{"id":7871,"date":"2026-01-06T09:56:47","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T09:56:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aihello.com\/resources\/?p=7871---65633f96-3122-4d1c-95d8-7898230262cf"},"modified":"2026-01-16T03:06:49","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T03:06:49","slug":"rules-based-systems-for-optimizing-ads-are-killing-your-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aihello.com\/resources\/blog\/rules-based-systems-for-optimizing-ads-are-killing-your-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Rules Based Systems for optimizing ads are killing your business"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Calculating optimal bids are all rage around the internet especially around the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aihello.com\/resources\/blog\/e-commerce-challenges-and-projections\/\">Amazon ecommerce business<\/a> and the most frequent formula given is\u00a0<\/p><blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Bid = sales\/click* <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aihello.com\/resources\/blog\/8-tips-on-how-to-beat-your-competitors-on-amazon-2024\/\">target<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aihello.com\/resources\/blog\/the-5-elements-of-a-successful-amazon-advertising-strategy\/\">acos<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote><p>While this may provide a good indication of what your bid might be, this is a classic case of putting the cart before the horse.<\/p><p>Optimizing your ads through rules-based systems may seem like a smart strategy, but it could actually be hindering your business.&nbsp;<\/p><p>What you want to do is to optimize the bid to generate good sales. But with formulas like this you are optimizing your sales &amp; clicks based on your bids.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Adding misery to that equation is that lower bids will get you substandard sales and most likely higher ACOS (lower ROAS).<\/p><p>This causes what I call a \u201cspiral of death\u201d. Your sales go down since your bid is low. Your bid goes further down if you use the formula above since sales is low.<\/p><blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>So don\u2019t be a kid, ditch the algo bid! (I am no Shakespeare when it comes to rhymes)<\/p><cite><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aihello.com\/resources\/blog\/4-times-in-which-re-branding-is-mandatory\/\">aihello<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote><p>The true way out is to frequently go against intuition and raise the bids when acos is high and test and see what;s the perfect bid.&nbsp;<\/p><p>There are (currently) two ways to do it:<\/p><p>Keep raising bids according to your gut feeling. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aihello.com\/resources\/blog\/key-terms-you-need-to-know-when-you-start-out-as-a-seller\/\">You will<\/a> be lucky or you will be wrong.<\/p><p>OR<\/p><p>Forecast the bid based on aggregate data and then keep optimizing your bid towards the goal.<\/p><p>In short, relying solely on rules-based systems for optimizing your ads can actually harm your business, so it&#8217;s important to test different strategies and be open to thinking outside of the box.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are common Amazon ad bid formulas hurting your profits? Discover why traditional rules fail &#038; how going against intuition boosts sales and ACOS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7872,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,971,89,620,906],"tags":[173,169,171,168],"class_list":["post-7871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advertising","category-aihello-autopilot","category-amazon","category-amazon-ppc-advertising","category-amazon-seller-tips","tag-amazon-ads","tag-amazon-ads-optimization","tag-amazon-advertising","tag-amazon-ppc-automation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aihello.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aihello.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aihello.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aihello.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aihello.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7871"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aihello.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12032,"href":"https:\/\/www.aihello.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7871\/revisions\/12032"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aihello.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aihello.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aihello.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aihello.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}