The problem with the suggested bid

Sponsored Display shows your ad on competing or complementary product pages and across entire categories. When you build the campaign, Amazon shows a suggested bid for each target. That number reflects the auction, not your P&L: it doesn't know what your product costs, what you pay in fees, or how many visits turn into orders.

Following the suggested bid blindly is the fastest route to an ad that sells and still drains cash.

What Amazon suggests

For the selected product, Amazon returns, under product targeting:

  • Up to 60 competing products whose pages your ad can appear on;
  • Up to 40 categories where your ad can be shown;
  • for each target, a suggested bid and a bid range (low and high), calculated from winning bids over the last 7 days.

The max bid your margin can pay

EcomVision calculates the per-click bid ceiling from your own numbers:

Max bid = average price × conversion rate × break-even%

  • Average price: the price the product actually sold for.
  • Conversion rate: orders ÷ sessions over the last 60 days. If the product had fewer than 10 orders, the number is unstable, so we use the account average and the screen shows "estimated conversion".
  • Break-even%: how much of the price is left after product cost, Amazon fees and taxes. It's the most you can spend on ads per sale without losing money.

Example: a product that sells for $25, converts 10% of visits and has a 30% break-even can pay up to $25 × 0.10 × 0.30 = $0.75 per click. Above that, every sale from the ad costs more than it brings in. To understand break-even, see how to calculate your target ACoS.

The badge on each target

Each suggested target gets a badge comparing Amazon's suggestion with your max bid:

  • Fits your margin: the suggested bid is equal to or below your max bid.
  • Tight: only the low end of the range fits. You can compete with a low bid, knowing you'll win fewer auctions.
  • Doesn't pay: even the lowest bid in the range exceeds your max bid. Advertising there loses money.
  • No bid: Amazon didn't return a bid for this target.
  • No cost: the product has no cost entered, so the max bid can't be calculated.

The badge protects your profit: instead of finding out weeks later that a target only burned spend, you see before advertising which placements your margin can actually afford.

How to use it in EcomVision

  1. Open Bulk Actions and go to the Amazon Suggestions tab.
  2. In the Where to show on Display block, pick a product. The list includes products that sold in the last 60 days.
  3. At the top, see the calculated max bid with the math shown (price × conversion × break-even), plus the target table with suggested bid, range and badge.
  4. Use the Show filter to see only targets that fit your margin, the tight ones, or the ones that don't pay.

The block is read-only: nothing is created or changed on Amazon. You decide where to advertise and how much to bid. The same tab also shows Amazon's suggested budget for Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands, compared against profit.

Target and bid suggestions come from Amazon itself (Sponsored Display targeting recommendations) and change with the auction. The max bid depends on the product cost you've entered and your account's sales data.