Concepts
Guide to Amazon Marketing Cloud: Process & Use Cases
Oct 21, 2024
by
Rakshita Soni
Learn how to get started with Amazon Marketing Cloud, covering its eligibility criteria, essential requirements, and practical use cases to help you enhance your retail or e-commerce brand
What is the Amazon Marketing Cloud?
Who is eligible to use Amazon Marketing Cloud in 2025?
What are the top 4 essentials to use Amazon Marketing Cloud?
How to register with Amazon Marketing Cloud?
How does AMC differ from Regular Amazon ads Insights & Reports?
What are the top 5 use-cases of Amazon Marketing Cloud, along with examples?
FAQs
Imagine you own an online store that sells organic skincare. You’ve got a limited budget from which you’re investing in Amazon ads, running Sponsored Products Ads, creating eye-catching Sponsored Brand ads, and even engaging video ads.
Despite all this effort, you’re still unsure which ads are truly driving sales and which are draining your budget. You wonder how customers are interacting with your ads. Are they clicking on a Sponsored Product ad and buying immediately? Or are they seeing a video ad, then a display ad, and purchasing days later?
Analyzing customer interactions can be challenging, especially when traditional reporting tools only provide a limited view. This is where Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) comes into play. AMC is a powerful custom analytics tool that can transform how you analyze and improve your marketing efforts on Amazon.
In this guide, we’ll dive in deep about what Amazon Marketing Cloud is, how it works, and how you can utilize its capabilities to achieve the best results for your retail or e-commerce brand.
What is Amazon Marketing Cloud?
Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) is a secure, cloud-based analytics platform. It is a database that allows advertisers to perform analytics across various channels. Using AMC, you can track individual customer actions and leverage the information to optimize your advertising strategies, improve campaign performance, and achieve your brand advertising goals.
Before the introduction of advanced analytics tools like Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), Amazon advertisers faced significant challenges in understanding the full impact of their marketing efforts.
While they had access to basic “aggregated” campaign metrics like clicks, impressions, and individual ad campaign conversions, they lacked a holistic view of how different ads worked together to influence customer buying behavior. This made identifying ad opportunities at the customer cohort level (vs. keyword level) difficult.
But with AMC, advertisers get a cloud-based clean room database to perform analytics efficiently instead of a limited set of pre-built, aggregated reports.
Let us understand the difference in a detailed way:
Today, Amazon gives you aggregated reports on the keyword level. This means that if 1000 customers clicked on your ad after seeing that keyword, Amazon aggregates data from all those 1000 customers and shows you 1 line item of that keyword’s performance.
Amazon now lets you query a database where every customer interaction is a line item. Here are a few examples:
Path to Purchase: You can use the database to find how many times your customer interacts with different ads before purchasing a product. For instance, Customer X first saw your Sponsored Product ad, then the Sponsored Display ad, followed by the Sponsored Brand video ad (two times) before buying your product.
Frequency Cap: You can use AMC to find how many ad exposures are required to convince a customer to buy your product. If a customer converts after a frequency of 10, then you need to show more ads to the same customer before they can convert. But if the customer converts at an average frequency of 2, that means you can remove excess ad spend on showing ads to the same customer.
Keyword-ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) relationship: You can use the database to find which keyword helps you sell which ASIN most effectively. For example, if you sell 5 types of face cleansers. With AMC data, you can find which keywords lead to sales of which ASINs. You can also find which ASINs are better for new customer acquisition and which are suitable for repeat purchases.
Who Is Eligible to Use Amazon Marketing Cloud in 2025?
The Amazon Marketing Cloud is now more accessible than ever. Initially, only advertisers with Amazon DSP (Demand-Side Platform) accounts or advertisers running Amazon DSP campaigns could use Amazon Marketing Cloud.
But recently, at UnBoxed2024, it was announced that all Amazon DSP direct advertisers (i.e., advertisers running sponsored ads like Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands) and all partners registered with Amazon Ads Partner Network advertisers with or without Amazon DSP ads usage are now eligible to have Amazon Marketing Cloud accounts.
So, what does this mean?
No DSP Account Needed: You no longer need a DSP account. This opens up AMC to a broader range of advertisers, including small and medium-sized businesses.
ALL advertisers have access: Whether you’re advertising with Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands, you can now access AMC to gain valuable insights into your Amazon ad campaigns.
Here’s an example:
Suppose your organic skincare store is running Sponsored Products ads. Before, you couldn’t use AMC without a DSP account. Now, you can access AMC with minimum requirements to see how your sponsored ads contribute to sales and how they interact with other marketing efforts.
What are the top 4 essentials to use Amazon Marketing Cloud?
AMC is designed for advertisers who have:
Minimum Budget: The minimum annual advertising budget you require to use AMC is $5000/year.
Compliance with Data Policies: Ensure adherence to Amazon’s data protection and usage policies and comply with all relevant privacy regulations in the 17 global marketplaces where AMC is available.
Other good-to-have requirements are:
AWS Account Access: If you want to create your own AMC dashboard, you need an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account.
Familiarity with SQL: Although you can use Amazon’s pre-built queries to analyze usual use cases, to query an advanced set of data, you will need proficiency in SQL.
