Great info from Nicholas Rossi’s advertising survey. I was quite surprised by AMS (Amazon Marketing Services) coming out as the leader of the pack. I tried them some time ago and had absolutely no luck. And now that I’m no longer in Select, I can’t test them anymore. Ce la vie!
Anyway, good info there — check it out!
Last year, I shared with you the result of my Call to Arms, on my very popular post, Book Marketing Results 2015. I now have collected enough data to follow up with this year’s results. …
Source: Call to Arms: Year-long survey reveals which book advertiser offers best value for money
Ruth Nestvold - Indie Adventures 
There were posts on Kboards indicating that the KU requirement for doing an AMS ad campaign has been lifted. I don’t know if this is still true, but you might give it a shot and see if your campaign submission is rejected.
If you’re totally new to AMS ad campaigns, a couple of caveats:
1. The bid suggestion you get from the sign-up is bloated. I’d start with a bid about 1/3 the suggested amount.
2. If you get a campaign accepted, READ THE E-MAIL CAREFULLY and be sure it doesn’t go on to say that the ad won’t be shown on Kindle-style devices because of xxxxxx. If you don’t get the Kindle exposure, then your impressions (times your ad is shown) will be severely impacted. Note that “grammar” errors in your ad text include using two hyphens for an m-dash (use the real m-dash) and placing a space in front of an ellipsis. Thus, “He went far … and came back” will fail, while “He went far… and came back” should work.
3. Unless you get runaway impressions or runaway clicks (I wish!) on your campaign, any data received during the first WEEK of a campaign is totally useless and should not be the basis of any decision.
4. If you’re getting plenty of impressions at your current bid, consider lowering the bid.
Other things:
The ad campaign dashboard STILL does not show KU borrows, but of course those are useless these days anyway.
If you suspend or terminate a campaign, impression and click data for the campaign may still trickle in for WEEKS afterward.
If you need to correct a campaign setting that isn’t dynamically settable (like campaign text, e.g.), use the COPY feature to create a new campaign, change the campaign name and what you need to correct, and submit that. Once that’s approved, suspend or terminate the incorrect campaign.
Best of luck.
Thanks for all the great info, Lurker! 🙂
You’re welcome. And it looks like the non-KU use of AMS is official; see this announcement:
Advertising with Amazon Marketing Services Available to All KDP Authors
https://kdp.amazon.com/community/ann.jspa?annID=1192
Yup. Using your advice, I started a new ad. Thanks again!