Keyword targeting puts your ad in front of shoppers based on the words they type into Amazon’s search bar. Product targeting puts it in front of shoppers based on the products and categories they are already looking at. Most sellers need both, in separate campaigns, with keywords doing the work of capturing intent and product targeting doing the work of reaching shoppers who are browsing.
This guide explains how each method works, when to lead with one or the other, how to set them up without mixing them, and how to read the reports so you know which one is earning its budget.
TL;DR
- Keyword targeting matches your ad to shopper search terms. Use it when you know the words buyers use to find your product.
- Product targeting matches your ad to specific products (ASINs) or product categories. Use it to appear on or around competing and complementary listings.
- Amazon recommends that you avoid mixing targeting strategies in one campaign and ad group, so build them as separate structures.
- Start with automatic targeting to learn, then use the search term report to feed manual keyword and product campaigns.
- Judge each by profit, not just ACoS: a campaign that looks efficient can still lose money once fees and costs are counted.
Table of Contents
- The core difference in plain terms
- How keyword targeting works
- How product targeting works
- When to use keyword targeting, product targeting, or both
- Setting up each type in a manual campaign
- Reading the results: which one is working?
- Common mistakes with both methods
- Our view: let the data decide the split
- Put it into practice with Osellpa
- FAQ
- Sources
The core difference in plain terms
Think of it as two questions your ad answers:
- Keyword targeting: “What is the shopper searching for?”
- Product targeting: “What is the shopper looking at?”
With keyword targeting you choose keywords, and Amazon matches your ad to customer search terms. With product targeting you choose individual products by ASIN, or whole product categories, and your ad can appear on or around those product detail pages and in results where those products show. Both are manual targeting options inside Sponsored Products. Amazon’s guide to targeting with Sponsored Products lists automatic, manual and negative targeting as the three families, and manual targeting is where you pick keywords or products yourself.
| Keyword targeting | Product targeting | |
|---|---|---|
| What you choose | Keywords and match types | ASINs or product categories |
| Shopper signal | Typed search term | Product or category being viewed |
| Typical placement | Search results, plus product pages | Competitor and complementary product pages, search results |
| Best for | Capturing existing demand | Reaching browsing shoppers and shadowing rivals |
| Main control | Match types and negatives | ASIN lists, category filters |
| Available in | Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands | Sponsored Products, Sponsored Display |
The availability row matters. Amazon’s own material says product targeting is available in both Sponsored Products and Sponsored Display, which is one reason sellers use it to extend reach beyond the search bar.
How keyword targeting works
You pick the words, then decide how closely a shopper’s search must resemble them. That decision is the match type.
- Broad match: the widest exposure. Search terms can contain your keyword’s words in any order, plus close variations.
- Phrase match: the search must contain all components of your keyword in the same order.
- Exact match: the most restrictive. It matches the keyword word for word, including plural forms.
- Negative phrase and negative exact: these stop your ad showing for the search terms you specify.
These definitions come from Amazon’s targeting guide for Sponsored Products. The same guide recommends adding at least 30 keywords to a manual campaign and starting with broad match before moving winners into phrase or exact match.
The practical point: keyword targeting is a funnel. Broad match discovers, phrase match narrows, exact match controls. If you want a deeper walkthrough of that progression, our article on PPC match types and how to scale them goes through it step by step.
Why negatives belong in the keyword plan
Broad and phrase match will bring in some irrelevant searches. Negative keywords are how you stop paying for them. We cover the mechanics in negative keywords on Amazon, and the order of work in lowering ACoS with negatives first.
How product targeting works
Product targeting lets you manually target specific products or ASINs, or product categories. Amazon’s Sponsored Products best practices describe two routes:
- ASIN targeting. Your ad can appear on or around the detail pages of the products you choose, and in results where those products appear.
- Category targeting. You pick a browse category and refine it with filters such as brand, price range, star rating and Prime shipping eligibility. For certain categories there are also filters like product age range and genre.
In Sponsored Display, Amazon’s product targeting blog post says you can refine campaigns by price and star rating, and that placements may appear alongside customer reviews, on shopping results pages and on the right side of product detail pages.
Who to target by ASIN
Good ASIN targets tend to fall into three groups:
- Direct alternatives: products a shopper might choose instead of yours. Your ad sits where the comparison is being made.
