Promote from Auto to Manual

Auto campaigns (auto targeting) are built for discovery, while Manual campaigns (manual targeting) are built for precision. This category collects prompts for carving search terms that perform well in Auto campaigns into keywords inside Manual campaigns. The goal is to bridge “discovery to precision” — move only the efficient search terms into Manual, and pair them with negative keywords so the same term is not served twice across Auto and Manual.

When to use this category

• Surface search terms in an Auto campaign that deserve promotion to a Manual campaign
• Carve high-CVR search terms into Manual campaign keywords
• Run search terms that perform well in Auto as Exact-match keywords

How Auto and Manual divide the work

Auto campaigns serve a discovery role — Amazon’s automatic matching surfaces search terms that have not been noticed yet. Manual campaigns serve a precision role — bids concentrate on search terms that clearly convert. The typical promotion flow is to move winning search terms out of Auto into Manual, then add the same terms as negative keywords on the Auto side so they are not served in both places at once.

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Prompt 1: Detect Auto-to-Manual promotion candidates (standard thresholds)

🎯 Goal

List the Auto-campaign search terms that are worth promoting to Manual-campaign keywords, with the evidence behind each call.

📋 When to use

• Review promotion candidates under standard conditions
• Get recommended match types and recommended bids alongside each candidate
• Move Auto-campaign winners into Manual

📝 Prompt

From the most recent completed weekly data, detect promotion candidates
from Auto-campaign search terms into the Manual campaign.
- min_clicks {{MIN_CLICKS}} (default 30)
- min_orders {{MIN_ORDERS}} (default 2)
- min_cvr {{MIN_CVR}} (decimal 0–1, default 0.05)
Include the recommended match type and recommended bid.

Placeholders:

Placeholder	Description	Default source
{{MIN_CLICKS}}	Minimum click count for promotion (e.g. 30)	Default 30
{{MIN_ORDERS}}	Minimum order count for promotion (e.g. 2)	Default 2
{{MIN_CVR}}	Minimum CVR for promotion (decimal 0–1, e.g. 0.05)	Default 0.05

⚙️ What the AI does

1. Filter promotion candidates — Extract Auto-campaign search terms with 30+ clicks, 2+ orders, and 5%+ CVR.
   • Why a completed week: An in-progress week is still accumulating clicks and orders, making the CVR denominator unstable.
   • Why min_clicks 30: Promoted terms get their own bids in Manual, so the observation bar is set higher than in Auto to avoid false positives from thin data.
   • Why min_orders 2: A single order may be a fluke, so the filter requires terms that converted more than once.
   • Why min_cvr 5% or higher: Restricts candidates to search terms above the typical CVR baseline — only terms that clearly convert qualify for promotion.
2. Recommend a match type — Decide between Exact, Phrase, and Broad.
   • Why include match type: The same search term needs different trade-offs depending on how generic the wording is — Exact prioritizes precision, Phrase sits in the middle, and Broad keeps discovery alive.
3. Recommend a bid — Derive the Manual-campaign bid from the actual CPC and CVR observed in the Auto campaign.
   • Why pair the recommended bid: Leaving the default bid after promotion runs too hot or too cold compared with Auto, which erodes the winning position.
4. Return an approval table — Six columns: search term, recommended match type, recommended bid, observed CVR, order count, and whether a negative keyword is needed on the Auto side.

📊 Example output

Auto → Manual promotion candidates: 9 items

Search term	Recommended match type	Recommended bid	Observed CVR	Orders	Negative on Auto side
amino acid shampoo refill	Exact	¥92	9.4%	6	Required (Exact)
low-irritation shampoo	Phrase	¥78	7.2%	3	Required (Phrase)
commercial shampoo 1L	Exact	¥85	8.1%	4	Required (Exact)
…(6 more)…

Once all 9 terms are added to the Manual campaign, the Auto campaign would keep matching the same search terms, so negative keywords must be registered on the Auto side as well. Reply “Execute” to proceed. To act on one row at a time, specify like “Execute only row 1”.

🔒 Safeguards

• This prompt only generates the candidate list — adding keywords to the Manual campaign and registering negative keywords in the Auto campaign do not happen automatically (no change applies until approval).
• Manual-campaign keyword additions are handled in Create campaigns.
• Auto-campaign negative-keyword registration is handled in Add negative keywords (required to prevent double serving).
• The recommended bid floor is ¥1 (blocks invalid values).
• Each suggestion has a 1-hour expiry; after that, regenerate.
• Nothing applies unless “Execute” is sent explicitly.
• Some Auto-campaign search terms arrive anonymized; anonymized phrases are excluded from candidates (see the interpretation guide in N-gram analysis).

🚦 Execution modes

Phase	State	Conditions
Phase 1 (current)	One-shot	Available with Picaro connected
Phase 2 (Q3 2026)	Weekly run	Monthly KPI targets registered + “saved prompt” enabled
Phase 3 (Q4 2026)	Auto-run (approval flow)	One-click Slack approval, weekly batch
Phase 4 (2027)	Fully automatic	ML confidence ≥ 0.85, within guardrails (Auto-side negative registration also automated)

👉 Next

• Create campaigns — Add the promoted keywords to a Manual campaign.
• Add negative keywords — Register the same search terms as negative keywords on the Auto campaign to prevent double serving.
• Optimize bids — Fine-tune the promoted Manual keywords using ACoS.

