Creating a Sponsored Products Auto campaign via bulk sheet

The simplest campaign type to build — and the one most sellers start with

If you've ever clicked through Amazon's "Create campaign" wizard in Seller Central, you know how many screens it takes to launch a single Sponsored Products Auto campaign — naming, budgets, bidding strategy, ad group setup, default bid, ad selection, targeting bids per group, placement adjustments. By the time you finish the wizard, you've spent ten minutes on one campaign. Building the same campaign via bulk sheet takes about thirty seconds once you understand the structure, and it scales to ten or a hundred SKUs without any extra friction. This article walks through exactly how to build one.

If you haven't already, read the anatomy article first — it explains the column structure that the rest of this assumes. You can also use the template generator on this page (upper right on desktop, in the article body on mobile) to download a blank SP Auto template with the cells you need to fill in highlighted yellow. The walkthrough below is the same template, explained row by row.

When to use Auto campaigns

Auto campaigns let Amazon decide which search terms and product placements to bid on, rather than you specifying keywords or ASINs explicitly. There are three scenarios where they're the right choice:

• Launching a new SKU. You don't yet know which keywords convert. An Auto campaign exposes your product to a wide range of related searches and product pages, and you harvest the converters into Manual campaigns later.
• Keeping discovery active alongside Manual campaigns. Even when you have well-tuned Manual campaigns running, an always-on Auto campaign continues finding new converting terms as shopper behavior shifts.
• Research phase for a category you're expanding into. If you're moving from one category into an adjacent one, an Auto campaign on the new product gives you data on which terms perform without requiring you to guess upfront.

If you already know exactly which keywords or competitor ASINs you want to target — say, because you've harvested them from another campaign — a Keyword or Product Target campaign is the right move, not Auto. Those campaign types are covered in their own articles in this guide.

The seven rows you'll create

One Auto campaign requires exactly seven rows in the Sponsored Products Campaigns sheet (or more, if you're advertising multiple SKUs or want to adjust placements). The minimal structure:

1. Campaign row — defines the campaign itself: name, budget, bidding strategy, dates, state.
2. Ad Group row — defines the single ad group inside the campaign.
3. Product Ad row — connects your SKU to the ad group. (One row per SKU; we'll cover multi-SKU at the end.)
4. Product Targeting row — close-match — bid for "close match" auto-targeting (searches that closely match your listing).
5. Product Targeting row — loose-match — bid for "loose match" auto-targeting (loosely related searches).
6. Product Targeting row — substitutes — bid for product-page placements on competitor ASINs.
7. Product Targeting row — complements — bid for product-page placements on complementary ASINs.

Optionally, you can add Bidding Adjustment rows to increase your bid on specific placements (Top of Search, Product Pages, Rest of Search). Most beginners skip these on a new campaign and add them later once they have placement performance data — so this walkthrough leaves them out.

Row 1: the Campaign row

The Campaign row is where the campaign comes into existence. In your bulk sheet template, this is the first row of data (below the header row). The cells you need to fill in:

• Campaign ID — a unique value you make up. This is the most important field on the row: every subsequent row that belongs to this campaign references this same value. Pick something memorable, like auto-airfryer-12L-2026. The ID is internal — it doesn't appear in Seller Central — so it can be anything, as long as it's unique in your account.
• Campaign Name — the display name shown in Seller Central. Often the same as the Campaign ID. Sellers commonly encode the campaign type, the product, and the year (SP-Auto-AirFryer-12L-2026). Pick a naming convention you'll be consistent with — it pays off when you have dozens of campaigns.
• Start Date — format is YYYYMMDD with no dashes or slashes. Today or a future date. For example, June 15, 2026 is 20260615.
• State — enabled or paused. Start with paused if you want to review the campaign in Seller Central before it goes live; use enabled if you're confident in the setup.
• Daily Budget — a numeric value in your account's currency. $1 minimum (or local equivalent). $10–$20 is typical for a launch Auto campaign; you can scale up later once the campaign has data.
• Bidding Strategy — one of three exact strings: Dynamic bids - down only, Dynamic bids - up and down, or Fixed bid. For a new campaign, "Dynamic bids - down only" is the safest choice: Amazon lowers your bids in real-time on impressions that are unlikely to convert, but won't raise them. The "up and down" strategy can be powerful once you have conversion data, but on a brand-new campaign with no history, it can spend aggressively before any optimization signal exists.

