If you’re researching Amazon PPC software tools to find something that can save you time and make you more money, Scale Insights has to be on your radar.
It’s a powerful tool that helps Amazon sellers save time and money through advanced automation rules, detailed reporting, and bulk campaign creation.
In fact, I’ve been using it to manage over $20,000 per month in Amazon PPC ad spend in recent months.
So coming up, I’ll first share a quick summary of my experiences then dive into a deeper look at the powerful features on offer.
By the end of this review, you’ll know if Scale Insights is the right Amazon PPC software for you!
Scale Insights Review Summary
Scale Insights is an Amazon PPC automation tool that is quickly growing its market share thanks to its powerful set of features and a very competitive pricing structure.
Built by a team of 9-figure Amazon sellers to solve their own PPC needs, Scale Insights features all the campaign management, bid optimization, and automation functionality you’d expect in a high-quality Amazon PPC tool.
It’s become my number one go-to tool and its automation features have helped save me a documented 128 hours per month while driving profitable growth for my own PPC campaigns that generate 6 figures per month.
It does have a steep initial learning curve, and the tool interface is not as slick and modern as others, but if you push past those and commit to learning the tool it can be a powerful weapon in your Amazon seller armory.
Features
Packed with PPC optimization and growth features to give you value for money.
Automation
Manage bid adjustments, keyword promotion, and more with powerful automation.
Reliability
Accurate reporting data and reliable automation make it a dependable tool.
Ease Of Use
An initial learning curve for beginners that requires patience and commitment.
Pricing
Flexible ASIN-based pricing tiers make it very affordable for most sellers.
Support
Good email support and active Facebook group with tool creators & large sellers.
Scale Insights Pros
Scale Insights Cons
30 day free trial. plans Start at $70/month AFTER discount
Looking for a deeper dive? Coming right up!
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What is Scale Insights?
Scale Insights is an AI-driven Amazon PPC automation tool that helps Amazon sellers scale their PPC marketing and drive profitable growth.
It offers a variety of features, including:
- Dynamic real-time bidding: Automatically adjust your bids based on factors such as competition, budget, and historical performance.
- Keyword research and optimization: Scale Insights helps you find the right keywords to target and optimize your bids for maximum results.
- Detailed reporting: Detailed reports on your campaigns help you track your performance and make necessary adjustments.
- Restock forecasting: Scale Insights helps you forecast your inventory needs so you don’t run out of stock and lose sales.
- Pre-configured mass campaigns: Scale Insights offers pre-configured mass campaigns that you can use to quickly and easily launch new campaigns with optimized rule sets.
In short; it’s a powerful tool that can help Amazon sellers save time and money, improve their campaigns, and scale their businesses sustainably.
Who is the team behind Scale Insights
The team behind Scale Insights is a group of experienced Amazon sellers and engineers who are passionate about helping businesses succeed on Amazon.
The founding team consists of:
- Luke Lim: Luke is the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Scale Insights. He is a software engineer who started building Scale Insights from scratch in 2018 having started selling on Amazon in 2015.
- Davion Wong: Davion is the Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder of Scale Insights. He is a civil engineer who started selling on Amazon in 2016 and generated over $10million in sales.
- Leslie Chong: Leslie is the Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of Scale Insights. He started his career in corporate finance then pivoted into eCommerce building a 7-figure brand in the toys niche.
- Ivan Ong: Ivan is a Partner and co-founder of Scale Insights. He started his entrepreneurial journey as an affiliate marketer in 2007 and co-founded his eCommerce brand in 2017.
- Daniel Lai: Daniel is the Lead Spokesperson and co-founder of Scale Insights. He has co-founded multiple eCommerce brands which have consistently delivered 7 figure annual sales since 2017.
The team is very active on LinkedIn and in the Scale Insights users’ Facebook Group.
They are constantly innovating and adding new features to the platform, and they come across as very approachable and keen to help their customers get the most out of their Amazon PPC campaigns.
Who is Scale Insights for?
