Reviewing, rejecting and blocking

A brief is a proposal. You can apply it, reject it, or block it.

Applying

Apply Now sends the change to your Amazon account. Until somebody presses it, a brief is a proposal and nothing has moved.

Sending a change to Amazon needs Ads Manager · Edit. Being able to read a brief and being able to apply it are different rights. See Roles and permissions.

Once applied, the change is recorded with its source, so months later it can be traced back to the brief that proposed it. See Change History.

Rejecting and blocking

Two ways to turn a proposal down, and they mean different things.

	What it does
Reject	Turns this proposal down. The same one can come back after roughly 14 to 20 days, depending on the evidence
Block	That keyword × campaign × ad group is never proposed again

Reject means “not now”. The evidence is thin, or the timing is wrong, or you want to see another fortnight first. The Analyst is free to raise it again once something has changed.

Block means “not ever”. The combination is closed permanently — a term you defend regardless of what its numbers say, or a target you have decided does not belong in that ad group whatever happens to it.

Block is the stronger tool and the narrower one: it closes that combination, not the term everywhere. The same query in a different ad group is a separate proposal and is unaffected.

Doing nothing

Legitimate in one case: the evidence is thin and you would rather wait for more. But a reject says the same thing and says it on the record, so the Analyst knows you looked.

Working a queue

Sort by priority. The list is not evenly important, and a queue read top to bottom spends most of its attention on the least consequential entries.

Batch by type. Ten negation briefs are one decision about your relevance standard, made ten times. Reading them together is faster and produces more consistent judgements than reading them scattered.

Look for patterns, not items. If the same kind of brief keeps appearing for the same reason, that is a signal about your account rather than about those targets — and it may be better answered with an Automation rule than by applying briefs one at a time.

When a brief keeps coming back after you rejected it, that is reject working as intended — the proposal returns because the evidence is still there. If your disagreement is permanent rather than a question of timing, block it instead and stop deciding the same thing every few weeks.

After applying

A change that reached Amazon needs traffic before it means anything, and the result is not visible immediately — Amazon’s attribution keeps arriving for days.

For whether applied changes actually helped, see ASIN Automation Review, and read its warning about causation before drawing conclusions.

Considerations

• Applying does not create a rule. The same situation will produce another brief next time unless you automate it.
• A brief can go stale. If the underlying bid or state changed after the brief was written, applying it may no longer make sense — check the last-changed note on the brief.
• Nothing is applied in bulk without you choosing it.