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A New AMS Thread

116K views 972 replies 138 participants last post by  A past poster 
#1 ·
Edited to say: Sorry guys. Based on new ownership at this site and their response to legitimate author concerns I've chosen to withdraw from participation here.
 
#529 ·
loraininflorida said:
According to my AMS graph I sold what was obviously a paperback. However, on my KDP graph, it has not shown up. Anyone know why this happens?
One possibility is that the sale hasn't shown up yet due to the lag time in reporting.

Another possibility is that the ad didn't actually lead to the sale. I've had the same thing happen, and I can only assume that my book's sale was not related to the ad, but that the purchaser found my book some other way (referral, direct search, etc.).
 
#530 ·
loraininflorida said:
According to my AMS graph I sold what was obviously a paperback. However, on my KDP graph, it has not shown up. Anyone know why this happens?
I wonder if someone clicked on your ad, then clicked on the paperback option, and then purchased a "used" copy. Assuming AMS would register that as a sale, it wouldn't result in a paperback being printed because it's already in stock somewhere else.

I know that one of my books has "used" options, most of which are former library books. I already got royalty credit for those on the initial sale, but won't get anything on a resale.

Again, this assumes that AMS would count that option as a sale. I'm not sure.
 
#532 ·
Cassie Leigh said:
...(Of course, just want to point out that my opinion on any of this has no more weight than anyone else's. I have no doubt that there are others who know more about AMS than I do who just chose to write their next book rather than write a book about AMS so that rep might be like, who?)
That first sentence above, stated as fact ("of course" ??), may be the first unhelpful or misleading opinion you've provided here. Fake news! Sure, the KDP rep will likely say, "Who?", but she'll be hard-pressed to find a more helpful book on AMS in Amazon's current catalog. I don't expect her to research you, but the name-dropping may inspire her to root out a consensus from her available brain trust. Considering how long those dashes can stay in the impressions column, your theory makes more sense to me than her answer.

Sadly, my reply with follow-up question (re dashes vs. zeros in impressions counts) got routed to a general queue, and a new, clueless rep answered every question I never asked with a canned response ignoring the one I did ask. So I clicked on the 'unhelpful' feedback option, which took me to (hopefully) a higher-tier portal, where I complained about Rep 2 and restated my last question. We shall see what transpires.

Luckily, all the disagreement on dashes vs zeros isn't likely a significant factor in our success or failure. Except to the point it distracts us from digesting more crucial data. But authors can't live on crucial data alone. So y'all'r welcome. It was the least I could do. (I checked.)
 
#534 ·
snip ...


Hey Cassie or anyone :

I want to change my bid ... but the ads have not showed up on the dashboard ... been a week.  Sent a CU to Zon and got this :

Hello Lyle,
Yes, you are correct. If the bids have not been met, you won't be getting any impressions for your ad campaign.

Before an ad is displayed, advertisements are ranked based on cost-per-click and performance, including click through rate and delivery. Advertisements with higher CPCs may win more impressions. This may lead to increased delivery of ads. The CPC bid should be the maximum you are willing to pay for a click. Note that your actual CPC may be lower than the CPC bid.

To change the CPC Bid for your ad campaign, follow the steps below:

1. Sign in to your Amazon Marketing Services account at ams.amazon.com with your KDP credentials.
2. Select the campaign you want to edit by clicking on the name.
3. Click the “Campaign Settings” tab and change CPC bid.
4. Click “Save.”

Your new campaign settings will update immediately. However, ad data such as clicks, impressions, and sales may take up to 14 days to show up in your reports.

(my problem is my campaigns have not showed up on my dashboard to allow me to change them )

You can also consider making new ad campaigns with good CPC value for getting more impressions for your ad campaign.

--------------
So my bids may be working ... but it takes a long time for them to show up it seems before I can see impressions and CPC and aCPC. I set them pretty low. I thought they were not being met and not effective. This may not be the case.


