Amazon Sponsored Display: Cost Per Order Optimization Strategy for Amazon Ads

Published on January 15, 2026

About this video

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This video continues the deep dive into Amazon Sponsored Display campaigns, covering additional optimization options to help you run more effective campaigns. I walk through the complete campaign setup process, from budgets and portfolios to ad format selection and product grouping strategies. Amazon recommends adding multiple products to Sponsored Display campaigns, but I explain how to group them properly by category rather than mixing unrelated items. The focus is on optimization strategies, specifically the difference between page visits and conversions. When you select conversions as your optimization strategy, Amazon gives you the option to set cost control by cost per order. This can be useful if your business operates around specific cost per sale metrics. Amazon optimizes these campaigns on a 7 day rolling average and recommends waiting at least 72 hours for real data. The recommended budget should be 3 to 5 times higher than your cost per order setting. I also cover the new optimized targeting feature that uses machine learning to reach audiences likely to be interested in your ad, though it operates as a black box without visibility into which audiences Amazon actually uses. The alternative is manual targeting with contextual, in market, interest based targeting, and custom audiences from Amazon Marketing Cloud. Running Sponsored Display alongside Amazon Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands can increase your purchase rate by 5x to 10x, making it an essential part of your Amazon advertising strategy. The video explains why I don't recommend VCPM campaigns despite them being more fair than CPM, as they skew sales results. I share my approach to testing cost control settings and invite viewers to share their experiences with these features.

Contents: 00:00 Campaign Setup and Product Selection Strategy 01:12 Optimization Strategies: Conversions vs Page Visits 01:47 Cost Per Order Control Settings 03:06 Budget Recommendations for Cost Control 03:35 Optimized Targeting Feature Explained 04:24 Manual Targeting Options and Custom Audiences

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Transcript

Hi there. I'm continuing with the sponsor display because there are additional few options that I would like to cover. So you have sponsor display fully covered so you can go ahead and do some campaigns. Uh so we're going to start as usual with the campaign name and budgets and portfolios if you like that. Then you know select the type of the ad format that you're going to use. This is going to be image or video and then you can drive traffic to the product listing or stores. Select your products to advertise. And by the way, Amazon is recommending for sponsored display specifically to add as many products as possible. That doesn't mean that you should go ahead and add your whole catalog with mixed products like you know combined presses and I don't know iPhone cases and something else. Try to group them per product. So if you have multiple products with different variations or sizes or you know they just belong to the similar uh subcategory group them together but add like five six 10 of them easily and then group them in multiple campaigns for better control. Then um as usual I don't recommend running any VCPM campaigns. They are more fair than CPM campaigns because the VCPM stands for viewable cost per per 10,000 impressions. So it's a bit more fair in terms of yes the the product needs to be viewed but I don't recommend this optimization strategy simply because it skews the sales results. Then I covered in my previous video how to use page visits and I want to now focus on conversions only. When you select optimization strategy for conversions, Amazon is giving you cost control to set by cost per order to remind you when you sell page visits you have cost per click uh which you need to or you can opt out not to use it but for conversions I want to tell you that um sometimes it's useful to uh set this up simply because you know it may align with how your business is operating. If your cost per sale is very important metric and and you guide your advertising decisions off of that, you may test this um cost control for sponsor display. Uh Amazon recommends that once you set up this kind of campaign with the cost control setup, you need to wait at least 72 hours for the real data to come in. And they optimize on the 7-day rolling average. far from perfect, but still it can help you keep that cost uh low. I mean, in some boundaries where you want to have it, but still have some kind of a display campaign. As I've shown you, having a sponsor display campaign together with sponsor brands and sp products really increases your purchase rate significantly. And I'm talking 5x 10x easily. So, you need to have sponsor display as well. So, set some cost per order here. Uh typically Amazon recommends that your your budget is three to time three to five times higher than your cost per order that you set. So your daily budget in this case will have to be at least $50, but uh you should set it at uh I would say $100 per day if your cost per order is is at 10. And this is now very interesting. When you select cost per order uh and conversions uh as your bidding strategy, sorry, optimization strategy, you have this predefin predefined setting like optimize targeting where Amazon is kind of doing their blackbox thing. Now, you just select that you enable to reach audiences likely to be interested in your ad. Now, that's very very kind of Amazon. But what I don't like about it is that you will not be able to see what are the audiences that they used in order to provide some of the results that they provided or not. Um when you hover over it says that they'll of course use the machine learning and some signals to adjust automatically which kind of which audience is going to provide you with the best possible results. I'm still testing this uh for one one of the campaigns because I only recently saw this. It's new for me at least. Uh so I'm going to record another video once I have some meaningful data. Uh if you dislike that then you of course you have an option to create the usual manual targeting like contextual in market interest and of course custom audiences which I really recommend to create custom audiences in Amazon marketing cloud and uh have additional bit adjustment for them as well. So let me know if you used this in the past and what are some of your experiences. Um I would like to learn more about it because you know I haven't played with this cost control but I'm kind of start to take it as um even predefined setup compared to when you don't have anything uh included like cost control because then also your sponsor display campaigns go up and down up to 300% by default and I don't like that at all. So let me know if you have any comments and see you tomorrow in the next video. Bye-bye, guys.

Frequently asked questions

What is the cost per order control setting in Sponsored Display conversions campaigns and when should you use it?

When you select the Conversions optimization strategy in Sponsored Display, Amazon gives you the option to set a maximum cost per order rather than a cost per click. This is useful if your business already operates around a specific cost per sale target, because it gives the algorithm a boundary to work within while optimizing for purchases. Amazon recommends waiting at least 72 hours before evaluating results, as the campaign optimizes on a rolling 7-day average rather than reacting to daily fluctuations.

What daily budget should you set for a Sponsored Display conversions campaign with cost per order control enabled?

Amazon recommends setting your daily budget at three to five times your target cost per order. For example, if you set a cost per order of $10, your daily budget should be at least $30 to $50, with $100 per day being a more comfortable starting point that gives the algorithm enough spend to gather meaningful data. Running the campaign at a budget that is too close to the cost per order target will limit impressions and prevent the machine learning from optimizing effectively.

What is the optimized targeting feature in Sponsored Display conversions campaigns and what are its limitations?

Optimized targeting is an automated setting where Amazon uses machine learning and its own signals to select which audiences are most likely to convert for your ad, without requiring you to manually choose targeting. The main limitation is transparency: you cannot see which specific audiences Amazon is selecting or how it is making those decisions, making it a black box. If you prefer full visibility and control over who sees your ads, the alternative is to set up manual targeting using contextual, in-market, or interest-based options, and to add custom audiences built in Amazon Marketing Cloud with their own bid adjustments.