📋 Overview
You set a base bid on a Sponsored Products keyword or target, but that bid alone does not decide where your ad appears. Amazon serves ads across multiple placements — and each placement converts differently and costs differently. Placement bid adjustments let you raise your bid by a percentage for specific placements, giving you a way to compete harder where your product performs well without overpaying everywhere else.
This article explains how the four Sponsored Products placement adjustments work, how to find and set them, and how to use performance data to make decisions that improve your return on ad spend.
🎯 Who This Is For
🌱 Beginner sellers
You have at least one active Sponsored Products campaign and want to understand why your ads appear in some places and not others, and how to start influencing placement without blowing your budget.
🚀 Advanced sellers
You are already running multiple campaigns and want to use placement-level data to segment your bidding strategy — pushing harder on high-converting placements and pulling back on low-converting ones to protect your ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale).
🔑 Key Concepts You Need to Know
📍 What is a placement?
A placement is the location on Amazon where your Sponsored Products ad can appear. Amazon groups these locations into four named placements that each support bid adjustments: Top of Search, Rest of Search, Product Pages, and Amazon Business.
📍 Top of Search
Top of Search refers to the first row of results on the first page of a search results page. This is typically the highest-visibility position on the page and often carries the highest conversion rate — but it also tends to be the most competitive and expensive position to win.
📍 Rest of Search
Rest of Search covers all other positions on search results pages that are not the top row of the first page. This includes mid-page and bottom-of-page positions on the first page, as well as all positions on subsequent pages.
📍 Product Pages
Product Pages are placements on Amazon product detail pages — for example, the carousel below the main product listing. This placement reaches shoppers who are already in a buying mindset but are comparing options.
📍 Amazon Business
Amazon Business is the B2B purchasing channel on Amazon. The placement adjustment for Amazon Business applies when your ads appear to business buyers browsing Amazon Business search results and pages.
📍 How the adjustment works
A placement bid adjustment is a percentage increase applied on top of your keyword or target base bid. If your base bid is $1.00 and you set a Top of Search adjustment of 50%, Amazon will bid up to $1.50 when your ad is eligible to appear in that placement. The adjustment range is 0% to 900% per placement. Setting an adjustment to 0% means no increase — your base bid applies without modification.
📍 ACoS and TACoS
ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale) is ad spend divided by ad-attributed revenue, expressed as a percentage. TACoS (Total Advertising Cost of Sale) divides ad spend by total revenue — both ad-attributed and organic — giving a picture of advertising efficiency across the whole business. Both metrics appear in the advertising console and help you evaluate whether a placement is earning its cost.
🛠️ Step-by-Step Guide
1️⃣ Open the campaign you want to adjust
In the advertising console, navigate to your Sponsored Products campaigns. Select the specific campaign — placement adjustments are set at the campaign level, so you will repeat this process for each campaign where you want to make changes.
2️⃣ Go to the Bid adjustments tab
Inside the campaign, find the Bid adjustments tab. This is where all four placement adjustment controls live. You will see the four placements listed: Top of Search, Rest of Search, Product Pages, and Amazon Business.
3️⃣ Pull placement-level performance data before touching anything
Before you set or change any adjustment, look at how your current traffic is performing across placements. In the advertising console, open Measurement & Reporting and run the Placement report under Sponsored ads reports. This report breaks out impressions, clicks, spend, and sales by placement. Without this data, any adjustment you make is a guess.
💡 Pro Tip: Give a campaign at least two to four weeks of data before drawing conclusions from the placement report. A short window can produce misleading conversion rates due to low click volume.
4️⃣ Calculate the conversion rate and ACoS for each placement
From the placement report, calculate conversion rate (orders divided by clicks) and ACoS (spend divided by sales) for each placement. A placement with a strong conversion rate and an ACoS below your target is a candidate for a higher adjustment. A placement with a high ACoS relative to your target is a signal to leave its adjustment at 0% or reduce it.
5️⃣ Set your Top of Search adjustment
If your placement data shows Top of Search converts well and your ACoS there is at or below target, enter a percentage increase in the Top of Search field. Start conservatively — a modest increase gives you data on how the change affects your win rate and costs before you commit to a larger number. The ceiling is 900%.
💡 Pro Tip: A very high Top of Search adjustment can push your effective bid well above what the placement is worth, especially on broad-match keywords that attract low-intent traffic. Pair aggressive placement adjustments with tight keyword targeting or exact/phrase match types to control relevance.
6️⃣ Set your Rest of Search adjustment
For most campaigns, Rest of Search has lower visibility than Top of Search but can still drive volume at lower cost. If your data shows a reasonable conversion rate at a lower ACoS, a modest positive adjustment here can increase reach without the premium cost of Top of Search. If Rest of Search is consistently underperforming, leave it at 0%.
7️⃣ Evaluate Product Pages and Amazon Business separately
Product Pages placements reach shoppers comparing products, so conversion intent varies depending on how competitive your listing is on the detail page. Amazon Business is relevant only if you sell products with B2B demand. Check the placement report for each. If either shows strong performance, apply a positive adjustment. If either shows poor return, leave the adjustment at 0%.
8️⃣ Save and monitor
After saving your adjustments, allow at least one to two weeks for the changes to accumulate enough data before evaluating results. Check the placement report again and compare ACoS and conversion rate at each placement against your targets. Adjust incrementally rather than making large swings in multiple placements at once.
