Dayparting

Dayparting is the Pilot builder for rules that raise, lower or pause bids by hour of the day and day of the week. A rule holds a set of keywords, targets or campaigns and a 7-day by 24-hour grid; each cell says what to do to the bid in that hour. This page lists every control on the rules list and in the four-step editor. Words such as bid, match type and CVR are explained in the Amazon advertising glossary; Pulse Pilot's own words, such as Autopilot and Copilot, are on Pulse Pilot Vocabulary.

Open Automations → Dayparting. Each editable control below is marked Required, Optional or Preselected. Required means Next or Save stops until it is filled.

The rules list

+ New Rule opens the editor at Step 1.

Each row shows the rule's name; a Managed by Autopilot pill when Autopilot built it; a chip when some of its keywords are under Copilot bid management and the schedule is not applied to them; a line with the metric, the max bid delta, the lookback and the minimum clicks per slot, when set; and a status pill, active or paused. Row actions: pause or activate, Edit rule, and Delete rule, which asks to confirm and says that keywords the rule paused are restored on its next run. An Autopilot-managed rule offers View schedule only: a read-only grid with a link to the product's Autopilot page.

Step 1 · Rule Setup

Rule Name. Required. A text box.

Campaign Type. Preselected (Sponsored Products). Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display. Changing it resets the rule scope below.

Performance Metric. Preselected (CVR %). CVR %, ACoS %, ROAS, CTR %, CPC, Clicks, Orders, Spend, Sales. Auto-generate uses it to decide which hours get a raise and which a cut.

Rule Scope. For Sponsored Products, Preselected (Keyword bids): Keyword bids, Product-target bids, or Campaign daily budget. For Sponsored Display, Preselected (Campaign budget): Campaign budget or Target bids; the target option covers CPC campaigns only. Sponsored Brands rules act on campaign budget.

Schedule Template. Preselected (Auto-generate from historical data). Auto-generate shows a Generate Schedule button in Step 3; Start with blank grid does not. Auto-generate is unavailable for Sponsored Display target rules.

Who manages this schedule? Shown when editing a Sponsored Products rule. Preselected (Manual). Manual: you build and edit the grid. Copilot: Copilot re-authors the schedule weekly from the rule's hourly data. Switching to Copilot saves at once and opens Step 3 with the Copilot panel; switching back keeps the current schedule editable.

Lookback Period (days). Preselected (30). A whole number from 7 to 90; the window auto-generate reads.

Min Clicks / Slot. Optional. A whole number of at least 1. During auto-generate, an hour slot with fewer clicks than this gets no suggestion and is marked insufficient. Left blank, every slot is considered.

Max Bid Delta ($). Optional. A dollar amount of at least 0.01; the most a bid may move in one run, whatever the cell's percentage says.

Next: Keywords stops with "Enter a rule name." when the name is blank.

Step 2 · Select Keywords

Campaign. Optional. A multi-select; picking a campaign enrols every keyword in it (or every target, or the campaign itself for a budget rule). Campaigns under Autopilot, and campaigns with nothing to enrol for this scope, are not listed.

Campaign Tag and Keyword Tag. Optional. Multi-selects from the Campaign Tags and Keyword Tags pages. Choosing a tag runs the search, selects every matching keyword that is free, and moves to Step 3.

Search. Runs the keyword search over the chosen campaigns and tags; up to 500 rows. Keywords in Autopilot campaigns are left out.

Results. Columns Keyword, Match, Bid, State, Campaign, each with a checkbox. A keyword already in another dayparting rule is marked "In another rule", tinted, and cannot be ticked. Select All ticks every free row; Deselect All clears the selection.

Selected campaigns. A chip per campaign with its keyword count and Remove.

Next: Schedule stops with "Select at least one keyword." when nothing is selected.

Step 3 · Build Schedule

Manual

Generate Schedule. Shown for the Auto-generate template. Reads the hourly data for the selected keywords over the lookback, marks slots below Min Clicks / Slot as insufficient, and fills the rest with raises and cuts by the chosen metric. A message reports when no hourly data or no qualifying slot was found.

Clear Grid. Asks "Clear all cells?" and empties the grid.

Summary chips. Increase, Decrease, Paused and Insufficient counts.

The grid. Seven rows, Monday to Sunday, by 24 hours, with two hour headers, EDT and PT. A cell holds one of None, Increase, Decrease or Pause with a percentage for the two bid moves: orange raises, navy lowers, the two-bar cell is paused, a dashed cell had too little data. Click a cell to edit it; press and drag to select a block.

Cell editor. Action buttons None, Increase, Decrease, Pause; for the two moves a percentage, Required, a whole number from 1 to 100. Apply to all [hour] fills the column, Apply to all [day] the row, Apply to Entire Grid every cell; Apply to this cell or Apply to N cells applies to the click or the block.

Copilot

The grid is replaced by a status panel: reviewing, authored with the number of slots adjusted, holding with the reason, or an error. Sensitivity is the same Min Clicks / Slot value, Optional; a warning appears below it when the value is very low. ↻ Re-run review now saves the sensitivity and asks Copilot to author the schedule again. Both are disabled while a review runs or when every enrolled keyword is under Copilot bid management.

Step 4 · Review & Save

Read-only cards: Rule Settings, Schedule Summary with the keyword count and the slot counts, and a Schedule Preview grid. ✓ Create Rule or Save Changes saves; a failed save shows its reason above the buttons. Save stops for a blank name or no keywords, and the server refuses a rule whose keywords belong to an Autopilot campaign, to a campaign under Copilot bid management, or to another dayparting rule.

Good to know

1. A keyword belongs to one rule. Conflicts are shown in Step 2 and refused on save; remove the keyword from the other rule first.
2. Copilot-managed campaigns are skipped. Keywords in a campaign whose bids Copilot manages stay in the rule but the schedule is not applied to them; the row's chip and the Step 3 panel say how many. Take the campaign off Copilot to daypart it here.
3. The grid is in Pacific time. The EDT header is shown for reference; the rule runs on the PT hour, once an hour.
4. Bids move from the bid the keyword had when it was enrolled. Each hour's move is applied to that base bid, capped by Max Bid Delta, and the bid is restored when no cell applies. Keywords in a rule show a DP chip on the Keywords and Product Targeting pages, and each move is recorded in the keyword's history as Daypart.
5. Deleting a rule restores its pauses. The rule is paused first, then removed, and keywords it had paused are enabled on the next run.