Log initiatives and external events and verify their impact

On this page you record the initiatives you ran yourself (the initiative log) and external events caused by others in Picaro, then verify the impact of the initiatives you recorded by comparing before/after (Before/After). Unless you record the initiatives you run, you can’t look back later on “what actually worked.” Recorded initiatives can also be used in Prompt 3 “Measure the Before/After impact of an initiative” in Check KPIs on the dashboard.

About this page

Item	Details
What you can do	Record initiatives and external events in Picaro, consolidate a period’s change history into a single table, and compare KPIs before and after a change to verify impact
Applies to	Initiative logs (moves you made yourself — bid adjustments, budget changes, promotions, etc.) and external events (factors outside your control — TV broadcasts, sales, buzz, stockouts). Change-history analysis mainly targets Sponsored Products (SP)
Data & connection needed	A connected account. Impact verification uses the connected account’s actual KPI data (no extra setup)
Scope	Varies by prompt. Registering initiatives and external events records to Picaro (a write occurs); consolidating, comparing, and reporting on change history is analysis only (read-only). Neither changes your Amazon ad settings themselves. Each prompt states its own in “Changes”

Terms used on this page

• Initiative log … a record of a move you made yourself (bid adjustment, budget change, promotion, etc.). You register it in Picaro so you can measure its impact later.
• External event … a record of an external factor that isn’t your own initiative (TV broadcast, sale, buzz, stockout, etc.). You reference it later as a reason KPIs moved.
• Initiative ID / Event ID … the number auto-assigned at registration. You specify it when verifying impact or updating.
• before/after (Before/After) … comparing KPIs across the periods before and after you ran an initiative. It’s the basic way to judge whether it had an effect.
• ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales) / ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) … ad-efficiency metrics. Lower ACoS is better; higher ROAS is better.

Pair recording with impact verification

An initiative log delivers no value from recording alone. 7–14 days after you run it, pass the recorded initiative ID to the impact-verification prompt (Prompt 6) or the dashboard’s Before/After impact measurement, and the deltas in ACoS / ROAS / ad spend / sales are aggregated automatically.

When to use this

• You want to record initiatives you ran (bid adjustments, budget changes, promotions, etc.) in a form you can measure later
• You want to keep things others caused — TV broadcasts, sales, buzz, stockouts — as reasons for KPI movement
• You want to review, in a single table, who changed what during a period
• You want to check when you last ran a bid adjustment, and each campaign’s change history
• You want to compare how KPIs changed before and after an initiative you ran, to verify its impact
• You want to reverse-trace the reason KPIs improved from your recorded initiatives
• As an agency, you want to report which changes each sub-account user made in which accounts

Before you run

• Target account … if you handle multiple accounts, check first that the account you’re recording or analyzing is the right one.
• Initiative execution date … when registering an initiative log, you can only specify past dates.
• Verification period … the period you compare before against after (Prompt 6 is fixed at 2 weeks each side). Today’s and yesterday’s data may not be finalized, so a recent, finalized period is safest.
• Target brand / ASIN (optional) … specify these to narrow to a particular brand or product. Without them, the whole account is covered.

Quick reference

Goal	What you get	Changes	Prompt
Record an initiative you ran in a form you can verify later	The auto-assigned initiative ID and what you registered	Records an initiative log	Prompt 1
List / update / add notes to recorded initiatives	A list of initiative logs, or the update result	List: no change / update & delete: modifies the initiative log	Prompt 2
Record external factors (TV / sale / buzz / stockout)	The auto-assigned event ID and what you registered	Records an external event	Prompt 3
Pull every change in a period into one table	A change history merging initiatives, events, and automation	No change (read-only)	Prompt 4
Check the last bid-adjustment date and change history	Per-campaign last execution date and days elapsed	No change (read-only)	Prompt 5
Compare KPIs for the 2 weeks before and after a bid adjustment	A comparison table of KPI deltas across the 2 weeks before and after	No change (read-only)	Prompt 6
Identify the changes that contributed to KPI improvement	A this-period vs. prior-period comparison and the contributing initiatives	No change (read-only)	Prompt 7
Create a per-user change report for agency sub-accounts	Per-user change trends and an analysis of gaps	No change (read-only)	Prompt 8

Telling recording prompts from analysis prompts

Prompts 1–3 record initiatives and external events in Picaro (a data write occurs). Prompts 4–8 only read recorded change history or KPIs to analyze, compare, and report — they write nothing. Neither changes your Amazon ad settings themselves.