Most Amazon PPC tools are geared towards a particular end of the market, but Scale Insights is unique in that it is a great fit for a wide range of Amazon sellers:
- Beginners: Competitive pricing makes Scale Insights a good first Amazon PPC software tool, just be prepared for the initial learning curve.
- Solo sellers: Growing sellers that can’t afford to outsource or hire in for Amazon PPC advertising can lean on the automation functions to save time and grow PPC sales at a very affordable cost.
- Large brands: The high-level and reliable functionality of Scale Insights means it can be used all the way up to 8 & 9 figures in sales – there are many large sellers using the tool.
- Agencies: If you’re a freelancer, an Amazon PPC agency, or run multiple brands from different accounts you can set Scale Insights up to run multiple accounts that you can then navigate between via a drop-down menu. This is exactly how I manage my accounts. It’s a bit of a pain to set up as you’ll need unique emails for each account initially, but it only needs to be done once then you’re good to go.
- Aggregators: As mentioned, running multiple accounts requires a bit of initial setup, but once it’s done you can add sub-users who can then operate various brands in your portfolio.
Save 10% for life on any Scale Insights plan.
30-day free trial, no credit card required.
How does Scale Insights work?
Scale Insights uses a variety of machine learning algorithms to automate your Amazon PPC campaigns and help you achieve your desired results.
The software is made up of six main areas:
1. Sales
Here you can deep-dive into a range of sales trends, order details, and return analytics to help you get a quick view of performance.
The Sales Trend section is very useful for judging performance at a quick glance.
And the Orders section gives some actionable performance insights in relation to returns and refunds:
This is all data you’d have to dig around for in Seller Central, so it’s very useful and adds extra value beyond just PPC management.
2. Products
This is your area to add and analyze key product information:
- COGS: Add your cost of goods for each product to ensure profit and ROI reports are accurate.
- Lead Time: Add production and shipping timelines so restock recommendations are accurate.
- Inventory Value: Get a snapshot view of what stock you have where and how much it’s all worth.
- ROI: Visualize the return on investment each product is bringing. A great feature here is being able to adjust the selling price without it updating anywhere else. This will help you quickly understand what your ROI would be at different price points. Very useful for a product launch!
You can also check package/carton metrics and hide or show certain products in this section, but I haven’t really used these features at all.
3. Restock Forecasting
As I use SoStocked for inventory management in my business I haven’t used this feature in Scale Insights.
However, it is a great value add that helps you keep track of stock levels in comparison to sales velocity.
This helps create a good link between your marketing and supply chain ensuring you only push PPC ads to a point that current inventory levels can sustain.
You will need to manually update 3PL stock and inbound shipment levels to keep these numbers accurate. If you’re a large Amazon business with multiple products I’d highly recommend a more robust inventory management tool like SoStocked or Helium 10.
4. Ads Insights
This section gives you an Amazon PPC performance overview and actionable insights for all of your campaigns.
In the ‘Overview’ section you first get a quick look at key actionable insights such as search terms with high ACOS:
(most of these are for a product launch I’m currently doing for a product with no reviews, so I’m not too worried about the high ACOS just yet!)
And top performing search terms:
Plus some other nice analytics like performing search terms that aren’t in your title:
If these search terms are converting well and you put them in your title, you should see some good organic ranking benefit.
‘Overview’ is a good start, but ‘Performance’ is the area I use most inside the Ads Insights section:
It gives a very clear breakdown of the key performance metrics for your Amazon advertising helping you see what is working and what needs attention:
You can view and filter performance data by product, portfolio, campaign, ad group, keyword, and even placement.
Each of these sections breaks down click, cost, and conversion rate data to help you understand exactly how campaigns are performing.
I go to the ‘Performance’ area several times a week to monitor data and see if any changes are necessary – which is admittedly quite rare thanks to the automation features.
Other features in this section include:
- Search terms: A complete list of the best-performing search terms for each product.
- Best metrics: Shows the metric that is performing best for each keyword – e.g. orders, conversion rate, etc.
- Competing keywords: Reveals any keywords that have received impressions in multiple ad groups so all the keyword isolation nerds can keep track!