How to register with Amazon Marketing Cloud?
Verify your eligibility with all the above essentials. If you check all the boxes, then fill out the form available on the Amazon Advertising portal.
How does AMC differ from regular Amazon Ads Insights & Reports?
Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) is like a powerful database where you can run custom queries to explore your advertising data and consumer behaviors in depth. In contrast, Amazon Ads Insights and Reports provide standard reports with predefined metrics and summaries like impressions, clicks, and sales for each campaign. These metrics are useful but don’t show you how different campaigns and channels work together.
Here’s how AMC stands out:
A Complete View: AMC lets you see the entire customer journey by combining data from different campaigns and channels. This helps you understand how various ads work together to drive sales.
Custom Analysis: With AMC, you can ask specific questions by running queries tailored to your needs. This flexibility allows you to dig deeper into your data.
Deeper Customer Insights: AMC provides detailed, anonymized data that you can analyze to uncover patterns and trends that standard reports might miss.
Example
Imagine you want to know how many times a customer needs to see your ads before purchasing from your organic skincare store. With regular reports, you might see that your Sponsored Products ad generated 100 sales, but you don’t know how many ad impressions it took to achieve that.
Using AMC, you can run a query to find out that most customers purchased after seeing your ads three times. This insight helps you optimize your ad frequency to improve sales without overspending.
What are the top 5 use cases of Amazon Marketing Cloud with examples?
Cross-channel attribution modeling
Understand how different marketing channels work together, leading customers to purchase your products. This helps you see the full path a customer takes, from the first ad they see to the final sale.
Example: You discover that customers who see your ads on social media and Amazon are more likely to buy, so you coordinate your campaigns across these channels.
New-to-brand customer analysis
Identify customers who are purchasing from your brand for the first time. This helps you tailor your marketing strategies to attract more new customers.
Example: You find that many new customers respond well to your sponsored brand ads, so you focus more on this ad type to grow your customer base.
Purchase latency and frequency analysis
Analyze how long it takes for customers to make a purchase after seeing your ads and how often they buy. This helps you optimize the timing and frequency of your marketing and advertising efforts.
Example: You learn that most customers purchase within seven days of seeing your ad, so you adjust your campaigns to retarget customers within that time frame.
Competitive share of voice analysis
Measure how much visibility your brand has compared to competitors. This helps you understand your position in the market and make adjustments to improve your presence.
Example: You notice that your share of voice is lower than a key competitor’s, so you increase your ad spend or optimize keywords to improve visibility.
Customer lifetime value calculation
Determine the total value a customer brings to your business over time. This helps you make informed decisions about how much to invest in acquiring and retaining potential customers.
Example: If you calculate that customers acquired through Sponsored Brands ads tend to spend more over time, you invest more in that ad type to maximize long-term profits.
Conclusion
Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) is a powerful tool that shifts your advertising strategy from campaign-focused insights to a customer-centric approach. With real-time analytics on path to purchase, time to purchase, and ASIN search terms, AMC helps you understand shopper behavior and optimize your marketing efforts.
By leveraging atom11’s AMC suite, you gain single-click access to essential reports without the need for SQL queries. This enables data-driven audience segmentation, granular personalization, and high campaign efficiency.
About atom11
atom11 is an Amazon advertising platform designed to help brands automate, optimize, and scale their ad campaigns. With rule-based automation, retail-aware insights, and advanced analytics, our solution ensures every ad dollar you spend on Amazon is driving sales and revenue.
If you want to know how we can help you succeed on Amazon, book a 1:1 demo with our team, and we would be happy to help.
FAQs
What is Amazon Marketing Cloud used for?
Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) is a secure, cloud-based clean room solution where advertisers can perform analytics and structure custom queries to explore different metrics/ measurement questions.
How much does Amazon Marketing Cloud cost?
Amazon Marketing Cloud is free for eligible advertisers. This means that if you advertise with Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands, you can access AMC to gain deeper insights into your campaigns.
When was Amazon Marketing Cloud launched?
Amazon Marketing Cloud was launched in 2021 as a versatile and advanced analytics tool that offers a holistic view of ad metrics and provides deeper insights into ad campaign performances.
What are the benefits of Amazon Marketing Cloud AMC?
Amazon Marketing Cloud helps businesses measure and manage marketing campaigns. It enables you to create custom audience segments, track customer behavior, gain audience insights, measure campaign performance, make informed decisions about strategies, and optimize ads to boost conversion rates.
AMC Platforms like atom11 make it easy by giving you tools to apply advanced analytics for smarter ad targeting. With a 360-degree view of customer journey, you can pinpoint the most effective touchpoint, create targeted audience segments, and engage shoppers with tailored ads.
Is Amazon Marketing Cloud only for large advertisers?
No, AMC is now available to advertisers of all sizes, including small and medium-sized businesses, as long as they meet the minimum annual ad spend requirement of $5,000/year. Even smaller businesses can benefit from AMC’s powerful insights to optimize their campaigns.
How does AMC protect customer privacy?
Amazon Marketing Cloud operates as a “clean room,” which means that while you can track customer actions and interactions with your ads, all personal identifiable information (PII) is anonymized. This ensures data privacy while allowing you to analyse customer behaviour.
