For Amazon sellers, optimizing advertising costs isn’t just about cutting spend. It’s about making every advertising dollar work harder to drive profitable sales. One effective strategy for achieving this is dayparting.
Dayparting is the practice of adjusting your advertising strategy based on the time of day or day of the week. While the concept has been used in traditional advertising for decades, it can also be a valuable approach for Amazon sellers looking to improve advertising efficiency.
The objective isn’t necessarily to advertise less. It’s to allocate your advertising dollars toward the periods when they’re most likely to generate profitable sales.
What Is Dayparting?
Dayparting allows advertisers to modify their campaigns based on when customers are shopping.
Think about traditional television advertising. An advertiser probably wouldn’t want to spend the same amount at 2:00 a.m. as they would during prime time. The same basic concept can apply to Amazon advertising.
Certain hours may generate a high volume of clicks but relatively few sales. Other periods may generate fewer clicks but a much higher conversion rate.
If you can identify those patterns, you may be able to shift your advertising investment accordingly.
However, there’s one important rule:
Don’t make assumptions about when your customers shop. Let the data tell you.
Start by Identifying Your Most Profitable Hours
The first step in using dayparting is determining when your advertising is actually producing results.
Analyze your advertising performance by both hour of the day and day of the week, using metrics such as:
- Impressions
- Clicks
- Advertising spend
- Orders
- Sales
- Conversion rate
- ACOS
- ROAS
You’re looking for meaningful patterns.
For example, imagine that your Amazon campaigns generate a large number of clicks between 8:00 a.m. and noon, but those clicks rarely turn into orders.
Then you notice that between 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., you receive fewer clicks but substantially more conversions.
That could be an indication that your evening traffic is more valuable.
But don’t jump to conclusions based on a small amount of data.
One of the biggest mistakes ecommerce advertisers make is reacting too quickly to short-term fluctuations. A few poor-performing hours don’t necessarily mean those hours are inherently bad.
Sometimes it’s not the hour.
Sometimes it’s Tuesday.
Give your data enough time to reveal a consistent trend before making significant changes.
Look for Wasted Advertising Spend
Once you’ve collected enough data, look for periods when you’re spending money without generating an acceptable return.
For example, suppose your campaigns consistently spend $100 between midnight and 5:00 a.m., but that period produces very few sales.
If the resulting sales aren’t profitable based on your target ACOS or other business economics, you’ve potentially found an opportunity to reduce wasted spend.
But there’s an important distinction here.
A click isn’t automatically wasted simply because it doesn’t immediately generate an order.
Some customers need more time to research a product. Some categories have longer consideration cycles. And some shoppers may click on an ad today and purchase later.
The question isn’t simply:
“Did this click generate a sale?”
The better question is:
“Does this traffic, over time, generate enough value to justify what I’m spending?”
That’s a much more useful way to evaluate advertising performance.
Adjust Your Bids and Campaign Strategy
After identifying stronger and weaker periods, you can begin adjusting your advertising strategy.
Depending on the Amazon campaign type and advertising capabilities available to you, that may involve reducing bids during weaker periods, increasing bids during stronger periods, or scheduling campaigns to be more aggressive when your highest-value customers are shopping.
This brings us to a fundamental principle of ecommerce advertising:
Don’t optimize for clicks. Optimize for profitable results.
Suppose one hour produces 100 clicks while another produces only 50.
It would be easy to assume that the first hour is better.
But what if those 100 clicks generate only two orders while the 50 clicks generate eight?
The second period is clearly more valuable.
I’d take the 50 clicks all day long.
Actually, I’d take the eight orders.
The clicks are simply the mechanism that gets us there.
Don’t Look at Dayparting in Isolation
Dayparting shouldn’t be viewed as a standalone optimization strategy.
Your advertising performance can be influenced by many other factors, including:
- Product margins
- Inventory levels
- Competition
- Promotions
- Seasonality
- Product launches
- Organic rankings
- Customer buying behavior
For example, a seller with limited inventory may have a very different advertising strategy from a seller aggressively launching a new product.
Likewise, if you’re running a promotion, your conversion rate may increase significantly.
You don’t want to look at that data and conclude that every Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. is a magical shopping window.
It may simply be that your Tuesday-night promotion was especially effective.
Understanding the why behind your performance data is just as important as identifying the pattern itself.
An Example of Dayparting in Action
Let’s say an Amazon seller spends $3,000 per month on advertising.
After analyzing their performance, they discover that approximately 20% of their advertising spend occurs during periods that consistently produce below-target conversion rates and poor ACOS.
Rather than simply cutting the advertising budget from $3,000 to $2,400, they adjust their bids and campaign strategy around those lower-performing periods.