- Negative keywords: Keeps a handy list of anywhere there is a negative keyword in case you want to remove them and have ads run for them again. Very useful as it saves clawing through every campaign manually to find them.
- Main words: The individual words that are performing best in your campaigns along with how many search terms they are found in, whether they are in your title, and so on.
- Dead keywords: Displays keywords that have received zero impressions for the time period chosen so you can try and revive them with higher bids.
- Trends: See an overview of PPC performance insights in a similar fashion to how it is displayed in the Sales section.
Save 10% for life on any Scale Insights plan.
30-day free trial, no credit card required.
5. Automation
This is where Scale Insights really starts to get exciting, but can also be a little overwhelming.
Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.
If you’re new to this level of Amazon PPC then the easiest way to get started with automation is by using the ‘Mass Campaigns’ feature which I’ll cover in the next section.
But if you want to learn the tool inside out, this is a feature-rich area to spend some time in.
The features are broken down into three key areas:
a. Strategic Objectives
Strategic Objectives are what Scale Insights use to apply optimized rule sets to your campaigns.
Or in their words:
“A strategic objective is a collection of algorithms designed to reduce your ACOS, increase profitability and boost organic sales.”
There are different objectives designed to achieve different outcomes, in categories including:
- Keyword Targeting: Objectives that deal with bidding, promoting keywords, and adding negatives to keyword-targeted campaigns. ‘Discovery’ objectives deal with research campaigns, ‘Sales’ objectives with campaigns designed to scale, and you also have options for single keyword campaigns.
- Auto Campaign: Here you’ll find objectives that relate to two types of auto campaigns – a discover or research campaign and the ‘Bulk Auto’ feature which will be covered more in the ‘Mass Campaigns’ section.
- Product Targeting: Similar to the keyword targeting objectives but built for product targeting and category targeting.
- Video Ads: Dedicated objectives for Sponsored Brands video ads.
- Display Ads: Dedicated objectives for Sponsored Display ads.
In all, there are over 20 different strategic objectives you can apply to campaigns.
This can be a bit overwhelming at first.
But when you take time to learn what each does it gives you a lot of flexibility to apply the ideal rule sets for each product depending on its lifecycle.
For example, you have one mature product with lots of reviews that converts well, and one newly launched product with no reviews.
You wouldn’t want to apply the same objectives to each product as you’ll either stifle the new launch or risk becoming unprofitable on the established product.
b. Algorithms
Scale Insights’ algorithms are a range of optimized rule sets that drive unique results and together form overall strategic objectives.
Algorithms include:
- Dayparting Rule: This rule turns your ads on and off at certain times of the day to take advantage of periods where conversion rate is highest.
- Bidding Rule: This group of rules increases and decreases keyword bids based on varying criteria. You can use the provided rules that are built around clicks, conversion rates, and ACOS, or set up your own custom bidding rules.
- Import Rule: These rules import keywords and ASINs that meet certain criteria into new campaigns so you can isolate them in order to scale up budgets profitably.
- Negative Rule: These rules negate poor-performing keywords and ASINs and can be used out of the box, or have custom criteria set for them.
- Blacklist/Whitelist Rule: Allows you to apply irrelevant terms you don’t want any ads to run for.
- Status Rule: Allows you to pause campaigns that are performing poorly – for example, with a high ACOS.
- Daily Budget Rule: Allows you to adjust your daily budget by certain percentages on certain days. Perfect for products that sell more over the weekends, for example.
- Placement Rule: Allows you to increase keyword bids for top-of-search in campaigns that are performing well in this placement.
You can apply any of these algorithms to your campaigns manually, or use the strategic objectives to apply them in bulk.
c. Monitoring
In the ‘Monitoring’ section you can check which rules you have assigned to which campaigns:
And also see a detailed change log to keep an eye on the changes being made by the automation rules you’ve set up:
d. Settings
Finally, in the ‘Settings’ section, this is where you can set up your automated ASINs:
This is where the pricing of Scale Insights is so efficient.
