Why are all my sponsored product search terms ASINs?

[Joe Vasicek]

So… total AMS ads n00b here. All of my currently running AMS ads are auto-targeted, which I assume means that the almighty algorithms (in their infinite wisdom) determine which keywords / search terms would work best for my ads, and bid for them accordingly.

Recently, my ads saw a spike, so I ran a sponsored products search term report, and aside from "free kindle books space," all of the search terms are ASINs. What does that mean? Did the auto-targeted ads input those as keywords, or did the almight algorithms determine that linking my books to those books was best? What is this report actually telling me?

Also, it appears that the spike was caused by getting a sponsored ad on a book that must have gotten a bookbub or something, because it's currently #6 on the Kindle Store free list. Except, my AMS ads dashboard says that I got only 6 clicks, but my KDP dashboard says that I got a spike of 153 downloads (it's a permafree first-in-series.) So… did all of those downloads come off of the AMS ad? And if so, am I going to be charged for all of that?

[notthatamanda]

When I was doing AMS if an ASIN number got a click or sale I would figure out what book that was and decide if I wanted to target those authors and books directly. Just paste the ASIN number into Amazon and it should come up.

I've never heard of anyone being charged for a sale when the ad wasn't clicked on. You will see sales being credited to keywords that never got a click and I figured that was someone opening a new window and searching for what they saw in the ad. I do that quite frequently, with everything, if something interests because I don't want to lose the page I am on. Also because when I am looking at books I know the author will have to pay for the click and I usually don't have any intention of buying the book.

I've been out of AMS for several months so I don't know if this is still the case. I can't answer this question  "Did the auto-targeted ads input those as keywords, or did the almight algorithms determine that linking my books to those books was best?" with 100% certainty but I think when you have general terms that's what it does. I saw it when I ran "WW2 historical fiction" and variants as keywords.

I ran the search term report every morning to make sure nothing was amiss and I recommend that. It only takes a couple of minutes a day.  You'll start to get a feel for what it's doing, even if the reasons behind it is never 100%.

[Simon Haynes]

Don't forget to add 'free' to your kindle negative keywords, unless you're advertising a free book.

Also 'dvd', 'movie', 'audiobook' and other media you're not selling.

I also enter the ASINs for all my own books in the negative product search. Otherwise people search for my name or one of my books, and the first result is a sponsored ad I'm paying for. Below that are all my books.

[notthatamanda]

Yes I did audio, audible, audio book and audible book in the negative keywords. Well, until I did my first audio book that it

The search term report can also show you the infrequent but completely unexpected matches that will give you new negative keywords to add to specific campaigns.

[Joe Vasicek]

I also enter the ASINs for all my own books in the negative product search. Otherwise people search for my name or one of my books, and the first result is a sponsored ad I'm paying for. Below that are all my books.

I can see how having an ad pop up on a search for your books would be counter-productive, but what about having your own books show up on your Amazon book page? The way I see it, Amazon is basically farming out my own book pages to sell things that are not my books. Wouldn't it be a good thing to grab some of that space back through AMS ads?

Also, a more general question: is it possible to batch edit ad campaigns to add negative keywords?

[notthatamanda]

Like edit more than one campaign at once?

[Joe Vasicek]

Like edit more than one campaign at once?

Yes. Like I said, I'm a n00b.

[notthatamanda]

I wasn't sure if you were trying to add all the negative campaign words to one campaign at once. That may be a simple cut and paste. I don't know a way to edit multiple campaigns, unless they changed something in the portfolio, are you using portfolios to group campaigns? I've not been doing AMS for the past couple of months. It has always been cumbersome to adjust anything after the campaign launches.

I wouldn't stress too much about it, run your search term report for the day before every morning. If you see anything amiss, add negative keywords when you are fixing whatever turned else you are fiddling with for that campaign.