- Complementary products: items bought alongside yours. A shopper already committed to the main purchase may add yours.
- Your own listings: a defensive and cross-sell option, so your other products appear on your own detail pages instead of a rival’s.
Keep ASIN lists tight. A short list of genuinely comparable products usually teaches you more than hundreds of loosely related ones. Amazon allows a maximum of 1,000 products per ad group, but that is a ceiling, not a target. Our seller’s playbook for product targeting covers how to choose and rank candidates.
Category targeting needs filters
Targeting a whole category without filters spreads your budget across thousands of products. Use the filters Amazon provides. A common approach is to select a subcategory and filter for products priced above yours and rated below yours, so your ad looks like the better-value option when it appears. That is a tactic, not a rule, so test it on your own listings.
When to use keyword targeting, product targeting, or both
The honest answer for most sellers is both. The question is the order.
Stage 1: Launch and discovery
Amazon’s success tips recommend running a Sponsored Products automatic-targeted campaign early on to learn how shoppers find and buy your products, then using the search term report to identify top-performing keywords for manual campaigns. Automatic campaigns choose targets for you based on your product information and previous shopping queries, so they are the lowest-effort way to find out what works.
Stage 2: Build a manual keyword campaign
Amazon’s getting started guide for sponsored ads suggests targeting at least 30 keywords, starting with broad match, and then focusing on top performers from the search term report with phrase or exact match. It also suggests running product targeting at the same time to focus on browsing trends.
Stage 3: Add product targeting on purpose
Once you know your best-converting keywords and your main competitors, add product-targeting campaigns with a clear goal. Typical goals include:
- Appearing on the pages of the three to five products shoppers compare yours against.
- Cross-selling from complementary products.
- Defending your own detail pages.
Stage 4: Separate by objective
Amazon’s guidance is that if you want to optimise for ROAS on one product but drive awareness on another, you should use separate ad groups or separate campaigns. The same logic applies to targeting type. A keyword campaign built to convert and a product-targeting campaign built to gain visibility should not share a budget or a bid strategy.
A quick decision guide
| Your situation | Lead with | Add next |
|---|---|---|
| New listing, little data | Automatic targeting | Manual keywords from the search term report |
| Clear best-sellers in a competitive niche | Exact and phrase keywords | ASIN targeting of close rivals |
| Strong reviews and a better price than competitors | Keywords, then category targeting | Filtered category campaigns |
| Cross-sell opportunity across your catalogue | Product targeting on your own ASINs | Complementary ASINs |
| Limited budget | Exact match keywords on proven terms | One small ASIN campaign |
Setting up each type in a manual campaign
To create a Sponsored Products campaign, go to the advertising tab, choose to create a campaign, pick the products you want to advertise and name the campaign. In a manual campaign you choose keyword or product targeting when you create the ad group. According to Amazon’s getting started guide, a single ad group is one type or the other, not both.
A workable structure looks like this:
- Automatic campaign: discovery, with modest bids.
- Manual keyword campaign, broad or phrase: your core product terms.
- Manual keyword campaign, exact: proven converting terms promoted from search term data.
- Manual product campaign, ASIN: a short list of competitor and complementary ASINs.
- Manual product campaign, category: a filtered subcategory.
Name campaigns so you can tell them apart at a glance, for example by product, targeting type and match type. Clear names make reports readable months later.
Bids in the UK
Amazon’s guide for European sellers states that the minimum bid is £0.02 and recommends that new advertisers bid £0.05 or £0.10 for keywords. Those are starting points. Real clicks in competitive categories often cost far more, so work out what you can afford before you scale. Our guide to UK break-even ACoS shows how to do the calculation from your own margins.
Reading the results: which one is working?
Do not compare keyword and product targeting on one headline number. Use Amazon’s reports to see what each is doing.
- Search term report: shows the actual customer search terms that resulted in at least one click. Add top converters as keywords and negate the weak ones.
- Targeting report: shows sales metrics for keywords and products in campaigns with at least one impression, which helps guide bid changes.
- Placement report: compares top-of-search with other placements.
- Advertised product report: shows performance over time for each advertised product.
Amazon’s best practices suggest checking the search term report once a campaign has run for at least two weeks, and setting benchmarks from your goals and history.
