Manual campaign management can’t keep up with the demands of a growing business. Fortunately, the Amazon Ads API provides a solution. Let this guide walk you through everything you need to know to set Amazon Ads API up and automate your advertising.
Quick Summary
- The Amazon Ads API lets advertisers and developers create, manage, and optimize Amazon ad campaigns programmatically for greater efficiency.
- Key Features: Automation for campaign management, real-time bid adjustments, data reporting, and keyword harvesting.
- How to Set Up: Register as a developer, create a new LwA security profile, obtain credentials, apply and assign API Access to your LwA Application.
- Best Practices: Manage tokens automatically, handle rate limits with batching, build for scalability, and monitor for errors proactively.
What is Amazon Ads API?
The Amazon Advertising API, or Amazon Ads API, is a software that allows direct connection to an advertiser’s Amazon Ads account. It lets advertisers manage campaigns, adjust bids, and access performance data through automated tools instead of only using the web interface.
The Amazon Ads API suits advertisers managing many campaigns or products, including eCommerce brands, Amazon sellers, and agencies with multiple clients. It also supports developers, ad tech providers, and data teams needing automation or real-time advertising insights.
Why Using Amazon Ads API Matters?
By connecting directly to Amazon’s advertising platform, the Amazon Ads API offers many ways to handle complex advertising needs:
Automation and Efficiency
The API helps you make advertising management more efficient by automating repetitive tasks. Instead of constant manual work, you can write code to automatically adjust bids, launch new campaigns, and manage products at scale.
Real-Time Adaptability
The Amazon Ads API allows you to make real-time campaign changes and respond instantly to shifts in performance, competitor actions, or market trends
For example, if a competitor suddenly lowers their price or a product starts trending, the API can update campaigns immediately to maintain visibility and sales momentum.
Deeper Data Integration
Another key advantage of Amazon Ads API is the ability to integrate your Amazon advertising data with your own business systems. You can combine performance metrics like clicks and ad spend with your own sales, inventory, or customer data to get a complete, unified view of your business.
Having all your data in one place would make it easier to create custom dashboards and reports. In turn, you can see how your ad performance connects to the bigger picture, helping you align advertising strategies with overall business goals and make more confident, data-driven decisions.
Key Functions of Amazon Ads API
With the API connection established, Amazon Ads API enables more efficient campaign oversight, easier reporting, and smarter decision-making. Some of its primary functions are:
Campaign Management
Amazon Ads API gives you the power to manage your campaigns at scale. You can create, update, or remove campaigns, ad groups, and keywords programmatically to save time and reduce manual errors.
The API also supports handling multiple campaigns simultaneously, maintaining consistency and organization across different products, ad types, or regions to help campaign structures stay aligned with overall marketing goals.
Data Reporting
You can use Amazon Ads API to access detailed performance data of your campaigns, ad groups, and keywords. This includes key metrics such as clicks, impressions, conversions, sales, and ad spend.
Beyond just collecting numbers, the API enables automation of reporting processes. Performance data can be integrated into custom dashboards, analytics tools, or business intelligence platforms, allowing advertisers to combine it with other metrics like inventory levels or revenue.
Budget and Bid Optimization
The Amazon Ads API includes features that allow you to automate bid adjustments based on real-time performance metrics. Instead of setting static bids manually, your system can use up-to-date data, such as click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, advertising cost of sales (ACoS), and return on ad spend (ROAS), to adjust bids dynamically.
This automation helps align your ad spend with what’s actually working. For example, if a product is performing well and converting at a low cost, the system can automatically increase the bid to gain more visibility. On the other hand, if a keyword is generating clicks but not conversions, the bid can be lowered or paused entirely.
Keyword Harvesting
Amazon Ads API can be configured to analyze search term data and automatically identify high-performing keywords that match predefined performance criteria. The analysis process pinpoints terms generating higher engagement, conversions, or sales.
Once these keywords are identified, the Amazon Ads API can automatically add them to relevant campaigns. The process runs continuously and updates campaign targeting according to changes in search behavior.
What to Prepare Before Setting Up Amazon Ads API?
Before you begin connecting to the Amazon Ads API, make sure the following are ready:
- An Amazon account (Amazon Seller Central or Vendor Central account with a professional plan)
- A valid Privacy Policy URL for your business or organization
- A developer or technical team member who can help set up and manage API integration (ideally)
- Access to the official Amazon Advertising API documentation for reference and implementation details
How to Set Up Amazon Ads API?
Setting up the Amazon Ads API may seem complex at first. In this part, we’ll walk you through the process step-by-step:
Step 1: Create your Amazon Developer account
Go to developer.amazon.com and click Sign In.
