Is AMS accurate? I have a specific example here...

[WasAnn]

Okay, so I turned off all AMS ads, which I'd left alone for months and had gone crazy in spending. A few days after I did, everything started dropping like crazy in rank. Sales and reads started decreasing too.

So, despite it not showing up on the AMS dashboard, clearly the ads had some effect.

So, I went back in, archived old ones, started new ones, or adjusted the keywords for existing ones. One new one I created was for my new semi-permafree. It's a prequel to a completed six book series.

I chose category targeting and kept my bids low to reasonable, fairly narrow too. After a few days, it shows a ctr of 4.1% for the entire ad, with some targets up to 10% CTR.

That sounds fine, but of course, the sales are 0 since this is permafree. That said, the orders listed in the AMS ad don't seem to reflect reality at all. I have no idea what this means.

Within about 24 hours of the ad starting, my actual buys of the permafree increased dramatically. No other ads at all, except one with too low a bid to get much airplay on BookBub.

The book had been hanging between 2700 and 3300 in free ranks by itself, but now it's up at 473 in the store. Example, for one day I got 130 free-sales, but AMS showed only 4 orders.

That's a huge difference. So, how effective is this? And are these kinds of errors normal? How can I know what's working or not? Totally confused.

[Simon Haynes]

(I'm not in KU - prefacing my post with that.)

I'm convinced the AMS dash does NOT show all related sales. In my case, it often shows no sales at all. (I went 2-3 weeks with 0.00 showing in the Sales field. And that was with 'Last 7 days' as the filter. I kept my foot on the gas, though.)

And yet when I stop my ads, my sales on the KDP dashboard dry up too.

I'm running an experiment right now, as a matter of fact. I have 2 omnibus editions which are not advertised anywhere else. I've only just created a pair of AMS ads for them, and I've suspended the ads on the individual books that make up the omnibus editions.

If the sales for those omnibus editions start moving and nothing ever shows on the AMS dash, it will only prove my suspicions.

[Simon Haynes]

I also have 2 permafrees that get dozens and dozens of clicks, but AMS shows just 4 orders of the freebies, and no associated sales from the other 9 titles at 2.99

[WasAnn]

I also have 2 permafrees that get dozens and dozens of clicks, but AMS shows just 4 orders of the freebies, and no associated sales from the other 9 titles at 2.99

Well, I guess that goes to show one can never truly know when it comes to AMS ads.

OTOH, I'm beginning to suspect that AMS has designed the system to be like this to appeal to the gambler aspect of human behavior. It's our "pavlov response." In dogs, it's consistent behavior that stimulates a return. For primates, it's the gambling aspect.

Maybe they did this knowing we'd keep spending if we can't be sure how well it works. I bet there's some nefarious tweaking behind the scenes. Like, if we turn off ads for a book, they shuffle the results to make it appear later in searches.

I know, total conspiracy theory there. Tin foil! But...after the release of the story that Zon was, in fact, shuffling results to show the things that give higher profit percentage first in results, I'd almost believe anything.

Edited to Correct: It's Zon shuffling results, not AMS.

[notthatamanda]

I know, total conspiracy theory there. Tin foil! But...after the release of the story that AMS was, in fact, shuffling results to show the things that give higher profit percentage first in results, I'd almost believe anything.

With the dynamic bidding they pretty much tell you they are shuffling the results, that's how I read it anyway.  Last night I was looking at some of my worst campaigns.  If a campaign doesn't get impressions or clicks I pretty much let it sit there, cause it's not costing me anything and if I get an impression, there's always a shot, and my book is getting visibility.   So I went and searched on a book on one of these not working at all ads.  And I saw that the overwhelming majority of books getting the sponsored ad spots are $2.99 or less.  My book is more.  I'm not mad they are not showing my ad, I'm grateful.  I don't need someone clicking on my ad without noticing the price until they get to my book page.  Waste of a click, and my money.  I could always override the algos to show my ad there.  Paraphrasing Anarchist, "We, the algos, think your ad's got a snowballs chance in hell of making a sale here, but if you want to pay for the right to prove us wrong, okay"  I'm sure the algos would put my book there if they "thought" it would sell, Amazon would make more money off of my book than the $2.99 and unders.

As far as AMS not showing everything, there could be several factors at play here.  People could have another window open and instead of clicking on the ad they look for the book there.  (I always do that, but maybe that's just me)  There's probably other options too. 

[WasAnn]

I know, total conspiracy theory there. Tin foil! But...after the release of the story that AMS was, in fact, shuffling results to show the things that give higher profit percentage first in results, I'd almost believe anything.