The Targeting page in the advertising console lists all automatic, keyword, product and audience targets together, so you can find top and bottom performers, adjust bids and disable targets in one place.
A useful trick: spotting product-page traffic
In Amazon’s multi-marketplace guide, a customer search term made of letters and numbers means the shopper saw your ad on another product’s detail page, not in the search results. This is how you spot ASIN traffic arriving through an automatic campaign, and it gives you candidate ASINs to target deliberately. For a broader process, see our piece on search term discovery.
What to measure
Amazon’s UK advertising page lists impressions, clicks, click-through rate, new-to-brand customers, traffic to your Store and ad spend as the basics. Add ACoS, spend, sales, orders and cost per click, which the success tips page also lists. Then ask the question the report cannot answer on its own: after product costs, fees and ad spend, did this campaign make money?
Common mistakes with both methods
- Mixing types in one ad group. It blurs your data and goes against Amazon’s own advice.
- Skipping negatives. Broad and phrase keywords, and automatic campaigns, will attract irrelevant searches.
- Targeting too many ASINs at once. You cannot learn from a list you cannot manage.
- Judging too early. Give a campaign time to gather data before cutting it.
- Ignoring objective. Compare awareness campaigns with awareness benchmarks and conversion campaigns with conversion benchmarks.
Our view: let the data decide the split
We see the same pattern in seller accounts again and again. The debate over product targeting versus keywords is really a question about what each campaign is for. Keywords capture people who already know what they want. Product targeting reaches people who are comparing, and it lets you choose which listings you sit beside.
The trouble is that doing this well means constant, small decisions: which search terms to promote, which ASINs to drop, which bids to lower. In a spreadsheet that work piles up, and wasted spend hides in the gaps. That is why we built Osellpa around Amazon API data and automated campaign management, so sellers can see which targets earn a profit and act on it without manual exports.
Our advice is simple. Keep keyword and product targeting in separate campaigns, name them clearly, and review them against profit, not only ACoS. Whatever your sales volume, the aim is the same: less wasted ad spend and a clearer view of what is working.
Harry
Put it into practice with Osellpa
If you would rather not sort through search term exports by hand, Osellpa’s Amazon PPC advertising and optimisation tool is built for exactly this work: automated management of campaigns to cut wasted ad spend, with manual control when you want it. You can also run the free PPC bid optimisation report to see where your bids stand today.
Plans are priced by the sellers’ sales volume tier and billed monthly or annually: Launch is £10 per month or £96 per year, Scale is £20 per month or £192 per year, and Advanced is £40 per month or £384 per year. See the full details on the pricing page.
FAQ
Is product targeting better than keyword targeting on Amazon?
Neither wins outright, because they do different jobs. Keywords reach shoppers by what they type, and product targeting reaches them by what they view. Most accounts run both, in separate campaigns, and judge each against its own goal.
Can I use product targeting and keyword targeting in the same campaign?
You can run both inside one manual campaign structure, but a single ad group is one type or the other. Amazon also recommends against mixing targeting strategies in the same campaign and ad group, so keep them apart for cleaner measurement.
How many keywords or ASINs should I start with?
For keywords, Amazon recommends at least 30 in a manual campaign, starting with broad match. For ASINs, start with a short, relevant list of direct rivals and complements. The platform allows up to 1,000 products per ad group, but a focused list is easier to learn from.
What is the difference between category targeting and ASIN targeting?
ASIN targeting places your ad around specific products you choose. Category targeting places it across a browse category, which you can narrow by brand, price range, star rating and Prime eligibility. Category targeting reaches more shoppers, while ASIN targeting gives tighter control.
How do I find ASINs worth targeting?
Check your search term report from an automatic campaign. Search terms made of letters and numbers are ASINs where your ad already appeared. Add the ones that convert to a manual product campaign, and review the ones that spend without selling.
Sources
- A guide to targeting with Sponsored Products, Amazon Ads
- Getting started guide for sponsored ads, Amazon Ads
- Reaching relevant audiences with product targeting, Amazon Ads
- Sponsored Products best practices, Amazon Ads
- A Guide to Creating Successful Amazon Sponsored Products
- Advertising your brand on Amazon: success tips
- Targeting page in Amazon advertising console
- Insights driven multi-marketplace advertising guide, Amazon Ads
- Amazon Ads for UK sellers