The objective isn’t necessarily to spend less.
Instead, the seller can potentially take that $600 and redirect it toward campaigns and periods that are producing better results.
That’s a much more powerful way to think about advertising optimization.
You’re not simply cutting costs.
You’re improving the efficiency of your investment.
Be Careful About Making Changes Too Quickly
Before you start turning off Amazon advertising during certain hours, make sure you have enough data to justify the decision.
Amazon advertising performance can fluctuate significantly due to:
- Seasonality
- Holidays
- Prime events
- Promotions
- Changes in competition
- Product launches
- Listing changes
- Inventory availability
A single bad day—or even a bad week—doesn’t necessarily mean you should permanently eliminate a particular advertising period.
Instead, treat dayparting as an ongoing process of testing, measuring, and refining.
Make a change, monitor the results, and determine whether the adjustment actually improves overall profitability.
The Goal: Make Each Click Count
Dayparting can be a powerful tool for Amazon sellers because it allows you to move beyond simply asking, “How much am I spending?”
The better question is:
“When and where is my advertising spend producing the best return?”
To get started, follow four basic steps:
- Collect enough data to identify meaningful trends.
- Analyze performance by hour and day to find your strongest and weakest periods.
- Adjust bids or campaign schedules based on profitability rather than traffic volume alone.
- Continue testing and refining as customer behavior and marketplace conditions change.
The goal isn’t to discover one perfect advertising schedule and leave it untouched forever.
Your customers change. Your competition changes. Your products change. Amazon changes.
Your advertising strategy should change with it.
Ultimately, every Amazon advertising click costs money.
The objective is to make sure those clicks have the best possible opportunity to generate profitable results.
Make each click count.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is dayparting in Amazon advertising?
Dayparting is the practice of adjusting your Amazon advertising strategy based on the time of day or day of the week. By analyzing when your ads generate the best combination of clicks, conversions, sales, and profitability, you can allocate more of your budget toward higher-performing periods and reduce spend during less efficient periods.
- How can dayparting help Amazon sellers reduce wasted ad spend?
Dayparting can help identify times when you’re consistently spending money without generating enough sales or profit to justify the expense. Sellers can then reduce bids or adjust campaign schedules during those periods and redirect that budget toward times when advertising produces stronger results.
- What Amazon advertising metrics should I analyze for dayparting?
Start by looking at impressions, clicks, advertising spend, orders, sales, conversion rate, ACOS, and ROAS. The goal is to understand not just when you’re receiving traffic, but when that traffic is actually producing profitable results.
- Should Amazon sellers stop advertising during hours with low sales?
Not necessarily. A period with few immediate sales isn’t automatically a poor advertising period. Customers may click an ad and purchase later, particularly with products that require more consideration. Before eliminating a time period, make sure you have enough data to determine whether the traffic consistently underperforms against your profitability goals.
- How much data should I collect before making dayparting changes?
There’s no universal number of days that applies to every Amazon seller or product. You need enough data to identify a consistent pattern rather than reacting to short-term fluctuations. Seasonality, promotions, holidays, Prime events, competition, and product launches can all affect performance, so major changes should be based on meaningful trends.
- Is the goal of dayparting to spend less on Amazon ads?
Not necessarily. The primary goal should be to spend more efficiently, rather than simply spend less. If you identify a period where advertising is inefficient, you can potentially reduce that spend and redirect the budget toward campaigns or time periods that generate a better return.
- How should Amazon sellers get started with dayparting?
Start by analyzing your advertising performance by hour of the day and day of the week. Identify periods with consistently strong or weak conversion and profitability metrics. Then make measured bid or scheduling adjustments, monitor the results, and continue refining your strategy. The key is to use data—not assumptions—to determine when your advertising dollars are most valuable.
Need Help with Amazon Ads? If you’re looking to maximize your Amazon ad returns, sometimes you need an expert who’s been there, done that. I’m Andy Splichal, author of Make Each Click Count and host of the Make Each Click Count podcast. Amazon’s PPC landscape can be overwhelming, but with the right guidance, you can make every dollar count, I’m here to help. Let’s make those clicks count!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andy Splichal is the founder and managing partner of True Online Presence, author of the Make Each Click Count book series, host of the Make Each Click Count podcast, founder of Make Each Click Count University and certified online marketing strategist with twenty plus years of experience helping companies increase their online presence and profitable revenues.
He was named to Best of Los Angeles Awards’ Most Fascinating 100 List in both 2020 and 2021. To find more information on Andy Splichal, visit trueonlinepresence.com or read The Full Story on his website or his blog, blog.trueonlinepresence.com.