So is it the case I can't jigger the bid until up to 14 days when the campaign actually shows up on the ad dashboard? They were accepted but now in limbo it seems for up to 14 days it seems ???  (they did not answer the question, but I did get some insight if I am right ... so I asked again in a different way.)

With 3 million books and all the cross information going on in the algo it seems like they may be processing ALL this with a kindle paperwhite with its slow clock speed  :p (they are saving power and money  :p)

14 days ... wow.  So the data you are looking at is likely 14 days old thinking it is current and up to date and in the moment-now ... it does not seem to be the case that it is current data --- it is up to 14 days old.  Your KDP dashboard is much faster by far than your ad campaign dashboard.

aCoS would be a joke in the ad dashboard. So wait for the monthly billing cycle and use your cost billed for ads on your visa divided by your income from the KDP dashboard (sales and KENP) for the month to get a fair cost of advertising that is likely pretty close.

I am new so bear with me ... and correct me if I am wrong ... which I usually am ... usually ...  ;D
 
#536 ·
Cassie Leigh said:
I don't know what on earth that rep was trying to sell you. As soon as you submit an ad campaign it should be visible in your dashboard right at the top with a status of Pending, I think it is. If that hasn't happened, the ad didn't get submitted for review. Once it's accepted it should show as running in that Status column. At that point, if you need to update your bid, click on the campaign name. This will take you to a detail screen for that campaign. For the PD ads, scroll down and you'll see your bid and can click in that box and change it. For your SP ads, you'll see a listing of your keywords with bids next to them. Click into any of those boxes to change the bid there.

In terms of when information shows up. Generally I see impression and click information showing up same day. Maybe on a slight delay but I don't think it's more than 12 hours or so. Estimated sales take longer and part of that is in how they count a sale. Someone can click on your ad today and not buy for five days but that purchase five days from now may get credited to the ad.

In terms of billing information. When they bill you, they provide a breakdown of spend by ad campaign. So I can take my spend on Book X and compare that to my revenue on book X for the ad period. (I use KDP and CS numbers for that, limited to just the US market.)
That is what I was thinking (sans impressions or clicks - my bids are low but it should hit here and there) - it should show regardless, and quickly at that. They were accepted. But the display is a blank screen. Nothing shows up under status. The 14 day thing is weird I agree. Why did she say that?

BTW I did auto vs discreet keywords. But that should be no different I would imagine.

Off with another CU...

EDIT update : she backed off on the 14 day thing and now says it takes awhile ... and that my ads should show - and they don't.
 
#537 ·
I stand corrected on the 'whole carousel download'; they seem to download batches of six at a time. 

The conversation for the last  couple of days has been really illuminating - thank you all for your contributions towards understanding the chaos  :D ;) ::)
 
#538 ·
JRTomlin said:
After browsing quite a few pages, I'm not quite sure what the current thinking is on bid amount. For a long time $.25 bids did well for me and rarely hit that amount but for me that has seemed to lose effectiveness. While Historical Fiction isn't the most competitive genre, it is fairly competitive (to some people's surprise ;) ).

So, even after reading the thread or skimming it, I'm not sure exactly how much it would be a good idea to raise bids or if that is the way to go to recover the effectiveness of my ads. Thoughts or suggestions?
Most of my default (starting) bids are .25 or less. Then every few days I check my campaign and sort by # of clicks. Eyeballing the click/impression ratio, I raise or lower bids accordingly. So if a keyword doesn't seem to be doing much except causing me a slow death by pennies, I'll lower the bid by a penny or two. On the flip side, if a keyword seems to be effective, I'll raise the bid by a penny or two. *As it happens, "historical fiction" seems to be one of the more effective keywords for my time-travel books. Therefore the bid has been raised incrementally a number of times.*
 
#539 ·
Lyle 007 said:
That is what I was thinking (sans impressions or clicks - my bids are low but it should hit here and there) - it should show regardless, and quickly at that. They were accepted. But the display is a blank screen. Nothing shows up under status. The 14 day thing is weird I agree. Why did she say that?