Pre-filled cells you don't touch: Product is "Sponsored Products", Entity is "Campaign", Operation is "Create", and Targeting Type is "AUTO". These are the structural defaults that mark the row as a new Sponsored Products Auto campaign.

Row 2: the Ad Group row

Every Sponsored Products campaign needs at least one ad group, which is the container for ads and targeting. For an Auto campaign, you'll almost always have exactly one ad group — there's no benefit to multiple ad groups inside a single Auto campaign because the targeting groups are the same.

• Campaign ID — must exactly match the Campaign ID from row 1. This is the link that tells Amazon this ad group belongs to that campaign.
• Ad Group ID — another unique value you make up. Common pattern: take the Campaign ID and append -ag1 or just -ag. So auto-airfryer-12L-2026-ag.
• Ad Group Name — display name. Usually the same as Ad Group ID, or a simplified version.
• State — enabled typically. (Even if the campaign is paused, the ad group can be enabled; the campaign state takes precedence.)
• Ad Group Default Bid — the fallback bid used when a specific targeting bid isn't set. Numeric, minimum $0.02. A typical starting bid is in the $0.50–$1.50 range depending on category competition.

Pre-filled: Product, Entity ("Ad Group"), Operation ("Create").

Row 3: the Product Ad row

The Product Ad row connects a specific SKU to the ad group. This is what makes the campaign actually advertise your product. If you want to advertise three SKUs in the same Auto campaign, you add three Product Ad rows (each with a different SKU but the same Campaign ID and Ad Group ID).

• Campaign ID — match row 1.
• Ad Group ID — match row 2.
• Ad ID — unique value you make up. A common pattern is the SKU plus -ad: AF-PRO-12L-ad.
• State — enabled.
• SKU — your actual seller SKU as it appears in Seller Central inventory. This is the field that actually links the ad to a product. Make sure it matches exactly — capitalization and formatting count.

Pre-filled: Product, Entity ("Product Ad"), Operation ("Create").

Rows 4–7: the Product Targeting rows

An Auto campaign has four targeting groups, and each gets its own row. You can set a different bid for each, which is one of the main reasons to build Auto campaigns via bulk sheet rather than the UI — you can specify the four bids in one upload instead of clicking through four screens.

The four groups, in order:

• close-match — searches that closely match the keywords in your product listing. This is your highest-intent traffic.
• loose-match — searches that loosely relate to your product. Lower intent, but useful for discovery.
• substitutes — product-page placements on competitor ASINs (shoppers looking at products similar to yours).
• complements — product-page placements on complementary ASINs (shoppers looking at products that pair with yours).

Each of the four Product Targeting rows needs:

• Campaign ID — match row 1.
• Ad Group ID — match row 2.
• Product Targeting ID — unique value per row. A clean pattern: auto-airfryer-close, auto-airfryer-loose, etc.
• State — enabled for groups you want to participate; paused for groups you want to disable. For a launch campaign, leave all four enabled to maximize discovery.
• Bid — the bid for this specific targeting group. Numeric, minimum $0.02.

The Product Targeting Expression column is pre-filled with the group name (close-match, loose-match, substitutes, or complements). These are exact strings that Amazon's bulk parser expects — don't modify them.

Pre-filled on each row: Product, Entity ("Product Targeting"), Operation ("Create"), and the targeting expression.

How to think about bids across the four groups

A common starting pattern is to set all four bids equal to your Ad Group Default Bid — say, $0.75 across the board for a new campaign. This gives Amazon equal latitude across all four groups to find traffic, and after 2–4 weeks of data you'll see which groups convert and which don't.

A more strategic launch is to bias higher toward close-match (your best traffic) and lower on loose-match and substitutes (less predictable). For example: $1.00 close, $0.60 loose, $0.60 substitutes, $0.40 complements. This tells Amazon to compete harder for close-match impressions while still gathering data on the others.

Conservative launches sometimes pause loose-match and complements entirely, leaving only close-match and substitutes enabled. This narrows the discovery window but reduces wasted spend on lower-quality groups during the data-gathering phase.

