Amazon Catch All Campaign: How to Build One in 2026
Shivam Kumar
TL;DR
Key takeaways
An Amazon catch-all campaign is a low-bid Sponsored Products campaign across most of your catalog that buys cheap long-tail clicks your main campaigns miss.
Build it with auto and category targeting, bids around $0.20 to $0.40, dynamic bids down only, no placement premiums and a capped budget.
A low bid works because the required conversion rate falls with it: at a $30 order and 30% target ACOS, a $0.35 bid needs just 3.9%.
Negate your exact keywords and brand terms in it, harvest its winners out, and keep its bids low, or it turns into a second auto campaign.
An Amazon catch all campaign (usually written catch-all) is a Sponsored Products campaign that advertises most of your catalog at deliberately low bids. It picks up cheap clicks on search terms and product pages your main campaigns never bid on.
In the Amazon PPC accounts we manage, a well-run catch-all usually lands well under the account's average ACOS (advertising cost of sales), and wins some new customers along the way.
This guide is how we build one in late 2026: which ASINs go in, which targeting groups to use, the bid math with a worked example, how it sits beside a research and performance structure without stealing its traffic, what Prompts and keyword groups change, and when to switch it off.
What Is a Catch All Campaign on Amazon?
A catch-all campaign is a broad-reaching, low-bid Sponsored Products campaign, usually automatic targeting and often category targeting, that runs across many ASINs at once. Its only job is to buy clicks so cheap that they're profitable even at a lower conversion rate.
It isn't a campaign type in the Amazon Ads console. It's a practitioner's setup built from ordinary settings, which is why the details vary so much between guides.
Setting | Main research campaign | Catch-all campaign |
|---|---|---|
ASINs | One product group | Most of the catalog, grouped by price band |
Targeting | Auto, broad or category for one product group | Auto (all four groups), category, optionally keyword groups |
Bids | Near what the term can afford | Well below what the term can afford |
Bidding strategy | Down only | Down only |
Placement adjustments | Sometimes | Never |
Budget | Sized to the product group | Small and capped |
Goal | Find new search terms | Profitable leftover clicks, plus some discovery |
The difference from a normal auto campaign is the bid. A research auto campaign bids close to what a click is worth so it can find terms fast. A catch-all bids far below that and accepts much less traffic in exchange for a lower cost per order.
Why Low Bids Still Win Auctions
Not every auction is crowded. Long-tail searches, the detail pages of adjacent products and lower placements often have few advertisers competing, and a $0.30 bid can win them.
Bid isn't the only factor either. Amazon says its auctions prioritize relevance before bids, in a statement reported by Bloomberg, so a relevant ad can win with a modest bid where the competition is thin.
In our experience, catch-all clicks come mostly from rest of search and product pages, and a large share land late in the day after other advertisers' budgets run out.
Should You Run a Catch-All Campaign?
A catch-all earns its place in an account that already has a working structure. It's a supplement, not a substitute for proper research and performance campaigns.
Run one if | Skip it (for now) if |
|---|---|
You advertise 15 or more ASINs | You sell three products: a second auto campaign does the same job |
Main campaigns are structured and harvested weekly | You have no exact campaigns to protect yet |
Margins can absorb a lower conversion rate | Break-even ACOS is under about 15% |
You want long-tail discovery without raising research bids | Most of your catalog is out of stock or loses the Featured Offer |
The last row matters more than people expect. Sponsored Products only serve when your offer is the Featured Offer and in stock, so a catch-all over a catalog with patchy stock spends nothing on half its ASINs and reports misleading numbers on the rest.
The tactic is a Sponsored Products one. Sponsored Brands and display ads (formerly Sponsored Display) bid and serve differently, so a low-bid, catalog-wide setup doesn't carry over to them.
If you're still building the account, start with our campaign structure guide. It places the catch-all inside the research layer, which is where we keep it.
How to Build an Amazon Catch All Campaign, Step by Step
This is the build we use in 2026. It takes about an hour for a 100-ASIN catalog, most of it spent on the negatives.
1. Choose the ASINs
Start from every ASIN you advertise, then remove three kinds:
Products that lose the Featured Offer or run out of stock often. They won't serve, and they muddy the conversion data.
