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Dayparting

Dayparting automatically adjusts your bids based on the time of day and day of the week. If your ads perform better at certain hours, dayparting increases bids during those times and reduces them when performance drops.

Before you start​

  • At least one Amazon account connected
  • Active campaigns (Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and/or Sponsored Display)
  • At least 7 distinct days of Amazon Marketing Stream data (30 days recommended for best accuracy)

How it works​

Dayparting analyzes your Sponsored Products performance data, minus branded traffic if you exclude it, to calculate a bid level for every 4-hour block of every day, a 42-cell grid (6 time blocks x 7 days). Each cell holds a percentage where 100% means no change: above 100% raises bids during that block, below 100% lowers them.

  • During high-performance blocks, the bid level rises above 100% (bids increase)
  • During low-performance blocks, it drops below 100% (bids decrease)
  • Your baseline bid stays the same; dayparting only adjusts it temporarily
  • Adjustments are calculated from Sponsored Products data but applied to all campaign types: Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display

Example: A cell at 115% means bids run 15% above baseline during that block; a cell at 85% means they run 15% below. The size of each move always stays within the increase and decrease limits you set, and your baseline bid itself never changes.

Bid levels recalculate automatically every day at 2 AM UTC using the most recent 30 days of data. Blocks with 75 or more clicks use that block's own revenue per click. Blocks with fewer clicks use a more stable estimate instead: how strong that time of day is across the whole week, combined with how strong that day of the week is overall. This is why a low-traffic block can show a bid level above 100% even when the RPC popup shows little or no revenue for that exact cell, and why a strong day of the week lifts every block in its column.

Enable dayparting​

  1. Navigate to Dayparting in the sidebar
  2. Click the toggle switch at the top of the page

Once enabled, bid adjustments start applying within the next hour. Your timezone is displayed next to the toggle (set at the account level).

Settings​

Click the gear icon in the header to open bid limits and spend settings.

  • Max Increase and Max Decrease: the furthest a bid can move from its baseline in either direction. Presets are Conservative (5%), Standard (15%), and Aggressive (30%).
  • Min Spend: campaigns spending less than this per day, averaged over 30 days, are skipped. Dayparting only touches campaigns with enough data behind them.
  • Exclude branded campaigns from RPC data: see Exclude branded campaigns below. A shortcut switch labeled Exclude branded also sits next to the main toggle at the top of the page.

The bid level grid​

The main view is a color-coded heatmap grid showing bid levels across all 42 block-day combinations.

Reading the grid​

  • Rows represent 4-hour time blocks: Overnight (12-4 AM), Early Bird (4-8 AM), Morning (8 AM-12 PM), Afternoon (12-4 PM), Evening (4-8 PM), and Night (8 PM-12 AM)
  • Columns represent days of the week (Sunday through Saturday)
  • Cell values show the bid level as a percentage (e.g., 130%, 70%, 100%)
  • Color intensity increases with the bid level: deeper cells mean higher bids, lighter cells mean lower bids
  • The cell for the current time block is outlined, so you can see at a glance which bid level is active right now

Hover over any cell to see a tooltip with the bid level, the Revenue Per Click (RPC) for that block, the allowed range, and whether the value is auto-calculated or a manual override.

Legend​

At the bottom of the grid, a legend shows the color gradient from low to high bid levels. Cells you have manually edited are marked with a small dot in the corner.

Header statistics​

Above the grid, four statistics summarize your dayparting status:

  • Overall RPC (30d): average Revenue Per Click across all hours and days
  • Last Calculated: timestamp of the most recent recalculation
  • Manual Overrides: count of cells you have manually edited
  • Timezone: your profile's timezone (read-only, set at account level)

Edit a cell​

To override an auto-calculated bid level:

  1. Click any cell in the grid
  2. Type the new bid level as a percentage of baseline (e.g., 115 to run bids 15% above baseline, or 85 to run them 15% below)
  3. Press Enter to save, or Escape to cancel

Edited cells get a corner dot to indicate they are manual overrides. The daily recalculation preserves your manual edits. It only updates auto-calculated cells.

How far a cell can move is bounded by your maximum increase and decrease limits, and a bid can never fall below 1% of its baseline value.

View RPC data​

To see the raw performance data behind your adjustments, click the View RPC Data button in the header. This opens a modal with a separate heatmap of 6 time blocks across 7 days (42 cells) showing actual Revenue Per Click values for each block and day.

The modal includes summary statistics:

  • Overall RPC, Overall CVR (conversion rate), Overall AOV (average order value)
  • Total Clicks and Total Sales for the 30-day period

Cell shading uses a single teal color ramp: darker cells indicate stronger RPC relative to the average, lighter cells indicate weaker RPC, and grey means no data for that time slot.

Exclude branded campaigns from RPC data​

Shoppers searching your brand name convert far better than shoppers searching generic terms. Left in the data, branded campaigns inflate your Revenue Per Click and pull bid levels toward the hours your existing customers shop, rather than the hours that win you new ones. This toggle removes branded traffic from the RPC calculation.

It works automatically. You do not need to add campaigns yourself.

A campaign counts as branded when either:

  • it has an active keyword containing one of your brand terms, matched as a phrase, or
  • it targets an ASIN you sell.

Negative keywords never count. A campaign that negates your brand terms is blocking brand traffic, not buying it.

Excluding a campaign changes the RPC data and the bid levels calculated from it. The campaign still runs, and it still receives dayparting bid adjustments.

The Manage list​

Manage shows the campaigns currently excluded, each marked Detected or Manual, along with the brand term or ASIN that matched it. Use it for the two cases detection cannot cover on its own:

  • Auto-targeting campaigns. These have no keywords to read, so they are never detected. If one of yours picks up brand searches, add it here.
  • Anything we got wrong. Remove a campaign from the list to put its data back in.

The number next to Manage counts live Sponsored Products campaigns only. If it reads (0), nothing branded is running right now: your brand campaigns may be paused, or your brand terms may exist only as negative keywords in your other campaigns. Either way the toggle is safe to leave on. Detection re-runs on every recalculation, so a brand campaign you enable later is picked up on its own.

Changes take effect at the next hourly bid application.

Disable dayparting​

  1. Click the toggle switch to turn dayparting off
  2. A confirmation dialog appears warning that all bids will revert to their baseline values
  3. Click Disable & Revert Bids to confirm, or Cancel to keep dayparting active

When disabled, a background process sends your original baseline bids back to Amazon. The grid becomes semi-transparent and editing is disabled. Your adjustment data is preserved for when you re-enable.

Dayparting and the Budget Utilization goal​

If a campaign's Smart Bidding goal is set to Budget Utilization, dayparting is disabled for that campaign: Budget Utilization is already managing bids to pace spend across the day toward the daily budget, and hourly dayparting adjustments would fight that logic. Switch the campaign to a different goal (or turn Smart Bidding off) if you want dayparting active on it. See Smart Bidding for the full goal list.

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