The Maturation of AMC for Sponsored Ads with Ross Walker and Carlos Sastre - Episode 394

Welcome to The Ecommerce Braintrust podcast, brought to you by Julie Spear, Head of Retail Marketplace Services, and Jordan Ripley, Director of Retail Operations.

In today’s episode, we’re diving into a topic that’s been heating up since Amazon unveiled it at Unboxed last October: using AMC audiences for Sponsored Products. 

It’s a conversation that’s gone from a slow simmer to a full-on boil in recent months, and we’ve brought in two of Acadia’s sharpest retail media minds to break it all down: Ross Walker and Carlos Sastre.

We’ll be exploring where the real impact is showing up, what’s working, and what this shift means for the future of Sponsored Search.

Tune in to find out more!

"I don't care about winning every single eyeball for a keyword. I only care about winning the subset of eyeballs that are most likely to convert, be a high lifetime value customer, or be most likely to purchase multiple products in my assortment. That is the new game that we are moving towards in the future."

Ross Walker

KEY TAKEAWAYS

In this episode, Julie, Jordan, Ross, and Carlos discuss:

• Overview of AMC Audiences for Sponsored Ads: The distinction between using AMC audiences in DSP vs. Sponsored Ads.

• In Sponsored Products/Brand Ads, AMC audiences act as bid modifiers rather than strict targeting mechanisms.

• Limitations and Current Capabilities: Advertisers can only boost bids for specific audiences, not exclude or exclusively target them.

• Only one AMC audience can be applied per campaign currently, which introduces campaign complexity.

• The "crawl, walk, run" approach: Start simple by identifying the campaign goal (upper vs. lower funnel) before layering in AMC audiences.

• Recommendations to duplicate existing campaigns and layer AMC audiences for more efficient targeting.

• Strong results from using purchaser and subscriber lookalike audiences (doubling ROAS and improving conversion rates).

• Cautions against hyper-granular audience building, which may limit scale and statistical significance.

• Leveraging “out of the box” audiences first before building complex custom audiences.

• Keep initial testing straightforward, scaling complexity only if justified by results.

• Notable reductions in CPCs and significant increases in ROAS for test campaigns that adopted AMC audiences.

• Dual campaign strategy allows efficiency gains without sacrificing overall volume.

• The introduction of more AMC-style features directly in the Amazon Ads console (e.g., new-to-brand bid boosting).

• The shift from keyword/product targeting towards audience-based bidding and what that means for campaign architecture and ROI.

• Amazon’s continued pace of innovation in ad products enables proactive brands to gain an edge.

• The future of advertising on Amazon involves refining audiences beyond keywords, focusing spend on high-value customers.

• The importance of adapting campaign strategies to stay ahead as the platform evolves.