Overview

Amazon’s Advertising Basics course now details how sellers can fine‑tune spending by using daily, lifetime, and portfolio budgets for Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands. The guidance explains the math behind each budget type, how mid‑month changes are handled, and what alerts sellers receive. Mastering these rules helps sellers keep ad costs predictable while still capturing high‑traffic days.

Key Points

• Daily Budget — Sets an average daily spend limit for a month, with Amazon allowing up to a 10 % overspend on any single day.
• Lifetime Budget — Caps the total amount a campaign can spend over its entire run; the minimum amount is $100.
• Portfolio Budget Cap — Groups several campaigns and enforces a single spend ceiling across the whole portfolio.
• Mid‑Month Adjustments — Reducing a daily budget mid‑month may take effect immediately, the next day, or be prorated for the remaining days, depending on how much has already been spent.
• Budget Notifications — Email alerts fire when spend approaches or exceeds a set budget, and the alerts also appear in the advertising console.

How Daily Budgets Work

1. Set an average daily amount — When creating a Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands campaign, the seller enters a daily budget (e.g., $50). Amazon treats this figure as the target average for the whole calendar month.
2. Allow limited overspend — On high‑traffic days the system can spend up to 10 % more than the set amount; for a $50 budget, the campaign might spend $55 on a busy Tuesday.
3. Maintain monthly ceiling — The sum of daily spends cannot exceed the daily budget multiplied by the number of days in the month, so a $50 daily budget in a 30‑day month caps total spend at $1,500.

How Mid‑Month Budget Adjustments Work

1. Immediate reduction when under‑spent — If a seller lowers the daily budget from $80 to $40 on the 15th and the campaign has only spent $300 of the expected $1,200, the new $40 limit starts right away.