Amazon Marketing Cloud: An Introduction to Amazon’s Powerful Cleanroom
We have entered an era of privacy-first data management solutions. Gartner estimates that around 80% of advertisers with a substantial marketing budget would be investing in data clean rooms this year.
In the wake of their rising popularity, Amazon launched its own data management solution called the Amazon Marketing Cloud in beta in 2019. Today AMC is available as a strong advertisement measurement solution that is capable of doing what couldn’t be done before.
However, as powerful as it is, AMC is still largely under-adopted. One of the reasons for this could be the mystery that surrounds Amazon’s data analytics and management solution.
In this blog, we’ll disperse some of these clouds of mystery and make sure by the end of it you know what AMC is and how it can help you as an advertiser.
What is Amazon Marketing Cloud?
Amazon Marketing Cloud is a privacy-first, secure, cloud-based analytics and measurement solution.
In plain English, AMC is a cloud-based platform that collects data from various sources and brings them as aggregates to the advertisers when they ask for it.
Using AMC, you can retrieve sponsored ad data, DSP data, and with Amazon’s latest announcement, sponsored brand ad signals as well. It also lets you upload your own data for customized analytics and reporting.
AMC gives you a detailed insight into all kinds of ad-related events and enables you to attribute these events to various factors like device type, geography, demography, and more.
This event-level data is available for advertisers to access across multiple data sets.
What makes AMC so good is that it doesn’t just spew out all the data. It collects and presents it in a very cohesive, stitched-together manner. This helps advertisers answer some of the most difficult analytics and measurement questions, like how upper-funnel ads affect the performance of lower-funnel ads. Something that has historically been impossible.
AMC, with its data collection, aggregation, and presentation powers, helps advertisers tie ad performance to revenue and get increasingly granular in identifying the efforts that yield the best results.
How Does AMC Work?
AMC is built on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and has many (some say unlimited) use cases. We’ll discuss some ways AMC can benefit advertisers a little further down. Before that, let’s talk about how AMC works.
Amazon tracks every impression and clicks down to the individual user level within AMC. You can use the platform to get aggregates of this data to view a complete picture of the customer behavior without invading anyone’s privacy.
All the aggregations that AMC returns contain performance and behavior data from at least one hundred user IDs. This is ensures the accuracy of data-based findings and user privacy.
AMC lets you find data according to whatever pattern you want. Did the sponsored product ad come first or the sponsored brand ad in the customers’ path toward conversion?
The platform’s user interface comprises a query editor. You can type in custom queries to get data-driven answers to whatever questions you have concerning your advertising campaign performance.
AMC also has more than 50 sample queries that you can use to get the right data back.
How AMC Helps the Modern Advertiser?
The spray and pray modalities have long been phased out of advertising. Modern advertisers are now increasingly reliant on accurate data. In this situation, a platform like AMC is a dream advertisers long had but never really thought would realize.
Here are only a few of the many ways proper use of AMC can benefit advertisers today:
Media Mix Analysis
You probably use a bunch of advertising products in your campaigns. And just like every other advertiser, you want to know how each of these products impacts your business’s bottom line, right? Of course. More importantly, you would like to find out what mix works best as the shopper goes from awareness to consideration and conversion.
AMC makes all of this possible.
What’s the purchase rate of customers who come across a Streaming TV ad just once? What’s the purchase rate for customers who come across a Streaming TV ad once followed by a Sponsored Product ad?
AMC answers these questions for you, so you know exactly what media mix works best for your target audience. This helps optimize your ad buying for maximized ROAS.
A CPG brand collaborated with Amazon Ads data science team to leverage AMC for their business. Through AMC data, they found that the audience exposed to both Display and streaming TV ads were twice as likely to make a purchase than those exposed to only one ad type.
Such granularity helps you efficiently credit different touchpoints to understand the contribution of different media types and campaigns.
Granular Audience Insights
Besides telling you what media mix works best, AMC can also help you identify the characteristics of ad-exposed audiences and the attributes of those who engage with your brand. This allows you to tie audience behavior to your advertising efforts and find out what works for which type of cohort.
Custom Analysis
Since AMC contains the word Amazon in its name, many business stakeholders believe it is only useful for their Amazon ad campaigns.
However, this is a huge misconception.
While AMC does have datasets from Amazon ad campaigns, it also allows advertisers to upload their own data into the platform. This means, you can mix and match your Amazon ad performance data with data from other platforms to gain holistic insights across your advertising efforts.
Optimizes Ad Spend and Gives You an Edge
Taking the guesswork out of the advertising equation can lead to increased revenues.
When you know exactly what media mix to deploy to drive conversions, you can run campaigns focused on driving sales and pushing your bottom line.
AMC gives you these insights, and that’s how it helps brands optimize their ad spend.
The most exciting part is this powerful platform is available at no additional cost to eligible advertisers.
Moreover, since AMC is still largely under-adopted due to its inherent complexity, any brand that chooses to overcome its fear of AMC and dive in can have that first-mover advantage.
This can help them gain an edge over their competitors, who might still be dealing with the last-touch attribution model, not knowing how to accredit the ad that came before the last ad before conversion.
How Is AMC Different from Amazon Attribution?
Amazon attribution helps advertisers determine the on-Amazon impact of their off-Amazon campaigns, while AMC helps advertisers get detailed insight into the impact of their Amazon ad campaigns and be more specific with their attribution.
Who Can Use AMC?
Amazon Marketing Cloud is available to advertisers who have Amazon DSP MSA (Master Service Agreement), planned campaigns, or live campaigns in the last 4 weeks at Amazon DSP. Advertisers also need a technical resource familiar with SQL since the queries are written in SQL.
Conclusion
AMC is a worthwhile investment for brands that have a substantial number of users interacting with their ads and want to understand how their ads influence the buyer’s journey and impact sales.
The possibilities are endless with custom queries. You can get AMC to answer some of your most difficult analytics questions and gain insights into areas you never thought were accessible. All of this while ensuring complete user privacy. In a post-cookie world, this is no less than a dream.
Interested in adopting AMC for your business? Our team will help you identify whether it is the right choice for you.