The default bid in Amazon advertising is the cost-per-click bid an ad group applies to every keyword or product target that does not have its own bid. In an automatic campaign it is the only bid, because Amazon chooses the targets; in a manual campaign it fills in wherever you leave a keyword bid blank.
Every Sponsored Products ad group carries one default bid. When Amazon enters an auction for a search that matches one of your targets, it looks for a bid on that target first. If the keyword or ASIN has its own bid, that is used. If it does not, the ad group's default bid is used. Placement adjustments and the dynamic bidding strategy are then applied on top, so the default bid is the starting point, not the amount you pay.
Worked example: an ad group has a default bid of ₹8. The keyword 'steel water bottle 1 litre' has a bid of ₹12, so it enters auctions at ₹12. The keyword 'water bottle' was added without a bid, so it enters at ₹8. In the automatic campaign next to it, the close match and loose match groups each take the default bid unless you set a separate bid per targeting group, which Amazon allows.
On Amazon UAE the same rule applies in AED. On Flipkart there is no ad-group layer; a PLA CPC campaign has one bid per campaign and per-placement multipliers, so the nearest equivalent is the campaign bid.
Sellers confuse the two because they sit next to each other in campaign manager. The suggested bid is Amazon's estimate of what has been winning impressions for a target, shown as a range. The default bid is the number you actually set. Amazon prefills the default bid with a suggestion when you create an ad group, and that prefill is where many accounts pick up bids far above what the product can afford.
Blooprint's glossary on blooprint.in covers dynamic bidding and placement adjustments; this page stays on the bid you type.
Work out the highest bid you can afford from price, target ACoS and conversion rate.
Learn more →The range Amazon shows beside the bid box, and why it is not a target.
Learn more →How bids are adjusted from performance data once the campaign is running.
Learn more →Filter keywords by ACoS, CPC and CVR, review suggested bids and apply them in bulk.
Learn more →It is the ad-group level cost-per-click bid Amazon uses for any keyword or product target that has no bid of its own, and for the targeting groups of an automatic campaign.
No. A keyword or target with its own bid uses that bid. The default only fills in where a bid is blank, so changing the default does not touch keywords you have priced individually.
Below the CPC the product can afford: price multiplied by target ACoS multiplied by conversion rate. For a ₹999 product at 25% ACoS and 8% CVR that is about ₹20, so a default of ₹10 to ₹15 leaves room to raise winners.
No. The suggested bid is Amazon's estimate of recent winning bids for a target. The default bid is the figure you set, though Amazon prefills it with a suggestion when the ad group is created.
Yes. Amazon lets you set a bid for each of close match, loose match, substitutes and complements. Any group you leave blank uses the ad-group default.
Join 500+ brands powered by our team with