Dayparting for Amazon PPC – Limitations and Recommendations

blog-img

Are you struggling to get the most out of your advertising budget on Amazon?

Do you find that your campaigns have a significantly low conversion rate, leading to a lot of wasted ad spend and higher cost per acquisition?

Imagine if you could use a method that allows you to display your ads to potential customers precisely when they’re most likely to convert.

Yes, that’s what dayparting is all about.

In this blog post, we will discuss what Amazon PPC dayparting is, how it works, and how you can use dayparting to boost sales and your brand.

What is Dayparting?

Dayparting also known as Amazon Ad scheduling is an advanced advertising technique that enables you to adjust your ad campaign’s bids, budget, and placement modifier on an hourly basis.

Benefits of Using Amazon PPC Dayparting

1. Avoid the CPC rush of the initial few hours of the day

Amazon refreshes the budget for all advertisers at midnight sharp. As a result, competition is at its highest during the initial few hours of the day because advertisers have not yet depleted their budgets. Consequently, the cost-per-click (CPC) is also high during this period.

This phenomenon of high CPC during the initial hours of the day is commonly referred to as the ‘CPC bid rush.’ As the day progresses, advertisers with limited budgets begin to run out of funds, which, in turn, lowers the CPC. With dayparting, you can go less aggressive with your bids or even pause your ads during these rush hours to ensure that the majority of your ad campaign budget is used during the hours when CPC is lower.

2. Go aggressive with ads when your customers are more likely to buy

With Amazon Marketing Stream data, you can discover the peak hours and days for your brand when you receive the most orders. For instance, it could be possible that you receive the maximum number of orders during the last 6 hours of the day, or maybe the majority of your shoppers shop on weekends. 

Based on such insights, you can create a dayparting strategy to be more aggressive with your bids and budget, maximizing your chances of being discovered by your target audience.

3. Maximize the efficiency of limited ad budget

Do your ad campaigns frequently get out of budget, leaving you with insufficient budget for advertising? In such cases, you can utilize dayparting to run your ads during selected hours of the day and days of the week when they are more likely to drive conversions for your brand. This practice will ensure that your limited ad budget is being used most effectively.

Dayparting with Hourly Performance Data

Gone are the days when people used to create their dayparting strategy based on a general consumer behavior assumption. Not all shoppers are the same, and neither do they always behave similarly. This is why previously, dayparting schedules created based on assumptions didn’t work for all brands.

With the introduction of Amazon’s marketing stream, Amazon provides your campaign’s performance data, such as ad spend, sales, ACOS, CPC, CVR, etc., on an hourly granularity.

Adbrew hourly performance data

What does this mean for you?

Well, now, you can study your customer’s shopping behavior to understand when they are just window shopping, when they are buying your product, when they are not seeing your ad at all and much more.

Once you have this understanding, you can leverage dayparting capabilities to increase and decrease your bids and budget on an hourly granularity.

Amazon PPC Dayparting With Amazon Bid Schedule Rule.

Amazon recently introduced a feature called ‘Bid Schedule Rule’ that lets you set up rules to increase your bids by a certain percentage for specific days and times.

Here is how it works:

Step 1: Open the campaign for which you want to set up the bid schedule.

Step 2: Navigate to the campaign settings tab from the left menu.

Amazon Dayparting

Step 3: Under the bidding strategy option, click on ‘Add Schedule Rule.’

Amazon Dayparting

Step 4: Now, first, select the date range for which you want the rule to run.

Step 5: Then, choose whether you want to run the rule daily or weekly.

Step 6: Next, choose whether you want the rule to run for the whole day or the selected hours of the day.

Step 7: Enter the percentage by which you want to increase the bids.

Step 8: Finally, give it a name and save the rule.

Amazon Dayparting

Now, Amazon will automatically increase the bids in your campaign by the specified percentage on set days and hours of the day.

Limitation of Amazon Bid Schedule Rule

While Amazon Bid Schedule Rules offer exciting possibilities for optimizing your Sponsored Products campaigns, their limitations can sometimes throw a wrench in your plans.