With the dynamic bidding they pretty much tell you they are shuffling the results, that's how I read it anyway.  Last night I was looking at some of my worst campaigns.  If a campaign doesn't get impressions or clicks I pretty much let it sit there, cause it's not costing me anything and if I get an impression, there's always a shot, and my book is getting visibility.   So I went and searched on a book on one of these not working at all ads.  And I saw that the overwhelming majority of books getting the sponsored ad spots are $2.99 or less.  My book is more.  I'm not mad they are not showing my ad, I'm grateful.  I don't need someone clicking on my ad without noticing the price until they get to my book page.  Waste of a click, and my money.  I could always override the algos to show my ad there.  Paraphrasing Anarchist, "We, the algos, think your ad's got a snowballs chance in hell of making a sale here, but if you want to pay for the right to prove us wrong, okay"  I'm sure the algos would put my book there if they "thought" it would sell, Amazon would make more money off of my book than the $2.99 and unders.

As far as AMS not showing everything, there could be several factors at play here.  People could have another window open and instead of clicking on the ad they look for the book there.  (I always do that, but maybe that's just me)  There's probably other options too.

Sorry, my bad and I corrected the post. It wasn't AMS shuffling search results, it was Zon shuffling search results so that higher profit margin items were seen first, regardless of possible better matches for the customer's search words.

[Simon Haynes]

Well, since I dropped the price of all my stuff from 4.99 to 2.99 the daily sales have doubled. I'm sure that's due to AMS - it's the only place I'm advertising, and I have no illusions about my brand power or my discoverability.

And yet, not much showing in the Sales column on the AMS dash. (It does say results can take up to 14 days, so I'll reserve judgement.)

I would actually be really happy if sales don't always show. If that's the case, my ads might actually be working. (Not just working better, working full stop.)

[notthatamanda]

Do you ever go and search on your keywords just to see if you can see your books showing up in the sponsored ads carousel and where?

[Simon Haynes]

I never see sponsored ads on Amazon US even though that's where my account is. (I'm in Australia, and we don't have AMS here.)

It's really annoying, because yes, I'd love to see what other people are advertising and where.

[Shoe]

Do you ever go and search on your keywords just to see if you can see your books showing up in the sponsored ads carousel and where?

I'm sure most do check. I want to be in the first to second carousel so I'm always checking to see where my ads land.

As an aside, I was off AMS for a couple months and now that I'm back, I've noticed you have to click the "spend" column several times before it's accurate. It caught me off the first couple of days back. I thought, boy, I'm not spending much, then re-clicked the column and saw the spend climb from something like $5 to $20.

[Simon Haynes]

I just doubled my daily budget on a bunch of ads, so that should determine whether there are loads of phantom sales or not.

(Since I tinkered with my ads, pricing and keywords recently I've seen a healthy boost in sales. Naturally, I have no idea which bit of tinkering worked. Throw in cover tweaks, description changes and a new release and it's anyone's guess.)

[WasAnn]

I just doubled my daily budget on a bunch of ads, so that should determine whether there are loads of phantom sales or not.

(Since I tinkered with my ads, pricing and keywords recently I've seen a healthy boost in sales. Naturally, I have no idea which bit of tinkering worked. Throw in cover tweaks, description changes and a new release and it's anyone's guess.)

That's the thing with not procrastinating and getting all the stuff that needs doing done quickly. You never can tell what works!

[notthatamanda]

I never see sponsored ads on Amazon US even though that's where my account is. (I'm in Australia, and we don't have AMS here.)

It's really annoying, because yes, I'd love to see what other people are advertising and where.

Oops, sorry, didn't mean to rub it in.

Shoe, I'm not sure what you mean by spend column.  I know if I ever go in and up the bid you have to hit the save button.  I do small campaigns so I just set a daily budget I can live with and rarely have to up it.

[Simon Haynes]

I never see sponsored ads on Amazon US even though that's where my account is. (I'm in Australia, and we don't have AMS here.)

It's really annoying, because yes, I'd love to see what other people are advertising and where.

Oops, sorry, didn't mean to rub it in.

Don't worry, not annoyed that you brought it up,  just annoyed that Amazon is so short sighted. (I do my ebook shopping on the US site, so why not show me ads?)

[notthatamanda]

If there's ever something you really want to see, PM me and I can try to screen shot for you.
Have you ever been able to make heads or tales of those placement stats?  I haven't.

[Simon Haynes]

I've only looked at the targeting reports. That's what led me to tweak my keywords and bids. (I love spreadsheets and data)

I was thinking of knocking up a program to digest a targeting report and spit out the most effective/productive keywords based on a few criteria. But for now I just sort and resort.

