Amazon dayparting: how it works and when to use it

Shoppers do not convert at the same rate all day. Dayparting adjusts what you are willing to pay per click by hour, and often by weekday, so a click in a strong hour can cost more and a click in a weak hour less.

The reason is arithmetic. ACoS for an hour is the click price divided by what a click earns in that hour, and what a click earns is conversion rate times average order value. If conversion rate moves through the day and the bid does not, ACoS moves with it.

A weak hour usually deserves a lower bid, not no bid. A click that converts half as often is worth half as much, not nothing.

Schedule bid rules (Sponsored Products)

Since November 2023, Sponsored Products campaigns can use schedule bid rules to schedule bid increases for specific times of the day or days of the week, or around recommended events.^[3] They work with dynamic bids up and down, dynamic bids down only and fixed bids.^[1]

Amazon's API documentation adds the details that matter for planning: a new or changed schedule bid rule takes effect within 24 hours, a campaign can have up to 20 of them, and they apply on top of placement adjustments and the bidding strategy. Rules that are active at the same time add up: Amazon's own example combines a 10% daily rule, a 20% Black Friday rule and a 20% evening rule into a 50% increase.^[2]

Budget rules, including hours of day

Schedule-based budget rules raise a campaign's daily budget by a percentage you choose, on a date range or on chosen weekdays. Hours of day were added in November 2023 for the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, India and Japan.^[4] Amazon requires a minimum budget before an hours-of-day budget rule becomes active.^[5] Performance-based budget rules raise the budget when a campaign meets a threshold such as return on ad spend instead.^[6]

What the native tools do not describe

Amazon's documentation describes schedule bid rules and budget rules as increases. It does not describe a way to schedule a lower bid for a weak hour, and each window is a rule you write and maintain by hand. A budget rule also changes the budget cap, not the price of a click, so it only matters for a campaign that actually runs out of budget.

Hourly ad data comes from Amazon Marketing Stream, which delivers Sponsored Products traffic and conversions per hour, each stamped with the start of the hour in the time zone of the advertiser profile.^[7] Three caveats from the same documentation shape how to read it:

• Clicks can be invalidated during the 72 hours after they are first reported, so the latest hours can still change.^[7]
• Conversions belong to the hour of the click they are attributed to, and conversion data can be revised for up to 60 days after the click. The most recent days read worse than they will settle.^[7]
• Hours are in the profile's time zone. Make sure the hours you compare and the hours you schedule are in the same zone.

The bigger trap is sample size. A week has 168 hours, and splitting a campaign's clicks across all of them leaves most cells small. One large order can make an hour look brilliant.

Shurq's Stream shows these hourly metrics by time of day and day of week. In Shurq's dayparting schedule builder, the heatmap fades ratio metrics such as conversion rate and ACoS toward neutral when an hour has few clicks behind it, so a lucky hour does not look like a pattern.

1. Fix the base bid first. Dayparting shapes a bid around its base. If the base bid is wrong, dayparting repeats the mistake in a pattern, so bring each keyword close to its target ACoS before shaping it by hour.
2. Collect enough history. Weekday patterns need several observations of each weekday. Work in weeks, not days, and leave out the most recent days until their sales have settled.
3. Remove event days. Prime Day, Black Friday and similar days distort hourly averages. Exclude them from the analysis and plan them separately.
4. Read conversion rate and revenue per click by hour. ACoS alone mixes click price and conversion. Look at conversion rate and revenue per click for each hour, check how many clicks sit behind each cell, and leave thin hours flat.
5. Set adjustments in the marketplace's time zone. Raise the hours that convert better, lower the hours that convert worse, and keep most hours at zero. Use the time zone of the marketplace's shoppers, not your own.
6. Cap the peak hour. Work out the most a click can cost in your highest hour, including placement adjustments and any dynamic bidding increase, and keep it under what a click earns back at your target.
7. Measure and revisit. Compare the same weekdays before and after the change, and revisit the schedule when the season, the price or the stock position changes.

Amazon describes placement adjustments as working in addition to your bidding strategy, and schedule bid rules as applying on top of both, which is why the peak hour needs its own cap.^[8][2] The max CPC calculator gives the click price a keyword can afford at your target.

