Okay, I just sent a note to Amazon about this and we'll await their answer. But, I think I may have cracked the code and if I'm correct, it's silly beyond belief. Check the screenshot below:
Now, here's my cloudy logic. Amazon says they average the spend over the month. So, if you have a $2.00 budget and there are 31 days in the month, you can expect to see a $62 spend. As you can see, the top ad, the one that only spent .56 cents today, has spent over $69 this month so far.
I'm sure you're asking, "But Dave, that's way over the $62 budget for the month." Yes it is. Why is that? Because I've played around with the budgets this month, like I do every month and at one point, paused the bottom ad and raised the top ad to $5 a day. For three days they had no problem spending every dime of that, but there was not one sale to show for it. So, I backed it back down to $2, but now the spend for the month was already past what a $2 budget would allow.
Why do I think that it's silly that Amazon does it this way (if they really do)? When you go Out Of Budget, your ad stops serving until midnight, at which time it gets turned back on. So I guess I would have to ask, why doesn't the budget just reset at midnight and go from there? If my budget is $5 a day for the first 15 days of the month and then I back it off to $2 a day, they're saying for the next 15-16 days I've already blown my budget for the month.
And I just thought of this just as I was getting ready to press Post. They are punishing you if you lower your bid. They're saying there are six days left in this month and we're going to strangle your impressions and clicks because you had the temerity to lower your budget.
