What is Amazon Marketing Cloud? Your Complete Guide

Summary

• Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) is Amazon’s advanced analytics platform, giving advertisers full-funnel insights into shopper behavior across ad campaigns.
• AMC lets you model behavior, measure incrementality, and build custom audiences using Amazon Ads data—all from a privacy-safe clean room environment.
• Any brand running Amazon ads, especially those spending $20k+/month, can benefit from AMC’s deeper visibility and custom reporting. 
• You can use AMC via no-code tools, SQL queries, or API integrations, depending on your needs and technical capabilities. If SQL and APIs seem intimidating, a trusted partner can help you get set up.
• A smart AMC strategy includes:
  
  • A solid full-funnel PPC ad foundation
  • Optional but highly effective DSP strategy
  • Identifying actionable insights (e.g., LTV, NTB drivers)
  • Building and testing targeted audiences

Today’s Amazon Marketers Need Full-Funnel Visibility

Advertising on Amazon is becoming more complex by the day. Competition is increasing, as are CPCs. Ad formats have expanded exponentially. (Remember way back when it was just Sponsored Products?)

To succeed on Amazon today, basic PPC and search term data isn’t enough. Brands need actionable, robust shopper insights that can lead to meaningful campaign optimization. That’s where Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) comes in. 

AMC is Amazon’s most comprehensive analytics platform: It stitches together shopper behavior across the funnel to give brands a clearer picture of what’s working, and what’s not.

With help from Tom Kluis, the GM of our Amazon and Ecommerce practice, we’ll take you through what AMC is, who it’s for, how it works, and how to build a strategy that elevates your campaigns.

What is Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC)?

Amazon Marketing Cloud is a powerful analytics solution that offers aggregated, anonymized (i.e., privacy-compliant) shopper data at every stage of the customer journey.

By allowing marketers to model behavior and build custom audiences based on Amazon Ads data (e.g., impressions, clicks, views, purchases), AMC gives brands a full-funnel view of how consumers are engaging with products as well as the opportunity to act based on those signals.

“Amazon Marketing Cloud is one of the biggest developments Amazon has made on the advertising front in the last five years.” — Tom Kluis

This increased access to data is a game-changer for brands, and Tom thinks it’s one of the most important solutions Amazon has rolled out in recent times in the ad space.

A clean room solution

You’ll often see AMC referred to as a clean room solution, which means its analyses happen in a closed system and raw data can’t be moved outside the environment. 

Used by other major platforms like Meta and Google, this clean room structure is the gold standard for privacy. It’s especially desirable right now in light of stricter data regulations and cookies being phased out.

Who can (and should) use AMC?

The easy answer is: everyone who is running ads on Amazon should be using AMC, since the only requirement is an active Ads account—and because who doesn’t want more audience insights?

But there are a few caveats. Let’s get into how to get access to AMC since it isn’t automatically included with an Ads account, and which brands can see the best results from the platform.

What you need to access and use Amazon Marketing Cloud

1. This is maybe obvious, but you must have an Amazon Ads account (DSP or Sponsored Ads).
2. Request access through either your account manager or seller support team (if you don’t have a dedicated rep). Or, if you’re working with an agency like Right Side Up, they can make the request on your behalf.
3. From there, you’re set to use AMC in three ways: 
   
   1. No-code: You can run prebuilt queries without added technical steps through AMC’s interface, like path-to-purchase or branded vs. non-branded reports.
   2. SQL queries: To get more from AMC and run deep, customized analysis, you’ll need some SQL experience (or help from someone who does).
   3. APIs: If you’re a more scaled advertiser, you can automate and scale query execution and reporting via APIs. Don’t want to write the integration yourself? Work with someone who already has API infrastructure in place. Often ad software providers with an API connection (such as Xnurta) have a large number of pre-built reports, queries, and audience segmentation tools which will speed up adoption.

Which types of brands are successful on AMC

Irrespective of industry, virtually any type of brand already running ads on Amazon can gain from consolidating them with AMC learnings, according to Tom. The true key to success is extracting relevant and actionable data that’s tied directly to your business’s most important metrics.

“Using AMC can benefit all types of brands, whether you sell groceries, apparel, or auto parts.” — Tom Kluis

For instance, supplement or grocery brands should evaluate lifetime value (LTV) since they often incur high initial acquisition costs but generate repeat purchases. Conversely, apparel brands whose customers only purchase from once or twice a year should focus on maintaining a reasonable customer acquisition cost (CAC).

As far as how budget affects results, brands who spend at least $20,000/month on Amazon Ads across multiple channels typically experience the most impact from AMC, simply because they have more data.

That said, anyone looking to measure incrementality, lifetime value, or multi-touch journeys can benefit from exploring AMC—at the very least the no-code reports. It’s free after all!

How to build a smart AMC strategy in three steps

With such a robust suite of tools at your fingertips, knowing where to start can be challenging. 