BTW I did auto vs discreet keywords. But that should be no different I would imagine.

Off with another CU...

EDIT update : she backed off on the 14 day thing and now says it takes awhile ... and that my ads should show - and they don't.
If I remember correctly, KDP AMS does not show keywords in auto selected campaigns until a sale is made. I don't recall if it then shows all the keywords or just the ones that made the sale. The ads I did were terminated long ago and there is no data there now so I can't add anything to that.
I imagine that the policy is to preclude folks getting antsy over their arcane choice of keywords. Whether their choice is just plain wrong or it was wisely conditioned and customized to information given by the particular customer browser...I don't know.
 
#540 ·
SUPER BIG Thank You! to everyone that helped resolve the manner in which impressions are counted. The manner of counting has bothered me since I started in AMS and I have had to devise strategies to make how impressions are counted less consequential.

It is important to remember that the person that clicks on a 30 cent ad is just as interested as a person spending hours looking at ads and finally clicking on a 3 cent ad. It will be interesting to test and will be at least dependent upon the type of title, pricing etc. My hunch is the higher price clics high in the carousel are going to impulse buyers and the lower price clics are going to more careful shoppers...if such differences exist.




 
#541 ·
Well now I've emailed KDP three times in one help thread, and gotten responses from three different reps, only the first of which spoke coherent English throughout. Not to bad-mouth the reps. I'm sure if I was underpaid on the graveyard shift, working in my second language and trying to address topics I wasn't trained in, I wouldn't be that coherent either. Anyway, I found their latest reply telling and interesting (not yet helpful), regarding nailing down the dash/zero significance in the impressions column. Below is their communication, with my notes [in italics and brackets.]

Hello James,

Thanks for writing back with your kind words. I'm glad to hear that my colleague, [name], was able to assist you, and I'll be sure to forward your message. [By now this email thread is so long and full of other reps' noise that she won't know what to make of it.]

Kindle Direct Publishing has offices in different locations in order to provide assistance to our members 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We are unable to assign your inquiry to a specific representative. [But wait-you just said you would.]

We maintain the same service standards at all of our different support centers, so you will receive qualified assistance from any of our Kindle Direct Publishing Representatives. [To be fair, he didn't say "same GOOD service standards" or "HIGHLY qualified."]

Regarding your inquiry about Impressions:

For us to assist you with this query, we need expertise from our AMS teams, since it is related to AMS website and they have a separate moderation team.

Currently, there isn't a direct way for you to get in touch with them, [Yes, we've noticed the two years of AMS bid-taxation without support-representation] and hence, I'll contact them on your behalf, find out the resolution, and assist you with your query. [That makes four reps, and if their answer leaves me puzzled and I ask for clarification, they'll make it five. But again, didn't he start out saying he'd forward my message back to capable rep #1?]

I'll get back to you with an update on or before "February, Monday 26". [waiting to exhale]

We appreciate your patience while I work with the necessary teams to find out a resolution for your issue.

***

I really appreciate the time you took to contact us and this will prove to a valuable and feedback from esteem authors like yourself who provide valuable constructive feedback will never go unnoticed. [Uh, oh. He's run out of clean Macros. Me talk pretty one day.]

But not to worry; we are still evolving and publisher's self-publishing experience matters a lot for us. [Please don't stop throwing dice in the dark. Those uneducated bids pay all the KDP royalties and then some.]

Hence, what I have done now for you, I have taken your comments on AMS dashboard impressions as a feature request and communicate the same to our business team for consideration as we plan future improvements.

I'm unable to promise a time-frame at this time, however, we are still evolving and feedback like yours motivate us to dive deep and unearth ways and means which helps us in making publishing on KDP a happy experience. [Stay thirsty, my deep-diving, unearthly friend.]

Please be sure to check our forums periodically for updates:

https://kdp.amazon.com/community [Thanks, I'll use kboards.]

Thank you for using KDP.

...............................................................
Were you satisfied with the support provided?

