AMC Audiences Explained
With Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), you can craft custom audiences to identify different groups of shoppers to target with DSP (Demand-Side Platform) or Sponsored Display (SD) campaigns. Whether you want to identify New-To-Brand customers, delve into multi-touch attribution, or measure Time to Conversion metrics, AMC lets you create audiences with precision.
Picture this: As an advertiser, you aim to launch a campaign targeting first-time buyers or those who took their time before making a purchase. AMC queries enable the creation of audiences tailored to these specific criteria.
Intentwise simplifies the process by handling complex queries. The user-friendly interface streamlines the experience, requiring you only to input your requirements.
Audience Library in Intentwise Explore
The Audience Library gives you audience pools that you can create almost instantly. Examples of audiences in the library:
High customer value (for retargeting)
Low customer value (for exclusion)
Ad exposed shoppers who purchased during Prime day (for targeting repeat shoppers)
Organic and Ad exposed Shoppers who have viewed the reviews but did not purchase (for retargeting)
Shoppers who viewed product detail pages and not purchased (for retargeting)
Shoppers who searched for Sponsored Ads keywords but have not completed the purchase (for retargeting based on keyword interest)
Shoppers who added items to the cart and not purchased (for retargeting with purchase incentives)
Shoppers who are new to brand and not exposed to ads (for brand awareness campaigns)
Shoppers who purchased but did not opt for Subscribe & Save (for Subscribe & Save program promotion)
Shoppers who searched for Brand terms (for retargeting with brand-specific ads)
and more
Note: If you don't find an audience you're looking for in the Audience Library, you can request a custom audience by filling out the form.
Adding an Audience
After selecting an audience pool, you'll navigate to the audience settings page, where you can further refine your audience details. In this example, let's focus on selecting "High customer value" for retargeting.
You can include these additional details to target an existing audience pool. Next, let's examine the different inputs more closely.
Audience Settings Page
To execute queries using the Intentwise platform, input the following details in the Settings page:
Name: Displayed in your Amazon DSP Console when the audience is created.
Description: Optional field for additional context. This will also be displayed alongside the audience in your Amazon DSP Console.
Date Range: Start and end time for the AMC Audience query.
Audience Refresh Rate: Determines how often the SQL query is re-run.
Auto Adjust Date: Allows incremental adjustments to the date range based on the Audience Refresh Rate.
Advertisers: A drop-down menu listing the available Sponsored Ads and DSP advertiser accounts.
Input Parameters: You can set specific parameters for each audience, and they'll be used when the audience is created.
Some more context on Audience Refresh Rate and Auto Adjust Date:
Audience Refresh Rate
The value determines how frequently the SQL query that generates your audience is re-run. Once the re-run is complete, the existing Amazon DSP audience is wholly overwritten with new data. The default option is No Refresh, meaning the audience from the AMC query will not be re-run after the first creation. Such audiences will deactivate themselves in the Amazon DSP after 30 days.
We can re-run the audience once every day to every 21 days. Setting this option lets you keep the audience active in Amazon DSP and re-run the SQL query at a specified interval. For example, if set to 7, the SQL query will be re-run every seven days, and the audience in Amazon DSP will be updated with the new data.
Auto Adjust Date
This allows you to increment the date range of your Audience SQL query by the value specified in the Audience Refresh Rate.
If the Auto adjust date is set to:
Yes, when the SQL query is re-run as per the setting in Audience Refresh Rate, the query start and end time are incremented by the value specified in Audience Refresh Rate.
No, the query start and end time will not change. i.e., when the Audience SQL query is re-run, it will be continually re-run for the original date range.
For example, if you've added a date range of 30 days from June 1 with Auto Refresh set for every 14 days and auto adjust date set to Yes, the query will run from June 1 to June 30. The following query will run from June 15 to July 15.
Watch the Video
Frequently Asked Questions
What to expect once the Audience setting is created?
Once an Audience setting has been created, Intentwise will submit the Audience query to Amazon for execution. Upon submission, two things need to happen:
Execute the Audience SQL query
Once query execution is successful, an Audience for the exact needs to be created on DSP Advertiser linked to your AMC Instance.
These two steps can take a few hours to complete depending on the time range selected and how complex the query is.
The status on the My Audience page only reflects the status of Step 1. The Audience status would be marked as SUCCEEDED if the query was executed successfully. In case of issues, it will be marked as FAILURE.
Once the query execution is successful, you can search for the created Audience in your Amazon DSP Console. The audiences appear as line items in the DSP Console.
Navigate to the Audiences tab in your DSP console and filter for Custom Built and AMC. This filter should display all rule-based Audiences created via AMC.
Note: Some audiences are free, and Amazon charges for some (directly to your account). You'll see the details when you select the audience to target your DSP campaigns.
What is a paid dataset?
Some audiences may require paid datasets from Amazon to create an audience. Subscribing to Paid Features under Amazon Marketing Cloud provides additional insights and access to new datasets for more detailed analysis and targeting.
Paid Features in AMC are a set of three different subscription options available on a monthly basis. These features include:
Amazon Insights:
Amazon Flexible Shopping Insights: Tracks organic shopper events like purchases, adds to cart, and subscribe & save, providing insights into non-ad-attributed behaviors.
Amazon Audience Segment Insights: Helps understand shopper demographics and behaviors to enhance top-of-funnel campaigns, providing insights into categories like "Pet & Animal" products and demographic information like income and location.
Experian Vehicle Purchase Insights: Designed for automakers, this dataset connects Amazon DSP ads to actual vehicle purchases, allowing measurement of ad impact on vehicle sales
Foursquare Store Visit Insights: Connects digital ads to physical store traffic, helping brands with physical stores measure the impact of their Amazon ads on in-person visits.
Learn more: Paid Features in Amazon Marketing Cloud.
Why did my audience creation fail?
Here are some common reasons for audience creation failure:
An issue with Amazon Audience API
An issue with the Audience query
The query failed to meet a minimum size restriction of 2000 users (there's no way to find this out before running the query)
How long does it take for an audience to be created?
It can take up to 48 hours for the audience to be created & for the same to reflect in bid boosting or AMC audience targeting.