Campaign optimizer
Access from: Processes → Workflows · per-campaign settings in Advertising → Campaigns (AI Settings button)
A workflow that optimizes your Sponsored Products campaigns once a day: it recalculates each target's bid based on its performance, turns search terms that have already proven sales into keywords, blocks the ones that only spend, and manages the quarantine of those that deliver no results.
How to create it
The optimizer is just another workflow, so you create it like any other: by adding it from the template library.
- Go to Processes → Workflows.
- Click Add to open Available templates.
- Pick Campaign optimizer and confirm.
You can have more than one — for example, one per brand or per target ACOS — and link each campaign to whichever fits.
It starts paused and with no campaigns
A freshly created workflow does nothing: it starts paused and in manual selection. Until you turn it on and link campaigns to it, it touches nothing in your account. That is deliberate: it lets you review it before it moves a single bid.
How campaigns are linked
Linking a campaign is how you tell the workflow to manage it. There are two moments to do it:
- When you create the campaign in Epinium. The Sponsored Products campaign wizard has an Optimization section where you pick the workflows that will run it. Pick the optimizer and the form itself asks you for the objective and the max bid, both required for it to work.
- Later, from the campaign. In Advertising → Campaigns, the AI Settings button on each row opens the panel where you link, exclude and adjust objective and limits. You can also do it in bulk: tick several campaigns and use Bulk edit.
To see at a glance which campaigns each workflow manages, use the Workflows filter on the campaigns table.
Which campaigns it acts on
Two layers decide whether a campaign enters the run: how the workflow selects campaigns and the campaign's own controls.
How the workflow selects campaigns
In the workflow's Variables tab, the Include all campaigns with a target ACOS configured switch sets the criterion:
- Off (the default for new workflows) — manual selection: the workflow only optimizes the campaigns you tick under Algorithm campaigns. A brand-new workflow optimizes none until you choose.
- On — automatic: it takes every Sponsored Products campaign that has an objective and a max bid configured.
The details of the selection table are in Workflows.
Which one to pick
Manual selection is the recommended way to start: you decide campaign by campaign and there are no surprises. Automatic makes sense once you trust the workflow and want any new campaign to join on its own as soon as it has an objective and a max bid.
Campaign requirements
With the switch on, a campaign enters the run if it meets all of this:
| Requirement | Where it is set | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Objective (ACOS or ROAS) greater than 0 | AI Settings → Objective | It is the reference for every decision: without an objective the workflow cannot tell whether a target is doing well or badly |
| Max bid greater than 0 | AI Settings → Limits | Safety ceiling: no bid ever goes above it |
| Not archived | Amazon / Epinium | Archived campaigns are not managed. Paused ones are, with limitations |
| At least one active ad group | Amazon / Epinium | With no active ad groups there is nothing to optimize |
Rule of thumb
With automatic selection on, any campaign with an objective and a max bid enters the run (unless excluded). If you set those two values "just to try", the campaign will be managed from the next cycle on.
The campaign's own controls
These three controls in the AI Settings drawer win over the workflow's criterion, and they apply to any workflow, not just this one:
| Control | Effect |
|---|---|
| Force workflows | The campaign is always processed, even if the workflow's criterion would not take it. This is the route used by manual selection |
| Exclude workflows | The campaign is never processed, even if it meets the requirements. Exclusion always wins |
| Only process forced workflows | The campaign is only processed if it is explicitly forced |
Full decision table in Per-campaign AI Settings.
When it runs
- Once a day, early in the morning. The time and frequency are edited in the workflow's schedule, like any other.
- It can also be launched manually from the workflow page.
- Each cycle processes all selected campaigns, one by one.
What it decides on each cycle
| Block | What it decides |
|---|---|
| Bids | With sales and ACOS below target it raises the bid; with ACOS well above it lowers it; with no sales it applies either a small discovery nudge or a progressive decrease. At most ±20 % per cycle (±25 % in the automatic ad group), always within your limits. A decrease is not repeated until new data from the previous one arrives: Amazon reports take about two days, and during that time the workflow holds the bid instead of lowering it again on the same data |
| Placement adjustments | With a max bid configured, placement adjustments are set to 0 % — the absolute bid rules. Without a max bid, it calculates the adjustment for Top of Search and Product Pages based on their performance, and touches nothing if there aren't enough clicks |
| Quarantine | Targets that spend without selling go under observation with a reduced bid: if they recover sales they return to normal; if 21 days pass with no results they are blocked at the minimum |
| Keyword harvesting | Search terms with proven sales (2 or more conversions, ACOS within target, 5 or more clicks) are created as a keyword in the same ad group, with a calculated bid. It never creates duplicates nor harvests the same term twice |
| Negatives | Terms with enough clicks, zero sales and a cost that no longer justifies continuing are blocked as an exact negative. If the term is relevant to your product, instead of blocking it the workflow isolates it: it creates the keyword at the minimum bid to control it rather than losing the visibility |
| Discovery | It proposes new keywords, but only when they are needed: if the ad group has very few keywords, or if the campaign has gone days without spending its budget. Never if it is already saturated with keywords |
| Auto-pruning | It archives exhausted "parent" keywords: those that have already produced harvested winning children and that, on their own, only spend. It is a destructive action and depends on the autonomy mode |
How much of this actually runs depends on the workflow's autonomy mode — see Autonomy modes and variables.
Spend is not controlled from here
The workflow does not change budgets nor pause campaigns because of spend. Your spend cap is still the campaign's daily budget in Amazon; what the workflow respects are the bid limits (min and max), both the campaign's and the workflow's own — the more restrictive of the two always applies.
What changes in your campaigns when you turn it on
- The bidding strategy switches to "Dynamic bids - down only". The workflow controls increases with absolute bids and does not let Amazon inflate them on its own.
- Placement adjustments are set to 0 % on campaigns with a max bid configured. If you had per-placement percentages, they are cleared.
- Bids move gradually: at most ±20 % per cycle (±25 % in the automatic ad group). Abrupt changes do not exist by design.
- New keywords and negatives appear, created by the workflow, each with its reason recorded in the run history.
Try it risk-free: simulation mode
When you launch the workflow manually you can tick Dry run (test mode): it calculates every decision it would make — bids, new keywords, negatives, quarantine — and shows them to you without applying any change in Amazon.
It is the recommended way to start: simulate, review the decisions in the history, and only then turn it on for real.
The advertising fee
The campaigns this workflow processes pay your plan's advertising fee, and it is charged per campaign: if the workflow processes a campaign on at least one day of the billing period, the fee is calculated on all of that campaign's ad spend in that period, not just on the days it ran. Each campaign pays only once, even if several workflows process it.
Next steps
- Autonomy modes and variables — how much initiative you give the AI and what each mode adjusts
- What the workflow has done — where to see its changes, the per-campaign verdict and the history
- Per-campaign AI Settings — force, exclude and opt-out per campaign
- Workflows — scheduling, run history and editor