Inventory-Aware Amazon PPC That Runs Itself
The Problem
Manual PPC is slow, expensive, and fragile:
- Bids move once a week while competitors change hourly.
- Budgets blow out by noon or crawl to a stop by 5pm.
- You pay for clicks when only a few units are left in stock.
- Wasted search terms keep spending because no one harvested them today.
- Managers live in spreadsheets instead of growing the business.
The Engineering Solution
How we solve it using n8n and the Amazon Ads API + SP-API, with Supabase and Cloud Run behind the scenes.
What runs on autopilot:
- Live bid control: We read keyword/target performance and Amazon’s bid suggestions and ranges, then raise/lower bids inside safe guardrails tied to your target ACoS/ROAS.
- Search-term hygiene: We pull the search-term view programmatically (segment=query) to auto-harvest winners and add negatives for waste.
- Budget pacing that doesn’t drift: Using near real-time budget usage endpoints, we pace spend across the day, catch underspend early, and protect against early blowouts.
- Inventory-aware ads: From the FBA Inventory endpoints we detect low or zero stock and pause or taper ads automatically; campaigns resume the moment inventory or inbound is detected.
- Placement tuning: If Top of Search or Product Pages deliver, we increase placement multipliers; if not, we dial them back.
How it’s built (kept simple):
- Orchestration: n8n schedules the checks hourly/daily and executes changes. Critical steps (bid math, placement rules, negative logic) are packaged as reusable sub-workflows.
- Decisioning: Gemini evaluates each keyword/ASIN against your guardrails and today’s intent signals; no wild swings—every change stays within your max CPC and ACoS caps stored in Supabase.
- Data & audit: Supabase stores rules, snapshots, and a full change log so you can roll back anything in one click.
- Infrastructure: A lightweight Docker service on Cloud Run handles secure API auth/webhooks; n8n handles the automation graph end-to-end.
- Human handoff: Big moves (new campaigns, large budgets, dramatic bid jumps) route to a manager for one-tap approval.
What you see as the operator:
- Clear daily summary: spend, sales, ACoS, top wins, and stopped waste.
- A short queue of “Approve/Skip” items for high-impact changes.
- Zero spreadsheets.
The PDV Advantage
Why our Amazon Ads Optimization beats manual management and generic tools:
- Inventory-aware PPC by default: Stop paying for clicks you can’t fulfill; ramp back instantly when stock lands.
- Always-on pacing: Budgets pace themselves using Amazon’s official budget usage signals—no mid-day surprises.
- Clean search terms, every day: Automated harvesting and negatives from the actual queries shoppers typed.
- Guardrails first, experimentation second: Your ACoS, CPC, and placement caps live in Supabase and are enforced in every change.
- Transparent automation: Every decision is logged and reversible; you own the data.
- Built only on the approved Amazon APIs and a battle-tested automation stack (n8n, Supabase, Cloud Run, Docker) for reliability and speed.