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Record initiatives and external events

Prompt 1: Register an initiative log

Record an initiative you ran (bid adjustment, budget change, promotion, etc.) in Picaro, in a form you can compare before/after (Before/After) later.

When to use — when you want to keep a record of an initiative you ran so you can measure its impact later.

What you need — the initiative type, initiative name, and execution date (a past date).

Register an initiative log.
- Type: bid adjustment
- Name: {{INITIATIVE_NAME (e.g. Bid -22% on 18 high-ACoS keywords)}}
- Date executed: {{DATE_EXECUTED (e.g. 2026-05-18)}}
- Details: what the initiative was for (optional)
- Status: measuring

What you can change — the initiative name, execution date (past dates only), and type (choose from “bid adjustment,” “budget change,” “placement adjustment,” “promotion,” “negative,” “other”). If you just executed a bid-adjustment proposal, you can also link that proposal.

What you get back — the auto-assigned initiative ID and a table of what you registered, with guidance to measure impact 7–14 days after the initiative.

Changes — records the initiative log in Picaro (a write occurs; it does not change your Amazon ad settings).

Next steps — verify the recorded initiative’s impact 7–14 days after you ran it, using Prompt 6 or the Before/After impact measurement in Check KPIs on the dashboard.

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Prompt 2: List / update / add notes to initiative logs

Review the initiative logs you registered earlier in a list, and update progress notes or status.

When to use — when you want to check the status of recorded initiatives, or update progress notes or status.

What you need — the target initiative ID when updating or deleting.

Show me a list of initiative logs that are still being measured.
Filter to bid adjustments only.

What you can change — the list’s filter conditions (type, status, etc.). You can also specify a particular initiative ID (e.g. evt_2026_05_18_cpc) to update its contents, add a progress note, or delete it (ask like “Add the note ‘Day 3: results starting’ to evt_2026_05_18_cpc”).

What you get back — a list table of initiative ID / type / name / execution date / status / days elapsed (up to 20 by default, newest execution date first), or the result of an individual fetch or update.

Changes — listing and individual fetch make no change (read-only). Update, add-note, and delete modify the initiative log (a write occurs). Deletions always go through a confirmation step.

Next steps — once results are in, compare the before/after KPIs with Prompt 6.

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Prompt 3: Record an external event

Record external factors that weren’t your own initiative — TV broadcasts, sales, buzz, stockouts — so you can reference them later as reasons for KPI movement.

When to use — when you want to keep the background behind a big KPI move (factors outside your control) so you can look back on it later.

What you need — the external-event type, start date, and event name.

Record an external event.
- Type: sale
- Start date: {{START_DATE (e.g. 2026-06-11)}}
- End date: {{END_DATE (optional, omit for a single day)}}
- Label: {{EVENT_NAME (e.g. Prime Day 2026 Spring)}}
- Details: all ASINs, 20% OFF coupon concurrent (optional)

What you can change — the start date, end date (optional; omit for single-day events), event name, and type (choose from “TV broadcast,” “sale,” “buzz,” “stockout,” “other”).

What you get back — the auto-assigned event ID and a table of what you registered.

Changes — records the external event in Picaro (a write occurs; it does not change your Amazon ad settings).

Term note — a recorded external event is annotated as “possibly influenced by an external factor” when you run a before/after comparison of an initiative (periods are not auto-excluded).

Next steps — go to Prompt 4 if you want to review it together with every change in the period.

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Analyze and verify change history

Prompt 4: Pull every change in a period into one table

Consolidate every change made to the target brand or account during a period into a single table (type / summary / who / when / details).

When to use — when you want to see, all at once, who changed what and when.

What you need — the target period (defaults to the last 30 days). The brand name if narrowing to a specific brand.

Pull every change made in the last 30 days into one table.
Columns: type / summary / who / when / details.

