Amazon Marketing Stream: Enabling Effective Campaign Optimization

Amazon is not just an online marketplace. It has grown to become an advertising powerhouse.

Just last year, the company’s ad business grew 58%, crossing $31 billion in revenue.

This indicates businesses trust Amazon’s advertising capabilities and believe in its potential.

And to ensure it stays that way, Amazon continues to introduce innovations in its advertising vertical. The company keeps pulse on what its sellers and partners struggle with and develops products that help solve their problems.

Data-driven marketing is the top priority of modern marketers. 2/3 of marketers say data-based decision-making is better than going with the gut (we agree!)

While Amazon bursts with lots of first-party data, advertisers have to pull this data themselves to check out their Sponsored Product ad performance and drive campaign optimization. This not only adds friction to the process but delays optimization as well.

Amazon has attempted to solve this problem by launching Amazon Marketing Stream, a solution built to tackle the problems associated with pull-based data APIs.

https://advertising.amazon.com/solutions/products/amazon-marketing-stream

Understanding Amazon Marketing Stream

Amazon Marketing Stream is a push-based messaging system, essentially a data stream, that provides insights on campaign performance metrics and information on campaign changes in near real-time with its hourly supply of data.

First launched in June 2022 in beta, Amazon made Amazon Marketing Stream available for a broader user base only recently.

As powerful as Amazon Marketing Stream is right now, it is still under construction. Amazon says it will increase the data sets available on Amazon Marketing Stream in the coming months, which might increase the product’s functionality.

Benefits of Amazon Marketing Stream for Advertisers

Amazon Marketing Stream’s hourly supply of data offers immense value to advertisers looking for effective campaign optimization and a more streamlined optimization process.

Here are three top benefits that stem from Amazon Marketing Stream’s key feature, i.e. its near real time data stream:

Intraday Optimization and Dayparting

Amazon Marketing Stream supplies accurate campaign performance data on an hourly basis, allowing advertisers the opportunity to make intra-day optimizations.

Previously, if advertisers wished for intra-day optimization, they had to call API several times a day. Amazon Marketing Stream eliminates the need for that by streaming data every hour, enabling advertisers to make quick changes as per the campaign metrics.

Using Amazon Marketing Stream, you can track changes in CPC, ACOS, and conversions throughout the day.

Having such granular insights into your campaign metrics gives you the ability to act quickly and make intra-day optimizations with hourly data streams.

Amazon Marketing Stream also enables Amazon advertisers to implement dayparting with their Sponsored Product campaigns.

Most brands have peak hours and days. Using the hourly data from Amazon Marketing Stream, you can figure out the time slots and days you get the highest conversions on and bid more aggressively during that time.

This lets brands know when their shoppers are most active and reach them with their ads right then. And when ads get to the right people, at the right time, and of course, with the right message, they are sure to have a more significant impact.

Prompt Response to Campaign Changes

Near real-time data, along with push-based messages notifying the advertisers of changes in campaign variables and metrics, allow them to act quickly.

The news that the campaign stopped running because the budget maxed out during peak hours is not something advertisers look forward to.

You want to make sure your ads are served at a time when most of your prospects are out, ready to shop from your category.

Amazon Marketing Stream will inform the users when the budget is running out. This will alert them and allow them to increase the campaign budget if the advertisers wish to keep the campaign running.

And that’s just one use case of Amazon Marketing Stream’s near real-time push-based notification. As Amazon says, its partners and advertisers are creative and put their products to imaginative uses. So, as Amazon Marketing Stream matures, we will see more innovative use cases of its powerful features come up.

Better Operational Efficiency

Amazon Marketing Stream brings hourly insights, helping you enjoy far greater granularity with your campaign performance data without you having to make API requests multiple times in a day.

Not just that, but Amazon Marketing Stream pushes delta values instead of aggregates to help you easily identify the changes in your KPIs. Instead of comparing the bulk of data from previous days together, you can have granular insights and find out the change in campaign performance metrics on an hourly basis so that you can drive better campaign optimization.

On top of all that, the data on Amazon Marketing Stream is easily accessible natively through your AWS account.

All of this eliminates the friction in the data analyses and campaign optimization process and enhances operational efficiency.

When advertisers have fewer (or zero) API calls to make for their Sponsored Product campaigns, don’t have to find differences in aggregated data, and get all the insights they need through a single source, they have more resources to build and drive more impactful advertising campaigns.

To Sum It Up

Amazon Marketing Stream allows users greater data granularity with near real-time hourly updates on KPIs. The product also gives advertisers greater control over their campaigns with real-time push messages notifying them about campaign changes.

The product is available to all agencies, tool providers, and direct advertisers who use Amazon APIs anywhere in the world (except India). Amazon Marketing Stream itself is free of cost, but the volume of data it supplies may increase your costs associated with using AWS. You can subscribe for it through your AWS account.

But Amazon Marketing Stream is still under development, and we can expect Amazon to add more functionalities and data sets in the near future.

If you still haven’t integrated Amazon Marketing Stream with your Amazon Ads API, now is the time. Be among the first advertisers to leverage this powerful Amazon tool, get a grip on Amazon Marketing Stream, and gain an edge over others in terms of data analytics and campaign optimization.

At Accrue, we help our customers with the latest Amazon products, enabling them to stay ahead of the Amazon curve.

Ready to leverage the powers of Amazon Marketing Stream? Let’s discuss your options.