Before we pick keywords, we set the account shape for the first dollar of spend. We run 15 to 20 accounts at once, so we cannot live with a structure that relies on remembering why any single campaign exists. After ten years in Amazon e-commerce, the minimum is three campaigns per ASIN, and everything else in the account grows from that base.
The base is three units: an auto campaign kept on close match and loose match, a phrase match keyword campaign, and an ASIN targeting campaign loaded with the products ours competes against. We did not pick those three on taste. Our audits keep ranking target types the same way. On the account we audited, auto close match ran at 22 percent ACOS, ASIN targets ran at 19 percent, and category targets ran at 17 percent, so the cheapest conversions sat in the very campaign types most sellers treat as an afterthought.
Each of the three has one job. Auto covers what Amazon believes the product is, because close match and loose match let the algorithm test our listing against real queries without us guessing. Phrase match covers what shoppers actually type, since phrase holds the root term while still catching the long tail around it. ASIN targeting covers where shoppers compare, because a placement on a rival detail page intercepts a buyer at the exact moment they are choosing between that product and ours.
Launch structure for a brand new ASIN
A brand new product with no history gets a wider build, because the first stretch must buy data on purpose. The base expands into a taxonomy: a theme targeting campaign anchored to the product's core phrase, a product targeting campaign packed with competitor ASINs, a discovery campaign built only for term harvesting, and category plus cross targeting where the category is tight enough to trust. Each campaign in the taxonomy answers one question, so when a number goes wrong we know exactly which assumption failed.
The competitor ASIN harvest runs as an SOP, not a judgment call. We identify the three to five word phrase that defines the product, and our standing example is beach umbrella accessories set. Then we search that phrase on Amazon, export the ranking products with a research extension, and filter to listings whose titles contain the phrase, because a page one ranking alone does not prove the product is a true substitute for ours. The surviving ASINs go in as exact product targets with expanded matching removed, at custom bids rather than suggested bids, because suggested bids are Amazon's opinion of our margin and we would rather state our own.
Once the ASIN has history, two more campaign types graduate into the structure. The first is the refactored keyword campaign, built from every keyword that converted under 50 percent ACOS across exact, phrase, and broad, so proven terms get their own budget and their own bids away from the noise that found them. The second is the search term harvest campaign, which promotes winning search terms into their own targets, because a search term that converts inside someone else's campaign deserves a direct bid. On top of those, we layer single keyword campaigns for the handful of terms where organic rank actually matters, because rank is won with focus and top-of-search pressure rather than with a bid buried inside a crowded ad group.
The whole structure works as a pipeline rather than a pile of campaigns. Discovery feeds refactoring, because the auto and discovery campaigns exist to surface the terms and ASINs that convert. Refactoring feeds the single keyword campaigns, because only proven winners earn the focus of a campaign of their own. Every stage has one job, and that discipline is a large part of how our flagship accounts hold TACoS under 15 percent, because money never sits in a campaign whose purpose nobody can name.
If you take one thing from this, take the minimum. One auto campaign kept on close match and loose match, one phrase match campaign, and one ASIN targeting campaign will carry a new product further than a dozen improvised builds, because a small structure you understand beats a big structure you inherited.
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