Most Amazon sellers run their ads 24/7 — and they’re throwing away money every single night.
Why?
Because not all hours convert equally.
In this guide, I’ll show you how to use dayparting — a powerful Amazon PPC technique — to schedule your ads during peak hours and pause them during low-converting periods.
This is one of the most underrated strategies for sellers looking to improve ACoS, reduce waste, and scale smarter.
🧠 What Is Dayparting?
Dayparting = setting specific times of day for your ads to run.
It’s about showing up when your ideal customers are:
✅ Awake
✅ Shopping
✅ Ready to buy
And turning your ads off when they’re:
❌ Sleeping
❌ Browsing casually
❌ Not converting
📉 Why 24/7 Ads = Wasted Spend
Let’s say your product sells best between 7am and 9pm EST.
But your ads run all night long.
You’re still paying for clicks at 2am… but conversions are near zero. That means your ACoS goes up and your ROAS tanks — even if your product is great.
With dayparting, you can:
✅ Lower your total spend
✅ Maintain or increase total sales
✅ Improve overall efficiency
🛠️ How to Implement Dayparting on Amazon
🔹 Option 1: Use Third-Party Software
Amazon doesn’t offer native dayparting… yet. But tools like:
- Perpetua
- Downstream
- Quartile
- Pacvue
- M19
…allow you to set schedules for ad campaigns and even automate based on historical data.
📌 Most let you run campaigns only during top-performing hours (e.g. 7am–10pm), and pause overnight or on low-performing days.
🔹 Option 2: Manual Dayparting (Budget Pausing)
If you’re not using software, try this:
- Run your ads with daily budgets
- Manually pause/unpause campaigns based on performance
- Check reports to identify your strongest hours (via Amazon Advertising Reports or third-party tracking)
It’s not fully automated — but it’s a great low-cost way to test.
⏰ How to Identify Your Best Hours
Look at:
- Search Term Reports (performance by time-of-day, if your tool allows it)
- Conversion window trends (when your ACoS is lowest)
- External behavior (e.g., B2B products = weekday AM, impulse buys = nights/weekends)
Common patterns:
- Consumer products: 7am–10pm local time
- Niche/high-priced items: 10am–5pm (business hours)
- Kids/household items: 8pm–11pm (post-dinner scroll zone)
🔄 When to Turn Ads OFF
- Between 11pm and 6am in your target customer’s time zone
- During lunch hours or dead midday stretches (if data supports it)
- On weekends (for B2B) or Mondays (for low-conversion trends)
📉 Turning ads off during bad hours lets you consolidate budget into your best hours = more impressions + conversions when it matters.
📈 Real Seller Example:
A mid-size CPG brand using Perpetua implemented dayparting:
- Ads paused from 1am to 7am
- Daily budget stayed the same
- ACoS dropped by 24%
- Clicks dropped 8%, but conversions held steady
- Overall ROAS improved by 31%
🧠 Bonus Tip: Use Dayparting with Bid Adjustments
Combine dayparting with dynamic bidding (down only or fixed) during weaker hours.
Also test different:
- Keyword match types during peak times
- Ad creatives for nighttime vs. daytime users (if using Sponsored Brands)
🛑 Common Dayparting Mistakes
❌ Turning ads off too early without enough data
❌ Pausing profitable late-night or early AM traffic
❌ Forgetting to sync campaigns to your customer’s timezone, not your own
❌ Trying to daypart when you’re still under 10 orders/day
✅ When NOT to Daypart
- If your product sells well 24/7 (ex: urgent health or consumables)
- If you have low ad data and are still learning
- If you run Sponsored Display (which performs differently by hour)
Test first — then scale.
Final Thoughts:
Dayparting is a high-leverage PPC hack that puts your budget where it performs best.
You don’t need more traffic.
You need better-timed traffic that converts.
✅ Use software if possible
✅ Start with light testing (pause nights, track results)
✅ Build smarter ad schedules as you scale
