🎅🏻 December Ads Strategy · Royalty Guild. Amazon KDP Kit

Dec '25 (edited) • 🧰 Tools

🎅🏻 December Ads Strategy

Great December strategy explainer from Gerald Confienza. The main takeaways:

1️⃣ The Exact Match Test

The goal of this strategy is to capture specific, high-converting opportunities without wasting the budget, leveraging the higher buyer urgency and conversion rates seen in December.

Implementation and Bidding:

1. Identify Targets: Use a tool like Helium 10 (specifically Cerebro) to find competitors’ books. Extract the top five to ten keywords that competitors are ranking for organically, ideally those with an organic rank between one and five.

2. Campaign Creation: Activate a new exact match sponsored product keyword ad campaign using these extracted keywords.

3. Aggressive Bidding: Start with very aggressive bids, usually at around $2, aiming for the top of search result placement. The intent is to see if the ad is "worthy of top of search placement," which yields the biggest ROI and helps improve the book's organic ranking for that keyword.

Monitoring and Management:

• Monitor the campaign's performance over a 3 to 7 day window.

• If you see sales, break-even, or only very slight losses, keep the keyword active.

• If the keyword is profitable, gradually raise the bids so that the performance is maintained at total break-even.

• A keyword is considered "working" even if it incurs a slight loss (e.g., 55% ACOS) if it helps maintain or improve the SEO rank for that specific search term, increasing the book's overall visibility.

• If the keyword does not perform within the 5 to 7 day window, turn it off immediately.

2️⃣ Prioritizing Gross Royalty Over Low ACOS

The expenditure-to-profit ratio is most optimal in December, meaning sellers should focus on maximizing total sales and profit rather than strictly adhering to a low ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sales).

Strategy Details:

• Avoid the "Low ACOS" Trap: Sometimes, a slightly higher ACOS is beneficial if it causes the gross royalty per day to grow. When gross royalty increases, net profit can actually grow, even if the ACOS goes up.

• Raising Bids: When raising bids, particularly for keywords that currently have a very low ACOS, the ACOS will likely increase, but this action makes it more likely that both gross royalty and net profit will increase as a consequence.

• Regulating Ads: Never regulate ads in a vacuum. You must always regulate ad spend while simultaneously monitoring three things: your ad performance, your gross royalty (often checked using a tool like Publisher Champ), and your organic ranking. The end metric for success is your net royalty per day, which can improve even with a higher ACOS. You should only raise your ACOS if your gross royalties are going up as well.

3️⃣ Taking Profits and Maximizing ROI (Return on Investment)

December is primarily a time to "take profits" or "harvest sales" from preparatory work done earlier (ideally in November).

Action Plan:

1. Identify High Performers: Use ads monitoring tools (like Publisher Champ) to look at metrics like Overall ROI over a set time period (e.g., the last seven days) to identify which books and marketplaces are providing the highest returns.

2. Focus Investment: Concentrate efforts on books that are already generating the best returns. You should create more ads for these books, using regular or lower bids to push what is already profitable.

3. Gradual Bid Increases: For existing keywords that are performing well (with an ACOS lower than 30%), bids should be raised incrementally by 5 cents. This is done to maximize the sales push without incurring unnecessary losses.

4. Priority: Always prioritize and monitor your net royalties per day when testing and raising the temperature of your campaigns.

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