Managing 57 Campaigns at 13.6% ACOS with Automated Optimization

The Challenge

Nutraj, one of India’s leading dry fruit and nut brands on Amazon, faced a scale problem that plagues many large sellers: with a catalog spanning dozens of products across multiple categories, managing advertising effectively required a level of attention that no human team could provide.

The specifics:

• 57 active campaigns across Sponsored Products, Brands, and Display
• Hundreds of ad groups with thousands of keywords
• Multiple product categories with different seasonality patterns
• Search term reports generating thousands of new terms weekly
• Manual optimization was happening at best once per week
• ACOS was creeping upward as campaigns grew in complexity

Our Approach

The Scale Problem

With 57 campaigns, even spending 15 minutes per campaign on weekly optimization would require over 14 hours — nearly two full work days just for basic bid adjustments. And that does not include search term analysis, negative keyword management, budget reallocation, or strategic planning.

This is exactly the problem ScaleSkus was built to solve.

Automated Campaign Management

We deployed our full automation stack:

Bid Management: Real-time bid optimization across all 57 campaigns. Each keyword has individualized bid rules based on its performance history, conversion patterns, and competitive dynamics.

Search Term Classification: Our 3-step AI pipeline processes Nutraj’s search terms automatically:

• SQL rules engine catches obvious irrelevant terms
• Cache layer handles previously seen terms
• Gemini AI classifies truly ambiguous terms
• Over 15,000 search terms classified automatically

Budget Intelligence: Dynamic budget allocation ensures money flows to the best-performing campaigns. Underperforming campaigns have budgets reduced, while high-performers receive automatic increases within predefined guardrails.

Day-Parting: Category-specific day-parting rules. Dry fruit purchases peak at different times than snack purchases — our system optimizes bids for each category’s unique patterns.

Safety and Transparency

At Nutraj’s scale, automation without safety guards would be reckless. Our system includes:

• Maximum bid caps per keyword and campaign
• Daily budget limits that cannot be exceeded
• Minimum performance thresholds before any optimization is executed
• Complete audit trail — every change logged with before/after values, reason, and timestamp
• Weekly human review of all automated actions by our account team

The Results

After implementing ScaleSkus automation:

• Portfolio ACOS stabilized at 13.6% — well below the food category average of 22-28%
• 2,800+ automated optimizations per month across the 57 campaigns
• 15,000+ search terms classified by AI, with 1,200+ negatives added
• Zero missed optimization cycles — the system runs 24/7 without breaks
• Weekly optimization time reduced from 14+ hours to 2 hours of strategic review
• Sales volume grew 28% as freed-up budget was reinvested in proven performers

Category-Level Performance

Category	Campaigns	ACOS	Monthly Optimizations
Premium Dry Fruits	18	11.2%	890
Snacks & Trail Mixes	15	14.8%	720
Cooking Ingredients	12	15.3%	580
Gift Boxes (Seasonal)	7	12.1%	340
Sponsored Brands	5	16.2%	270

Key Takeaways

1. At scale (50+ campaigns), manual optimization is not just inefficient — it is impossible to do well
2. AI automation handles volume; human oversight handles strategy
3. Safety guards and audit trails are non-negotiable for automated optimization
4. Category-specific optimization rules outperform one-size-fits-all approaches
5. The time saved by automation should be reinvested in strategic thinking, not just saved