Contextual targeting (Display)

On Amazon's Display line — the console says Display, the API still says /sd/ — contextual targeting is the old product targeting, renamed 23 June 2022. Targets are product- and category-level clauses: asinSameAs, asinCategorySameAs, asinBrandSameAs, price and rating refinements, similarProduct. costType is cpc or vcpm, and that constrains optimization: cpc takes clicks or conversions, vcpm forces reach. Its counterpart is Audiences. Do not tell the two apart by the API's tactic field — Amazon's docs put clauses for both under T00030 and say either T00020 or T00030 creates a contextual campaign, so the clause list is the only reliable tell. It aims at the page, not the shopper, though Amazon never claims delivery runs on no behavioural signal at all, and similarProduct is explicitly a machine-learning pick off retail data.

Refinements silently amputate reach. Amazon's help doc — scoped to Display (smart) campaigns — is explicit: an unrefined suggested category, or the "similar to advertised products" category, serves both on and off Amazon; add individual products, or a category with refinements, and it serves on Amazon only. The off-Amazon half is third-party websites and apps plus Twitch, while detail pages, shopping results, Fresh and Whole Foods Market are Amazon's own surfaces — what refinement forfeits is open web and mobile apps, not a grocery buy. The two moves every operator makes first — hand-picking competitor ASINs, filtering to 4-plus stars and $30–60 Prime — collapse that off-site buy back onto detail pages. Run unrefined category and similarProduct targets in their own campaign, keep ASIN conquesting in another, and read the targets, not the campaign label.