• Reading noise as a pattern. A saturated cell with a handful of clicks is luck. Check click counts first.
• Switching ads off overnight. You lose clicks that may still convert at a lower price. Lower the bid instead and measure.
• Using budget rules as dayparting. Raising the cap cannot lower the price of a weak hour, and does nothing for a campaign that never runs out of budget.
• Shaping a wrong base bid. Fix the base first; see our bid optimization guide.
• The wrong time zone. A schedule for one marketplace's shoppers, run on another zone's clock, shapes the wrong hours.
• Two systems on one bid. If a schedule, a rule and a bid tool all write the same bid, they undo each other. One should own the base, and the schedule should only shape it.
• Running out of budget before the peak. A higher evening bid is useless if the campaign spent its daily budget by mid-afternoon. Watch budget and bids together.

Dayparting is part of Shurq's AI Ad Manager, built on the hourly data in Stream. How it works:

• A day-by-hour grid. A schedule is a grid of percentage adjustments, up or down, for each hour of each weekday, attached to a set of campaigns. Each hour, Shurq sets the bid to the campaign's base bid plus that hour's adjustment through the Amazon Ads API.
• It never sets the base. You, a rule or the bid optimizer set the base bid; dayparting shapes it. Edit a bid by hand and your number becomes the new base. A bid changed outside Shurq is adopted as the new base rather than fought. Pause or delete a schedule and bids return to their base values.
• A time zone set per marketplace. A new schedule starts in the marketplace's own time zone where the zone list offers it, so a German campaign is shaped around German hours. Where the list does not, it starts on the nearest listed zone, and Canada starts on Pacific time. Check the zone before saving; you can change it.
• Generated from your own history. The AI Optimized preset analyzes the selected campaigns' own hourly data, over the last 90 days by default. It leaves out the last 7 days, whose sales are still arriving, unless you include them, and lets you exclude event days such as Prime Day.
• Ceilings and placements. A schedule can carry a maximum bid per hour. Placement adjustments are left as they are unless you set them in the schedule.
• Bids priced from the base. When the bid optimizer reprices a dayparted campaign, it works from the schedule's base bid, never from whatever the current hour happens to be bidding.

Shurq Pro includes Stream and dayparting at a flat monthly price with no percentage of ad spend: see pricing, the methodology in our documentation, or how other tools approach dayparting on the comparison pages.

• Amazon bid optimization: getting the base bid right first.
• Agency vs software vs in-house: who should run the schedule.
• Glossary: dayparting, budget rules, placement modifiers.

1. Amazon Ads Support Center, Apply Schedule bid rules for Sponsored Products. https://advertising.amazon.com/help/G7JFAU9C7PHA3Q68 (updated 24 February 2026). Checked 3 October 2026.
2. Amazon Ads API, Schedule bid rules. https://advertising.amazon.com/API/docs/en-us/guides/rules/bidding-rules/scheduled-bid-rules. Checked 3 October 2026.
3. Amazon Ads, Schedule based bid rules now available for Sponsored Products. https://advertising.amazon.com/resources/whats-new/schedule-based-bid-rules-available-for-sponsored-products (published 6 November 2023). Checked 3 October 2026.
4. Amazon Ads, Hours of day now available for schedule-based budget rules. https://advertising.amazon.com/resources/whats-new/hours-of-day-available-for-schedule-based-budget-rules (published 30 November 2023). Checked 3 October 2026.
5. Amazon Ads API, Schedule-based rules (budget rules). https://advertising.amazon.com/API/docs/en-us/guides/rules/budget-rules/schedule-based. Checked 3 October 2026.
6. Amazon Ads, An introduction to budget and bidding rules. https://advertising.amazon.com/library/guides/budget-rules. Checked 3 October 2026.
7. Amazon Ads API, Sponsored Products performance datasets (Amazon Marketing Stream). https://advertising.amazon.com/API/docs/en-us/guides/amazon-marketing-stream/datasets/sp-performance. Checked 3 October 2026.
8. Amazon Ads Support Center, Adjust Sponsored Products bids. https://advertising.amazon.com/help/GYYZVM7LGSRYGWV5 (updated 28 September 2026). Checked 3 October 2026.