Operator glossary
Auto campaigns (and their four targeting groups)
Sponsored Products campaigns where Amazon picks the targets, split into close match, loose match, substitutes, and complements — a discovery engine when segmented, a slush fund when left whole.
Auto campaigns let Amazon match your ads to queries and product pages using your listing content. The four targeting groups behave like different campaigns: close match mines your core queries, loose match explores the fringe, substitutes lands you on competitor pages, complements on adjacent products.
Run them segmented with separate bids — close match deserves several times the bid of loose match — and treat the search-term report as the product: harvest converters into exact campaigns weekly, negative the rest. An auto campaign whose winners are never extracted just re-buys the same discoveries forever at discovery prices.
The numbers
- Four targeting groups: close match, loose match, substitutes, complements — individually biddable within one auto campaign.
- Auto targeting quality is downstream of listing content: it matches what your title, bullets, and backend terms describe.
Primary sources: Amazon Ads guides
Related terms