Smart Campaigns internal structure

Access from: Advertising → AI Campaigns → (any campaign) → Internal breakdown

Epinium's Smart Campaigns are intelligent wrappers that group 4 coordinated Amazon Advertising sub-campaigns. This page explains how they work internally: how sub-campaigns are organized, how targets move between them and how Epinium auto-optimizes bids and budget.

The 4 sub-campaigns

Each Smart Campaign internally generates 4 Sponsored Products campaigns on Amazon, each with a different role:

Sub-campaign	Role	What it does
Auto	Automatic discovery	Amazon selects targets automatically. Used to discover which search terms and products generate impressions and clicks
Category	Category discovery	Product targets by category or ASIN. Finds targeting opportunities that auto mode doesn't cover
Validation	Validation	Keywords and targets that showed potential in Auto or Category are moved here to confirm their performance with more restrictive match types
Performance	Performance	Already validated keywords and targets that have demonstrated stable conversions. Uses exact match types to maximize ROI

Ad group types by sub-campaign

Sub-campaign	Ad Groups
Auto	auto
Category	category
Validation	validationProducts, validationBroad, validationPhrase, validationExact
Performance	performanceProducts, performanceBroad, performancePhrase, performanceExact

Target promotion funnel

Smart Campaigns work as an optimization funnel that automatically moves targets from discovery to performance:

How does promotion work?

1. Discovery (Auto / Category): Epinium lets Amazon show your ads for different search terms and products. It collects performance data.

2. Promotion to Validation: When a search term shows good performance in Auto or Category, Epinium creates it as a positive keyword in Validation with more restrictive match types (broad, phrase, exact, products).

3. Negation at source: When promoting a target to Validation, it is created as a negative keyword in Auto and Category so those campaigns stop bidding on that term — all traffic goes to the more optimized campaign.

4. Promotion to Performance: If the target continues converting in Validation, it is promoted to Performance with exact match types. It is negated in Auto, Category and Validation.

5. Result: The best-performing targets end up in Performance, where they are assigned the most precise and efficient bids. Discovery campaigns remain free to keep finding new opportunities.

Match types

Match types determine how precisely a shopper's search term must match your keyword:

Match type	Precision	Example (keyword: "wifi camera")	Use in Smart Campaign
Broad	Low	Matches "wireless camera", "wifi camera home"	Validation and Performance — broadens coverage
Phrase	Medium	Matches "cheap wifi camera", not "wifi for camera"	Validation and Performance — balance
Exact	High	Only matches "wifi camera" exactly	Validation and Performance — maximum efficiency
Products	Product	Targeting by specific ASIN or category	Validation and Performance — product targeting

Optimization strategies

Strategy	Objective	Bid behavior
Optimize ACoS	Reach a defined target ACoS	Adjusts bids to keep advertising cost within the target. Prioritizes spend efficiency
Max Harvesting	Maximize sales and impressions	More aggressive bids to capture the highest volume possible. Limited by Amazon's minimum recommended bid

Campaign target

Each Smart Campaign has a configurable numeric target:

• ACoS target: Maximum percentage of advertising cost over sales (e.g.: 25%)
• ROAS target: Minimum return on advertising spend (e.g.: 4×)

Bid auto-optimization

Epinium automatically adjusts bids for each target using an algorithm that evaluates 5 scenarios:

Scenario 1: Quarantined target with no sales

When a target generates no sales, it enters "quarantine" with a multiplier that adjusts based on CTR:

• If the quarantined target's CTR exceeds the campaign CTR → the multiplier increases (maximum 1.2×), giving more opportunities.
• If the CTR is lower → the multiplier decreases (minimum 0.5×), reducing exposure.
• After 21 days without sales → Epinium stops optimization and sets the country's minimum bid.

Scenario 2: Target with sales

Formula: new bid = conversion rate × target ACoS × average order value (60 days)

For targets with few sales (≤ 2), a gradual 20% adjustment is applied to avoid abrupt changes.

Scenario 3: Target with cost but no sales

Epinium calculates a "projected future ACoS". If it exceeds the target:

• With good CTR or historical sales → enters quarantine with multiplier.
• Without positive history → stops optimization and sets minimum bid.

Scenario 4: Target with no cost or impressions

The target is not receiving visibility. Epinium gradually increases the bid until reaching a competitive bid.

Scenario 5: Safety limits

All bids are verified to never exceed the maxBid nor drop below the country's minBid. In the Max Harvesting strategy, the bid does not exceed Amazon's minimum recommended bid.

Budget distribution

The Smart Campaign's total daily budget is distributed among the 4 sub-campaigns:

• Each sub-campaign receives a percentage of the total budget.
• If a sub-campaign is inactive, its budget is redistributed among the active ones.
• Loan system: if a sub-campaign exhausts its daily budget early, it can "borrow" from another that has surplus budget (regulated by the loanPercentage parameter).

Placement optimization

Epinium also adjusts bid percentages for the different ad placements:

Placement	Description
Top of Search	First position in search results — maximum visibility
Product Page	Ads on product pages — contextual targeting
Rest of Search	Other positions in search results

Adjustments are calculated automatically by analyzing the CPC, CTR and CVR of each placement. This allows bidding more aggressively where ads convert better.

Sub-campaign performance classification

Epinium classifies each sub-campaign into a role based on its performance:

Role	Criteria	Recommended action
Star	High performance and high spend	Maintain and boost
Efficient	Good performance, low spend	Scale budget
High Spender	High spend, low return	Optimize bids and targeting
Underperformer	Poor performance	Review or pause
Low Activity	Low activity	Investigate visibility and relevance

Advanced configuration

Parameter	Description
budget	Total daily budget for the Smart Campaign
initialBid	Initial bid for new targets
maxBid / minBid	Upper and lower bid limits
loanPercentage	Maximum loan percentage between sub-campaigns
strategy	optimizeAcos or maxHarvesting
target	Numeric ACoS or ROAS target
method	AUTO, CLUSTER_BASED or CAMPAIGN_BASED
pauseOriginCampaigns	Pause origin campaigns when importing (CAMPAIGN_BASED method)