The right approach depends on your category, margin, and risk tolerance. Whatever you pick, plan to revisit the four bids after the first two weeks of data — that's when the four groups' relative performance becomes clear.

Download a template and fill it in

Use the template generator on this page to download a blank SP Auto template. The dropdown is already set to "SP — Auto campaign" because you're reading the Auto article. The yellow cells are the ones you fill in, following the walkthrough above. The gray cells are pre-filled structural defaults — leave them alone.

Common mistakes that cause upload errors

Amazon's bulk upload parser is strict. The most frequent reasons an Auto campaign fails to upload:

• Campaign ID or Ad Group ID doesn't match across rows. If row 1 has auto-airfryer-12L-2026 but row 2 has auto-airfryer-12l-2026 (lowercase L), Amazon treats them as different IDs and the upload fails. Copy-paste the IDs rather than retyping them.
• Start Date in the wrong format. Amazon wants YYYYMMDD with no separators. Excel sometimes auto-formats date cells, turning 20260615 into a date object that exports as 6/15/2026. Set the cell format to "Text" before typing, or prefix with a leading apostrophe.
• State value misspelled or capitalized wrong. The accepted values are enabled, paused, and archived — all lowercase. Enabled with a capital E fails.
• Bidding Strategy doesn't match an exact string. The three accepted values include specific spacing and capitalization: Dynamic bids - down only, Dynamic bids - up and down, Fixed bid. Note the spaces around the dashes; missing them causes a failure.
• SKU doesn't match an active inventory SKU. If you have a typo, or the SKU was archived in Seller Central, the Product Ad row fails. Pull the exact SKU from Seller Central or your inventory file rather than typing it from memory.
• Bid below minimum. The minimum bid is $0.02 (or local currency equivalent). A bid of $0.01 fails. Empty bid cells also fail on Product Targeting rows.
• Numeric cells formatted as text. If you paste a Daily Budget value with a dollar sign, like $25, the cell becomes text and the upload fails. Use plain numbers: 25 or 25.00.

What happens after upload

When you upload a bulk sheet to Amazon (Seller Central → Advertising → Bulk Operations → Upload), Amazon validates every row before applying any changes. If any row fails validation, Amazon flags it and continues with the rest — or, depending on the severity, rejects the entire upload.

If the upload succeeds, the new Auto campaign appears in Seller Central within 5–30 minutes. The campaign starts spending immediately if its state is enabled. The first 24–48 hours of data is typically low-volume as Amazon's algorithm learns which placements to bid on; meaningful traffic and conversion data usually requires 7–14 days.

You can monitor the campaign in Seller Central's campaign manager, or — more usefully — wait a week and download a fresh bulk sheet to see performance data alongside the campaign structure. That's the natural cadence for bulk-sheet-driven optimization: upload to create, wait for data, download to analyze, upload to adjust.

Multi-SKU Auto campaigns

The walkthrough above creates a single-SKU Auto campaign. To advertise multiple SKUs in the same Auto campaign, add additional Product Ad rows — one per SKU — between row 3 and rows 4–7. Each Product Ad row references the same Campaign ID and Ad Group ID, with a different Ad ID and SKU.

Multi-SKU Auto campaigns make sense when you have closely related products (different sizes or variants of the same thing) where the four auto-targeting groups should behave similarly for all of them. For very different products, separate campaigns give you cleaner data and better budget control.

Next steps

Once you have an Auto campaign live and accumulating data, the natural next operations are:

• Harvest converting search terms from the Auto campaign into a Keyword campaign. The Keyword campaign article in this guide covers building those from scratch; the Search Term Harvesting article covers extracting them from your Auto data.
• Adjust bids on the four targeting groups based on performance. Covered in the Bulk Bid Adjustments article.
• Add placement multipliers if certain placements (Top of Search, Product Pages) are converting disproportionately. Covered in the Placement Multipliers article.

And if you find yourself building Auto campaigns for ten or twenty SKUs at once, that's the point where BulkSheet Pro stops being optional. It generates Auto campaigns for every SKU on your list, validates everything before upload, and integrates the post-launch optimization cycle into the same workflow. Try it free →