[Shoe]

I've only looked at the targeting reports. That's what led me to tweak my keywords and bids. (I love spreadsheets and data)

I was thinking of knocking up a program to digest a targeting report and spit out the most effective/productive keywords based on a few criteria. But for now I just sort and resort.

Their advertising reports are comprehensive. I'm sure you're familiar with them but you never know (under the navigation thingie upper left on your dashboard).

[notthatamanda]

Yeah I run the search term report every morning for the day before.  Keeps it manageable and I can do it before the coffee kicks in.  I can't imagine looking at a month of data.

[Jeff Tanyard]

Okay, so I turned off all AMS ads, which I'd left alone for months and had gone crazy in spending. A few days after I did, everything started dropping like crazy in rank. Sales and reads started decreasing too.

So, despite it not showing up on the AMS dashboard, clearly the ads had some effect.

So, I went back in, archived old ones, started new ones, or adjusted the keywords for existing ones. One new one I created was for my new semi-permafree. It's a prequel to a completed six book series.

I chose category targeting and kept my bids low to reasonable, fairly narrow too. After a few days, it shows a ctr of 4.1% for the entire ad, with some targets up to 10% CTR.

That sounds fine, but of course, the sales are 0 since this is permafree. That said, the orders listed in the AMS ad don't seem to reflect reality at all. I have no idea what this means.

Within about 24 hours of the ad starting, my actual buys of the permafree increased dramatically. No other ads at all, except one with too low a bid to get much airplay on BookBub.

The book had been hanging between 2700 and 3300 in free ranks by itself, but now it's up at 473 in the store. Example, for one day I got 130 free-sales, but AMS showed only 4 orders.

That's a huge difference. So, how effective is this? And are these kinds of errors normal? How can I know what's working or not? Totally confused.

Just fyi, I picked up your freebie yesterday.  I saw it in one of my emails.  Patty Jansen's ebookaroo, maybe?  Anyway, at least one of your downloads came from there, not AMS.  I'm not sure if that affects your conclusions or not, but there it is just in case.

[WasAnn]

Just fyi, I picked up your freebie yesterday.  I saw it in one of my emails.  Patty Jansen's ebookaroo, maybe?  Anyway, at least one of your downloads came from there, not AMS.  I'm not sure if that affects your conclusions or not, but there it is just in case.

That must be it! I got an extra couple of hundred downloads and I could not, for the life of me, believe AMS was that far off.

[BlueWren]

I never see sponsored ads on Amazon US even though that's where my account is. (I'm in Australia, and we don't have AMS here.)

It's really annoying, because yes, I'd love to see what other people are advertising and where.

Oops, sorry, didn't mean to rub it in.

Don't worry, not annoyed that you brought it up,  just annoyed that Amazon is so short sighted. (I do my ebook shopping on the US site, so why not show me ads?)

Lurker jumping in just to say that I'm from Aus too, and if I go to the US site and put in a US postcode (I think the box is in the top left?) I can see AMS ads. If it thinks I'm an Aussie looking in from outside, AMS ads disappear.

Hope that helps!

edit: fixed my own screwy formatting.

[Simon Haynes]

I got an email this morning saying one of my ads had reached its daily budget.

I checked and it had spent $2.60 out of a budget of $10/day - and wasn't delivering due to spending all the budget.

So I bumped the budget to $12, then paused and unpaused the campaign, and it's running again.

Accurate. Hah.

[Simon Haynes]

Lurker jumping in just to say that I'm from Aus too, and if I go to the US site and put in a US postcode (I think the box is in the top left?) I can see AMS ads. If it thinks I'm an Aussie looking in from outside, AMS ads disappear.

Hope that helps!

edit: fixed my own screwy formatting.

Thanks, that worked well! (I'm now in Beverly Hills, natch.)

And the first of my own novels I checked had a carousel with 179 PAGES of ads in it, 7 per page.

I bet some guy on page 176 is going 'AMS ads, they just don't work for me.'

[notthatamanda]

Especially when you try to click on a carousel that big it will lock up eventually and you won't get past page 80 probably.

179, That's a new record, I think. 

[WasAnn]

To me, that's just dishonest. In no normal world is someone going to click through 178 pages of ads to happen across one on 179. If people wanted to click that much to find a book, people wouldn't complain about the top 100 lists in genres being so polluted with man chest.

[notthatamanda]

Oh, is it still that bad? The genres I'm mostly looking at these days are remarkable void of Nekid McChesty.

I doubt people will click through even 20 pages unless they are in a very sullen mood.  I picture them sitting there clicking angrily, glaring at the screen.
I probably don't help the cause clicking deeper and deeper, looking for my book.

