As a business owner, you may already invest considerable resources in Amazon advertising — and we won’t be surprised if the outcomes vary. Historically, it has been notoriously difficult to figure out what goes on behind the scenes of Amazon sales or track customer journeys through this massive commercial ecosystem.
With the launch of Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) in 2019, Amazon gave advertisers access to a new dimension of customer data. So, what is Amazon Marketing Cloud, how can advertisers use it, and what does it mean for your brand?
Amazon Marketing Cloud: What Is It?
AMC is a cloud-based platform that lets advertisers easily perform analytics and generate aggregated reports based on user data, including their own (e.g., from search data or CRMs). Amazon Marketing Cloud is a dynamic platform constantly evolving and adding new features.
Amazon Marketing Cloud can help you map out customer journeys on Amazon rather than just the final touchpoint of a user clicking on an ad and purchasing a product. Using AMC correctly can make ad campaigns and Amazon Ads management a lot more effective.
What About Customer Privacy?
Amazon Marketing Cloud is a completely anonymous “clean room” platform and never shares sensitive data that would enable advertisers to identify specific customers. In other words, you can track an individual shopper’s behavior without accessing personal details that would reveal their identity. Thus, AMC doesn’t violate user privacy and is fully legitimate.
Why AMC Insights Matter
How exactly does Amazon Marketing Cloud work? Let’s give an example.
Samantha loves to buy vitamins and food supplements on Amazon. An Amazon seller’s ad for a food supplement catches her eye while she browses social media. Samantha clicks on the ad but doesn’t buy since she’s unfamiliar with the brand.
A couple of days later, Samantha runs into a different ad for the same product, browses around for more details about the supplement and seller, and thinks she might want to try the product at some future time. Then, she gets distracted and forgets about it. Finally, when Samantha is on Amazon a week later, she sees a Sponsored Products ad for this supplement, adds it to her cart, and buys it.
So, which ad won Samantha as a buyer? In the past, Amazon attribution would have favored the last Sponsored Products ad, but all three ads made up a sales funnel that led her to purchase — and that’s what you can view with AMC.
Amazon Marketing Cloud allows the advertiser to observe a full customer journey (pseudonymized) with all its touchpoints. This provides valuable custom attribution insights for the entire ad campaign, not just the final ad that clinched the deal.
Important Amazon Marketing Cloud Metrics
As we dive deeper into the question, “What is Amazon Marketing Cloud?” let’s look into some of the key metrics this platform provides. Apart from conventional insights like impressions, ad clicks, and other conversion parameters, AMC offers a few unique and valuable metrics:
- New to Engage (NTE): This metric tracks users’ first-time engagement with your brand, regardless of whether or not they make a purchase.
- New to Brand (NTB): NTB spots users who have made a first-time purchase from your brand within the past 12 months.
- Multitouch Return on Ad Spend (MT-ROAS): MT-ROAS evaluates the relative contribution of all touchpoints in the customer’s journey.
- Lifetime Value (LTV): LTV gauges the value of an individual customer to your brand throughout their engagement period.
AMC insights are far more holistic, comprehensive, and cohesive than standard ad campaign metrics. Isolated data like ad impressions and clicks only give you a few pieces of the customer journey puzzle, while AMC allows you to see the whole picture.
How Brands Can Use Amazon Marketing Cloud
Amazon Marketing Cloud provides answers to questions like: What does the typical buyer journey look like for my customers? What points in my campaign are crucial in nudging them toward a purchase? How can I reinforce these points?
Your brand can use AMC insights to:
- Evaluate attribution. With AMC data, you can determine the relative roles of advertising channels, including off-Amazon ads that drive customers to your Amazon store.
- Target the right market. AMC allows you to see which audiences and customer groups generate the highest value for your business so that you can focus on these audiences.
- Improve your products. AMC insights can help you fine-tune your products based on shopping behaviors and give your brand a competitive edge.
- Boost revenue. Armed with the right data, you can optimize your ad campaigns to improve customer experience and win more buyers.
Who Can Use AMC?
Amazon Marketing Cloud provides its services at no cost (with some premium-tier paid options) to qualifying advertisers with an executed Amazon DSP Master Service Agreement. The advertiser must also have run a campaign within the past 28 days or have a current planned campaign. Each advertiser will use AMC in their private “clean room” environment.
How You Can Leverage AMC for Success on Amazon
Amazon Marketing Cloud is an extremely valuable tool that can give you an insider’s peek into user behavior. You can see how shoppers respond to your ads and which parts of your sales funnel could use some adjustments.
Using Amazon Marketing Cloud requires a certain level of expertise and technical skills, like knowing SQL, to extract insights. Moreover, AMC constantly evolves, and only advertisers with a deep focus on Amazon can keep up with all its data trends.
As a brand, your best bet is to work with a competent digital marketing agency with the requisite experience in Amazon advertising. Then you can profit from AMC aggregated reports and clear, actionable insights.
Thrive on Amazon With Click Fluency
Now that you have an answer to “What is Amazon Marketing Cloud?” it’s time to take action. At Click Fluency, we help brands like yours succeed on Amazon. Level up your Amazon game with our precise Amazon keyword match types, skillful use of AMC data, and high-powered ad campaigns.
Schedule a call today and start thriving on Amazon.