Products whose break-even ACOS is very low. If a product breaks even at 12%, even a $0.25 click has to convert well to pay for itself.
Products in launch. Launches belong in their own campaigns with their own target, as our product launch guide explains.
Variations with near-identical listings can share one child ASIN in the catch-all. Advertising every size and color mostly splits the same clicks.
2. Group ASINs Into Price Bands
Every ASIN in an ad group shares its targets and its default bid. A $0.30 bid is a bargain on a $60 product and expensive on a $12 one, so we split the catch-all into ad groups by price band.
A typical split is under $20, $20 to $50 and over $50. Amazon's own Sponsored Products best practices say to group ASINs "based on price range and conversions within the same category", and price bands are the catch-all version of that advice.
3. Set the Targeting Groups
Auto targeting has four targeting groups, defined in Amazon's targeting guide: close match, loose match, substitutes (detail pages of similar products) and complements (detail pages of products that go with yours).
Keep all four on. Each has its own bid, which is where the catch-all gets its control.
Auto and manual targeting can't share a campaign, so a full setup is two campaigns:
Catch-all auto: the price-band ad groups with all four targeting groups.
Catch-all manual: category targets for your main categories at low bids, refined by price or star rating where that helps. Optionally a keyword groups ad group if you're in the US beta.
4. Set Low Bids by Targeting Group
Start at $0.20 to $0.40 per click in the US, scaled by price band. The section on bid math below shows how to work out your own ceiling.
These are our illustrative starting bids for a $20 to $50 ad group:
Targeting group | Starting bid | Why |
|---|---|---|
Close match | $0.35 | Closest to intent, converts best |
Substitutes | $0.30 | Shoppers comparing similar products |
Loose match | $0.25 | Widest net, most irrelevant clicks |
Complements | $0.20 | Lowest intent, but cheap reach |
Category targets | $0.25 | Broad, depends on refinement |
Amazon's bid limits allow Sponsored Products bids from $0.02 in the US, so there's plenty of room to go lower. Other marketplaces have different floors, such as ₹1 in India and ¥2 in Japan, so convert the idea, not the number.
5. Choose Dynamic Bids Down Only and No Placement Premiums
Set the bidding strategy to dynamic bids down only. Amazon lowers the bid when a click looks less likely to convert and never raises it.
Never use up and down here. Amazon's dynamic bidding guide says that strategy can "increase or decrease your bids by up to 100% for all placements", which turns a $0.35 bid into $0.70 and removes the reason the campaign exists.
Leave every placement adjustment at 0%. Top of search, rest of search and product pages can each go up to 900% (Amazon added the rest of search adjustment in January 2024), and any premium makes the catch-all compete with your performance campaigns. Our bidding strategies guide covers how adjustments and strategies stack.
6. Cap the Budget
We start a catch-all at about 5% of total Sponsored Products spend, inside the 10% to 20% research share from our structure guide. For a smaller account, $10 to $25 a day is a sensible start; Amazon's minimum daily budget is $1 in the US.
Remember that a daily budget is spent over the calendar month. Per Amazon's best practices guide, $100 a day can buy up to $3,000 of clicks in a 30-day month, with some days over $100.
If the catch-all spends its whole budget every day at target ACOS, raise the budget before you touch a bid. A full budget means it found more cheap clicks, not that the bids are too low.
7. Copy Negatives From Your Main Campaigns
This is the step most catch-alls skip, and it's why they end up competing with the account they were supposed to supplement.
Every exact performance keyword as a negative exact. Those searches already have an owner and a bid you chose.
Your brand name as a negative phrase. Brand searches belong to brand defense, where they're judged on share of voice, not ACOS.
Your own ASINs as negative product targets, if a defense campaign already targets your detail pages.
Account-wide waste negatives, such as "used", "free" or sizes you don't sell.
Our negative keywords guide covers campaign versus ad group negatives. Amazon's negative targeting help page says negatives can take up to 72 hours to apply, so judge overlap after three days, not the same afternoon.
The Bid Math: Why a $0.20 to $0.40 Bid Converts Profitably
Everything about a catch-all comes down to one formula: ACOS = CPC ÷ (average order value × conversion rate). Lower the CPC enough and a much weaker conversion rate still hits target.
