@Igor O @Robert Enochs @Pamela Henkels That’s a great discussion. My intent is not to compare or criticize different approaches. I’m simply sharing what works for me and for others I’ve been working with. In my approach, I put a lot of focus on controlling ad spend and measuring what works and what doesn’t. I’m a big fan of testing and interpreting results as soon as we have a meaningful data set. If we spend, for example, $500–$800 on ads, generate 500,000 impressions and 1k–2k clicks, and the ads are still not profitable, then it’s time to pause and consider whether the book can be improved or if the competition in that niche is simply too strong. Of course, we can try aggressive promotion for certain keywords, but we have to be aware that it may cost a lot and there are no guarantees it will work. To emphasize: I do not recommend spending $500 only on automatic ads for a newly launched book. As I mentioned, auto ads need to be monitored and optimized closely, and most of this budget should go toward manual keyword campaigns. The remaining, controlled spend can be allocated to auto ads. Many times, it turns out that our initial keyword research isn’t fully aligned, and auto ads uncover profitable targets we hadn’t even thought about testing. Everyone has their own approach, and most strategies can be effective if we stick to them. We just need to be aware of the pros and cons of each 🙂

@Robert Enochs all good, thanks 👍🏻 I'm genuinely curious what your end result will be after going through all the phases. I hope it'll be a success!

@Robert Enochs Thanks for the comment. As we had a chance to speak already, I know you're sceptic about running auto ads for brand new books, until Amazon learns what your book is about. In my experience, auto ads can work pretty well in some cases, but they ALWAYS have to be monitored closely, even if the book has long sales history and is ranking high for multiple keywords. Simply because the nature of auto ads - they tend to advertise broadly to wide variety of audiences. I suggest looking ad search terms report, and on that basis assess how relevant are the books and keywords there. On this basis we can cut the spending (negative targeting, reducing bids), or expanding (extracting profitable targets to separate campaigns, raising bids). It doesn't hurt to run auto ads even for new books with low bids initially. Having said that, I rely heavily on broad targeting campaign with limited number of highly relevant keywords. And I totally agree with keeping raising the bids to the targets that generate low impressions (i call them 'untested' targets), until we have meaningfull data to make final decision. And it works even with 'down only' :) But utilising 'fixed' or 'up and down' can speed up that process if you're not afraid of higher spending. Thanks for your input!

@Robert Enochs Sounds good, it would be very interesting to see your results. With auto ads you would probably get huge list of search terms with 1-2 clicks. But if your bids will be really low, it doesn't hurt so much, because your conversion rate doesn't have to be that great. And auto ads can still discover profitable targets, and also let you know how well Amazon indexed your book already. Keep us informed on the results of this test.

@Thomas Juuls Nice, congratulations!

@Igor O You're not being inclusive by creating a coloring book that's not left-handed friendly! 😉

@Igor O