📖 Real-World Examples or Scenarios
🛒 Scenario 1: New seller establishing a baseline
A seller who has just launched their first Sponsored Products campaign might notice after several weeks that their placement report shows most spend falling in Rest of Search with a modest conversion rate, while Top of Search has received very few clicks. Rather than immediately applying a large Top of Search adjustment, this seller leaves all adjustments at 0% and focuses on accumulating enough data. Once Top of Search has meaningful click volume and shows a favorable conversion rate relative to the base bid, they apply a small positive adjustment and monitor.
🛒 Scenario 2: Established seller optimizing an over-spending campaign
A seller running a mature campaign with a product that competes well notices their overall ACoS is above target. The placement report shows Product Pages is consuming a significant share of spend but converting at a lower rate than Top of Search. The seller reduces the Product Pages adjustment to 0%, concentrating the budget on the placement that actually drives profitable sales. Over the following weeks, overall campaign ACoS moves closer to their target as spend shifts toward higher-converting placements.
🛒 Scenario 3: B2B-focused seller using Amazon Business placement
A seller offering a product with strong B2B demand checks their placement report and finds that the Amazon Business placement shows a notably higher order value and acceptable ACoS compared to their other placements. They apply a positive adjustment to the Amazon Business placement to compete more aggressively for those buyers, while keeping the other placements at their existing settings.
⚠️ Common Mistakes to Avoid
❌ Setting a high Top of Search adjustment without supporting data
Many sellers apply a large Top of Search adjustment simply because they assume it converts better. Top of Search does tend to carry high visibility, but whether it delivers profitable conversions for your specific product depends on your listing quality, your price competitiveness, and the intent of the keywords you are targeting. Always let placement-level data guide the decision.
⚠️ Treating the adjustment as a set-and-forget setting
Placement performance shifts with seasonality, competitor activity, and changes to your own listings or pricing. An adjustment that was appropriate three months ago may no longer reflect current reality. Build a recurring check of your placement report into your campaign management routine.
❌ Making large adjustments across all placements at the same time
Changing multiple placement adjustments simultaneously makes it impossible to isolate which change affected your results. Change one placement adjustment at a time, wait for enough data, evaluate, and then move to the next. This discipline produces cleaner learning and fewer costly surprises.
⚠️ Confusing placement adjustments with Dynamic Bids
Amazon also offers Dynamic Bids (down only, up and down, or fixed) at the campaign level, which instructs Amazon to automatically adjust your bids in real time based on conversion likelihood. Placement bid adjustments and Dynamic Bids interact with each other. Understanding which setting is doing what requires checking both. Applying an aggressive Dynamic Bids “up and down” setting on top of a large placement adjustment can result in much higher effective bids than you intended.
📈 Expected Results
After applying placement bid adjustments based on performance data, the primary metric to watch is ACoS by placement in the placement report. A well-calibrated adjustment will move spend toward the placements where your product converts profitably and away from those where it does not.
Secondary metrics to track include:
- Click-through rate — an indication of ad relevance at each placement
- Conversion rate by placement — shows whether additional visibility is translating into orders
- Overall campaign ACoS and TACoS — the combined signal of whether the adjustments are moving the campaign in the right direction
Allow at least two to four weeks after a change before drawing firm conclusions, as order data can take several days to fully attribute and short windows produce noisy conversion rates. Placement optimization is an iterative process — expect gradual improvement over multiple adjustment cycles rather than an immediate shift.
❓ FAQs
🤔 Do placement bid adjustments apply to all ad types or only Sponsored Products?
The four-placement bid adjustment system described in this article — including the Bid adjustments tab with Top of Search, Rest of Search, Product Pages, and Amazon Business — is a feature of Sponsored Products campaigns. Other ad types, such as Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display, have their own placement and bidding mechanics that differ from this system.
🤔 If I set a Top of Search adjustment of 0%, does that mean my ad will never appear there?
No. A 0% adjustment means your base bid applies without any increase for that placement. Your ad can still appear at Top of Search if your base bid is competitive enough to win that placement in the auction. The adjustment only adds to your base bid — it does not exclude a placement.
🤔 How do Dynamic Bids interact with placement adjustments?
Amazon applies the placement adjustment to your base bid first, then Dynamic Bids logic is applied on top of that adjusted bid. For example, with a $1.00 base bid, a 50% Top of Search adjustment, and Dynamic Bids set to “up and down,” Amazon can raise your effective bid further when it predicts a strong conversion chance — potentially well above $1.50. If you want more predictable costs, consider using Fixed bids at the campaign level when testing placement adjustments, so Dynamic Bids do not add an additional variable.
🤔 Can I set different placement adjustments for different keywords within the same campaign?
No. Placement bid adjustments are set at the campaign level and apply uniformly to every keyword and target within that campaign. If you need different placement strategies for different keywords — for example, aggressive Top of Search on your highest-converting exact-match terms but conservative adjustments on broad-match discovery terms — the standard approach is to separate those keywords into their own campaigns.
🤔 Where do I find placement performance data to inform my adjustments?
In the advertising console, navigate into the specific campaign and look for the placement reporting available within the campaign’s reporting section. Amazon surfaces impressions, clicks, spend, sales, and related metrics broken out by placement. Placement performance is available in two places: inside the campaign on the Bid adjustments tab, and as the Placement report under Measurement & Reporting. Amazon does relabel console surfaces from time to time, so confirm the current wording in your account.