1. Compare a Main Campaign With the Catch-All
Take a $30 product with a 30% target ACOS. These numbers are illustrative, but the pattern is what we see in real accounts.
Exact campaign: $1.10 per click at a 12% conversion rate. Cost per order is $1.10 ÷ 0.12 = $9.17, so ACOS is $9.17 ÷ $30 = 30.6%.
Catch-all: $0.35 per click at a 4% conversion rate. Cost per order is $0.35 ÷ 0.04 = $8.75, so ACOS is 29.2%.
The catch-all converts at a third of the exact campaign's rate and still delivers a cheaper order. In ROAS (return on ad spend) terms, both sit around 3.3, the inverse of a 30% ACOS.
2. Work Out the Conversion Rate a Bid Needs
Turn the formula around: the conversion rate a bid needs is CPC ÷ (target ACOS × order value). At a $30 order and a 30% target, the denominator is $9.
Bid (paid in full) | Conversion rate needed for 30% ACOS |
|---|---|
$0.20 | 2.2% |
$0.35 | 3.9% |
$0.60 | 6.7% |
$1.10 | 12.2% |
Most products convert above 4% even on loosely matched traffic. Our conversion rate guide shows where to find yours by ASIN.
3. Set Your Own Ceiling Bid
The ceiling for each price band is target ACOS × average order value × the conversion rate you expect from loose traffic. We use half the ASIN's normal conversion rate as that estimate until the catch-all has its own data.
For a $30 product converting at 10% normally: 0.30 × $30 × 5% = $0.45. Start below the ceiling, around $0.30 to $0.35, so there's margin for error. Set the target itself from your break-even ACOS.
4. Plan as if You Pay Your Full Bid
Many older guides assume you pay well below your bid in a second-price auction. Don't build the math on that.
On August 31, 2026, the FTC and 22 states sued Amazon, alleging that Sponsored Products advertisers paid their own winning bid "close to 80% of the time." These are allegations, Amazon disputes them, and the case is pending.
Either way, Amazon says you never pay more than your maximum bid. So the safe assumption is the one in the table above: set every catch-all bid at a price you're happy to pay in full.
How the Catch-All Fits Your Research and Performance Structure
A catch-all sits in the research layer of the account, below the product group research campaigns. It finds leftovers; it doesn't own anything.
Layer | Campaigns | Bids | Owns |
|---|---|---|---|
Performance | Exact keywords, individual ASIN targets | Highest | Proven searches |
Brand defense | Brand terms, own ASINs | Set for share of voice | Brand searches |
Research | Auto, broad, category per product group | Middle | Discovery for one product group |
Catch-all | Auto and category across the catalog | Lowest | Leftover cheap clicks |
Why It Doesn't Cannibalize When It's Set Up Right
Cannibalization happens when two of your campaigns can serve the same search and the cheaper one wins traffic the expensive one should have bought. Negatives stop that for exact terms and brand terms.
For everything else, the catch-all's low bid does the work. Where your research campaign bids $0.90 on the same loose search, the catch-all at $0.30 rarely wins. It mostly serves where your other campaigns didn't bid at all.
Check it anyway. Once a month, compare the catch-all's search terms with your exact keywords; any overlap means a negative is missing.
Harvesting Out of the Catch-All
A catch-all is a research source like any other. Its converting search terms graduate into exact on the same rules: we use two orders in 30 days at or under target ACOS, skipping the last 7 days.
When a term graduates, add it as negative exact in the catch-all and in the research campaigns of that product group. Our keyword harvesting guide has the thresholds, the negation map and the bid seeding formula.
One difference matters. A catch-all term's history was bought at a very low CPC, so seed its exact bid from target ACOS × order value × its conversion rate, not from the CPC it paid. Otherwise the new exact keyword can't win the better placements it now needs.
Negating Inside the Catch-All
Negate slowly here. At $0.30 a click, a term needs many clicks before it has cost much, and loose traffic converts in bursts.
We use the same rule as in our negatives guide: negate a relevant term after about three times its expected clicks per order with no sale. At a 5% conversion rate that's 60 clicks, or roughly $18 at $0.30, which is cheap insurance against blocking a future winner. Clearly irrelevant terms go straight away.
