44:39
Amazon PPC
Amazon sellers facing rising ad costs and falling conversion rates should combine Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) behavioral data with the Demand Side Platform (DSP) to target buyers based on actual customer journeys rather than keywords alone, measuring DSP success by new-to-brand reach rather than short-term profitability, in order to build a defensible, sustainable growth position for 2026.
Amazon advertising is becoming saturated and less efficient: keyword bidding costs rise while conversion falls, and almost 70% of a keyword's search results page is paid ads, making it "pay to win."
AMC adds a behavioral/persona targeting layer on top of traditional keyword and competitor-ASIN targeting (e.g., restricting a "yoga mat" campaign to women aged 20-30).
AMC unlocks up to 25 months of historical shopper behavior data immediately on activation (product-page engagement, cart abandonment, repeat purchases).
DSP lets brands follow AMC-defined audiences off Amazon, across Amazon-owned or partnered properties (news sites, Twitch, Prime Video) and even non-Amazon inboxes like Outlook.
DSP access has become far more affordable: from a historical $50,000/month direct-with-Amazon minimum to $3,000-$5,000/month via a verified agency's shared Amazon seat.
The real metric for judging DSP success is "new-to-brand" reach, not retargeting or profitability; retargeting-only DSP duplicates what cheaper Sponsored Display already does.
A four-part funnel model (top, mid, bottom-funnel, and "crosser"/cross-sell) frames where AMC/DSP add value: DSP matters most at top/mid-funnel, since sponsored ads already cover bottom-funnel conversion and some cross-sell.
Case study: a vitamin brand used AMC to identify a "window shopping" journey against 2-3 recurring competitors, built a lookalike audience from it, and nearly tripled conversion.
Case study: a premium clothing brand cut ACOS from over 100% to close to 30% by using AMC to restrict targeting to high-spending ($80-100+) buyers with premium-brand affinity, avoiding a losing price fight with cheap competitors.
AMC can reveal a "spark effect" cross-sell pattern (one product's sale boosting sales of others) that most sellers otherwise can't track or attribute, enabling virtual bundles or re-engagement campaigns.
Geographic concentration of sales, often tied to off-Amazon activity like regional influencer marketing, can be exploited via AMC to localize ad spend (example: localizing to Florida tripled a brand's Amazon sales).
AMC demographic/behavioral insight (age, gender, education of top-converting buyers) can inform product decisions, listing content, imagery, and email campaigns, not just advertising.
AMC audiences should feed back into ordinary Sponsored Products campaigns as a quick win: abandoned-cart audiences, high-converter lookalikes, and competitor-engagement lookalikes applied to exact-match keyword targeting.
AMC functions as an omnichannel "data room" that can match uploaded first-party data (e.g., an email list) to Amazon shoppers or build lookalikes from it, a tactic the agency claims very few brands use.
AMC requires ongoing weekly review and audience refinement rather than a "set and forget" approach, since consumer behavior shifts month to month.
Common misconceptions addressed: DSP no longer requires a huge budget; DSP can technically be self-served via automation software but templated execution only achieves "the bare minimum"; AMC is free (data only, no added ad spend) and should now be accessible to all sellers via their Amazon rep.
AMC segmentation is additive, not incremental spend: it narrows an existing campaign's targeting (e.g., "yoga pants" to "yoga pants for women 20-30") without increasing budget.
Amazon itself is shifting from user-typed keyword search toward AI-driven recommendation via Rufus, reinforcing the argument that understanding consumer behavior/personas will matter more than keyword matching going forward.
Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) — A data platform that lets sellers query up to 25 months of Amazon shopper behavior (product-page engagement, cart abandonment, repeat purchases) to build custom, persona-based audiences. Apply: Activate AMC, run queries to define audiences matching a brand's actual buyer journey, then use those audiences to filter Sponsored Products campaigns or feed them into DSP.
DSP (Amazon Demand-Side Platform) — Amazon's programmatic ad platform for reaching consumers on- and off-Amazon (partnered websites, Twitch, Prime Video, and even non-Amazon inboxes) using audiences defined elsewhere, e.g. in AMC. Apply: Feed an AMC-built behavioral audience into DSP to reach new-to-brand consumers or retarget them across the funnel outside of standard sponsored ad placements.
