Amazon is, hands down, one of the fastest-growing companies at present. From online retailing to online music, TV streaming, and artificial intelligence- they have got it all covered. Its recent development has been in the world of cloud computing and marketing through the Amazon Marketing Cloud.
This development was seen in Amazon’s share of the digital ad market last year. It hit 10% for the first time and is expected to reach 15% by the end of 2023. The growth of Amazon is surpassing that of Google and Facebook’s at this rate. And of course, all this is due to its continuous release of new features like the Amazon Marketing Cloud.
The most recent version launched in 2021 and offers a set of tools to perform in-depth analyses of campaign and audience data. This improves the campaigns of the advertisers for selling on Amazon or sellers who want to use Amazon advertising as their promotional strategy.
This new advertising tool offers a lot of opportunities for marketers who know how to use it right. So let’s dive right into the basics of the Amazon Marketing Cloud to understand how it works and how it can help your business grow.
What is the Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC)?
The Amazon Marketing Cloud is a cloud-based analytics tool known for its privacy-first focus. It is a suitable tool for all advertisers with its custom-reporting opportunities. This cloud storage can be used to analyze datasets from Amazon advertising and their own internal data sources as well.
In short, the Amazon Marketing Cloud is a cloud space for storing and analyzing data from the advertisers themselves and from the marketing campaigns carried out with the help of Amazon marketing. By keeping track of the marketing campaigns, this marketing tool helps to paint a picture of audience actions, intentions and tendencies.
Top reporting abilities of Amazon Marketing Cloud
These are some of the basic types of data that Amazon Marketing Cloud can report on-
- Impressions– This is a metric to quantify the total number of times an advertisement has been visible on a web-enabled device.
- Engagement– The metric to quantify the number of times users have clicked on a piece of content.
- Conversions-The number of times a visitor to a website has fulfilled the desired goal set by the advertisers by either clicking on a tab or making a purchase.
- Revenue– The money that is generated as a direct result of the marketing campaign.
- Custom Reporting– AMC can provide customized reports on whatever is currently available on Amazon Demand Side Platform.
- Custom Attribution Analysis– This tool measures how different media channels influence audience discovery, purchase behavior, and research.
These reports are the KPIs or the key performance indicators for any marketing campaign. This suggests which part of the campaign is a success and which requires improvement. These targeted adjustments ensure the success of the entire marketing campaign by fulfilling its goals or simply by increasing sales.
How does the Amazon Marketing Cloud work?
The Amazon Marketing Cloud works with cloud instances containing data from one advertiser at a particular time. As soon as an instance is created, the advertising data of the past 28 days gets stored in it. Only the data from the 28 days can be queried on the day the instance is created.
In the case of Amazon Demand Side Platform, one or more Advertiser IDs or Entity IDs can represent an advertiser within the Advertising Console for Sponsored Ads. These multi ID advertisers generally represent the different units of a business or brand. From then on, the data of the next 12.5 months will get stored in your instance. However, you cannot create these instances by yourself. The AMC team has to do it. To create them, they have to make a request for them. Once the requests have been accepted, it takes 3-5 business days for an instance to be created.
Each Amazon Marketing Cloud account uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) for data storage. To ensure customer data privacy, all AMC data needs to have a minimum of 100 unique users.
Benefits of using the Amazon Marketing Cloud
These are some of the major benefits you can reap from the Amazon Marketing Cloud as an advertiser-
Alternative Cross-Channel Reporting–
The Amazon Marketing Cloud bids farewell to the use of third-party cookies for good. This alternative way of implementing cross-channel reporting prioritizes privacy so that the users can have a safe and user-friendly experience.
Time-Saving Method–
A skilled developer can set up the Amazon Marketing Cloud in no time. Advertisers have always faced the peril of managing time and resources for conducting the analytics on their ads. But thanks to AMC, their advanced cross-channel attribution and audience identification make that possible in a short time. And the best part is that it is entirely free to use.
Freedom to Choose–
The advertisers on AMC have the freedom to use their own programming language called the SQL ( Structured Query Language). They use this programming language to extract relevant data. This enables advertisers to focus on the data that is most aligned to their research.
Provides Control–
The users have total control to customize the datasets available to them. The analytics reports are adjustable according to the needs of the advertiser. It makes it easier for them to filter out the data relevant to them at that particular time.
Provides a Clear Picture–
AMC helps to get a clear overview about what is working and what is not. Through the analytics reports, the marketers can see how the customers are engaging with a piece of marketing content and compare its performance across various channels as well.
