Within manual product targeting (as opposed to manual keyword targeting or automatic targeting), you target specific products or categories rather than search terms:
Both category and ASIN targeting support exact and expanded match (expanded pulls in ASINs Amazon considers similar to the one targeted), and both support negative targeting — excluding specific competitor ASINs or brands from being targeted, the product-targeting equivalent of Amazon Negative Keywords.
Regardless of whether targeting is by keyword or by product, Amazon can and will show the ad in both Search and on product detail pages — the targeting method doesn't restrict the placement (see Placement Bid Adjustments (Top of Search / Rest of Search / Product Pages)).
Product targeting exposes two match modes for an ASIN target, mirroring Keyword Match Types (Exact / Broad / Phrase) but for product-based targets:
Use exact when you want tight control over a single competitor's page; use expanded when you're willing to trade control for Amazon surfacing additional, undiscovered similar product pages. See Negative Product/Brand Targeting for excluding specific ASINs/brands from a targeting set.
A $200+ Home & Kitchen bedroom-category launch drove the bulk of its 90-day, $100K-revenue run through category-targeting campaigns rather than exact-match keywords: 'bed frames' ran at 12% ACOS on $21,700 in sales, 'beds' at 18% ACOS on $6,100 — both outperforming a traditional keyword-only approach during the launch window. Setup: Sponsored Products → manual targeting → product targeting → Categories tab → select the category → set your own calculated bid (don't accept Amazon's suggestion) → dynamic bids – down only → withhold placement modifiers until performance data accumulates → set a daily budget. See Dynamic Bids Down Only (Default Steady-State Bidding Strategy) and Budget Allocation Across Campaign Types (Aggressive vs. Lean Launch).
Also referred to as PAT (Product Attribute Targeting) — an umbrella term for the manual ad-targeting method that places ads against other products by category, attribute (price band, Prime eligibility, review count), or specific ASIN, as opposed to keyword targeting.
This sits inside a broader diagnostic split: Amazon ad campaigns are either Auto (Amazon's algorithm chooses targets) or Manual, and Manual itself splits into keyword targeting (see Keyword Match Types (Exact / Broad / Phrase)) and product/attribute targeting (PAT). An account that is almost entirely Auto and broad-match is a signal of under-invested account structure, regardless of spend level.
Essential Candy (Helium 10 Scale Stories) — diagnosed as running an ad account that was almost entirely Auto/broad match; the fix proposed a new PAT campaign targeting roughly 100 relevant competitor ASINs, including a Switchers Tactic (Product Targeting by Competitor Star-Rating Gap) angle, managed on an ongoing basis via Helium 10 Ads Automation.
Amazon Ads' Product Attribute Targeting (PAT) — the manual targeting type behind category and ASIN targeting — lets sellers target either by category (own, complementary, or similar categories) or by specific product attributes: price, Prime status, star rating, or individual ASINs. See Switchers Tactic (Product Targeting by Competitor Star-Rating Gap) for a star-rating-based application, and Category Targeting Refine Filters (Price, Rating, Brand, Shipping) for the category-level filters.
For a newly-added ASIN/product target, start the bid low and raise it incrementally until impressions start appearing, rather than estimating a starting bid from the target-ACoS formula — a new target has no click/conversion history yet, so the formula's inputs aren't available. Use only Sponsored Products for this discovery process, not Sponsored Display or Sponsored Video; the source's rationale is that Display/Video auctions behave differently enough from search-based match types to make bid-discovery signals unreliable across formats.
ASIN targeting can be run specifically under the Sponsored Products ad format, as distinct from Sponsored Display or Sponsored Video ASIN targeting. Apply: start a new ASIN-targeting campaign with a low bid and incrementally raise it until impressions begin appearing, rather than guessing a competitive bid upfront.
Из тем: PPC Campaign Structure & Bidding