The Amazon Ads Placement Report, Explained for Authors

The three placements

Amazon reports impressions, clicks, spend, and sales separately for each, available as a bid-by-placement setting inside campaign settings and as a breakdown in the campaign performance view.

• —Top of Search (first page) — ads shown at the very top of search results; highest visibility, usually highest cost per click
• —Rest of Search — ads shown further down or on later search result pages; cheaper, lower visibility
• —Product Pages — ads shown on other books' detail pages, competing directly next to a comp title or competing ASIN

Why placement performance differs

Top of Search tends to convert best because it captures active, high-intent searchers — but it costs more per click, so a strong conversion rate is doing real work to keep ACOS in check. Product Pages placements put your book directly next to what a shopper is already considering, which can work well for genuinely comparable titles and poorly for a mismatch.

A campaign with a mediocre blended ACOS sometimes hides one placement doing very well and another quietly losing money — the average obscures both.

Using placement data without overreacting

Placement bidding is a tuning step, not a starting one. Get keyword-level performance right first; placement modifiers are for squeezing an already-working campaign, not for fixing a broken one.

• —Let a placement accumulate at least a couple dozen clicks before judging it — small samples swing wildly
• —Raise the Top of Search bid modifier only after manual keywords are already proving out at the base bid
• —If Product Pages placement is expensive and unconverting, it usually means the ASINs being targeted aren't real comp titles — revisit the keyword list, not just the bid