[ ::)]
 
#542 ·
Rising Sun said:
If I remember correctly, KDP AMS does not show keywords in auto selected campaigns until a sale is made. I don't recall if it then shows all the keywords or just the ones that made the sale. The ads I did were terminated long ago and there is no data there now so I can't add anything to that.
I imagine that the policy is to preclude folks getting antsy over their arcane choice of keywords. Whether their choice is just plain wrong or it was wisely conditioned and customized to information given by the particular customer browser...I don't know.
And that may be it ... makes sense. Thanks. Not good (I would not have done it if I knew that), as you want to see if you are getting impressions on the bid. I will let it run (can't stop it as I can't see it) until I can stop it. No biggy as it won't cost money - surely they show clicks and impressions on their key words. If it is only sales they show - crap! That could cost you big time and you know nothing.

It could be a sort of BOT for me as Amazon tries to get my ad money (if it shows impressions data sans clicks). So a CU to Amazon to stop it may be in order.

I started a discreet keywords Sponsored Ad - that should show up - and I start experimenting.

I guess the trick is get impressions and let the blurb sell the book. The buyer will know what they are getting into before they click and I lose money if they don't intend to buy. But the hope there is they are KU and like the blub and get the book for free.

The blub protects you some from a lot of just, look and see the book, ad clicks I hope (the blurb on the AISN is almost the same as the ad blurb) --- I don't want a sort of curious drive-by hit that costs me money. You guys sort of seeing that ? I hope not.

Be as direct and honest about the story in whole as you can get in the ad blurb - a short synopsis/preface kind of thing that is the AISN blurb and ad blurb both. Yes?

If they bother to click I hope they bother to LI and get the book.

My feeling is too much blurb in the AISN, in particular, throws me off ... it is like they are pleading in a way. Just me. If the ad looks like the AISN blurb, then they have to look inside to see if they like the story.

My hypothesis ... above ... I bet auto is a bust.
 
#543 ·
LilyBLily said:
You should forward the most incoherent answer to Bezos. There are something like 100 million people in India who speak English, so why is Amazon hiring people who can't?
If I thought for a minute that he could still be unaware of KDP's AMS support failings, I would forward. I suspect the ones who speak better English generally land higher-paying jobs than KDP provides. Since self-pubbers are dreamers, and most of us nothing more than that, we are not Amazon's first choice for investment. In Amazons favor, and in spite of their primitive metrics and poor support, their enormous customer base and sophisticated algos seem to provide our best chance of breaking even or making a little money with our advertising dollars. Still not a great chance for the average kboards skimmer with the average KDP book, but maybe the best chance around. Bookbub CPC ads are easy to understand, their reporting is great and includes specific time-frame settings options, and their support reads like native English. But their ACOS is much higher in my experience. Since they have no title or descriptive keyword options, everybody's bidding on the same few dozen authors or categories. You can advertise wide with them, but they don't track sales for you.

So for cost-effectiveness, for now, for me, it's KDP, even though Amazon's indifference leads me to believe that those three letters may stand for Keep Dreaming, Patsies.
 
#544 ·
I wrote this on another thread regarding using AMS for preorders:

“ I had some modest success with AMS ads for a preorder but nothing to bring me under a 100% ACoS. The same campaigns are definitely doing better now that the book is released but I�m wondering if I should copy and restart them now, as I think Amazon Algos may have written them off due to the mediocre pre-release performance. Still, it can be useful to get a sense of where your best impressions/clicks may come from so you can target more aggressively once the book�s out.”


But now I’m curious—if I use the Copy ability to duplicate a campaign that had poor returns, pause/terminate the original campaign, then run the new copy, will whatever “downgrading” that campaign received in the algos still apply to the new copy? Or does it get a fresh start?
 
#545 ·
LilyBLily said:
You should forward the most incoherent answer to Bezos. There are something like 100 million people in India who speak English, so why is Amazon hiring people who can't?
Perhaps, but I doubt that one-one hundredth of them speak it like a native.

