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 flow every campaign is created with today: older Smart Campaigns can no longer be created.

Creating by hand and automating are not opposites. In step 1 you can link the campaign to the Campaign optimizer and get both: you define the structure, and the workflow adjusts bids every night.

When to use the manual wizard

Need	Recommendation
Launch a new product with small budget and granular control	Manual wizard
Test specific keywords you already know	Manual wizard
Complex structure with several ad groups by audience	Manual wizard
I want Epinium to manage bids automatically	Manual wizard, linking the Campaign optimizer in step 1

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:

Field	Description	Required
Campaign name	Internal identifier. Max 128 characters	Yes
Marketplace	Country / Amazon country where it publishes (ES, IT, DE, FR, US…)	Yes
Daily budget	Max daily spend in the marketplace currency	Yes
Start date	When it begins publishing	Default: today
End date	When it stops publishing	Optional (no date = indefinite)
Targeting type	Manual (you define targets) or Auto (Amazon discovers)	Yes
Initial state	Active or Paused	Default: Active

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

Optimization — link a workflow from the start

Step 1 also includes an optional Optimization section where you pick the workflows that will manage the campaign. It is the easiest way to have it born automated, without having to come back to it later.

The dropdown lists your workflows and flags the paused ones, along with their schedule, so you don't link the campaign to one that won't run.

Field	Description	Required
Workflows	The workflows that will manage the campaign. Empty = the campaign is born outside every workflow	No
Objective (ACOS or ROAS)	The reference for every bid decision	Yes, if you link the optimizer
Max bid	Safety ceiling: no bid ever goes above it	Yes, if you link the optimizer

When you link the Campaign optimizer, the objective and the max bid stop being optional: without them the workflow wouldn't know whether a target is doing well nor how high it may bid, and it would skip the campaign.

If you'd rather not decide now, leave the section empty and link the campaign later from AI Settings, in Advertising → Campaigns.

Step 2 — Ad group

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

Field	Description	Required
Ad group name	Internal identifier. Max 255 characters	Yes
Default bid	Bid applied to any target in the group that has no own bid	Yes
Initial state	Active or Paused	Default: 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

Case	Allowed?
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

Field	Description
Text	One keyword per line
Match type	Multi-select of Broad / Phrase / Exact (positives); Phrase / Exact (negatives at group level)
Bid	Positives 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".

Field	Description	Required
Catalog products	Select one or more of your own ASINs from the Epinium catalog	Yes (at least 1)
Initial state	Active or Paused per product	Default: 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

Result	Meaning	UI
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

The wizard creates the campaign; it doesn't optimize it afterwards. All of this comes from the Campaign optimizer once you link the campaign, in step 1 or later:

• Bid auto-optimization based on each target's performance
• Automatic negativization of the search terms that spend without selling
• Automatic harvesting of the terms that already generate sales