You open the Actions page for the first time on a new account. The Advanced Options panel is collapsed. You expand it and see five sections under the target ACoS field: a sensitivity slider, two campaign-type overrides for Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display, a Campaign Rules area, a Keyword Rules area, and a SKU Rules area. Each one has an "Add rule" button.
The instinct is to fill it out top to bottom. That instinct is wrong.
The Advanced Options layout is designed for readability — broad to specific, account-level to entity-level. The order you should fill it out in is closer to most impactful first, which roughly inverts the visual order. This article walks through that order and explains why each layer earns its place where it does in the workflow.
Step 1: Set the account target ACoS
This is the only required field. Without it, BulkSheet Pro produces zero recommendations. Set it to the ACoS that defines "acceptable" for your average product.
Most accounts know this number already. If you're profitable at 30% ACoS across your typical SKU, that's the number. If you're a brand still building rank and willing to spend for awareness, you might be at 45% or higher. There's no universal right answer — but every account has one for itself.
Once this is set and you've clicked Analyze, BulkSheet Pro can already do real work. Every other setting in the Advanced Options is an exception to this default. If your account is reasonably homogeneous, the default might be all you need.
Step 2: Identify SKU exceptions (the highest-priority layer)
Of all the rule types, SKU rules sit at the top of the priority hierarchy. They beat every other rule type. If a SKU matches a SKU rule, that rule's target and sensitivity apply — overriding any campaign rule, keyword rule, or campaign-type setting that would otherwise have caught it.
That priority matters because SKUs are usually where the most extreme deviations from your account-default behavior live. A new launch needs much higher patience than the rest of your account. A clearance product needs much tighter efficiency. A loss-leader product might need to be left alone entirely.
Before adding keyword or campaign rules, walk through your SKU list and ask: are there any SKUs that should be evaluated against a different target than the account default? Common answers:
- New launches (last 90 days, no rank yet) — target 60–80%, gentle sensitivity
- Mature high-margin SKUs you want to squeeze — target 5–10 points below account default, moderate sensitivity
- Low-margin clearance — target well below account default, firm sensitivity for fast convergence
- Loss leaders / strategic SKUs — target unrealistically high (so BulkSheet Pro effectively leaves them alone), gentle sensitivity
If you have any of these, add a SKU rule for each group. Two or three SKU rules is typical. Many accounts have none — which is fine. If your SKUs are economically similar to each other, you don't need this layer.
Step 3: Identify campaign-name patterns (especially exclusions)
Campaign rules sit second in priority. They match by campaign name (whole-word match, case-insensitive). When a keyword or placement is being evaluated, if its campaign's name matches any words in a campaign rule, that rule's target and sensitivity apply — unless a SKU rule already caught it.
The most valuable campaign rule is often an exclusion rule, not a target rule. Campaign rules can be set to "Exclude from optimization," which removes the campaign from BulkSheet Pro's rec engine entirely. The campaign still shows up on your Campaigns page (you can edit it manually), but it doesn't get bid recommendations, placement recommendations, or negate recommendations, and it doesn't contribute to your account's baseline metrics like accountCPO.
Use cases for exclusion:
- Manual test campaigns named "test-X" — you're experimenting, don't want auto-recs in the way
- Tier-1 brand-defense campaigns you've already tuned and don't want disturbed
- Campaigns running a specific promo that BulkSheet Pro can't know about
Beyond exclusions, campaign rules are useful when your campaigns are named by stage or purpose. If all your launch campaigns share a "launch" prefix, one campaign rule with words "launch" and a target of 60% handles every campaign in that group — and any future campaign you create with "launch" in the name automatically inherits the rule. That's cleaner than maintaining a SKU rule list that you have to update every time you launch a new product.
One or two campaign rules is typical. Some accounts have none.
Step 4: Identify keyword patterns (the most specific layer that is still pattern-based)
Keyword rules sit third in priority. They match the keyword text by substring (case-insensitive). If a keyword contains any of the words in a keyword rule, the rule's target and sensitivity apply — unless a SKU rule or campaign rule already caught it.
The most common keyword rules:
- Branded keywords — your brand name, brand variants, trademark terms — target much higher than account default (45–60%) with gentle sensitivity
- Competitor keywords (if you run conquesting) — target high (50–70%), gentle sensitivity
- Specific phrases you know convert across the catalog — target tighter than account default
These are less critical than SKU and campaign rules for most accounts. If you don't run conquesting and your brand keywords are already in separate campaigns (which can be handled via campaign rules), you might not need any keyword rules.
