So far, my new auto targeting ad has been shown to exactly 53 customers, according to the Amazon ads spreadsheet. Not surprisingly, no clicks. It has a $15-a-day budget and I went ahead and accepted the suggested bid amount, too, but nada. On the good side (ha!), it has cost me nothing to get no results. Even assuming the ad reporting is three days behind, this is nowhere.
Meanwhile, my manually targeted ad has only delivered 5,281 views and 6 clicks on a $10-a-day budget. I can't say that I am thrilled with the performance of this ad, either. Women's fiction is not a confusing category to aim at, unlike, say, Gothic romance, which gets mixed up with "dark" romance and mafia romance and street, too on Amazon's pages.
I think I'll check out Bryan's ad challenge in case there's anything I missed. I've been running AMS ads for four years and they always used to deliver. A change in tactics appears called for.