AMC queries (query console) — The mechanism in AMC's editor where sellers combine behavioral events (e.g., "engaged with competitor then converted," "abandoned cart then purchased within 14 days") to seed an audience. Apply: Write a query combining the pre- and post-purchase events relevant to a brand's journey, then use the resulting audience as a campaign filter.
Lookalike audience creation — Taking a small, high-performing seed audience (e.g., repeat vitamin buyers who compared 2-3 competitors first) and having Amazon find similar shoppers at scale. Apply: Build a seed audience from a proven customer journey in AMC, generate a lookalike from it, then target that lookalike with sponsored or DSP campaigns.
Behavioral/persona targeting layer — An added targeting dimension on top of traditional keyword/competitor-ASIN targeting, e.g. restricting a "yoga mat" keyword campaign to only women aged 20-30. Apply: Layer an AMC-defined persona/audience filter onto an existing exact-match keyword campaign so ads only serve the highest-probability buyers for that keyword.
25-month AMC data lookback — Amazon's extended AMC data retention window, recently expanded to up to 25 months, available immediately on account activation. Apply: On activating AMC, pull the full 25-month history right away to identify existing patterns like repeat-purchase cycles instead of waiting to accumulate new data.
Cross-property DSP retargeting — DSP's ability to place ads on Amazon-owned or partnered properties beyond amazon.com, cited examples include Twitch, Prime Video, partnered news sites, and third-party inboxes like Outlook. Apply: Use DSP to keep an AMC-defined audience exposed to the brand across multiple off-Amazon touch points before they return to purchase.
High-spender / brand-affinity audience segmentation — An AMC audience built from shoppers who spend above a threshold (e.g., $80-100+ on clothing) and have engaged with comparable premium brands, used to avoid competing on price with commodity products. Apply: For a premium-priced product losing to cheap competitors on generic keywords, restrict sponsored/DSP targeting to this high-spender/brand-affinity segment to raise ROAS.
Funnel model: top / mid / bottom-funnel / "crosser" — A four-stage framework for allocating AMC/DSP effort, where bottom-funnel conversion and cross-sell are already served by sponsored ads, while DSP's real value sits in top- and mid-funnel awareness. Apply: Direct DSP budget primarily at top/mid-funnel new-to-brand reach rather than duplicating what sponsored ads or Sponsored Display already achieve lower in the funnel.
"New-to-brand" metric — The recommended primary success metric for DSP campaigns — whether the ad reaches consumers who haven't previously engaged with the brand — rather than short-term profitability or revenue. Apply: Track new-to-brand numbers from DSP reporting to judge whether a campaign is genuinely expanding reach; if it's only retargeting existing engagers, redirect that budget to cheaper Sponsored Display instead.
Geographic/location filtering and localization via AMC — Using AMC to detect where sales concentrate geographically (states or specific cities), often correlated with off-Amazon activity like regional influencer campaigns, and localizing ad targeting accordingly. Apply: Identify top-converting states/cities from order data, then build an AMC audience or DSP campaign localized to that region to compound existing off-Amazon brand awareness.
Sponsored-ad audience refinement via AMC — Ready-to-use AMC audiences — abandoned-cart shoppers, historically highest-converting/repeat customers, and people who engaged with a named competitor before converting — applied as targeting filters on existing Sponsored Products campaigns. Apply: Build one of these audiences in AMC and restrict an existing top-keyword exact-match campaign to only serve that audience, without increasing the campaign's budget.
Omnichannel attribution via AMC — Using AMC to measure the combined impact of channels outside Amazon advertising (email, influencer, website) on Amazon conversions, a capability the agency says only 5-10% of audited brands actually use. Apply: Set up AMC queries/attribution views that connect non-Amazon marketing touch points to on-Amazon purchase events to judge the true ROI of an omnichannel strategy.
First-party data upload / AMC as "data room" — Uploading a brand's own data (e.g., a list of customer emails) into AMC so Amazon can match it to existing shoppers or build a lookalike audience from it, described as done by roughly only 1% of brands. Apply: Export an email list (e.g., 10,000 addresses) and upload it to AMC to create a matched or lookalike audience for targeting.
Multi-touchpoint/multi-source audience querying — Combining several data sources in a single AMC query — e.g., "engaged with social media AND influencer marketing AND website, then purchased on Amazon" — to define an audience, said to be used by only 2-5% of brands. Apply: Write an AMC query chaining social/influencer/website engagement events with the Amazon purchase event to isolate and re-engage this high-intent segment via DSP.
