PPC Planning
Forecast strategy changes against your real 30-day performance with the Scenario Simulator, then schedule campaign moves to fire automatically at a future UTC time with the Campaign Mover.
Difficulty: 🟡 Intermediate · Reading time: ~12 min
Open this page in your dashboard: Go to PPC Planning →
BETA: The PPC Manager is currently in beta. Some features may behave unexpectedly or change based on user feedback. Please report any issues at info@sellermagnet.com.
📋 Overview
PPC Planning is the forward-looking half of the PPC Manager. Instead of changing bids and budgets live and hoping for the best, you model the change first, then schedule the winners to apply on their own. You will find it in the sidebar under the AI & Planning group, right below the AI Optimizer.
In practice it looks like this: it is early November and you want to push harder for Black Friday. You open Scenario Simulator, drag the budget lever to +30%, and see a projected 30-day spend, sales, ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale) and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) side by side with your real last-30-days baseline. The numbers look good, so you switch to Campaign Mover and schedule your main campaign to raise its daily budget at 06:00 UTC on November 24. The change is queued, cancellable until it fires, and you never have to remember to log in that morning.
The page has two tabs, each a self-contained tool:
Scenario Simulator
What-if forecasting against your real baseline
Before you commit to a budget or bid strategy
Campaign Mover
Schedule a campaign change for a future UTC time
When a change should fire on a specific date
At the top of the page, three header stats track your planning activity at a glance:
Saved scenarios
Number of scenarios you have saved for this project
Scheduled changes
Campaign Mover changes still pending (not yet applied)
Applied (30d)
Scheduled changes that fired in the last 30 days
Scenario Simulator
The Scenario Simulator projects the next 30 days of performance if you were to change your strategy, and compares it against your real last-30-days baseline. Nothing you do here touches Amazon: it is a pure forecast you can run as many times as you like.
Strategy levers
The left card holds three sliders. Adjust at least one, then click Run simulation.
Budget change
-90% to +200%
Scale campaign budgets up or down by this percentage
Bid change
-75% to +200%
Raise or lower keyword bids by this percentage
Target ACoS
off (0%) to 60%
Simulate autopilot bidding down toward a target ACoS
Target ACoS overrides bid change. When you set the Target ACoS lever above 0, the simulator models autopilot adjusting your bids toward that target and ignores the manual Bid change slider. Use one approach or the other, not both. Leave Target ACoS at "off" if you want to steer bids by hand.
Quick scenarios
Above the levers, three preset chips fill the sliders for you so you can go straight to a run:
Scale +20% budget
Budget change +20%
Target 25% ACoS
Target ACoS 25%
Conserve cash
Budget change -30%, Bid change -15%
There is also a one-click Try +20% budget on top campaign button in the empty result panel that fills the levers and runs the simulation for you.
Reading the projection
After you run a simulation, the right card fills with a Projection vs baseline block. Every metric shows your baseline value, the projected value, and the change between them. The projection covers the next 30 days; the baseline is your real last 30 days.
Spend
Projected ad spend vs your recent spend
Sales
Projected ad-attributed sales
ACoS
Projected advertising cost of sale (lower is better)
ROAS
Projected return on ad spend (higher is better)
Orders
Projected ad-attributed orders
Clicks
Projected clicks
Impressions
Projected impressions
CPC
Projected average cost per click
Two signals help you judge how much to trust the numbers:
Confidence badge (low, medium, or high): reflects how much real data backs the projection. Low confidence means your baseline is thin, so treat the forecast as directional.
Warnings: short flags that appear when a lever pushes into a risky range (for example, a very large budget increase that recent data cannot reliably support).
Every projection is an estimate. The simulator extrapolates from your recent performance. It assumes the market behaves roughly as it did over your baseline period. Seasonality, competitor moves, and listing changes can all shift the real outcome, so use the projection to compare options, not as a guaranteed result.
Saving scenarios
Once a simulation has run, a Save scenario button appears. Give the scenario a name and it is stored in the Saved scenarios list at the bottom of the tab. Saved scenarios are private to your project, so you can build up a small library and compare a few strategies before deciding which one to act on.
Worked example: scaling for the holidays
Situation: Your baseline for the last 30 days is EUR 2,400 spend, EUR 9,600 sales, 25.0% ACoS and 4.0x ROAS. You want to grow volume for Q4 but keep efficiency sane.
