Every Sponsored Products campaign on Amazon has a campaign bidding strategy. The choice decides whether the bid you enter is what actually goes into the auction, or whether Amazon may move it up or down on each impression based on its prediction of a sale. The dynamic options are the ones most Indian sellers leave on the default without understanding what they do to spend.
How dynamic bidding works
Amazon offers three strategies as of September 2026:
Dynamic bids - down only. Amazon lowers your bid in real time when a click looks less likely to convert. It never raises it. This is the default for new campaigns and the safest choice for launch.
Dynamic bids - up and down. Amazon raises the bid when a click looks likely to convert and lowers it when it does not. Amazon's guide states it can increase or decrease bids "by up to 100% for all placements", so a ₹10 bid can become ₹20 for any placement.
Fixed bids. Amazon uses exactly the bid you set, with no real-time adjustment. Useful when you want visibility at any cost or want clean data on a bid test.
Dynamic bidding is applied after placement bid adjustments. Amazon's worked example: a ₹1 bid with a 50% top-of-search adjustment becomes ₹1.50, and "up and down" can then take it to a maximum of ₹3. In rupees: a ₹10 keyword bid with a 50% top-of-search adjustment enters the auction at ₹15, and up-and-down bidding can push it to ₹30 for a shopper Amazon judges likely to buy.
Why dynamic bidding matters for sellers
"Up and down" can lift conversion rate and sales because Amazon bids harder where its models see intent, but it also raises average CPC and makes bids harder to reason about; a seller who set ₹10 may see clicks costing ₹18. "Down only" protects spend but can lose top-of-search on high-value queries. The right choice depends on the campaign's job: rank-building campaigns on proven exact keywords can justify up-and-down; discovery campaigns on broad or automatic targeting almost always belong on down-only.
How to manage dynamic bidding
- Use down-only for automatic and broad campaigns where you have not yet proven which queries convert.
- Test up-and-down only on exact-match campaigns with a stable conversion history, and lower the base bid by 20 to 30% when you switch so the maximum stays sane.
- Do not combine up-and-down with a large top-of-search adjustment unless you have checked what the combined maximum bid is.
- Use fixed bids for short tests when you need to know exactly what a bid buys.
- Review average CPC against bid monthly; if CPC is consistently near or above the bid, up-and-down is doing more than you intended.
Blooprint sets bidding strategy per campaign purpose under marketplace ads management; the Amazon ads guide for India covers campaign settings in detail.