Maximization of Investment–
The different reporting abilities of AMC help the advertisers to better understand their target audience and the way they use different platforms. This helps them to direct their campaigns more appropriately to achieve goals that will reap more benefits. This type of advertisement, based on audience actions, is likely to generate more revenue.
Boost Conversions–
Amazon Marketing Cloud helps to increase revenue and can persuade audiences to complete forms. By doing so it is boosting the overall conversion, making the advertising campaign a success. It also makes it a point to indicate the part of the campaign requiring optimization. These targeted improvements also help to increase the chances of the campaign reaching its goals.
Combining Media Channels–
The Amazon Marketing Cloud can also be used to find the audience’s preferred channels out. Not only this shows the preferred channels of the audience, but also displays the number of times they use them and the kind of actions they take on each platform. This information enables the advertiser to combine the best performing channels to achieve maximum results through maximum reach.
Who is eligible for the Amazon Marketing Cloud?
Although the Amazon Marketing Cloud provides multifaceted benefits for advertisers, not everyone can access it. Advertisers and advertising agencies actively using the Amazon Demand Side Platform are the only eligible users of the AMC. Let’s sum up the eligibility requirements through the following points-
- Users have to be actively using Amazon Demand Side Platform (DSP).
- Users must have planned or run a campaign in the past 28 days.
- Users need to have an executed Amazon DSP Master Service Agreement.
- To access the Amazon Marketing Cloud self-service platform, users need to have team members familiar with SQL programming language.
- Users wishing to take advantage of the Amazon Marketing Cloud API need to have an Amazon Web Services account too.
Users fulfilling the aforementioned criteria will be able to actively use AMC however they desire to.
How safe is the Amazon Marketing Cloud?
The standards of privacy are high on the Amazon Marketing Cloud. This privacy-first focus is maintained in order to protect the customers from having their privacy invaded through data exportation by AMC users.
The programming ensures that advertisers cannot access event-level data directly from Amazon Advertising. AMC can only perform aggregated analysis of the data to protect the consumer from privacy violations. Individual user data can never be accessible to marketers on the AMC.
Moreover, each aggregation must have at least 100 unique users. This ensures meaningful reports for the advertisers and also enables additional protection in regard to the privacy of the consumers.
Tips for using the Amazon Marketing Cloud as a brand
The Amazon Marketing Cloud comes with its benefits. It can provide impactful campaign insights, media buying recommendations, correct channel attribution and a comprehensive cross-channel customer service. But this can only happen when it is being used correctly. However, these benefits are not accessible to everyone. The reason lies in the way they use this tool. There are certain ways brands can use the AMC to get the results they want-
Understanding one’s own Amazon business goals
As an advertiser, it is imperative to understand one’s own Amazon business goals. With a target in mind, the AMC can be used more productively. On the basis of the goals that are to be achieved, the user can simply collect the data that need to be measured. This way, in a shorter amount of time, you are improving your marketing campaign according to your targets instead of spending huge resources on the overall improvement.
Using the Amazon Marketing Cloud across departments
Since the AMC is a tool suitable for both marketing and analytics, both the marketing team and the analytics team can equally reap benefits from it. These two teams can work together to perform the tasks they do on a regular basis. Therefore, it is highly important for these two teams to work harmoniously with each other.
Remaining Agile
It is crucial to use the Amazon Marketing Cloud with agility. The teams need to work faster in small consumable increments. Since the entire advertising process is an iterative process, it requires fast delivery of values to the customers.
Taking up time to set up the Amazon Marketing Cloud properly
The AMC tool requires proper setup for it to work thoroughly. The results will not be delivered within a day. A professional has to help build and execute the queries in order for it to become a desirable experience.
Is the Amazon Marketing Cloud worth it?
The Amazon Marketing Cloud is a functional advertising tool for agencies and advertisers looking for more in-depth insights into their contents and actionable reporting across channels without having to raise any privacy concerns for the customers. The most salient feature of the AMC is that it prioritizes customer privacy over anything else. It is designed to provide insights across different ad platforms by keeping the privacy of the consumers intact. Consequently, this is what makes it more user-friendly in the long run with all the changes being made to the policies on Amazon. And this is exactly why the it is worth a try for any advertiser willing to use a reliable marketing tool for branding.
Conclusion
The Amazon Marketing Cloud can provide a holistic overview across all channels. It can add flexibility to the comprehension of marketing strategies. Its carefully curated reports can help advertisers to understand how to engage with the audience in a more effective manner. So in the newly forming cookie-less world, the Amazon Marketing Cloud proves to be an efficient marketing tool.