Pre-event/post-event combined querying (frequency strategy) — Refining a basic audience (e.g., "abandoned cart") by adding a second historical condition (e.g., "and later purchased anyway") to isolate genuinely high-intent shoppers. Apply: Chain a pre-event and a post-event in one AMC query to build a tighter follow-up sequence audience that sustains conversion and organic ranking.
Cross-sell / "spark effect" tracking and virtual bundling — Using AMC to trace the customer journey across a brand's catalog and spot cases where buying one product reliably lifts sales of another (e.g., yoga mat purchasers also buying yoga blocks/clothing). Apply: Once a consistent cross-sell pattern is found in AMC, launch a virtual bundle, a new complementary product, or re-engage past buyers of the first item with ads for the second.
Weekly audience-refresh cadence — A stated best practice of treating AMC audiences as living rather than "set and forget," since consumer behavior shifts from month to month (example given: December 2025 vs. January 2026). Apply: Review and refine AMC-built audiences on a weekly basis, personally or via a delegate, rather than reusing a static audience indefinitely.
The "new-to-brand" framing reframes DSP entirely: per the guest, pure profitability-focused DSP use is actively wasteful, since Sponsored Display already covers cheap retargeting for less money.
Premium-priced products structurally lose sponsored-ad keyword auctions to cheap commodity competitors regardless of ad quality; AMC's high-spender segmentation is presented as a structural fix, not a minor optimization.
Off-Amazon marketing activity (e.g., a regional influencer campaign) can be "closed the loop" and amplified via AMC geographic targeting, because roughly 60% of product search still funnels through Amazon regardless of where discovery originally happened.
Sales concentration by geography (sometimes just 3 cities or 5-10 states) is treated as an actionable targeting signal most sellers ignore, meaning many brands are effectively over-spending nationally instead of doubling down where word-of-mouth is already working.
The agency claims only about 1% of brands upload first-party data (like email lists) into AMC for matching or lookalike creation, despite it being a low-effort way to build a higher-intent audience.
The agency claims only 5-10% of the "hundreds" of brands it audits do any omnichannel attribution, framing this as a structural blind spot across the industry rather than an execution detail.
A "set and forget" AMC audience is presented as silently decaying, because consumer behavior itself shifts month to month (explicit example: December 2025 vs. January 2026 behavior differing) — a static audience quietly stops matching current buyers.
The economics of DSP access are framed as having changed structurally rather than Amazon just lowering a price: agencies now aggregate multiple clients' spend under one $100k/month direct commitment, letting individual sellers buy in at $3,000-$5,000/month.
«Amazon sellers are struggling with rising advertising costs and decreasing conversion rates, making traditional advertising less effective than ever.»
— 00:00
«I only want the people behind looking for yoga mat to be for example women between 20 and 30 and that's it»
— 04:44
«over almost 60% of the searches are already happening on Amazon»
— 08:52
«almost 70% of the results on a keyword is paid ads»
— 10:18
«it's becoming a pay to-win»
— 10:24
«your conversion will most likely two to threex your revenue, your profitability»
— 11:08
«Amazon just announced that you can go back up to 25 months»
— 11:37
«touch points and marketing is all about touch point»
— 13:26
«DSP is essentially all the advertising that also happen outside of Amazon.»
— 20:42
«if you're only using DSP to get the low hanging fruit from sponsor, you might as well do that with sponsor display»
— 23:00
«new to brand is really the way for you to measure success.»
— 23:36
«if your goal is actually profitability, I would say don't actually do DSP.»
— 29:31
«make sure Amazon marketing cloud is not one of those things that you set and forget.»
— 31:01
«Amazon marketing cloud is a data room.»
— 33:51
«98% of brands are not doing that and that's already going to be a way for you to overcome your competition»
— 34:31
«These are things that if you don't know, you don't know.»
— 37:17
«If you only use templates, you're going to be doing the bare minimum and that's really not going to unlock the potential.»
— 39:16
«It's not that you have to add more advertising spend or budget to your current PPC. It's just an extra layer that you add to your campaign.»
— 40:48
Reception
No comments are available to gauge audience reception.
This is a promotional interview/webinar in which an agency founder positions AMC and DSP as the necessary next step for Amazon sellers, blending genuine tactical detail (query-based audience building, geographic localization, the new-to-brand metric) with case studies and a closing pitch to book a consultation with his agency.
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