❓ FAQ

Q: Is it fine to stop after adding the candidates to Manual? A: Not recommended. If the same search term keeps matching in the Auto campaign, ad spend splits across Auto and Manual, and the precision gain of promotion is wasted. Any search term added to Manual must also be registered as a negative keyword on the Auto campaign.

Q: Is it safe to loosen the order-count or CVR thresholds? A: The looser the thresholds, the more false positives (thin-data search terms) appear. Loosening is acceptable when looking broadly before launching a new Manual campaign, but stricter defaults are safer when adding to an existing Manual campaign. For customized thresholds, use Prompt 2.

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Prompt 2: Customize thresholds to narrow promotion candidates

🎯 Goal

Switch between a loose lens for new launches (cast a wide net) and a strict lens for additions to existing operations (only the most certain search terms), depending on the goal.

📋 When to use

• Apply stricter thresholds (min_orders 5+, CVR 8%+, etc.)
• Cast a wider net before launching a new Manual campaign
• Limit candidates to top-tier search terms with CVR 8% or higher

📝 Prompt

From the most recent completed weekly data, detect promotion candidates
from Auto-campaign search terms into the Manual campaign under these
thresholds:
- min_clicks {{MIN_CLICKS}}
- min_orders {{MIN_ORDERS}}
- min_cvr {{MIN_CVR}} (decimal 0–1)
Include the recommended match type and recommended bid.

Placeholders:

Placeholder	Description	Default source
{{MIN_CLICKS}}	Minimum click count for promotion (e.g. 10–50)	User input (default 30)
{{MIN_ORDERS}}	Minimum order count for promotion (e.g. 1–5)	User input (default 2)
{{MIN_CVR}}	Minimum CVR for promotion (decimal 0–1, e.g. 0.03–0.10)	User input (default 0.05)

⚙️ What the AI does

1. Read the intent behind the thresholds — Infer the prompt’s goal (broad exploration vs. confident addition) from the three threshold values and surface that intent in the result table’s header.
   • Why annotate the intent: A loose-condition list and a strict-condition list carry different confidence levels, so a clear header prevents reviewers from misreading them later.
2. Filter promotion candidates — Apply the same logic as Prompt 1 with the supplied thresholds.
3. Recommend match types — Lean toward Broad / Phrase when conditions are loose, and toward Exact when conditions are strict.
   • Why scale match type with thresholds: Locking a thinly observed term to Exact gives it a fixed bid before the data supports it, so match-type precision must match the observation volume.
4. Recommend bids — Derive from the Auto-campaign actual CPC and the supplied CVR.
5. Return an approval table — Same six columns as Prompt 1.

📊 Example output

Auto → Manual promotion candidates: 14 items Input thresholds: min_clicks 10 / min_orders 1 / min_cvr 0.03 (Loose: new-launch candidates)

Search term	Recommended match type	Recommended bid	Observed CVR	Orders	Negative on Auto side
amino acid shampoo refill	Phrase	¥88	4.2%	1	Required (Phrase)
salon-exclusive shampoo	Broad	¥72	3.6%	2	Required (Broad)
…(12 more)…

Because these come from loose thresholds, keep bids conservative for the first two weeks after promotion, then re-evaluate with Prompt 1’s standard thresholds once observations build up. Reply “Execute” to proceed.

🔒 Safeguards

• This prompt only generates the candidate list — Manual-campaign additions and Auto-campaign negative registration are not automatic.
• Manual-campaign keyword additions are handled in Create campaigns.
• Auto-campaign negative-keyword registration is handled in Add negative keywords (required to prevent double serving).
• The recommended bid floor is ¥1.
• Each suggestion has a 1-hour expiry.
• Dropping min_clicks below 10 raises the false-positive rate from thin observations, so a warning note is added to the result table.
• Anonymized phrases from the Auto campaign are excluded from candidates.

🚦 Execution modes

Phase	State	Conditions
Phase 1 (current)	One-shot	Available with Picaro connected
Phase 2 (Q3 2026)	Weekly run	”Saved prompt” enabled, threshold presets per goal
Phase 3 (Q4 2026)	Auto-run (approval flow)	One-click Slack approval, but loose thresholds always require manual approval
Phase 4 (2027)	Fully automatic (standard thresholds only)	Loose thresholds remain one-shot; automation is limited to standard thresholds or stricter

👉 Next

• Detect Auto-to-Manual promotion candidates (standard thresholds) — Re-evaluate under standard thresholds once observations accumulate.
• Create campaigns — Add the extracted candidates to a Manual campaign.
• Add negative keywords — Register the same search terms as negative keywords on the Auto campaign.

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Prompt cheat sheet

Goal	Prompt to use
Detect promotion candidates with standard thresholds	Prompt 1
Customize thresholds for the goal	Prompt 2

Full promotion flow

1. Detect promotion candidates in this category
   ↓
2. Add keywords to the Manual campaign in
   [Create campaigns](/en/prompts/campaign-creation/)
   ↓
3. Register the same search terms as
   [negative keywords](/en/prompts/negative-keywords/)
   on the Auto campaign
   (prevents double serving between Auto and Manual)
   ↓
4. Optimize the promoted Manual keywords with
   [bid adjustments](/en/prompts/bid-optimization/)

Related categories

• Create campaigns — Adding keywords to a Manual campaign
• Add negative keywords — Auto-side negative registration after promotion (prevents double serving)
• Optimize bids — Tuning promoted Manual keywords
• Decompose revenue contribution with N-gram — Anonymization constraints and interpretation guide for Auto-campaign search terms