After studying Spanish for three years in high school and college, I found I couldn't even manage to ask directions on a street in Madrid. I'm sure that even if I had studied it for twelve years, I wouldn't have been able to handle a tech rep's job in Spain or Argentina.
 
#546 ·
Okay, I'm setting up my Product Display ad, and boy, once you plug in your "specific Products" keywords and get related (?) Amazon products to choose from, you really get some out-there results. 8) But I managed to come up with about 200 items.

Two questions, in case anyone knows the answers:

1) when choosiing the "Targeting Product Type," there is the standard option of Target Specific Products, but there is also this option:
Target Related Categories ~New~
Target advertised product's category and related categories

I don't know what this means... sounds like broad categories rather than specific products. I don't have the nerve or the time right now to explore this option, so I wonder if anyone else has done it.

2) When setting up the details of the ad, I can either "run ad as quickly as possible" or "spread campaign evenly over duration." When I clicked on the latter option, I get a calendar to choose from, but it seems like the PD ad is limited to a maximum of 6 months. I hadn't thought about it, and I was surprised that this type of ad has an 'expiration date.' Guess it makes sense, though. I went for the full six months.
 
#547 ·
Jena H said:
2) When setting up the details of the ad, I can either "run ad as quickly as possible" or "spread campaign evenly over duration." When I clicked on the latter option, I get a calendar to choose from, but it seems like the PD ad is limited to a maximum of 6 months. I hadn't thought about it, and I was surprised that this type of ad has an 'expiration date.' Guess it makes sense, though. I went for the full six months.
The expiration date is misleading. You can extend the date over and over.
 
#549 ·
Anarchist said:
The expiration date is misleading. You can extend the date over and over.
Cassie Leigh said:
As Anarchist mentioned, you can extend the expiration date on PD ads up to six months from the day you go in to edit it. So you initially have to set it up for six months, but if it's doing well, you can go in at the end of that period and extend it another six months from the date you edit it. (Something I hadn't realized until earlier this week.)

In terms of related category. This ties in to your book categories on Amazon. It's a pretty limited list, but at least for non-fiction it has options sometimes that aren't listed under the By Interest option. For what you've said you're trying to do it sounds like the product option is your best bet, though, because then you can target the very specific products you think will relate to your book.
Thanks. I did go with the "specific products" option.
 
#550 ·
Cassie Leigh said:
From my perspective, sometimes AMS spending your money is a bad thing. I've had ads that spent $40-$50 in the first few days and never showed as having a sale credited to them. Or showed as having one sale for $4.99 credited to them. And I wasn't seeing KU page reads to make up for that difference. So if you have a new ad that isn't targeted well, it can be costly. I know some think any impression is great, so they may disagree. For me if impressions aren't leading to clicks AND then leading to sales, I don't consider that a successful ad.

Usually it is hard to get AMS to spend your budget, but not always.Newer ads are one example. If I start a new ad on my first-in-series romance title that ad almost always will max out a $5 budget on the first day. I actually did that this week and by the end of the day it was up to a $40 budget for the day. (I upped it by $5 each time it maxed out. Total spend for the day ended up being about $26.) That doesn't mean it was a good ad, though. I paused that ad for a few days because it wasn't looking good in terms of sales/borrows.

I have about five ads that are currently maxing out their $5/day budget. Since I price my books at $4.99, if I have one sale on one of those books and see that the ad has hit its budget, I up the budget. But sometimes I hit the budget for a day and there are no sales and no rank boost (for a KU title) and no paperback sales. In those cases, I'm spending on ads but not making anything back. I'll usually bump it once to $10/day, but I won't go past that until I can see some sign that those clicks are resulting in borrows or sales. But if I'm seeing enough sales for a day to show that I'm making my money back on that ad spend? I'll keep bumping that budget throughout the day. (Those ads seem to max out around $40/day in ad spend.)

