Every target in the accounts we manage gets sorted twice before its bid moves. O
By Elizabeth Greene · October 20, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Every target in the accounts we manage gets sorted twice before its bid moves.
Once by intent, once by performance, and then the performance side gets split again into sub-buckets that decide how hard we cut or push.
The intent buckets come first.
Ranking campaigns go in their own bucket.
Auto and category targeting get their own, low bid campaigns get their own, and branded gets its own.
Each bucket has its own ACoS goal.
Branded is always lower, because why would I overpay to convert on my own brand name?
Sponsored Display?
Heck no, I'm not losing money on those.
Then the algorithm drops every target into a performance bucket, and each one has sub-buckets:
→ Above target ACoS: 3 levels. A slight decrease if it's a ranking strategy, a bigger cut if we need performance, or a soft pause.
→ Below target ACoS: 2 levels, with match type factored in. Autos get less room and I'm very careful increasing them.
→ Clicks with no orders: 3 levels, based on how many clicks we have and how sure we are it's underperforming.
→ Low impressions: 2 levels. Not getting impressions at all, or not many impressions but a clickthrough rate that shows some potential, so we give it more leeway.
The step I've skipped is checking what's actually branded.
Just because a campaign is labeled non-branded doesn't make it non-branded.
I've gotten into so many accounts, opened a "non-branded" campaign, and the targeting inside was branded keywords and the brand's own ASINs.
And the algorithm always, always wants to spend on branded.
If it only looks at performance and you're not truly bucketing branded, it pushes budget there and the ACoS looks low while nothing new gets found.
So ours looks for branded ASINs and branded keywords wherever they sit, without renaming everything first.
Without sub-buckets you end up with "anything high ACoS, lower it 10%."
You kill things you shouldn't be that aggressive on, and you don't kill the things that are underperforming.
Done right, an exact match ranking keyword with a higher ACoS can land in the low ACoS bucket for its strategy, and it keeps getting pushed instead of cut.
And the soft pause is the part I like most, honestly.
We drop the bid so low it probably won't get impressions, and that's fine.
We got enough clicks to know it just doesn't work for the brand.