Next, enter your email address and password to sign in with an existing Amazon account, or click Create your Amazon Developer account and fill in the developer registration form
Step 2: Create a new LwA security profile
On Amazon Developer Portal, go to Developer Console > Login with Amazon > Create a New Security Profile.
You’re then redirected to the Security Profile Management page. In the form, enter:
- Security Profile Name
- Security Profile Description
- Consent Privacy Notice URL
Finally, click Save when you are finished.
Step 3: Retrieve your Security Credentials
When you are redirected to Login with Amazon page, find the Security Profile you just created and click Show Client ID and Client Secret.
These two values are important so make sure to save both:
- Client ID is required in every API request
- Client Secret is used to create access tokens
Step 4: Apply for Amazon Ads API access
Sign in to Amazon Ads using the same email from Step 1.
Complete the Amazon form to apply for Direct Advertiser API access. Make sure to select:
- Advertising under Data and access
- In-house developer(s) under Development resources
Submit the form. Approval may take up to 72 hours.
Step 5: Assign API Access to your LwA Application
Once approved, click the link in the approval email from Amazon Ads
Then, click Continue, then select the LwA security profile you created and click Submit.
You’ll see a confirmation with your client ID and scopes like:
- advertising::campaign_management (The required scope for most requests to the Amazon Ads API)
- advertising::test:create_account (The required scope for creating test accounts)
At this step, we recommend collecting a screenshot of these scopes at this stage in case future troubleshooting is required.
Your LwA client application for the Amazon Ads API has now been established. You can use these authorization credentials to generate tokens and make API requests directly through the Amazon Ads API, or by using third-party tools like Postman, Insomnia, or your own custom scripts.
What are the Best Practices for Using Amazon Ads API?
Want to get the most out of the Amazon Ads API? Here are our top tips for building a stable, efficient system and managing the campaigns effectively:
Manage your Tokens
Access tokens are required for all API calls, but they expire every hour. To maintain uninterrupted access, it is important to automatically refresh your ‘access_token’ using a ‘refresh_token’ before it expires.
For example, a system could be configured to refresh the token every 55 minutes to ensure a consistent connection for API-driven tasks like campaign management, bid updates, or data retrieval. A log of token expiration and refresh times should be kept as it can also assist in troubleshooting connection issues later on.
Handle API Rate Limits
Amazon Ads API enforces rate limits, which restrict how many requests can be made within a given period. To avoid hitting these limits, you should use batching to combine multiple requests into one call whenever possible. Instead of making 10 separate requests to update 10 different keywords, a single batch request can be used.
You can also implement a request schedule that spreads your calls out over time, which helps prevent your application from being throttled. A system could distribute a large data pull of 10,000 requests over a 10-minute period rather than attempting them all at once.
Build for Scalability
System design should account for future increases in campaign volume and data complexity. Let’s say you’re running 50 campaigns now, you might be handling 500 or more within a year, with each campaign containing 20–50 ad groups and hundreds of keywords.
To reduce the need for major system changes as data volume grows, systems should be structured to handle at least 10x the current load. You can do this by adding indexes to your database to speed up data retrieval and using parallel or asynchronous code to handle large workloads efficiently.
Monitor for Errors
Proactive error monitoring is key to a stable API integration. Whenever an error occurs, you should capture key details such as the status code (e.g. 401 for unauthorized access, or 429 for too many requests), the error message returned by the API, and the timestamp when it happened.
You can set up your system to keep a running log of the most recent 1,000 errors to get a clear picture of what’s going wrong over time. For example, if you notice a large number of 429 errors in a short period, it may mean you’re hitting the API rate limits too often and need to slow down or batch your requests.
It’s also important to handle failures gracefully. Instead of stopping everything when one request fails, you can build your application to retry the request up to 3 times, skip over bad data, or send an alert if a serious issue happens.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about Amazon Ads API
Using the API itself is free. Amazon does not charge for API access itself, but you will still pay for your ad spend and any related development or integration costs.
Yes, basic programming knowledge (e.g., working with RESTful APIs and OAuth 2.0) is required to integrate and automate campaigns. However, you can also use third-party platforms like Postman, Zapier, or Fivetran to simplify the process without deep coding expertise.
It can take from a few hours to several days, depending on your familiarity with API authentication and system setup.
Yes, as long as you have the proper authorization tokens and account permissions, you can manage multiple accounts from a single integration.
Get Professional Help from Megaficus
Don’t have the time or technical expertise for the Amazon Ads API? No problem. Megaficus simplifies the process, providing you with a fully managed service that leverages the API’s power to boost your performance. Contact us today for a special tailored strategy.