The search term report is where this happens. Amazon's search term report page now notes that it also includes terms inferred for non-search placements, so check an odd-looking term before you negate or harvest it.
What Prompts, Keyword Groups and Amazon Ads Agent Change
Most of what's new in Sponsored Products since late 2025 runs inside campaigns you already have. That includes the catch-all, at its catch-all bids.
1. Prompts Can Spend Inside the Catch-All
Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands prompts opened in beta in November 2025 and became generally available in the US on March 25, 2026. Eligible campaigns are enrolled automatically, prompts use existing campaign targeting, and clicks are billed under your CPC.
Amazon's announcement doesn't say whether auto campaigns are excluded. So check the Prompts report (Reports, Sponsored Products, Prompts) for your catch-all campaigns each month, and pause any prompt that spends without selling. Our post on Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands AI prompts covers the report.
2. Keyword Groups Are a Natural Catch-All Target
Amazon describes keyword groups as "simplified broad-match keyword management." They target sets of related keywords chosen from your ASINs and "continuously refreshes them over time." They're in beta and only in the US.
That's close to what a catch-all already does, so we test them in their own catch-all ad group at the same low bids. Amazon's documentation says keyword groups can share an ad group with keywords but not with product targets, so keep them away from category targeting.
3. Off-Amazon Placements Ignore Your Placement Settings
PPC Land reported that from August 10, 2026, existing Sponsored Products campaigns were enrolled in off-Amazon creator placements at existing bids and budgets. Top of search and product page adjustments don't apply there.
For a catch-all, those clicks are cheap but low intent. We set the campaign's off-Amazon setting to "Limit off-Amazon spend" at launch, then test the default once the on-Amazon numbers are stable.
4. Amazon Ads Agent Will Suggest Higher Bids
On September 29, 2026, Amazon renamed its unified platform Amazon Ads Agent. Its Sponsored Products recommendations for targeting, bids and budgets apply in one click, and its conversational features are in closed beta and rolling out.
A bid recommendation on a catch-all will almost always say raise it, because the campaign is designed to lose most auctions. Accept budget suggestions where ACOS is on target; skip bid increases.
5. Auto-Optimization Arrives in January 2027
Amazon announced on September 22, 2026 that auto-optimization, which adds relevant keywords, pauses underperforming ones and expands product targeting within existing campaign settings, comes to US advertisers in January 2027.
If you turn it on for a catch-all, watch for added targets that overlap your exact keywords. The negation step in this guide is still yours.
When a Catch-All Campaign Stops Working
Catch-alls decay. Competition rises, harvesting takes the best terms out, and bids drift up as people chase volume. These are the signals we check every month.
Signal | What it usually means | What we do |
|---|---|---|
Average CPC at 90%+ of the bid | You're paying full price for marginal clicks | Cut bids 10% to 20% on that targeting group |
ACOS above target for 30 days | The leftover clicks aren't cheap anymore | Lower bids, then remove the weakest price band |
Spend above about 10% of SP spend | Bids have crept up; it's a second auto campaign | Reset bids to the ceiling formula |
Search terms overlap your exact keywords | Negatives are missing | Add negative exact; check after 72 hours |
Impressions fall while bids are unchanged | The category got more competitive | Accept lower volume, or retire the band |
Too few orders to harvest anything | The catalog or margins don't suit a catch-all | Pause it and fold budget into research |
When a catch-all is retired, keep its negatives list. The search terms it negated are still waste in the research campaigns.
Catch-All Campaign Mistakes We See in Real Accounts
Raising bids because ACOS looks great. The low ACOS comes from the low bid. Double the bid and you have a second, more expensive auto campaign.
Dynamic bids up and down. It can double every bid, which defeats the design.
Placement modifiers. A top of search premium puts the catch-all in auctions owned by your performance campaigns.
No negatives from the main campaigns. The catch-all then serves your exact and brand searches at a lower bid, and your reports split them.
One bid across the whole catalog. A single $0.30 bid is too high for cheap products and too low for expensive ones.
Never harvesting. Converting terms stay at catch-all bids and never get the placements they could earn.
Negating on 10 clicks. At 4% conversion, 10 clicks without a sale is normal.
