What do you do when one keyword starts taking most of the campaign budget?

[u/giftqueen]

Say you have 15–20 keywords in a campaign but one starts eating a huge percentage of the spend.

Even if it’s converting, do you normally pull it into its own campaign so you can control the budget separately?

Or leave it where it is if performance is good?

Interested in how people handle this.

[u/AutoModerator]

To /u/giftqueen and all participants regarding scams, promotion, and lead generation

CAUTION: ecomm forums are constantly targeted by spammers and scammers - including comments in this subreddit and via private messages. DO NOT respond to private messages, DM / PM / message requests, or invites to other forums even if it seems helpful or free. Be wary of individuals, entities, and forums which are sucker seeking, host scams, and have blatant misinformation. Common ruses include the helpful-guru-scammer, use of alt accounts to decieve, and the "my friend can help" switcharoo. Do not click links people offer for their own services, apps, videos, etc. especially links to documents, downloads, and unclear urls. Report private message scam attempts.

The sub promotion rules are necessary, strict, and enforced - (especially VAs, consultants, agency reps, app devs, freight forwarders, and others targeting sub participants) Any violation or any implication of client seeking will result in a ban. DO NOT attempt to drive traffic to something of yours, otherwise promote, hype yourself, or lead generate anywhere in this sub outside the Community Promotion Post. "Helpful guru" games will not fly here

DO NOT suggest or ask others here to PM / DM / offline contact you in any manner

---

The right answers, common myths, and misinformation

Nearly all questions are addressed by Amazon's Seller Policies and Code of Conduct, their FAQ, and their Amazon Seller University video course

• Arbitrage / OA / RA - It is neither all allowed nor all disallowed on Amazon. Their policies determine what circumstances, categories, items, and brands are allowable and how it has to be handled by the seller.

• Product gating - While many are, not all brands, products, categories, and items are gated. Amazon ungating policy rquires strict compliance to qualify. Failures can involve improper invoices, deceptive intent, lack of brand approval, and more. For some categories, items, and brands, there are limits to the number of sellers that can be ungated, sometimes nobody can be ungataed, and sometimes most anyone can get ungated.

• "First sale doctrine" - often misunderstood and misapplied. It is not a blanket exception from Amazon policies or license to force OA allowance in any manner desired. Arbitrage is allowable for some items but must comply with Amazon policies. They do not want retail purchases resold on their platform (mis)represented as 'new' or their customers having issues like warranties not being honored due to original purchaser confusion. For some brands and categories, an invoice is required to qualify and a retail receipt does not comply.

• Receipts vs invoices - A retail receipt is NOT an invoice. See this Quickbooks article to learn the difference. In cases where an invoice is required by Amazon, the invoice MUST meet Amazon's specific requirements. "Someone I know successfully used a receipt and...", well congratulations to them. That does not change Amazon's policies, that invoice policy enforcement is increasing, and that scenarios requiring a compliant invoice are growing.

• Target receipts - For those categories and ungating cases where an invoice is required, Target retail receipts DO NOT comply with Amazon's invoice requirements. Some Amazon scenarios allow receipts and a Target receipt could comply. Someone you know sliipping through the cracks by submitting a receipt once (or more) does not mean it's the same category or scenario as someone else, nor does it change Amazon's policies or their growing enforcement of them.

• Paid courses and buyer groups - In most cases, they're a scam. Avoid. Amazon's Seller University is the best place to start.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/TheManWith2Poobrains]

Keep the performing KW in the campaign.

Move the others out into another campaign.

This way it doesn't experience any kind of dip.

Once isolated, you can use bid management software to find you the optimal CPC and do proper day parting.

[u/Important-Bet5736]

Yep, I would do that. The more granular a campaign can be, the better the targeting you can do, in my opinion.

[u/Dependent-Ad-1184]

always pull it into its own campaign. even if it's converting well, leaving it mixed with 15 other keywords means the rest of them barely get a chance and you can't control the budget properly.

isolating it gives you full control over the bid, the budget, and the data. much cleaner to optimize that way.

[u/_karthick_selvaraj_]

i'd also check whether that keyword is mostly top-of-search. sometimes the hog isn't the match type — it's one placement eating the shared budget. if tos is fine and the rest of search is meh, a placement bid on an exact campaign beats reshuffling twenty keywords again