On Flipkart, automatic targeting lets the platform decide which shopper queries your PLA campaign appears for, while manual keyword targeting shows the ad only for the exact and phrase keywords you add, with bids you set. Automatic is for discovering what converts; manual is for controlling what you pay for it. Most accounts should run both, with the search term report moving winners from one to the other.
An automatic PLA campaign takes your FSNs, budget and bid and lets Flipkart match the ads to searches and browse pages it judges relevant, using the listing's title, category and attributes. You cannot see the list of queries in advance; you see them afterwards in the search term report. A manual keyword campaign shows the ad only for the keywords you add, in exact match (the query is the keyword) or phrase match (the query contains the keyword), each with its own bid. Both modes work under CPC and Smart ROI bidding, and both accept negative keywords.
Blooprint's Flipkart ads guide covers building the campaigns; this page is about choosing between the modes and running them together.
| Automatic targeting | Manual keyword targeting | |
|---|---|---|
| Who picks the queries | Flipkart | You |
| Best for | New FSNs, categories you do not know, discovery | Proven terms, brand terms, margin control |
| Bid control | One bid for the campaign | Per keyword |
| Waste | Higher until negatives are added | Lower, but misses queries you did not think of |
| Setup time | Minutes | Hours for a large catalogue, unless uploaded in bulk |
| Data it gives | Search term report full of new queries | Keyword report with per-term ROI |
Neither column wins outright. Automatic finds the queries; manual makes them cheap. A catalogue run only on automatic pays a discovery premium forever, and one run only on manual never learns new terms.
Enough for the search term report to show 30 to 50 clicks on the main queries. Fewer than that and a zero-order term proves nothing.
Terms with orders and ROI above your break-even become exact-match keywords in a manual campaign, with a bid at or slightly above the CPC they were getting.
If 'steel water bottle 1 litre' converts, a phrase keyword 'steel water bottle' catches the variants at a lower bid, while the exact keyword carries the higher bid.
Otherwise the two campaigns bid against each other for the same query. Add the exact term as a negative in automatic so it only serves from manual.
Terms with meaningful spend and no orders go in as negatives in both campaigns. Flipkart accepts up to 200 per campaign, per paxcom; that limit is rarely reached but is worth knowing on big catalogues.
A worked example at a 25% margin, so break-even ROI is 4. A ₹600 product converting at 5% from an exact-match click earns ₹30 of revenue per click; at ROI 4 the most you can pay is ₹7.50 a click. The same product on a phrase keyword converting at 3% earns ₹18 per click and can carry ₹4.50. On automatic, converting at 2% across mixed queries, the ceiling is ₹3.
That ordering, exact above phrase above automatic, is the whole reason to run manual campaigns: the queries you know convert are worth more per click than the average, and a single campaign bid cannot express that. Blooprint's PLA bid calculator does this arithmetic from your own price, margin and conversion rate.
Across five FSNs the switch is an hour a week in the portal. Across a hundred, it is the job nobody does. BlooprintAI's Flipkart workflow adds exact and phrase keywords and excluded keywords in bulk from a template, filters search terms from every campaign in one table by ROI, clicks and spend, and applies bid changes in bulk with a summary before they are made and a log after. The decisions remain yours; the row-by-row work does not.
The Flipkart and Shopsy workflow in BlooprintAI: bulk campaign creation, placement bids, keyword control and reports the seller dashboard does not give you.
Learn more →Work out the highest CPC bid a PLA keyword can carry from your selling price, margin and conversion rate.
Learn more →Search term, FSN, placement performance and seller-level reports: what each shows and the action to take.
Learn more →The eleven ways sellers waste PLA budget, and the fix for each.
Learn more →Automatic lets Flipkart match your PLA to shopper queries from the listing's content; manual shows the ad only for the exact and phrase keywords you add, each with its own bid. Automatic discovers, manual controls.
Automatic, in a CPC campaign, for two to three weeks. It builds the search term report you need to pick manual keywords. Add a manual campaign once terms have 30 to 50 clicks and proven orders.
Up to 200 keywords and 200 negative keywords per campaign, as exact or phrase match, according to paxcom and harshitmaggo. Start with the ten the search term report proved.
Yes. Both automatic and keyword targeting run under CPC and Smart ROI bidding. Under Smart ROI, Flipkart sets the bid to chase your target ROI; under CPC you set each keyword's bid.
Because the same query matches both. Add the manual campaign's exact keywords as negatives in the automatic campaign so each query serves from one place and the reports stay readable.
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