As you can see, I have 5 ASINs enabled for automation as these are my best-selling ASINs that drive the most volume.
I have another 10 or so ASINs that I don’t currently use the automation features for, so I don’t get billed for them.
You can enable and disable ASIN automation at any time – it’s super flexible.
If you sell in multiple marketplaces, the same ASIN automated in two marketplaces counts as two automated ASINs.
6. Mass Campaigns
There are so many automation options available to you in Scale Insights, it really is a beast of a tool.
However, this can make it quite overwhelming at first.
As such, one of the quickest and easiest ways to get started is to launch ‘Mass Campaigns’.
These are campaign structures designed by the Scale Insights team with optimized automation rule sets already in place.
I’ll admit: I’m a bit of a control freak and initially wanted to customize the mass campaigns to my own preferences. For example, the SI team doesn’t give too much weight to keyword isolation – something I’ve been a big proponent of in the past.
However, I decided to get over myself and adopt the structures and best practices laid out initially to see how it goes, and performance has been great so far. I’d recommend doing the same at first and see how you get on.
You’ve got four different options for setting up mass campaigns:
a. Bulk Auto Campaigns
Use this option to create multiple automatic campaigns with varying default keyword bids to discover untapped opportunities across different traffic tiers:
This is something I’d not tried before but did so on the recommendation of Scale Insights.
It actually works really well.
The theory behind it is that different bid levels access different ‘traffic tiers’ and what might not convert at a 0.70c bid may actually do really well at 1.20c.
You only know once you test!
The automation for these campaigns pauses poor-performing campaigns, negates poor converting search terms, and includes dayparting.
b. Fully Managed Campaigns
This is the option you’ll get the most benefit from.
It sets up a complete structure of campaigns with optimal rule sets in place so you don’t have to trawl through all your existing campaigns and add rules to them.
By default, it will create four campaigns:
- An automatic campaign
- A product targeting campaign with two ad groups – one to target a category, the other to target ASINs
- A campaign to discover & test new keywords
- A campaign to increase sales on proven keywords
If you already have a lot of existing, mature campaigns you might not want to shift everything over straight away.
But I’d recommend testing it with at least one product to get a feel for how it works.
This will provide the foundation that you can then build further campaigns on such as single keyword campaigns.
c. Split Keywords to Campaigns
This setting helps you quickly bulk-create single keyword campaigns – something that can otherwise be a very slow process.
Each keyword you enter in the list will become its own campaign.
You can assign a strategic objective of your choosing and apply settings to all new campaigns to ensure everything is set up optimally.
Layering these on top of the fully managed campaigns was the first step I took inside my Scale Insights account.
This makes sure you are getting the benefit of 24/7 keyword research through discovery campaigns and then gradually promoting keywords to scale them as much as possible.
d. Dayparting Campaign
If you want to measure the hourly performance of your ads, you can use this feature to create 24 ad groups with built-in dayparting to enable one ad group every hour.
I haven’t tested this function yet, but I will get to it eventually!
Save 10% for life on any Scale Insights plan.
30-day free trial, no credit card required.
My experience with Scale Insights
I am a fully paid-up user of Scale Insights:
And as you’ve seen in this review I’ve been learning and using the tool now for some time.
While it hasn’t transformed my Amazon PPC results, it has brought some good improvements:
You’ll see from the reporting that since starting to use Scale Insights, ACOS (purple line) is slightly down and sales (orange line) are up.
I’ve found it to be very effective at maintaining a steady, healthy ACOS with the automated bidding rules which then allows me to spend more time on launching new campaigns.
The only real downside I’ve found with Scale Insights is that if you want to manually make bid adjustments or pause campaigns you still have to do this inside Campaign Manager.
That said, having tried and tested a lot of Amazon PPC tools in recent years I can comfortably say this is one of the best in the Amazon PPC space.
What benefits do Scale Insights users get?
Investing in a PPC tool is all about weighing up the costs and benefits against optimizing campaigns manually yourself.
I’ve used a number of different tools and also run PPC manually with the help of bulk sheets, and I’ve found there are three main benefits of using Scale Insights:
1. Save time
Without a doubt, the biggest benefit this tool offers.