One pitfall: keyword rules use substring matching, which is more permissive than the whole-word matching campaign rules use. A keyword rule with the word "vegan" matches "vegan recipes" and "vegan air fryer cookbook" — but also "veganism" if you have that as a keyword anywhere. Choose your rule words carefully.
Step 5: Decide on SB/SD overrides
The two campaign-type overrides at the top of the Advanced Options apply only when no rule above them has fired. They're the broadest possible adjustment — they affect every campaign of that product type unless a more specific rule has overridden them.
If your Sponsored Brands campaigns reliably run at higher ACoS than your Sponsored Products (because they're buying brand awareness, not just conversions), set the SB target ACoS higher than your account default. Same logic in reverse for Sponsored Display retargeting, which often runs tighter than the account default.
If your SP / SB / SD perform similarly, leave both fields blank and skip this step.
Step 6: Consider sensitivity last
The Bid Nudge Sensitivity slider controls how aggressively BulkSheet Pro moves bids in any given monthly cycle. Default is 0.25 (Moderate). Most accounts should leave it at default.
Reasons to change it:
- Increase to 0.35–0.50 if you've inherited a neglected account and want to converge faster (run 1-2 cycles at higher sensitivity, then return to default)
- Decrease to 0.10–0.15 if you have a high-volume stable account and want minimal disruption per cycle
That's it. The sensitivity slider is the last thing to touch, not the first.
The priority hierarchy as a refresher
When BulkSheet Pro evaluates a keyword, placement, or search term, it walks down this hierarchy in order:
- SKU rules first. If the ad group's SKU matches any SKU rule, use that rule.
- Otherwise, campaign rules. If the campaign name matches, use that rule. (Or skip the campaign entirely if the rule is Exclude.)
- Otherwise, keyword rules. If the keyword text matches, use that rule.
- Otherwise, campaign-type overrides (SB or SD).
- Otherwise, the account default.
Most specific wins. No blending. The first matching rule applies in full.
This is why the right order to fill out the panel inverts the visual order. SKU rules at the bottom of the panel have the highest priority. Campaign-type overrides at the top of the panel have the lowest priority among the override layers. Filling out the panel top to bottom means you start with the broadest, lowest-priority layer — which most users don't actually need to set.
What good setup looks like
A well-configured account often has:
- One required field set: the account target ACoS
- Two to three SKU rules covering the SKUs that need different treatment
- One or two campaign rules (often including an exclusion for test campaigns)
- Zero or one keyword rule (typically branded keywords)
- Default sensitivity
- SB/SD overrides only if those campaign types reliably behave differently from SP
Total time to configure: about 15 minutes the first time you do it, after a bit of thought about which SKUs and campaigns are the exceptions. Most of those 15 minutes is decision-making, not data entry. The actual UI work — adding a rule, typing in the words and target — is under a minute per rule.
The configuration doesn't need to be exhaustive. It needs to cover the exceptions to your account default. The rest runs on the default, which is what the default is for.
What BulkSheet Pro won't do
It won't suggest rules for you. The system can't know which SKUs are clearance vs. flagship, which campaigns are tests vs. production, which keywords are branded vs. generic. Those judgments are yours. BulkSheet Pro provides the slots; you fill them with knowledge of your business that doesn't appear in any bulk sheet.
It won't validate that your rules make sense. If you set a SKU rule with target ACoS 5%, BulkSheet Pro will dutifully recommend aggressive bid cuts on that SKU. Whether 5% is achievable is a question only you can answer. The math doesn't second-guess your inputs.
It won't apply old recommendations when you change rules. Every change to Advanced Options shows a "settings changed — re-analyze" banner at the top of the Actions page. Old recommendations are marked stale; you click Re-analyze and they regenerate. Nothing applies automatically.
It won't lock you in. Every rule is editable at any time. You can experiment with one configuration, run a cycle, look at the results, and adjust. There's no commitment beyond what's in your current bulk sheet workflow.
The reward for ten minutes of thought
The configuration is one of the most underused parts of BulkSheet Pro. Most users set the account target ACoS and click Analyze, never expanding the Advanced Options. That works fine for accounts with uniform economics across products and campaigns.
For everyone else — meaning most accounts that have been running for more than three months — the difference between "BulkSheet Pro making generic recommendations against an account default" and "BulkSheet Pro respecting the specific decisions you've already made about which SKUs matter, which campaigns to leave alone, and which keywords play by different rules" is the rule layer. It's worth ten minutes of thought once. After that, the rules just keep applying themselves, cycle after cycle.