One-Way Street: Bid Up, But Not Down

The most glaring limitation is the inability to decrease bids during low-performance periods. This means you’re stuck paying potentially inflated prices for ad impressions even when conversions are abysmal.

Imagine scheduling a 20% bid increase for your peak hours, only to find yourself draining your budget during a midday slump. This one-way street can be frustrating, especially when you’re managing a large portfolio of campaigns.

Only for Sponsored Products Ads

Currently, the feature is only accessible for Sponsored Products campaigns. This implies that you cannot apply it to your Sponsored Brands or Sponsored Display campaigns to enhance campaign performance.

Separate Rule for Each Campaign

Currently, each campaign requires its own independent Bid Schedule Rule. This translates to navigating through each campaign individually to create and tweak rules, which becomes a significant time investment, especially for managers juggling numerous campaigns.

Set Up Dayparting Using Adbrew

Adbrew dayparting capabilities remove all of these limitations as it lets you create one single bid schedule and apply the schedule to as many Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, or Sponsored Display campaigns as you want.

All you need to do is simply specify the multiplier that you want to use and link the rule with your campaigns.

Adbrew dayparting data

In the above example, the bid is set to be reduced by 25% in the first 3 hours of the day, 50% in the next 4 hours, and then reverted to the base bid from 7 AM.

The best part? You can create a similar dayparting strategy for the campaign budget and placement modifier.

Amazon Dayparting

Create Auto Dayparting Strategy with Adbrew

You no longer need to manually analyze your campaign’s hourly performance data to find the optimal hours of the day and set up a dayparting strategy.

Adbrew AI algorithm can automatically analyze your campaign’s hourly performance data and develop a dayparting strategy based on your brand’s goals.

For example, if your goal is to improve the ROAS or get more sales from your Amazon advertising campaigns, the system will automatically identify the hours to increase and decrease bids to maximize ROAS or Sales.

Ready to get started with Adbrew?

Adbrew provides cutting-edge automation, expertly curated strategies, and data-driven insights for brands to thrive on Amazon.

Final Thought on Amazon PPC dayparting

In conclusion, crafting a dayparting ad strategy that aligns with your campaign’s real-time hourly performance can be a game-changer in maximizing the efficiency of your advertising budget. By meticulously analyzing and adapting to how your target customers behave throughout the day, you can boost your ROI and ensure that your marketing efforts reach the right audience at the right time.

Frequently Asked Questions:

What is Amazon Retail Analytics Reporting?

Amazon Retail Analytics Reporting is a suite of tools and reports designed to help vendors (businesses that sell their products to Amazon in bulk) gain insights into their performance on the Amazon marketplace. It provides data on sales, inventory, traffic, forecasting, sales history, and profitability for each ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) they sell.

What are some specific ways I can use dayparting to decrease ad spending?

  • Reduce bids during off-peak hours: Analyze your historical data to identify the times of day or days of the week when your ads perform poorly. During these periods, lower your bids to minimize unnecessary spending.

  • Schedule campaign pauses: If you see consistently low performance during specific times, consider completely pausing your campaigns during those periods. This is a more aggressive approach, but it can be effective for products with very clear peak times.

How often should I adjust my dayparting strategy?

Consumer behavior and seasonal trends can shift. Regularly monitor your data and adjust your schedule as needed. Consider testing different adjustments over time to find the sweet spot for both maximizing conversions and decreasing unnecessary ad spending.

Is dayparting only for high-volume sellers?

No! Even with limited budgets, dayparting can be valuable. Start with small adjustments during peak and off-peak hours to see if there’s a significant difference. This can help you allocate your ad spending more strategically, even with lower overall volume.

Grow your business on Amazon with Adbrew

Adbrew's Amazon PPC Optimisation Platform is being leveraged by 1000+ brands, sellers and agencies to optimise millions of ad-spend every month.

All Marketplaces Supported

24x7 Support

Expert Consultation

🎉🎉 Adbrew Wins the 2023 Amazon Ads Partner Awards in the Performance (APAC) Category. Read more