May 2, 2025
by Kenton Snyder
SAN DIEGO – When working with the Amazon DSP (demand-side platform), advertisers often arrive at one of two different sentiments at the end of their campaign. Brands often believe that DSP doesn’t drive incremental sales, taking all its sales attribution from organic or sponsored ads sales, or often even worse—that DSP does not drive sales at all.
These are valid findings that many advertisers are facing, but the root is not related to the nature of DSP, but instead to the setup and measurement strategy used alongside their DSP campaign.
All of Amazon’s ad platforms work off of a last-touch attribution model. This often creates an illusion of some campaigns being less, or even more, effective than they actually are.
Imagine a customer has never heard of your brand before, so you run a Streaming TV campaign targeting them because they show an aptitude for products similar to yours. After seeing this ad, you retarget them with display ads on DSP, and they eventually go search for your brand on Amazon.
When they complete this search, they click on a sponsored product placement, and purchase from that click. Which of these ad interactions truly drove the sale here? Looking at Amazon’s base attribution model, all of the credit would go to that sponsored product ad, but in reality that was likely the least impactful stage of the journey.
That is why it is essential to have a measurement strategy backed by Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) for any DSP activations. With AMC, advertisers are now able to view that entire customer journey, and could see the impact of the Streaming TV ad they ran. Through reports such as a first touch attribution model— advertisers can get an exact revenue number that came from users introduced to the funnel by the Streaming TV, or any upper-funnel campaign.
Some other easy reports to take a look at from AMC are New-To-Brand Customer reports, DSP and Sponsored Ad overlap, and DSP Reach & Impression data. AMC shows us why we may sometimes believe DSP doesn’t drive any sales, but why do we often see that it cannibalizes sales from other channels?
Imagine a fisherman fishing from a pond with an in-stream that has been blocked off. There may be fish in there to begin, but as they continue to fish, the rate of fish in the pond will continue to diminish. Eventually there won’t be any fish left to catch, because the pond isn’t being refilled. This is the same way we need to operate a funnel on Amazon if our goal is to drive long term brand growth.
If a brand is seeing sales on the DSP, but that’s not having an effect on the topline growth of the brand—there is likely an issue of strategy and setup.
The first cause of this is not using a full funnel strategy. Advertisers need to refill their metaphorical pond to continue to have new users to drive towards a conversion action. To achieve this, Amazon offers an abundance of audiences in the consideration phase of the funnel. I would recommend starting with In-Market and Contextual based campaigns, which target in-aisle shoppers who just aren’t aware of your brand yet, creating a balance between conversion and reach focuses.
When activating these consideration phase campaigns, the way you set up your campaign is one of the most impactful differentiators the DSP offers. Imagine being able to negate any shopper who has purchased from either you or a competitor in the last 90 days—or take this a step further and negate anyone who has viewed your PDP at all in that period—ensuring you are driving only net-new customers with these tactics.
On top of an audience strategy, we also want to make sure we take advantage of every level of optimization Amazon gives. This means optimizing our frequency caps, remarketing windows, and base bids—which AMC also makes easier than ever.
To have the most levers to pull for optimization, advertisers also want to make sure they structure their campaigns in a way that allows them to make granular changes as they get performance data. That means segmenting orders based on different audiences, segmenting line items based on supply and device type, and separating creatives into different lines. This ensures that you can take action off of every dataset you are integrating.
Amazon DSP is a powerful tool for long-term brand growth, but only if it is properly utilized. If you don’t go into your campaign with a proper strategic plan and measurement strategy, you are not setting yourself up for maximum success.
If you are an advertiser running DSP right now, or looking to start a campaign, take some time to review your strategy this week. You could be missing out on performance that can be captured from a few tweaks.
Kenton Snyder (pictured above at Prosper Show 2025) is customer success manager at Intentwise, San Diego, Calif.
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