[RPatton]

Oh, is it still that bad? The genres I'm mostly looking at these days are remarkable void of Nekid McChesty.

Okay, this is a total digression... but...

The problem with Nekid McChesty is because readers pick those covers. I did a completely unscientific test. Threw two covers on a book, one was nekid McChesty and one much more literary, but with subtle cues of the content (not as overt as Fear of Flying - God I wish I was that brazen). Everything else was the same. EVERYTHING. Pen, Title, Blurb, everything. Then offered those books up on Booksprout. Guess what? Nekid McChesty hit the max in hours. Literary? Never even hit double digits.

Didn't mean I went with McChesty (because, you know, I'm an idiot that way), but those man chests are on the covers because it moves the books. It might suck, bu it's the way of the market at the moment.

[Lynn]

Oh, is it still that bad? The genres I'm mostly looking at these days are remarkable void of Nekid McChesty.

Okay, this is a total digression... but...

The problem with Nekid McChesty is because readers pick those covers. I did a completely unscientific test. Threw two covers on a book, one was nekid McChesty and one much more literary, but with subtle cues of the content (not as overt as Fear of Flying - God I wish I was that brazen). Everything else was the same. EVERYTHING. Pen, Title, Blurb, everything. Then offered those books up on Booksprout. Guess what? Nekid McChesty hit the max in hours. Literary? Never even hit double digits.

Didn't mean I went with McChesty (because, you know, I'm an idiot that way), but those man chests are on the covers because it moves the books. It might suck, bu it's the way of the market at the moment.

Let me continue this digression for one little moment.

I LOVE those kinds of covers. People can complain all day and tell me I'm not supposed to love them, but the hell if I can stop myself. I love sexy covers.

[notthatamanda]

Middle aged woman married for 26 years here.  I definitely don't mind looking at McChesty, but I don't buy those books.

I'm not familiar with Booksprout.

[notthatamanda]

Oh, is it still that bad? The genres I'm mostly looking at these days are remarkable void of Nekid McChesty.

Okay, this is a total digression... but...

The problem with Nekid McChesty is because readers pick those covers. I did a completely unscientific test. Threw two covers on a book, one was nekid McChesty and one much more literary, but with subtle cues of the content (not as overt as Fear of Flying - God I wish I was that brazen). Everything else was the same. EVERYTHING. Pen, Title, Blurb, everything. Then offered those books up on Booksprout. Guess what? Nekid McChesty hit the max in hours. Literary? Never even hit double digits.

Didn't mean I went with McChesty (because, you know, I'm an idiot that way), but those man chests are on the covers because it moves the books. It might suck, bu it's the way of the market at the moment.

The top one star review of Fear of Flying is some lady who bought it for her daughter-in-law who is afraid of flying. She thought it would help her get over her fear. On the other hand, if the worst thing your mother-in-law ever did was give you porn by mistake, that's really not that bad.  Sorry for contributing to the thread derailment.

[Simon Haynes]

The nekkid manchest covers are prolific because they do their job. They get a lot of hate, but they're not the only books which pop up in completely the wrong categories. (Don't get me started on the Humorous Scifi category, which is crammed with Fantasy books.)

Plus it's not always the authors. I asked Amazon to add my latest to Humorous Scifi, and they put it in Fantasy humour instead. Oh, did I laugh.

At least now it's been moved to the correct spot.

[TimothyEllis]

I unfollowed Freebooksy on FB after they started sending me manchest posts. I can cope with their posters for whats on special today, but specifically sending me stuff I dont want to see was too much.

[notthatamanda]

Plus it's not always the authors. I asked Amazon to add my latest to Humorous Scifi, and they put it in Fantasy humour instead. Oh, did I laugh.

At least now it's been moved to the correct spot.

Just curious Simon, how did you ask them?  Do you email through author central?
Since we can only see three categories and it can be in up to 10, it could still be in Fantasy Humor also, no?
I've got one book that I can't get out of Women's Action and Adventure, it always winds up back there.

[TimothyEllis]

Plus it's not always the authors. I asked Amazon to add my latest to Humorous Scifi, and they put it in Fantasy humour instead. Oh, did I laugh.

At least now it's been moved to the correct spot.

Just curious Simon, how did you ask them?  Do you email through author central?
Since we can only see three categories and it can be in up to 10, it could still be in Fantasy Humor also, no?
I've got one book that I can't get out of Women's Action and Adventure, it always winds up back there.

I always do stuff like that through the KDP dashboard - help- contact us.

[Simon Haynes]

Yep, via the contact us and then the product page selection on the left, then the entry to do with categories.