Authority, Budget, and Portfolio Control

Before budget rules, delegation, or automation details, the seller needs one control rule: reporting, flagging, suggesting, approving, executing, and auditing are different authority layers.

The safer default is:

1. Report: show the data.
2. Flag: surface an exception.
3. Suggest: propose a candidate action.
4. Approve: a human accepts or rejects the action.
5. Execute: a narrow approved change is performed.
6. Audit: the result is reviewed later.

Budget is not only a spending limit. It is a control system. In a Merch PPC account, budget decides which campaign roles receive opportunity, which winners can develop, and which weak structures are allowed to keep consuming attention. A budget without purpose creates drift.

A discovery campaign may begin as a small controlled test and slowly receive more money without earning it. A seasonal campaign may keep spending after demand fades. A legacy campaign may stay funded simply because it has always been active. A proven campaign may remain capped while weaker structures continue to spend.

The account may still look managed, but the money is no longer following the strategy. This is the basic rule of budget control: a campaign’s budget should match what the campaign is supposed to do, what the evidence supports, and whether the timing justifies spend now.

Messy or legacy-heavy accounts should stay mostly in report, flag, suggest, and approve mode. Direct execution belongs later, after the account is cleaner and the rule has been tested.

The same authority split applies whether the work is done by the seller, an assistant, a consultant, a spreadsheet, a script, or software.

Preparation can be delegated earlier than approval. Structural changes, risky negatives, budget expansion, winner graduation, and legacy retirement usually need explicit human approval.

Everything else in this section follows that order: authority first, budget by role, portfolio control, legacy classification before cleanup, and automation only where the account is already readable enough to audit the result.

Platform budget controls should also be treated as current-platform behavior, not permanent assumptions. Amazon Ads may support daily budgets, budget recommendations, budget rules, portfolio controls, and other budget features, but exact behavior, availability, and recommendation logic can vary by ad product, marketplace, account eligibility, and console or API surface.