How to Leverage Prestozon’s Automation Services with Custom Text Ads

Kindle Direct Publishing accounts are a specific type of Amazon advertising account with unique metrics and functionality.  The Amazon API is limited in how it supports author specific metrics and functions; Prestozon and Amazon are working together to help expand those options to support the Amazon PPC needs of authors. Check out our Author Group on Facebook.

Kindle Direct Publishing accounts are a specific type of Amazon advertising account with unique metrics and functionality.  The Amazon API is limited in how it supports author specific metrics and functions; Prestozon and Amazon are working together to help expand those options to support the Amazon PPC needs of authors. Check out our Author Group on Facebook.

However, just because the API doesn’t support all KDP functionality doesn’t mean you can’t leverage Prestozon’s keyword harvest rules and bid optimization automation to streamline your advertising workflow and save yourself time.

What are Custom Text Ads?

Custom Text Ads are ad types unique to KDP users.  These ads allow you to add a custom text tagline to your book advertisements.  These ads have some unique properties:

• They are made through a slightly altered pipeline in the Amazon Console.
• They only allow one ASIN per ad.
• The ability to create them is not available through the API, but their data is sent through the API to Prestozon as normal.

Even though these ad structures are slightly different than standard Sponsored Product Ads, Prestozon is still able to receive and manipulate these campaigns, we just can’t create them through our 1-Click Setup.  This means that you can still gain all the benefits of Prestozon with Custom Text Ads, you just need to create the campaigns in the Amazon Console and then create the rules manually in Prestozon.

How do I create a Prestozon’s Automation Structure with Custom Text Ads?

First, you need to create three Custom Text Ad Campaigns in the Amazon Console for each ASIN, one auto campaign and two manual campaigns.  For the purposes of this article, I am going to name them according to Prestozon’s standard naming convention:

The auto campaign:

ASIN1 Custom Text Ad – SP – Auto

The manual campaigns:

ASIN1 Custom Text Ad – SP – Research

ASIN1 Custom Text Ad – SP – Performance

Once you’ve created these campaigns, they will automatically sync to Prestozon (syncs happen twice a day, so they may not show up for a few hours).  When you see the campaigns in Prestozon in the campaign manager, you can then add New Keyword Rules!

Add rules by clicking the eye icon next to the Auto campaign:

Create a New Keyword rule by clicking the left pink button (there is a little plus sign in the pink circle):

Then you want to create this exact structure by adding in the additional custom text ad groups in step 2 and then filling out the other steps exactly like this:

(note that the order of the ad groups may vary, so make sure the colored circles match by the type of ad group: auto, research or performance)

Each blue circle represents a new keyword that will be created in the corresponding ad group when a search term converts a sale.  Each red circle represents a negative keyword that will be created when a search term converts a sale.  The purpose of the structure in the image is to funnel search terms that convert sales into the performance campaign covered by exact match keywords.

If your rule doesn’t look exactly like this, then you may be creating new positive and negative keywords in the wrong places and it could hurt your performance.  Our rules are incredibly powerful and you can create complicated custom strategies, but we suggest waiting to make those until you are more comfortable with how they work.  Read about our advanced strategies here!

Once you’ve created this rule, let’s create a negative rule to look for expensive search terms that are costing you money and not getting sales in return.

We’re going to click the eye icon next to the auto campaign again, but this time we are going to click the right pink button (there is a little negative in the pink circle):

From here, we’re going to create this exact structure:

Negative keyword rules are designed for a different purpose than the new keyword rules.  Negative keyword rules are designed to look at your search terms and suggest negatives if a search term gets lots of clicks or spend and doesn’t get any sales in return.

Once you’ve created these two rules, you’re done!  You can now enjoy the same time saving rules and automation you would through the 1-Click Campaign setup!

By default, all rules are not automated, which means you need to check the suggestions tab to look at the rule suggestions and apply or ignore them.  You can set the rules to automated once you are confident the rules are working how you want:

Similarly, our bid optimization is also not automated by default.  You can look at the bid optimization suggestions in the suggestions tab and then automate on the campaign explorer once you are comfortable with the suggestions!