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
| 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 everything automatically | Smart 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:
| 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.
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
- Bid auto-optimization — use Smart Campaigns for that
- Automatic negativization from search terms — Smart Campaigns feature
- Automatic harvesting — Smart Campaigns feature