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Create SP campaign from scratch

Access from: Advertising → Campaigns

This guide covers manual Sponsored Products campaign creation from Epinium, without going through Amazon Seller Central. It's the recommended flow when you want full control over the structure (ad groups, targets, advertised products) instead of delegating everything to a Smart Campaign.

If what you want is fully automated advertising with bid auto-optimization, use AI Campaigns / Smart Campaigns instead.

When to use the manual wizard

NeedRecommendation
Launch a new product with small budget and granular controlManual wizard
Test specific keywords you already knowManual wizard
Complex structure with several ad groups by audienceManual wizard
I want Epinium to manage everything automaticallySmart Campaign

Hierarchical structure

An SP campaign in Amazon has this hierarchy:

Campaign
└── Ad Group
    ├── Targets (keywords, ASINs, categories)
    └── Advertised products (the own ASINs being promoted)

The wizard creates the 3 entities in a single flow, in this order: Basic data → Ad group → Targets → Advertised products.

The 4 wizard steps

Step 1 — Basic data

General campaign configuration:

FieldDescriptionRequired
Campaign nameInternal identifier. Max 128 charactersYes
MarketplaceCountry / Amazon country where it publishes (ES, IT, DE, FR, US…)Yes
Daily budgetMax daily spend in the marketplace currencyYes
Start dateWhen it begins publishingDefault: today
End dateWhen it stops publishingOptional (no date = indefinite)
Targeting typeManual (you define targets) or Auto (Amazon discovers)Yes
Initial stateActive or PausedDefault: Active

If you choose Auto, step 3 (Targets) is simplified: Amazon manages positive targets automatically and you can only add negatives.

Step 2 — Ad group

Each SP campaign has at least one ad group. The ad group bundles targets and advertised products that share configuration:

FieldDescriptionRequired
Ad group nameInternal identifier. Max 255 charactersYes
Default bidBid applied to any target in the group that has no own bidYes
Initial stateActive or PausedDefault: Active

If you're going to create an ad group within an existing campaign, this step lets you choose the destination campaign. If you come from the new-campaign wizard, group data is asked right after step 1.

Step 3 — Targets

Here you define what triggers your ads: keywords the buyer searches, ASINs on which to appear, or full categories.

The builder has a "Type" selector at the top:

  • Positive — fires the ad (where you want to appear)
  • Negative — blocks the ad (where you do NOT want to appear)

And two main tabs:

  • Keywords — buyer search keywords
  • Products — specific ASINs or full categories

Mixing rules

CaseAllowed?
Positive keywords + positive products in the same ad group❌ No (Amazon enforces a single positive type per adgroup)
Positive products + positive categories in the same ad group✅ Yes (share 10k cap)
Negative keywords + negative products in the same ad group✅ Yes (Amazon always allows mixing negatives)
Negative categories❌ No (Amazon does not support negative categories)
Negative keyword match type BROAD at ad group level❌ No (Amazon enforces only EXACT and PHRASE at group level)

Keywords

FieldDescription
TextOne keyword per line
Match typeMulti-select of Broad / Phrase / Exact (positives); Phrase / Exact (negatives at group level)
BidPositives only. Applied to each keyword × each match type generated

If you select several match types, each keyword is duplicated: "mobile" + [Broad, Exact] generates 2 targets.

Amazon limits:

  • Positive text: up to 80 characters
  • Negative EXACT: 80 characters, 10 words
  • Negative PHRASE: 80 characters, 4 words
  • 1,000 positive keywords per ad group
  • 1,000 negative keywords per ad group

Products — 3 modes

The Products tab has a "Mode" selector with 3 options, pick one at a time:

"From catalog" mode

Select your own products from the Epinium catalog. Generates ASIN_SAME_AS targets (positives) or ASIN_SAME_AS (negatives — only type allowed by Amazon).

"By external ASIN" mode

Paste competitor ASINs. For positives you can choose:

  • Exact (ASIN_SAME_AS) — only appears on that exact ASIN listing
  • Expanded (ASIN_EXPANDED_FROM) — Amazon also shows on similar products to the ASIN

ASINs are validated with regex [A-Z0-9]{10} and deduplicated against already added.

"By category" mode

Targets entire Amazon categories. See dedicated guide: Category targets.

Quick summary:

  • Tree picker with search
  • Refinement by brand / age / price / rating / Prime
  • Positives only
  • Shares 10,000 product targets per adgroup cap with ASINs

Step 4 — Advertised products

The advertised products are your own ASINs that will appear when the target fires. Different from targets: targets say "when", advertised products say "what ad to show".

FieldDescriptionRequired
Catalog productsSelect one or more of your own ASINs from the Epinium catalogYes (at least 1)
Initial stateActive or Paused per productDefault: Active

Best practices:

  • Advertise products with active BuyBox (without BuyBox the ad doesn't show)
  • Products with enough stock (Amazon pauses ads without stock)
  • Prime-eligible products (better CTR)

Wizard resilience

Once you press "Create", Epinium continues the flow even if you close the browser. The process lives in the backend and publishes step by step:

If you close the browser after pressing Create, the backend keeps working and persists partial result to database. On table reload you'll see final state (created / created with warnings / failed at step N).

Response states

ResultMeaningUI
success: true, stoppedAt: 'done', partialErrors: []All created clean✅ Green toast
success: true, stoppedAt: 'done', partialErrors: [...]Campaign + ad group created, some targets or products failed⚠️ Warn toast with detail
success: false, stoppedAt: 'adgroup'Failed creating the ad group → campaign does exist⚠️ Warn, continue manually with "Add group"
success: false, stoppedAt: 'campaign'Failed creating the campaign → nothing on Amazon❌ Red error toast

Editing after creation

Once created, you can:

  • Add more ad groups → "+ Add group" button on the campaign detail
  • Add more targets → from the Segmentations tab of the ad group
  • Add more advertised products → from the Advertised Products tab of the ad group
  • Change budget, state, dates → inline edit on the campaigns table

Things the manual wizard does NOT cover

  • Bid auto-optimization — use Smart Campaigns for that
  • Automatic negativization from search terms — Smart Campaigns feature
  • Automatic harvesting — Smart Campaigns feature

Epinium Documentation