Judging it on the last 7 days. Sponsored Products attribute sales for 7 days after the click for sellers and 14 for vendors.
A full Amazon PPC audit checks for these alongside the rest of the structure.
How We Run Catch-All Campaigns in Adbrew
Everything above works by hand in the Amazon Ads console: one build, a monthly check and the weekly harvest. Across a large catalog or many client accounts, the negatives and the bid creep are what slip.
Adbrew is an agentic retail media management platform for Amazon and Walmart, and the catch-all routine runs inside it:
Bulk launch. Build the catch-all auto and manual campaigns, price-band ad groups and starting bids for a whole catalog in one action, then edit them with bulk operations. See Sponsored Ads management.
Rules you set for harvesting, negation, bids and budgets. Converting terms move out of the catch-all into exact and are negated at the source; you choose the lookback, thresholds and guardrails.
Guardrails against bid creep. Keep the catch-all out of any bid-raising automation, so its bids stay where you set them.
Retail-aware automation. Ads pause when an ASIN goes out of stock or loses the Featured Offer, which keeps a catalog-wide campaign from wasting spend.
[Adbrew Intelligence](https://adbrew.io/blog/what-is-adbrew-intelligence). Ask for "catch-all search terms that also exist as exact keywords" or "catch-all targeting groups where average CPC is above 90% of the bid", and the agent pulls them for you to act on.
Brands on Adbrew cut ACOS by 46% on average, and Seller Presto saves more than 250 hours of manual optimization a month. Maintenance work like this is a good share of those hours.
Keep the Catch-All Cheap, and It Keeps Paying
A catch-all is the simplest campaign in the account to build and the easiest to ruin. Low bids, down only, no placement premiums and a monthly negatives check are what keep it profitable.
Want to see bulk launches, harvesting rules and guardrails running on your own catalog? Book a demo and we'll build your catch-all with you.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a catch all campaign on Amazon?
A catch all campaign on Amazon is a Sponsored Products campaign that advertises most of a catalog at very low bids, usually with automatic and category targeting. It buys cheap long-tail clicks and product page placements that the main campaigns don't bid on, at a cost per order that is often below the account average.
What bid should I use for an Amazon catch-all campaign?
Most US catch-all campaigns start at $0.20 to $0.40 per click. Calculate a ceiling as target ACOS × average order value × the conversion rate you expect from loose traffic, using half the product's normal rate at first. Start below that ceiling and set bids by targeting group and price band.
Should a catch-all campaign be automatic or manual?
An Amazon catch-all usually uses both, in two campaigns, because automatic and manual targeting can't share a campaign. The automatic campaign runs all four targeting groups with separate bids. The manual campaign holds low-bid category targets and, in the US, optionally keyword groups.
How much budget should a catch all campaign get?
Start a catch-all campaign at about 5% of total Sponsored Products spend, or $10 to $25 a day for a smaller account. If it spends the whole budget daily at or under target ACOS, raise the budget rather than the bids. If its share climbs past about 10%, the bids have probably crept up.
What bidding strategy should a catch-all campaign use?
A catch-all campaign should use dynamic bids down only, which lowers bids when a click looks less likely to convert and never raises them. Avoid dynamic bids up and down, which can raise a bid by up to 100%, and leave all placement adjustments at 0%.
Does a catch-all campaign cannibalize my other campaigns?
A catch-all campaign only cannibalizes when it can serve searches your other campaigns own. Add every exact performance keyword as a negative exact and your brand as a negative phrase, keep bids well below your research bids, and compare its search terms with your exact keywords monthly.
Do Prompts run in catch-all campaigns?
Sponsored Products prompts enroll eligible campaigns automatically and use existing campaign targeting, billed under your CPC, so they can spend inside a catch-all at its bids. Amazon's announcement doesn't say whether auto campaigns are excluded, so check the Prompts report for catch-all campaigns and pause prompts that don't sell.
When should I turn off a catch-all campaign?
Turn off or rebuild a catch-all campaign when its ACOS stays above target for 30 days after bid cuts, when its average CPC sits near its bids, or when it no longer produces terms worth harvesting. Keep its negatives, because those search terms are still waste in your research campaigns.