For Tom, brands need to do three things to get the most out of AMC:

1. Ensure their ad strategy is solid to begin with.
2. Look for important, relevant data that can answer strategic questions.
3. Lastly, turn that data into action by creating custom audiences and running tests.

“There is a wealth of information in AMC, but not all of it actually matters. Your job as a marketer is to identify actionable insights, not just interesting ones.” — Tom Kluis

Step 1: Ensure you have a solid ad strategy in place

AMC excels in analyzing and optimizing several campaigns at once. But it can’t guess what you’re trying to achieve (yet); having a strategic foundation in place for your Amazon ads is crucial. Here are a few things you need from the start:

• Clear advertising goals: Which channels are you focusing on and why? How does this tie back to broader team and business goals?
• Consistent ad investment: You don’t need to spend $1M/month, but you do need relatively consistent spend to get cleaner data.
• A full-funnel strategy, ideally: AMC works best when synthesizing data across the entire customer journey.
• Proper campaign structure: Tom warns that poor campaign structure (e.g., mixing branded, competitors, and category terms in the same campaign) makes AMC insights murky
• A test-and-learn mindset: When you unearth actionable findings, do you have a testing plan in place?

Step 2: Discovering actionable data in AMC

There is a lot of information you can gather from AMC, from path-to-purchase and LTV modeling to frequency and time lag insights. So how do you find what really matters? 

Start by posing broader strategic questions—these will vary based on your company stage, type, and goals—then turn those into specific hypotheses. 

For example, a challenger brand might wonder what’s driving new-to-brand (NTB) acquisition and hypothesize that Sponsored Brand Video ads are more effective than other formats. To validate this hypothesis, they could use path-to-purchase reports to compare NTB conversion rates across formats. Brands can also measure and understand how consumers interact across multiple ad types - for example: do your best shoppers see both upper-funnel DSP ads and also click on a lower-funnel branded PPC campaign?

Step 3: Creating custom audiences based on AMC data

Once you’ve discovered valuable findings, it’s time for the next (and maybe most important) step: building fitting custom audiences. According to Tom, the brands who see the most success on Amazon are the ones who consistently micro-target audiences.

“Long-term Amazon success is all about small, consistent incremental wins that come from testing and targeting micro-segments.” — Tom Kluis

In the example of the challenger brand looking to drive NTB acquisition, they might create lookalike audiences based on NTB converters for prospecting, or create an exclusion list of returning customers to focus budget more on NTB growth.

[Related: Your Complete Guide to Marketing Experimentation]

From there, testing is key. Target your custom audiences with new campaigns, messages, or bidding strategies. The goal isn’t one big breakthrough, but a steady stream of performance gains over time.

Examples of end-to-end AMC strategies

Let’s cover a few major strategic questions AMC can help answer. We’ll provide a step-by-step example of how to turn each of those questions into action—and optimization.

Example 1: “What’s driving new-to-brand customer acquisition?” 

• Often asked by: Challenger brands
• Hypothesis: Shoppers exposed to Sponsored Video along with category PPC ads are more likely to be NTB
• Data to pull: Generate a path-to-purchase report that compares NTB conversion rates across formats
• Audience to create: Lookalike audience based on NTB converters
• How to test and validate: Retarget audience through Amazon’s Demand-Side Platform (DSP) 

Example 2: “How can we increase LTV?”

• Often asked by: Established brands
• Hypothesis: Variety pack ASIN buyers who later see a branded DSP ad are more likely to become repeat customers.
• Data to pull: Build LTV models by ASIN and ad exposure
• Audience to create: Buyers of high-LTV “gateway” ASINs
• How to test and validate: Run cross-sell or upsell campaigns to audience

Example 3: “What’s the true impact of different ad types on conversions?”

• Often asked by: Established brands
• Hypothesis: Upper-funnel conversions are influencing conversions but not getting credit
• Data to pull: Run multi-touch path-to-purchase queries to uncover common conversion sequences
• Audience to create: Users exposed to specific ad sequences (e.g., DSP → Sponsored Brand → Sponsored Product)
• How to test and validate: Reinforce audience with high-intent SP retargeting 

Don’t overspend on branded search

Last but not least, a common mistake Tom frequently sees is overspending on branded search. 

“One common strategy pitfall is overreliance on branded ads. The beauty of AMC is that we’re able to see how many of those searches become NTB customers.” — Tom Kluis

In a case study, a client came to Right Side Up spending 40 to 50% of their spend on brand defense ads. 

Using AMC, our team identified which branded searches were actually NTB, and reinvested roughly 60% of the initial brand defense budget into category and competitor campaigns which proved to be much better at acquiring new to brand shoppers.

The result: better customer lifetime value and substantially increased market share.

(Overinvesting on brand terms frequently happens with Google search ads as well, which is why we at Right Side Up always preach the virtues of incrementality testing.)

Are you overspending on Amazon branded search ads? Or do you simply want the most accurate insights into what’s driving your Amazon ad performance? AMC can unlock the answers, and with the right partner, it’s easier than you think. Let’s talk.