In terms of running multiple ads...For users of Product Display ads, it seems to be common to run multiple ads. I'm not sure if it was in this thread or the other, but there's one user on here who starts two to three new ads each day on the same books. In that situation, I'd assume you monitor total ad spend versus ebook and paperback sales and estimated borrows for that day or ad period and don't worry about individual ads. (If that were me, I'd probably use the billing history to give me a summary of ad spend for the period rather than monitor on an ad-by-ad basis.)

I don't use that approach, but I'd assume that you only care about an individual ad if it gets out of control and spends too much, but otherwise you don't care about individual ads. I could be wrong and hopefully someone who uses that approach can chime in. Ultimately, for books that aren't in KU, the dashboard will eventually show gross sales amounts credited to that ad and you can see individual ad performance that way. (With all the caveats that whole series purchases aren't reflected in that number and neither are KU page reads.) If you're in KU, then you need to adjust what Amazon tells you for your estimated page reads that also came from the ad.
Well I brought the thread back ... sorry

Zon contacted me and said maybe use a different browser vs IE ... and that worked. I can see all ads I started. So pass this along to new folks. I used FireFox and it works fine. Forget IE - I was getting a blank display.

So I had six ads running. I shut all down but one. It was getting impressions but only on 3 keywords. So I shut the others down. I have 53 impressions in a day after I bumped the bid to 15 cents on each keyword. And I have one click ... no buy but it may lag - don't know. If it ends up being KU ... then it may take longer.

This is my first Prawny success ... :D someone was interested enough to look :D I spend 15 cents to get a look - yeah, strange success indeed.

1:50 ratio is not too bad for Sunday night. Not sure what to expect. Budget is $1 day ... but the book is small and priced at $1.49 so it is easy for the cost to surpass sales. I am working on the second book. I will combine the two and increase the price and the ad I hope becomes more profitable. Spend some money and see if it gets traction.

It is too soon to tell if this is profitable or not. But as Cassie suggests, AMS can blow away any profits easy.

So I am encouraged. AMS does better for a larger book I am sure as you have cost to sales wiggle room.. But I love writing novelettes and slightly bigger stuff. Three of my works is about a novel. As they are episodic and related I can pack them together. Zon does not seem to care if you rewrite and add to a work.

Cheers guys and thanks for all the posts. Have a great coming week.
 
#551 ·
I've had some some real success with AMS ads in my nonfiction niche that I thought I would report for the greater good.

tl;dr: for two very very niche nonfiction books, with a relatively high purchase price, I've had a lot of success with Amazon's "automatic targeting" ads (as distinct from their automatically chosen keywords if you choose "manual targeting."

Background

As you can see in my sig, I have three books about nonprofits. Unlikely my fiction, they tend to sell themselves consistently (but in low quantities) through Amazon's basic search. As an example of how different they are than my fiction, for these three books, I sell more paperbacks and audiobook than Kindle books (probably says something about the nonprofit audience). They are priced at $6.99 for the Kindle and $16.99 in paperback (except that for the past year I'd had the Kindle book on nonprofit fundraising permafree. More on that in a second.)

First steps toward advertising them
Recently, I'd been experimenting with promoting my fiction through BookBub Ads, so that's where I initially started for the nonprofit books since I knew and liked the system. But then I discovered... not a single nonprofit author was on BookBub! That should tell you something about how small my niche is. I couldn't target by author and "nonfiction" seemed too generic, so I turned to AMS.

I started setting up a sponsored product ad for "The Little Book of Boards." And then I faced a question that, so far as I can tell, very few on these forums have grappled with: should I go automatic or should I use keywords? Normally, I would set up my own keywords in these situations. But something made me pause and eventually I set up the ad going "automatic."

Here was my theory:

[list type=decimal]
[*]Amazon is really smart and knows also-boughts and knows when my book comes up for searches already. Shouldn't their "automatic" listings, in theory, be as good both those things? (And yes, I know their recommended keywords are often terrible but maybe this would be different?)
[*]I know from previous attempts with AMS that getting impressions and clicks can be hard, and this is clearly a super niche book. So what if instead of spending all that time on keywords I just let Amazon do its work and maybe I'd actually get some visibility?
[*]With a $6.99 price tag for the Kindle, I had a healthy margin to work with, so even if I could spend the time to optimize, it would take several times the effort. So why not give it a try?
[/list]

Results of Going Automatic in Niche Nonfiction

On January 21, I set up the ad for "The Little Book of Boards" with a daily budget of $4 and a CPC bid of $.50.

