Setting the bid per keyword — derived numbers, not console suggestions.
Every keyword bid should fall out of the same arithmetic from episode 03. Common shortcuts (one bid per ad group, bid = suggested bid mid-point, copy-paste from a similar keyword), why they are tempting, and why they cost money.
Episode 03 derived a single bid from contribution margin, target ACOS and conversion rate. That same arithmetic should run once per keyword in your manual campaigns. In practice almost no-one does it, because doing it manually is tedious — and that tedium is exactly where most accounts leak money.
The temptation 1 — one bid per ad group
Set one bid at the ad-group level and let every keyword inherit it. Saves time at setup. Costs money forever, because keywords inside the same ad group have different CVRs — sometimes by a factor of three. Bidding them all the same means you over-bid the low-CVR keywords and under-bid the high-CVR ones.
The temptation 2 — bid = suggested-bid mid-point
The console suggests a bid range and shows you a mid-point. It feels authoritative. It is a backwards-looking summary of what other advertisers paid — it has nothing to do with your unit economics. Using it as the bid means inheriting other advertisers' margin profile, not your own.
The temptation 3 — copy the bid from a similar keyword
"This keyword looks like that one, use the same bid." Sometimes correct, often not — CVR varies with intent specificity, and two synonyms can have a 2× CVR gap that the spelling does not hint at. Copy bids only when you have evidence the CVRs are similar.
The actual workflow at scale
For an account with hundreds of keywords across dozens of ad groups, the only sustainable way to do per-keyword bidding is in a bulk-file workflow:
- Export the current campaign bulk file.
- Join it to a calculated table of derived bids — contribution-margin × target-ACOS ÷ clicks-per-order — per keyword, using your realised CVR.
- Compute the new bid as the derived bid × a headroom factor (1.15–1.3 — episode 24 of Module 2).
- Upload.
Done weekly or bi-weekly, this is the single highest-leverage piece of campaign maintenance in any account.
Brand-new keywords with no CVR history
Use an analogue CVR from a similar keyword you do have history for. Set a deliberately conservative starting bid — closer to the bottom of the derived range — and let realised data update the calculation after a couple of hundred impressions.
What about Amazon's auto-rules and bid optimisers?
The first-party rule-based bidder is fine on Sponsored Brands campaigns with mature data; on Sponsored Products it tends to chase noise. Third-party optimisers vary wildly in quality. The principle holds either way: whatever sets the bid should be deriving it from your unit economics, not from market averages.
Watch Episode 18: Setting the bid per keyword (German)
The German walkthrough — setting per-keyword bids the right way.
Per-keyword bids without per-keyword tedium.
AMALYZE auto-derives bids per keyword from your unit economics and CVR data — so the maths from episode 03 runs on every keyword, not just the headline ones.