Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) – What’s behind the service?

What is the Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC)?

Amazon’s own definition of AMC is somewhat unwieldy: “Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) is a secure, protected and cloud-based clean room solution that allows advertisers to easily perform analytics for pseudonymised signals – including Amazon Ads events and their own inputs.”

In fact, the AMC is a service that brings together information from Amazon Sponsored Advertising (SPA) and Amazon Demand Side Platform (Amazon DSP). 

This data can be supplemented by non-Amazon sources, for example with data records from the company’s own web shops, social media marketing, or Google marketing. This gives advertisers the opportunity to track the path of the buyer across numerous ad types and platforms. The retrieval of this merged data is done via SQL queries, which can be made either directly in the AMC interface or via a separate API connection, as an ad hoc query.

As a result, advertisers receive a .CSV file, which must then be processed further. Unlike other Amazon interfaces and exports, AMC does not yet offer any visual processing, additional information, standard columns, or an overview of current KPIs.

What are the advantages of using the AMC?

The possibilities of obtaining data, data connections, and information from the AMC are very extensive, especially given the option to connect external data sources. For an account that only accesses Amazon data, all KPIs that are available are also contained in the respective ad consoles. This data is supplemented by comprehensive information on all ad types, ASINs, campaigns, location data, or information on the devices used. AMC thus maps far more data and detailed information than can be extracted from the classic consoles. This also opens up more far-reaching options for in-depth analyses and optimisations. 

This information is only limited by so-called aggregation thresholds – or the minimum requirements for the volume of data per data record that must be met in order to comply with Amazon’s privacy regulations. In addition, Amazon provides a variety of instructional queries that explain the possibilities of different analyses and provide ready-made queries that can be used immediately or after minor adjustments.

Another new feature is the possibility to create DSP audiences. While in the beginning there was only a possibility to retrieve data, Amazon is now expanding the focus of the tool to be more applied. Here, target groups can be created for the Amazon DSP platform either via prefabricated, customised, or self-created queries. It is also possible for these queries to be updated automatically, thus keeping the DSP target groups always up-to-date and effective. 

For the first time, the possibilities for DSP targeting now also extend to data originating from more traditional sponsored advertising and thus expand the link that the AMC forms between DSP and SPA.

How can the AMC data be used?

The usefulness of the AMC depends very much on individual requirements and the data which is connected. Since AMC can be used to read out advertising performance in a very granular way, advertisers can decide, for example, to adjust budgets and CPCs throughout the day based on historical performance. This makes it possible to offer more money for a click at times of day when purchase rates are highest on average, and therefore increase the efficiency of the advertising spend.

What are the requirements for AMC?

For an AMC connection, advertisers require their own AMC console (entity). For a long time, this was only made available by Amazon to larger brands or agencies; however, as demand grows, Amazon seems to be gradually lowering the entry barriers. Accounts can be connected in individual instances. For agencies, this can be the individual customers, large companies can have accounts created here for the respective countries in which they are active. 

To be able to create an account, Amazon usually requires active or planned advertising activities in both Sponsored Advertising and in DSP. Agencies must also provide written proof that the advertisers’ accounts have permission to be integrated into the agency entity.

Overall, the AMC options are immense. Whether a query is best prescribed by Amazon or directly tailored to one’s own needs will of course vary on a case-by-case basis.