What is Placement Report?

The placement report splits a campaign's performance by where the ad was shown. For Sponsored Products the placements reported are top of search on the first page, rest of search, and product pages. Sponsored Brands reports its own placement set, so the mechanic below generalises even where the names do not. It is the only report that tells you whether a campaign is expensive because of its keywords or because of where it is landing.

There is no placement bid

This is the mechanic most sellers miss. You never set a price for a placement. You set a percentage uplift on the campaign, and that uplift multiplies the base bid of every target inside it. Dynamic bidding then applies its own adjustment on top, so the two effects compound rather than replace each other.

A hypothetical worked example

The figures are invented. Suppose a keyword's base bid is 1.00 pound and the campaign carries a 50 per cent top of search uplift. The bid entering a top of search auction is 1.50 pounds before any dynamic adjustment, and a dynamic uplift multiplies again from there. Stack a dayparting modifier on the same hour and the effective ceiling can sit well above the number shown in the bid column. A modest looking stack of three adjustments can multiply a bid several times over, which is why they have to be read together rather than one at a time.

Never choose modifiers from placement ACoS

Placement ACoS conflates the keyword's bid with the placement's quality. A placement can show high ACoS purely because you already pay a large uplift there, while still converting better than anywhere else. Our house view is to pick modifiers from relative conversion rate or revenue per click, and to keep ACoS control in the base bid.

Modifier % = (Placement CVR ÷ Worst Placement CVR − 1) × 100

The method: set the base bid to the economics of the worst converting placement, then lift the better placements toward their own economics. The conversion rates below are invented to show the arithmetic.

Amazon caps how large an adjustment you can enter, so a very wide conversion spread can ask for more lift than the interface will accept. Raise the base bid in that case rather than abandoning the anchor.

Reading the result

If bid cuts driven by revenue per click ever push ACoS up, you have fallen out of the placements that convert. Fix the modifiers rather than cutting further. One binding constraint sits ahead of all of it: check inventory cover before any push at top of search, because winning the best placement with thin stock buys a stockout.