The results have been, to be honest, astoundingly good. So good that I delayed posting here in case the ad was going to self-correct. But it's been 35 days or so, and the results are still strong (if not getting a little better) so it seems like it's working well enough to post my experience.

Here are the numbers:

Impressions: 86,925
Clicks: 171
aCPC: $0.23
Total spent: $38.59 (yes, even set to "automatic" and with a high CPC, Amazon won't spend all my money).

And the big one...

Estimated total sales: $587.36 !!!!!!

ACoS: 6.57% !!!!!!

ACoS was actually at about 10% to 15% for the first few weeks, but then it improved again and has stayed in the 5% to 8% range.

And, I should add, I am seeing the sales directly reflected in both Kindle and Createspace. Going back to the same period in 2017, or the 30 days before this one--either way you look at it, I'm several hundred dollars ahead of where I was. Again: hard to actually imagine it worked when the ad has spent less than $40.

One note: I do suspect that I am paying for at least *some* sales I would have gotten otherwise, because I've seen the ad show up right above my book in search results. But even then, the fact that I can see the positive change in comparison makes me feel pretty good about it.

Further Experimentation in Niche Nonfiction

As you might guess, the first thing I did was try this strategy on other books.

I tried running an automatic sponsored product ad on "The Little Book of Gold" (permafree book on nonprofit fundraising) and saw a large increase in free downloads and even some money tied to the ad (thanks to the paperback). My ACoS was about 115%. But then I realized: why not just take this book off permafree and try to sell a bunch of the books in the same way I was doing with the other one? I kept using the same ad, but took the book off permafree.

That was about a week ago. The ad now shows $48.42 spent, $78.22 in estimated sales, and 61.90% in ACoS. Since I paid a lot for free downloads earlier with not much revenue, it will take a while before this particular ad shows the same ACoS as the first. But if I just zero in on the last week, it's right-sized the ACoS in a handful of days and, as with the other book, I can see the corresponding sales. So it's also doing well (though maybe not quite as well as the first, but it's hard to say for sure because I'm using an ad I'd already started).

Trying it in fiction

I tried to replicate the same "automatic targeting" formula with The Marinara Murders (a mystery that is very very close to a cozy), and that, dear reader, is where I encountered my first fail with the experiment.

Amazon wasn't showing the ad *at all* and the CTR was bad too. I cut it after a week and only spent $0.27 because I could barely get impressions.

After that, I did try a traditional keyword ad campaign for The Marinara Murders as well and have seen not-great results. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that the cover was conceived before I knew what a "cozy" mystery was (I was just writing a mystery novel I liked back in 2010 and 2011) so the cover is probably off for the genre the book is the best fit for. So maybe the issue wasn't "automatic" versus traditional key words but rather it's not the right cover fit. So I'm considering hiring out a new cover and then going back to test both "automatic" and regular ads with this one.

I suspect that all the fiction writers here are disappointed to see that this didn't translate! I am too.

That said, I *am* finishing up Book 3 of my sci-fi trilogy and will have it out by April-ish. So I'm going to wait until then and try some of these "automatic" strategies in sci-fi with Book 1 and see if I can do better. I'm not expecting that I will do as well as I am with the two nonprofit books. But I very much have appreciated that I haven't had to keyword monitor or optimize these "automatic" ads. In this one instance (niche nonfiction, relatively large margin) it has truly been "set it and forget it." A rare treat in marketing these days.

If there's anything in there that you can apply to your own experiments in ad runs, I hope it's useful. And if I do have any success with "automatic targeting" for my sci-fi novels I'll pass it along!
 
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