Amazon Placement Modifiers: When Top of Search Is Worth It

Key takeaways: Top of search is worth paying for when the placement report shows its conversion rate is high enough to cover its higher cost per click, or when the keyword's job is rank rather than profit. Set the modifier from the placement report, campaign by campaign, and lower the base bid when you raise the modifier so the other placements are not overpaid.

A top-of-search placement modifier is worth paying for when the placement report for that campaign shows top-of-search ACoS at or below the campaign's target, or when the campaign exists to build rank on a term and the extra cost is a planned investment. It is not worth paying for as a default. Many accounts run a blanket modifier that raises cost on every keyword regardless of whether the first row converts better for that product.

The three placements and how they differ

Amazon reports Sponsored Products performance across three placement groups: top of search (first page), rest of search, and product pages. Each has a modifier you can set from 0% to 900% at campaign level.

The modifier is a percentage added to your base bid for that placement. A $1.00 base bid with a 50% top-of-search modifier bids up to $1.50 for the first row and $1.00 everywhere else. With dynamic bidding down and up enabled, Amazon can raise the top-of-search bid a further 100%, so the effective ceiling on that example is $3.00. Read the modifier and the bidding strategy together or you will not know what you are actually paying.

Reading the placement report

In Campaign Manager, open a campaign and select the Placements tab, or pull the placement report from the reports section for all campaigns at once. Use at least 30 days. Look at four columns for each placement: impressions share, click-through rate, conversion rate and ACoS.

The question is simple. Does top of search convert enough better to justify its extra cost per click?

Suppose a campaign shows top of search at $1.60 CPC and 14% conversion, rest of search at $0.90 CPC and 8% conversion. Cost per order is $11.43 at the top and $11.25 lower down. Nearly identical: top of search is not earning its premium here, and a large modifier would just move spend to the more expensive row for the same result.

Now suppose top of search converts at 20% at the same CPC. Cost per order drops to $8.00. That placement is now cheaper per sale than rest of search despite the higher click cost, and a modifier that wins more of it will lower blended ACoS.

The decision

The "lower base bid when you raise the modifier" step is what keeps this from inflating spend. If you want more top of search and the same rest of search, raising only the modifier does that. If rest of search was already slightly overpaid, trimming the base bid at the same time funds the modifier out of the placements that were not earning it. This is the logic in B18 · How we choose placements.

Why the modifier belongs on control campaigns

Placement modifiers are set at campaign level, so they apply to every keyword in the campaign. That is fine when the campaign holds a handful of proven exact-match terms with similar behavior. It is a blunt instrument on a broad-match discovery campaign with two hundred search terms, where top of search may convert brilliantly for three of them and terribly for the rest.

This is one of the strongest arguments for the campaign structure in Amazon PPC Campaign Structure That Scales With Your Catalog: single-keyword or small exact-match campaigns are the only place a placement modifier can be set precisely. On discovery campaigns we leave modifiers low and let the base bid do the work.

Rank campaigns: paying for top of search on purpose

There is one case where the placement report says no and we still pay. When the objective is page-one organic rank on a head term, sales velocity on that exact term is what moves rank, and top of search delivers the most of it. A launch campaign or a rank-recovery campaign may run a high top-of-search modifier at an ACoS well above the profit target for a defined period.

The controls are a fixed duration, a rank target checked weekly, and a plan to step the modifier down as organic rank arrives and starts carrying the sales. What we do not do is leave a launch-era modifier running on a mature product because nobody revisited it. Every audit we run checks the modifier against the campaign's current job, and the mismatch is common.

Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display

Sponsored Brands has its own placement adjustments, with the ability to reduce bids for placements other than top of search. Sponsored Display does not use search placements at all. The analysis in this article is for Sponsored Products, where the three-way placement report is available and where most of the spend sits.

B16How we set bidsbids that reflect the job each keyword does — ranking, profit, discovery or defence — rather than one blanket rule.

B12How we audit your advertising accountseven audits that show where money is wasted, which placements convert and how much we expect to save — before we change anything.