner and select Access Marin Search. This will navigate you to the Marin Search platform.
- From there, click into the main Campaigns tab.
- Using the checkboxes on the left of the grid, select one or more of your Amazon campaigns.
- Click the Edit button ('pencil' icon), then select Ad Scheduling from the drop-down menu in the pop-up bubble.
- You will now see the ad scheduling calendar and can make updates as described in the single-edit section above.
Understanding bid adjustments
Using the ad scheduling calendar, you can make changes to either entire days or specific hourly ranges with 15-minute increments. When updating bid adjustments, you can enter values between 10 and 1000 percent.
The platform uses 100% as the baseline for any changes you make to your bids, so any changes you make above or below this value will result in positive or negative adjustments respectively. For example:
- Setting a value of 70 represents a 30% decrease in bids.
- Setting a value of 200 represents a 100% increase in bids.
For each ad schedule, bids are calculated and pushed to the publisher at both the start and end of the selected range, or between them if consecutive. If an ad schedule is created during a time range, the calculations will take place at the next 15-minute interval.
Important notes and limitations
Below are a few things to bear in mind when working with the Amazon Ad Scheduling feature in Marin Search:
- When using ad scheduling / dayparting, the original non-modified bid value will always appear in the grid if you have the Search Bid column enabled.
- Do not delete an existing ad schedule at any point during the start and end time -- only before or after.
- To avoid any potential clashes, do not change any bid value directly on the Amazon Advertising website if you have set up an ad schedule for the relevant campaign.
- Amazon Ad Scheduling works for campaigns which use Manual targeting (i.e. those with keywords). It does not work for campaigns with Auto targeting.
- Bulk changes to Amazon Ad Scheduling is currently not supported.
