Four tabs, each answering one question
Effective bid per placement
One row per keyword: base bid, the three placement modifiers, and what each placement can charge — including the ceiling under dynamic bidding, and the columns where audience and Amazon Business stack on top.
Cap product pages, keep Top of Search
Enter the product-page bid you want to cap at. You get the Top of Search modifier that holds your top-of-page bid steady, the rest-of-search modifier to raise alongside it, and a warning when the change needs more than Amazon's 900% maximum.
Read a real placement report
Paste the last 30 days. Per campaign: cost per placement, the Top of Search to product-page ratio, product pages' share of spend against their share of sales, and a plain-language read of the pattern.
What we measured, with the caveats
The headline numbers from 324,203 branded clicks across eleven brand-markets, including the share of your bid each placement actually charges — and the brand-market where the pattern did not hold.
The arithmetic it runs, on two example rows
The same settings produce very different ceilings depending on the placement. These are the two rows the workbook ships with, so you can check the file against this page.
| Row | Branded exact | Generic exact |
|---|---|---|
| Base bid | 1.12 | 0.95 |
| Top of Search modifier | 150% | 50% |
| Effective Top of Search bid | 2.80 | 1.43 |
| Effective rest of search bid | 1.12 | 0.95 |
| Effective product-page bid | 1.12 | 0.95 |
| Ceiling at Top of Search, up and down | 5.60 | 2.86 |
| Ceiling elsewhere, up and down | 1.68 | 1.43 |
Dynamic bids — up and down raise the bid by up to 100% at Top of Search and by up to 50% on the other two placements, which is why the two ceilings differ. Fixed and down-only never pay above the effective bid.
How to use it
- 01
Open the file
Download the workbook and open it in Excel or Numbers, or upload it to Google Drive and open it with Google Sheets. Every formula is plain enough to survive the import.
- 02
Enter your campaign settings
On the Planner tab, pick your bidding strategy and enter the campaign's audience adjustment and Amazon Business modifier.
- 03
Enter your bids and modifiers
One row per keyword or campaign: the base bid, and the Top of Search, rest of search and product-page modifiers exactly as they are set in Amazon.
- 04
Read your effective bid per placement
The workbook shows what each placement can charge, including the maximum under dynamic bidding: up to twice the effective bid at Top of Search and 1.5 times it elsewhere.
- 05
Plan a restructure
On the Restructure tab, enter the product-page bid you want to cap at. The workbook returns the Top of Search modifier that keeps your top-of-page bid unchanged, and the rest-of-search modifier that stops that placement being cut by accident.
- 06
Check it against a real report
Export Sponsored Products → Reports → Placement for the last 30 days, paste it into the Placement check tab, and list your campaigns. You get cost per placement, the Top of Search to product-page ratio, and a flag when product pages are taking spend without returning sales.
Same price at the top, a cap on product pages.
On a single-keyword campaign your base bid is also your product-page bid. Rebuild the same Top of Search bid from a smaller base and a larger modifier, and the expensive placement gets capped while the auction you were winning stays untouched.
The evidence behind itTwo conditions before you run it. It is a campaign-level lever, so it only behaves this way on single-keyword campaigns — with several keywords in one campaign, one modifier stands in for several clearing prices. And size the cut from your own account's measured share of bid paid, not from ours: the 11% figure in the study is dominated by one advertiser running a 150–200% modifier, it was 39% on modifier-free days, and it ranged from roughly 12% to 60% across accounts.
The benchmarks in the file
Measured on 324,203 branded Sponsored Products clicks across seven brands and eleven brand-markets, January to September 2026.
| Measure | Brand terms | Generic terms |
|---|---|---|
| Top of Search CPC ÷ product-page CPC | 0.51× | 1.56× |
| Days Top of Search was the cheaper placement | 89% | 2% |
| Share of the effective bid paid at Top of Search | 11% | 83% |
| Share of the effective bid paid on product pages | 88% | 95% |
| Product pages' share of spend vs sales | 26% / 8.6% | — |
Using it in Google Sheets
- Download the file, then upload it to Google Drive.
- Right-click it in Drive and choose Open with → Google Sheets.
- File → Save as Google Sheets if you want a native copy you can share with your team.
The formulas avoid dynamic arrays, macros and anything else that behaves differently after the import, so the numbers match the Excel version cell for cell. The dropdown on the Planner tab survives the conversion too.
Download the templateQuestions about the placement bid template
9 answersThe data, the tool and the platform
The study behind the template
324,203 branded clicks: why Top of Search is the cheapest placement on your own brand terms, and what that means for how you set bids.
Read the studyBidding Simulator
The interactive version: every placement, audience and Amazon Business scenario for a set of keywords, in your browser.
Open the free toolSYNQ App (Beta)
Placement analytics, starting modifiers on new campaigns and bulk modifier pushes, without the spreadsheet round-trip.
Join the beta