What you do:
Open Scenario Simulator and set Budget change to +30%.
Set Target ACoS to 25% so autopilot bids toward your break-even efficiency instead of bidding blindly higher.
Click Run simulation.
Illustrative projection: Spend rises toward EUR 3,000, sales toward EUR 11,800, ACoS holds near 25%, ROAS holds near 4.0x. The projection lands at medium confidence because your baseline has enough traffic to support a moderate scale-up.
Decision: The extra EUR 600 of spend is projected to return roughly EUR 2,200 in incremental sales at flat efficiency. That is worth committing, so you save the scenario as "Q4 scale +30%" and move to Campaign Mover to schedule the budget change for the start of the holiday push.
(Figures above are illustrative and depend entirely on your own account data.)
Campaign Mover
The Campaign Mover schedules a single campaign-level change to fire automatically at a future UTC time. This is how you plan holiday budget bumps, post-promo pauses, and gradual scale-ups without having to be at your desk when they need to happen. Every scheduled change is cancellable right up to its apply timestamp.
Building a scheduled change
The builder is a five-step stepper. Each step lights up as you complete it, and a live preview writes out what you are about to schedule in plain English.
Step 3: What to change
Choose the property to change:
State
Set the campaign to ENABLED or PAUSED
Daily budget
Set a new daily budget amount
Target ACoS
Set a new target ACoS for the campaign
Several more properties are marked coming soon and cannot be selected yet: Bidding strategy, Targeting type, Placement (Top-of-search %), Placement (Product-pages %), and Campaign name.
Apply times are UTC, not your local time. The apply-time field is stored in UTC, so convert your local time before entering it. For example, 09:00 Berlin time in winter is 07:00 UTC. The page shows your detected browser timezone as a badge to help you convert, but the value you type is read as UTC. Getting this wrong is the single most common Campaign Mover mistake: a budget bump you meant for 6 AM can fire in the middle of the night.
Preview and reason
Below the steps, a live preview turns your selections into a sentence, for example: "Will set daily budget on Brand-Exact to $80 on Nov 24 at 06:00 UTC." The preview only reaches its ready state once all steps are filled.
There is also an optional Why this change? field. It is not required, but recording a reason ("Black Friday promo", "Out-of-stock pause", "Q1 scale push") makes the planned-changes list far easier to read later. Fill it in, then click Schedule change.
The Up-next banner and Planned changes list
At the top of the tab, an Up-next banner highlights your single nearest scheduled change with its apply time and campaign, so you always know what is about to fire. When nothing is queued it shows an empty state pointing you to the builder.
The Planned changes list at the bottom shows every scheduled change and can be filtered:
Pending
Scheduled changes that have not fired yet
Applied
Changes that have already been applied
Cancelled
Changes you cancelled before they fired
Failed
Changes that could not be applied
All
Everything, regardless of status
Pending changes can be cancelled at any time before their apply timestamp.
Worked example: scheduling a Black Friday budget bump
Goal: Raise the daily budget on your "Brand-Exact" campaign to $80 at the start of Black Friday, then let it fire without you.
Steps:
Open the Campaign Mover tab.
Step 1: pick the marketplace (or leave All Marketplaces).
Step 2: select Brand-Exact.
Step 3: choose Daily budget.
Step 4: enter 80.
Step 5: your promo starts 07:00 Berlin time on November 24. In winter that is 06:00 UTC, so you enter Nov 24, 06:00.
Reason: "Black Friday promo."
Preview reads: "Will set daily budget on Brand-Exact to $80 on Nov 24 at 06:00 UTC."
Result: You click Schedule change. The change appears under Pending and in the Up-next banner. It fires automatically at 06:00 UTC on November 24. If your plans change, you cancel it any time before then.
⚠️ Common Mistakes to Avoid
Mistake 1: Entering the apply time in local time. The Campaign Mover apply field is UTC. If you type your local clock time, the change fires at the wrong hour. Fix: Convert to UTC first and use the browser-timezone badge as a reference before you save.
Mistake 2: Setting both Bid change and Target ACoS in the simulator. When Target ACoS is above 0 it overrides the Bid change lever, so the manual bid slider is ignored. Fix: Choose one approach: either steer bids manually with Bid change, or model autopilot with Target ACoS, but not both at once.