What you can change — the target period / target brand (add “filter to brand X”).

What you get back — a change-history list table. It merges all three sources — initiative logs, external events, and automation-rule applications — into one table.

Changes — no change (read-only). It only consolidates recorded history.

Next steps — go to Prompt 5 to look at just the bid-adjustment history in detail, or Prompt 6 to verify the impact of a specific initiative.

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Prompt 5: Check the last bid-adjustment date and each campaign’s change history

For each SP campaign, show the last bid-adjustment date and what changed in detail.

When to use — when you want to check when you last adjusted bids on each campaign and whether it’s about time to re-adjust.

What you need — (targets are SP campaigns that are live)

For each SP campaign, show the last bid-adjustment date and what changed, in detail.
Include the number of days elapsed since the last adjustment.

What you can change — the range of campaigns covered.

What you get back — a table of campaign × last execution date × change details × days elapsed. Anything 30+ days out is flagged as a re-adjustment candidate.

Changes — no change (read-only).

Next steps — handle campaigns that need re-adjusting through the approval flow in Adjust bids.

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Prompt 6: Compare KPIs for the 2 weeks before and after a bid adjustment

For a specified bid adjustment, compare KPI performance for the 2 weeks before and the 2 weeks after execution.

When to use — when you want to verify with numbers whether a recorded bid adjustment actually had an effect.

What you need — an initiative ID already registered in Prompt 1.

For the bid adjustment with initiative ID {{INITIATIVE_ID (e.g. evt_2026_05_18_cpc)}},
compare ACoS, ROAS, sales, and CTR for the 2 weeks before and the 2 weeks after.
Show a delta table including % change.

What you can change — the target initiative ID.

What you get back — a comparison table of KPI × the 2 weeks before × the 2 weeks after × delta (absolute value and % change).

Changes — no change (read-only).

Term note — it’s similar to the Before/After impact measurement in Check KPIs on the dashboard, but here the period is fixed at 2 weeks each side for bid-type initiatives.

Next steps — go to Prompt 7 if you want to reverse-trace which change worked across the whole account.

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Prompt 7: Identify the changes that drove KPI improvement

Report account-wide KPI performance for a period, compare it against the prior period, and identify the changes that contributed to the improvement.

When to use — when you want to reverse-trace the reason your numbers improved from your recorded initiatives.

What you need — the target period (defaults to the last 30 days).

Create a report of account-wide ACoS, ROAS, and sales for the last 30 days,
and compare it against the prior period.
Identify the changes that drove the improvement and link them from the initiative log.

What you can change — the target period.

What you get back — a table of KPI × this period × prior period × delta, plus a list of initiative-log IDs tied to the improvement. You can reverse-trace “the numbers improved → what drove it.”

Changes — no change (read-only).

Next steps — use Prompt 6 to compare the 2 weeks before and after if you want to dig into a specific initiative individually. Go to Create reports to include it in a monthly report.

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Prompt 8: Create a per-user change report for agency sub-accounts

For each agency sub-account user, report which changes they made in which accounts. This prompt is for the operations managers at agencies handling multiple accounts.

When to use — as an agency, when you want a cross-cutting view of your sub-account users’ changes to resolve single-person dependencies and gaps.

What you need — (the target agency, if you handle multiple agencies)

For each user under the agency, create a report of which changes they made in which accounts.
Also identify common change patterns and change types not being applied to specific brands.

What you can change — the target agency (add “filter to agency X”).

What you get back — a table of user × account × change type × count, plus an analysis of common trends and missing change types. Useful for agency management and removing single-person dependencies.

Changes — no change (read-only).

Next steps — when you find a missing change type, handle it on the relevant page, such as Adjust bids or Add negative keywords.

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Related categories

• Check KPIs on the dashboard — use recorded initiatives in Prompt 3 “Before/After impact measurement”
• Adjust bids / Adjust budgets — standard practice is to leave an initiative log alongside executing a proposal
• Set targets for sales, ad spend, and ACoS — pre-register a target ACoS / TACoS as the baseline for judging an initiative’s impact
• Create reports — bundle initiative logs and external events into the monthly report
• Save rules to systematize proposal approval and monitoring — record initiatives you approved and applied here