Dayparting on Amazon: The Ultimate Guide for Smart Sellers

July 4, 2025
Dayparting Blog
Reading Time: 5 minutes

Getting Started with Amazon Dayparting

As an Amazon seller, maximizing your advertising budget is crucial. You’ve invested time in keyword research and campaign optimization, yet conversions remain elusive. This is a common challenge among advertisers facing low conversion rates and inefficient ad spending. 

Spending your ad budget 24/7 without knowing when your shoppers are active? You might be missing out on conversions—and wasting money. 

That’s where Amazon ad scheduling, also known as dayparting, comes in. It’s a strategic approach that allows you to run your Amazon ad campaigns during peak shopping hours to boost conversions and reduce wasted spend.

In this guide, we’ll break down what Amazon dayparting means for Amazon sellers, why it matters, and how you can use it to gain better control over your ads, and stop paying for dead-hour clicks.

 

What is Dayparting and Why is it Important? 

Definition: Dayparting (or Amazon ads dayparting) means setting specific times of the day, week, or even month to run your ads. It lets you control how your Amazon ad budget, bids, and placements are allocated throughout time periods—like weekends, evenings, or seasonal spikes.

Let’s say your product sells best in the evening—Amazon PPC dayparting allows you to increase bids and budget during those hours and reduce them when traffic is low. That means smarter spend, better performance, and more control. 

Example: If your products perform better in the evenings, dayparting Amazon ads you can allocate a higher ad budget during those hours and reduce spending in the mornings. This strategy targets the most receptive audience, increasing the likelihood of conversions. 

Benefits of Amazon ad scheduling 

  1. Display Ads During Peak Shopping Times : Conversion rates often peak between 6 PM and 12 AM when shoppers are more active. Allocating a higher ad budget, bid and placement during these hours ensures your ads reach a more engaged audience. 
  2. Reduce Exposure to Non-Converting Traffic : Sales typically decline between 12 AM and 5 AM, a period dominated by window shoppers. Lowering bids during these hours prevents unnecessary ad spend on less likely conversions. 

Note: Tailor your dayparting strategy to your target demographic. For example, parents might shop after 10 PM, so if you’re selling baby products, consider increasing your ad budget during late-night hours. 

  1. Maximize Sales During Shopping Events : Events like Prime Day, Black Friday, and the Q4 holiday season see increased demand and competition’s can double or triple during these times. Implementing dayparting allows you to increase bids strategically, maintaining visibility and sales momentum. 
  2. Efficiently Manage a Limited Daily Budget : If your daily budget is constrained, dayparting helps you allocate funds during high-converting hours, ensuring optimal use of your advertising spend. 
  3. Target the Right Audience at the Right Time : Adjust your ad budget based on when your target customers are most active. For instance, if you sell printer ink primarily to businesses, increasing your ad budget during weekday business hours can lead to higher conversions. 
  4. Dayparting for seasonal Amazon products: For products with seasonal demand, like umbrellas during the monsoon, dayparting enables you to boost ad spend during peak seasons, maximizing sales opportunities.

Determining When to Implement Dayparting

Before setting up dayparting, consider the following: 

  • Campaign Objectives: Are you aiming to reduce wasted ad spend or increase brand visibility? Your goals will influence your dayparting strategy. 
  • Customer Buying Cycle: Understand the length and nature of your customer’s decision-making process. For products with a short buying cycle, dayparting can be highly effective. 
  • Geographical Location of Buyers: If your customers are in different time zones, align your ad schedule accordingly to reach them during their peak shopping hours. 
  • Customer Activity Patterns: Analyze your sales data to identify when your customers are most active and tailor your ad schedule to these periods. 

How to Analyze Sales Data for Dayparting in Amazon Seller Central

To identify optimal times for ad scheduling: 

  1. Access Sales Reports: Navigate to Seller Central → Reports → Business Reports → Sales and Traffic. 
  2. Download Data: Export the last six months of sales data. 
  3. Analyze Patterns: Use pivot tables to determine which days and times yield the highest sales. 
  4. Implement Findings: Adjust your ad schedule based on these insights to maximize conversions. 

Amazon Seller Central requires jumping between multiple reports and manual data crunching to spot trends. With KwickMetrics, everything’s in one dashboard—giving you instant insights about best times to run Amazon ads and automation with just a click.

How to set up dayparting on Amazon Ads via Seller Central Account

To create dayparting rule sets: 

  1. Log In: Access your Seller Central account and navigate to Campaign Manager → Budget. 
  2. Select Campaign: Choose the campaign you wish to modify. 
  3. Add Budget Rule: Click on the budget tab beside the campaign and select “Add budget rule.” 
  4. Configure Schedule: Name the rule, select “Schedule” as the type, and set the start and end dates. 
  5. Set Frequency/Rule recurrence: Choose “Daily” to apply the rule every day or “Weekly” for specific days. 
  6. Adjust Bids: Increase or decrease bids as needed during selected times in percentage. 

Note: Amazon’s built-in ad tools have their limits. For example, you can’t set rules by the hour or apply campaign-wide changes all at once. If you want to change bids and budgets based on the time of day, you’ll have to set up separate rules—and even then, Amazon only allows changes to budget and bids individually, not together. 

This can get messy, especially if you’re running ads across multiple marketplaces or managing many campaigns. 

That’s where third-party tools like KwickMetrics come in. With KwickMetrics, you can schedule changes to bids, budgets, and placements—all in one place, at the same time, on the same campaign. You get more control, less manual work, and smarter ad performance. 

We’ll walk you through how it works in our upcoming blog, “Dayparting with KwickMetrics.”

  • Real Seller Wins: A Quick Example
  • “I used to let my ads run all night. KwickMetrics showed me that I was spending 20% of my daily budget between 1AM and 5AM—with zero conversions. After setting up dayparting, I reallocated that spend to peak hours and saw a 15% sales lift in 10 days.” — David L., Amazon Seller in Home Improvements

Key Points to Consider Before Planning Manual Dayparting

Limited Data

Amazon's reporting may not provide detailed hourly data, making it challenging to identify precise peak times.

Report Delays

Sales may be attributed to clicks that occurred days earlier, complicating the analysis of immediate performance.

Customer Journey Complexity

Limiting ad exposure during certain times may reduce touchpoints with potential customers, impacting overall conversions.

Product Suitability

Not all products benefit from dayparting, especially those with consistent demand throughout the day.

All these challenges can be easily managed with KwickMetrics, which offers the data, automation, and control needed for smarter dayparting.

Best Practices for Effective Dayparting

  • Avoid Peak CPC Times: Steer clear of high-competition periods unless your data indicates strong performance during these times. 
  • Leverage Amazon Retail Analytics (ARA): Use ARA to gain insights into hourly sales data at the ASIN level, helping you fine-tune your ad schedule. 
  • Combine with Promotional Events: Align your dayparting strategy with lightning deals or other promotions to maximize visibility and sales. 
  • Test and Optimize: Regularly A/B test different ad schedules to determine what works best for your products and audience.
  • Final Thoughts
  • Learning about dayparting is the first step. But applying it manually in Amazon Seller Central? That’s a time-consuming, report-heavy process most sellers don’t have time for. That’s why we designed KwickMetrics—to make dayparting simple. No juggling spreadsheets. No manual campaign toggling. Just smarter spending, better performance, and more control over your results.

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