Mistake 3: Trusting a low-confidence projection. A low confidence badge means your baseline is thin, so the forecast is fragile. Fix: Treat low-confidence projections as directional only. Let the campaign gather more data, or model a smaller change, before committing real budget.
Mistake 4: Treating the simulator as a guarantee. The projection extrapolates from recent performance and cannot see seasonality, competitor moves, or listing changes. Fix: Use it to compare options against each other, then verify the real outcome after the change goes live.
Mistake 5: Scheduling a pause and forgetting to schedule the re-enable. A post-promo pause with no matching enable leaves a campaign dark indefinitely. Fix: When you schedule a pause, immediately schedule the ENABLED change for when the campaign should come back, and confirm both appear under Pending.
✅ Best Practices
Simulate first, schedule second. Use the Scenario Simulator to find a strategy you believe in, then use Campaign Mover to put the winning change on a timer. That is the intended two-step workflow.
Save the scenarios you might act on. A named saved scenario lets you compare a few strategies side by side before you commit, and revisit your reasoning later.
Convert to UTC before you type an apply time. Do the conversion once, deliberately, and double-check it against the timezone badge. This prevents the most common Campaign Mover error.
Always write a reason. The optional reason field costs a few seconds and makes your Planned changes list readable weeks later when you have several moves queued.
Pair every pause with an enable. For promos and out-of-stock windows, schedule both the PAUSED change and the ENABLED change up front so nothing gets stranded.
Watch the confidence badge. Give more weight to medium and high-confidence projections, and be cautious scaling hard off a low-confidence forecast.
Check the Up-next banner regularly. It is your fastest confirmation that the right change is queued for the right time.
🔧 Troubleshooting
Simulator will not run
No lever has been adjusted
Move at least one slider (Budget, Bid, or Target ACoS) above zero
Bid change slider seems ignored
Target ACoS is set above 0 and overrides it
Set Target ACoS back to "off" to steer bids manually
Projection shows low confidence
Baseline period has little data
Wait for more traffic, or model a smaller, more supportable change
Scheduled change fired at the wrong hour
Apply time was entered in local time, not UTC
Cancel and re-create the change using the correct UTC time
Cannot pick a property in Campaign Mover
The option is marked "coming soon"
Only State, Daily budget, and Target ACoS are available today
Page shows a connect banner
Amazon Advertising account is not connected
Connect your Amazon Ads account in PPC Settings, then reload
No campaigns appear in the picker
Ads data is still syncing after connecting
Wait for the initial data load to finish (you are notified by email)
❓ FAQ
Does running a simulation change anything in my Amazon account?
No. The Scenario Simulator is a pure forecast. It reads your recent performance and projects forward, but it never sends anything to Amazon. You can run it as often as you like with no risk.
Why does the Target ACoS lever override my Bid change?
Target ACoS and a manual bid change are two different ways to steer the same thing. When you set a target ACoS, the simulator models autopilot bidding toward that target, which supersedes any fixed percentage bid change. Pick whichever approach matches how you actually plan to manage bids, and leave the other at its default.
Are apply times in my timezone or UTC?
UTC. The apply-time field is stored and executed in UTC. Convert your local time before entering it. The page shows your detected browser timezone as a badge so you have a reference point while you convert.
Can I cancel a scheduled change after I create it?
Yes. Any change in the Pending state can be cancelled right up to its apply timestamp. Once it has fired it moves to Applied and can no longer be cancelled, though you can always schedule a new change to reverse it.
What level does Campaign Mover operate at?
The campaign level. You pick one campaign and change its state, daily budget, or target ACoS. Keyword-level bid changes belong in Bid Rules and the AI Optimizer, not Campaign Mover.
Why are some properties greyed out?
Bidding strategy, Targeting type, both Placement percentages, and Campaign name are marked "coming soon" and cannot be scheduled yet. Only State, Daily budget, and Target ACoS are available in the current beta.
Are my saved scenarios visible to other users?
No. Saved scenarios are private to your project. They are there for you to compare strategies and revisit your reasoning later.
➡️ What's Next?
PPC AI OptimizerPPC Bid RulesLast updated