What each option actually does
Automatic targeting lets the platform (Amazon or Walmart) decide which searches and product pages your ad appears against, based on your listing's content — title, bullet points, category, and attributes. You set a bid and budget; the platform handles the matching.
Manual targeting lets you specify exact keywords (or specific competing products, for product targeting) you want to bid on, along with individual bids per keyword or target. You control precisely what triggers your ad, at the cost of needing to already know which terms are worth targeting.
Why automatic targeting is the right starting point for most new campaigns
Automatic targeting surfaces real customer search terms you might not have thought to target manually — it's effectively free keyword research, run against real auction data rather than guesswork or a third-party keyword tool's estimate. For a brand-new listing with no advertising history, you don't yet know which of your assumed keywords actually convert; automatic targeting finds this out for you at the cost of a modest amount of "exploration" spend on non-converting terms along the way.
Why manual targeting matters once you have data
Manual targeting is where the real optimization work happens: once you know which specific terms convert well (from a search term report generated by an automatic campaign, or from category research), you can bid more aggressively and precisely on those exact terms, control match type, and exclude poor-performing terms outright — control that automatic targeting doesn't give you term by term.
Match types, briefly
Manual keyword targeting typically offers three match types: broad (matches loosely related search terms, casting the widest net), phrase (matches searches containing your keyword phrase in order, with other words allowed around it), and exact (matches only the specific keyword or very close variants). Broad match is useful for continued discovery; exact match is useful for tightly controlling spend on your proven best terms. Product targeting (bidding to appear on a specific competitor's or complementary product's page) is a separate, non-keyword manual option available on most platforms.
A practical hybrid approach
Most experienced advertisers run automatic and manual campaigns simultaneously rather than choosing one exclusively:
- Keep an automatic campaign running continuously as an ongoing discovery engine — even after you've built out manual campaigns, automatic targeting keeps surfacing new converting terms as search behavior shifts over time.
- Mine the automatic campaign's search term report regularly (weekly or biweekly for meaningful volume) to find terms with strong conversion performance.
- Move proven terms into a manual campaign, typically starting with exact match so you have precise bid control on your best performers.
- Add poor-performing terms as negative keywords to the automatic campaign, so it stops re-testing terms you already know don't convert, freeing that exploration budget for genuinely new terms.
Worked example
An automatic campaign for a stainless steel water bottle runs for two weeks and generates sales from the terms "insulated water bottle 32 oz," "stainless steel water bottle leak proof," and one accidental sale from "water bottle for dogs" (a mismatch, likely from a broad content match). The seller creates a manual exact-match campaign targeting the first two proven terms with an elevated bid, and adds "water bottle for dogs" as a negative exact keyword to the automatic campaign so it stops matching that irrelevant term going forward.
Comparison table
| Automatic Targeting | Manual Targeting | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | New listings, ongoing discovery | Proven terms, precise control |
| Setup effort | Low | Higher (requires keyword research) |
| Control over match | None | Full (broad/phrase/exact + product targeting) |
| Risk | Some spend on irrelevant matches | Missing new/unexpected converting terms |
| Recommended role | Always-on discovery engine | Precision layer on proven winners |
Mistakes to avoid
- Turning off automatic targeting entirely once manual campaigns are built — you lose the ongoing discovery function and stop finding new converting terms as search behavior evolves.
- Building a large manual keyword list from guesswork or third-party keyword tools alone without validating against your own actual search term report data.
- Letting an automatic campaign run indefinitely without ever reviewing its search term report — you're paying for the discovery data and then not using it.
Best practices
- Review search term reports on a fixed cadence (weekly while volume is low, more automated at scale) rather than only when something looks off.
- Start manual campaigns with exact match on your highest-confidence terms, expanding to phrase match once you have budget and confidence to explore variants.
- Keep negative keyword lists on your automatic campaign current — this is one of the highest-leverage, lowest-effort optimizations available.
FAQs
Can I run automatic and manual targeting for the same product at the same time? Yes, and it's the recommended approach — see the hybrid approach above.
Will manual targeting always outperform automatic on ACOS? Often, but not always — the advantage depends on how good your keyword research actually is. A poorly researched manual campaign can underperform a well-tuned automatic one.
How long should an automatic campaign run before I start pulling manual keywords from it? Long enough to generate a meaningful sample per term — for lower-traffic listings this can mean several weeks rather than days. See How to Set Up Your First Sponsored Products Campaign for guidance on judging sample size.