How the economics resolve

Break-even ACOS, Target ACOS and Max bid can each be set in four places. When a decision needs one of them, the App takes the most specific value that exists. Two places in Automation resolve them differently; see Where these values are used.

Resolution runs top to bottom and stops at the first level that has a value. A level you have left blank is skipped rather than counted as zero.

Reading it in the table

Under the table the App spells the order out: Economics priority: SKU → Group → Product Line → system. A value in bold is set on that row. An inherited value carries a badge naming where it came from: group, line or default. A line badge means nothing more specific was set, so the Product Line’s default is in force.

That is how you tell an inherited 50% from a deliberate 50%. The number is the same; what differs is how it behaves the next time you edit the line.

Inherit or override?

Leave it inherited when the ASIN behaves like its line. An inherited value keeps following the line, so when your costs move you change one number instead of forty.

Override when the ASIN genuinely differs — a size whose margin is not like its siblings, a product you are defending, a variant that attracts a different shopper. An override stops listening to the line permanently, which is the point, and also the cost.

The common mistake is overriding to make one bad week look better. That value is still there six months later, quietly ignoring every update you have made since.

Where these values are used

The AI Analyst reads them when it builds proposals:

• Break-even ACOS is the ACOS above which ads lose money. The Agent uses it to find keywords that waste spend.
• Target ACOS is the ACOS the Agent moves bids toward.
• Max bid derives the bid ceilings that proposal bids must stay inside. See Creating a Product Line.

Automation rules do not read them. A Bidding rule takes its Target ACOS and its Min and Max Bid from the rule itself, and an Import rule its own minimum and maximum bid. See Bidding rule.

Automation still shows them for reference, and resolves them its own way:

• The Whitelist’s Recommended keywords rank terms against a Target ACOS taken from the Product Group first, then the ASIN override, then the Product Line, then 50%. A group value therefore beats an ASIN override there.
• The Automated ASINs table shows the ASIN override’s Break-even ACOS, or else the Product Line’s. It does not read a Product Group value, and with neither the cell is empty.

The bottom level is a system default, not one of yours — so a badge reading default on a row means the opposite of what it looks like: nothing you configured supplied a value, and a built-in fallback did.

In that four-level order, Break-even ACOS and Target ACOS always resolve to something for that reason, and so does Max bid: its built-in default is $2.60. The bid limits on AI Analyst proposals are another matter. They come from a Product Line — its base-bid cap, worked out from the Max bid set on the line (see Product Lines) — and an unassigned ASIN takes them from the account default line. With no Product Line at all there is no cap, so the analyses that propose bids do not run until you create one. The first line you create becomes the account default.