It automates many of the tasks involved in managing Amazon PPC campaigns such as adjusting keyword bids and negating poor-performing keywords.
This then frees up your time to focus on other aspects of your business.
The great thing about Scale Insights is it doesn’t just claim to save you time, it actually shows you exactly how much:
In the last month, it shows me that I’ve saved a whopping 128 hours managing PPC campaigns!
That’s over three full weeks of eight-hour work days!
Of course, I wouldn’t have found time to make all the bid adjustments, promote performing keywords, and add negative keywords if it wasn’t for the automation…
But it’s still pretty cool to see the power of automation at work!
2. Improve profitability
The fact that keyword bids are being optimized and keywords promoted/negated around the clock without me having to do anything means my ads are much more efficient.
The losers get cut sooner than I would be able to (or have the time to!) find them.
And the winners get promoted just as quickly.
This results in my Amazon PPC advertising cost being less, and my ad campaigns being leaner and more profitable.
3. Scale sustainably
The efficiency of Scale Insights means I can put more investment into my Amazon ads which helps drive more keyword ranking.
Every Amazon seller knows organic ranking is the lifeblood of our business.
It helps drive profits sustainably and gives room for continual growth.
Another great benefit of Scale Insights is the members’ Facebook group – make sure you join once you’re signed up. There’s a lot of great content in there and some big sellers contributing great advertising strategies too.
What others are saying
Don’t just take my word for it.
Scale Insights is a tool that is growing in popularity in the Amazon seller community.
While there aren’t many Scale Insights reviews on platforms like Trustpilot, there are a number of experienced Amazon sellers saying good things:
Scale Insights pricing
Whereas most Amazon PPC tools price based on generated revenue or ad spend, Scale Insights has pricing tiers based on ASINs automated.
This means you are only paying for the specific ASINs you choose to set up with automation and is attractive for a couple of main reasons:
- Flexibility: When you first launch an ASIN, you don’t have to automate it. And when you do, you can always stop automating a different ASIN.
- Efficiency: As your sales grow, your software costs won’t skyrocket with them. In the current eCommerce tools climate this is a welcome rarity.
Plans start at $78/month which includes 5 automated ASINS:
But don’t forget – you can save an extra 10% when signing up with Scale Insights today.
I use the $78/month plan – less than 0.3% of my monthly PPC spend right now! It’s the perfect pricing plan for low ASIN, high revenue businesses especially.
As far as value for money goes, I just can’t find anything that beats this.
Scale Insights alternatives
While Scale Insights is a fantastic tool and my number-one recommendation for most sellers, it may not be a perfect fit for everyone.
So if you’re looking for some alternatives, here are some options to consider:
BEST TOOL SUITE
Adtomic is Helium 10’s PPC tool and some features can be used with an existing subscription.
BEST BUDGET OPTION
Plans start at just $9 (without automation) making it accessible for all sellers.
BEST MANAGED SERVICE
More expensive, but perfect for anyone looking for a managed solution without agency prices.
Conclusion: Is Scale Insights worth it?
Scale Insights is a great option for most sellers, but it’s not the perfect option for everybody.
It does have a steeper learning curve than other tools which may make it harder for beginners to get used to.
However, most sellers with even a small amount of Amazon PPC experience should find themselves quickly getting up to speed with how everything works.
Once you are up to speed, Scale Insights is one of the best Amazon PPC software tools I have ever used.
It’s reliable, feature-packed, and saves so much time with automations.
The bid-adjustment automation is a huge benefit of using Scale Insights as it will continually optimize your campaigns toward your overall PPC goals.
It won’t do all the work of Amazon PPC for you, but it does set guard rails that help maintain strong performance metrics.
Plus, if you get stuck – the detailed tutorials, helpful support, and member community will help you through.
If you do get started with Scale Insights (and save 10% on your monthly subscription) – be sure to get in touch and let me know how you find it!
Save 10% for life on any Scale Insights plan.
30-day free trial, no credit card required.
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