Change to the keyword adding on AMS/AA

[notthatamanda]

It's defaulting to broad, phrase and exact, all of them.  Also defaulting to a suggested bid for each keyword.  You have to uncheck what on broad, phrase and exact that you don't want, and put in a custom bid before you add the keywords or you will be removing them all manually and changing the bids for each keyword.

Sorry if I didn't do an adequate job describing it.  It looks very different.  The stuff for the bids and matching is on the top left, above where you put in the keywords.

[Tonyonline]

Yeah...another "great" idea they've had  . More stuff to work around!

I wish I could just strip the advert, set up, down to what I actually want. Which is as basic as possible. I don't want to be clicking the new ad group thing, what the heck is that about? I really don't want to know!
I don't want to see all the bid extra, up, down and, much more up! I know what I want to bid...end of.
And when setting up...does anybody actually use the negative keywords?
I'll stop here......but the point is, all this extra stuff is stuff I have to ignore and work around.

It's a shame they won't give me what I really want, like...How many borrows, to page reads. A simple way of seeing how many clicks each ad gets, and by each day would be great. Maybe you can find that info but I don't see it. I'd also like to know how much I'm spending per day.

Okay! Really stopping now

[123mlh]

And when setting up...does anybody actually use the negative keywords?

Um, yeah. Most definitely. Those save me a lot of money so I can have a keyword like fantasy but not have readers looking for reverse harem, paranormal, urban, etc. see and click on my epic fantasy.

[Simon Haynes]

Re negative keywords - I try to add all my own stuff and my name. Why? Because if people search Amazon for my stuff they show the ad first and the actual book below it. Then they click the ad. (Thanks, Amazon.)

I know this because of the new 'search terms' report, which shows some of the clicks I'm paying for were the result of searches on my own books.


Re the ad groups - you can now set up various ads under the one campaign, each with different targeting. So, if the campaign runs out of money, all those ads stop. (Same as facebook's ad setup.)

[LilyBLily]

That's a great idea, Simon. I shall do that. I already use negative keywords for my western romances since there are certain readers out there looking for steamy stuff that I don't write. The search term reports have opened my eyes to how much of my ad money can be wasted by people looking in the wrong place who click and then of course do not buy.

[Bill Hiatt]

Oh, yes, Simon, that never occurred to me, but it should have. One of the things that irks me about AMS is that when I search for my own name, I get something like four sponsored listings on the first page of the results that are in most cases books already on the page. That's annoying enough. But yes, I can imagine someone clicking on the sponsored listing in that case, especially since two of them are at the top.

[Anarchist]

Yeah...another "great" idea they've had  . More stuff to work around!

I love the updated system. It has streamlined my process.

And when setting up...does anybody actually use the negative keywords?

Absolutely. All of my keyword lists start with 40 default negs. I then add more based on the terrain a particular list covers.

[JRTomlin]

I was adding a couple of keywords yesterday and was totally

Yeah...another "great" idea they've had  . More stuff to work around!

I wish I could just strip the advert, set up, down to what I actually want. Which is as basic as possible. I don't want to be clicking the new ad group thing, what the heck is that about? I really don't want to know!
I don't want to see all the bid extra, up, down and, much more up! I know what I want to bid...end of.
And when setting up...does anybody actually use the negative keywords?
I'll stop here......but the point is, all this extra stuff is stuff I have to ignore and work around.

It's a shame they won't give me what I really want, like...How many borrows, to page reads. A simple way of seeing how many clicks each ad gets, and by each day would be great. Maybe you can find that info but I don't see it. I'd also like to know how much I'm spending per day.

Okay! Really stopping now

My sincere opinion, it totally sucks. Makes adding keywords considerably more troublesome for no reason that I can see.

The adage don't fix what's not broke comes to mind.

[notthatamanda]

I decided to look more closely at negative keywords so I ran the search term report on all my live ads and found a possible three.  One campaign I had already paused, but that word was not the problem.   I used to think I should put "free" in as a negative keyword but the algos seem to do a good job of filtering that one out.  I had a search that had "Spanish" in the customer input term, and one that had the same title with a different author, and one with a similar title.  So I will make a habit of checking the search term reports every day for possible negatives.  I don't see it making a huge difference but it can't hurt.

If anyone wants to share their standard negative keywords in case I missed something basic here, I'd be grateful for the advice.

[notthatamanda]

And you have to hit save each time you change the bid on a keyword.  Maybe I'm the only one who does this but I run small campaigns so I adjust just about each bid.  It's annoying.

[JRTomlin]

My negative keywords are pretty basic. Romance, my name, and the titles of my novels.

[Simon Haynes]

Don't forget you can select all the keywords using the checkbox at the top, then adjust them up and down by a percentage instead of fixing them to the same price.

So, if you want to boost them by 10% for a day, you can do so.

[notthatamanda]

I did not know that, thanks!