A Complete Guide to Amazon Marketing Stream

Advertisers on Amazon are constantly looking for better ways to understand and react to what is happening inside their campaigns. Traditional reports often arrive too late to support quick adjustments, which means decisions are made after the fact. As more teams shift to real-time data tools, they are gaining the ability to act faster, improve efficiency, and stay ahead of changes throughout the day.

Amazon Marketing Stream offers a new way forward. It delivers hourly data updates and near-real-time campaign-change messages directly through the Amazon Ads API. Advertisers can now make decisions based on current trends instead of waiting for the next day’s report.

In this blog, you’ll find:

• A breakdown of what Amazon Marketing Stream is and how it works

• The types of data it delivers and how each can be used

• Key benefits and limitations of using the Stream

• Steps to get started with integration

• Ways to simplify stream data with tools like atom11

But first, here’s a TL;DR table with each capability of AMS and what actionable insights you can get from it. We cover everything in detail in this blog.

What is Amazon Marketing Stream, and how does it work?

Amazon Marketing Stream is a real-time data service that delivers hourly updates and live notifications to advertisers through the Amazon Ads API. Unlike traditional reporting methods that require advertisers to request data and wait, this service sends information automatically to their system as soon as it becomes available. AMS also supports Sponsored Ads and Amazon DSP datasets.

Instead of waiting for the next day's reports, advertisers can now access hourly performance data such as clicks, spend, and conversions. They also receive alerts when important changes happen in their campaigns. This makes it easier to react quickly and make adjustments without delay.

To use Amazon Marketing Stream, advertisers must be connected to the Amazon Ads API, an AWS account, and have infrastructure to collect and store the incoming data. Once set up, they can choose the types of updates they want and begin receiving data directly, either through their tools or with the help of a platform like atom11. Learn more about how atom11 integrates with Amazon Marketing Stream and simplifies campaign management.

What are the Key Features of AMS?

Amazon Marketing Stream provides four core features that help advertisers optimize campaigns promptly: hourly performance metrics, near-instant notifications, automated improvement suggestions, and streamlined data delivery. Together, these features give brands and agencies better visibility and faster control over their advertising strategy.

Hourly performance updates

Advertisers receive data every hour about impressions, clicks, spend, and other key metrics. This helps them monitor trends throughout the day and adjust strategy as needed.

Instant notifications

The system sends near-real-time budget consumption and campaign changes via push messages. The campaign changes could be keyword or ad group changes, or a campaign halting due to limits.

Suggestions for improvement

Stream users get access to recommendations based on live data, delivered as a dataset and not an in-UI alert. These can include bidding ideas or optimizations to improve efficiency without manual checks.

Smoother workflows

Since the data is collected directly and continuously, advertisers no longer need to manually pull reports or worry about system delays. This also helps avoid data throttling limits that occur with older methods.

Who can use Amazon Marketing Stream?

Amazon Marketing Stream is ideal for ecommerce agencies, brands managing high-volume campaigns, vendors, sellers using the Amazon Ads API, and advanced API users with programmatic systems in place.

Ecommerce agencies that manage multiple client accounts benefit from the ability to monitor hourly performance and react quickly to changes. For them, AMS supports fast, data-driven adjustments at scale.

Brands running large campaigns directly can use the stream to optimize intraday performance, shift budgets dynamically, and avoid overspending during low-performing periods.

Vendors and sellers already connected to the Amazon Ads API are well-positioned to activate AMS with minimal setup. Their familiarity with API workflows means faster integration and higher value from the data.

Advanced API users with internal programmatic infrastructure will find AMS especially valuable. The stream integrates well with automated systems that can handle real-time inputs and trigger rule-based responses.

Teams that want to implement strategies like dayparting or hourly bidding will find AMS a critical tool. Because the data is delivered continuously, many advertisers rely on platforms like atom11 to handle ingestion, interpretation, and action.

Why is Amazon Marketing Stream Important for Advertisers?

Amazon Marketing Stream helps advertisers respond faster, optimize spend more effectively, and gain deeper insights into campaign performance. It solves the delays of pull-based APIs, enables real-time bidding and budget adjustments, and delivers granular hourly data for smarter decisions throughout the day.

We explain its importance in greater detail.

Solves Pull-Based API Limitations

Traditional reporting systems on Amazon rely on the advertiser to request data at regular intervals. These pull-based APIs are often subject to throttling, which limits how frequently data can be accessed. The result is delayed information that reduces the ability to respond quickly to changes in campaign performance.

Amazon Marketing Stream solves this issue by delivering updates automatically. Instead of asking for data and waiting for it to arrive, advertisers receive fresh insights as they happen. This removes a major roadblock to fast decision-making, especially for large accounts where speed is essential.

Enables Real-Time Optimization

With hourly performance updates and near-real-time campaign alerts, Amazon Marketing Stream allows advertisers to act in the moment. When a campaign begins to overspend or when conversions drop at a certain hour, adjustments can be made right away.

This continuous flow of information helps advertisers shift budgets, change bids, or pause underperforming campaigns without delay. It brings a level of control that simply is not possible when waiting for daily or manual reports.

Unlocks Granular Performance Visibility

The detail provided by Amazon Marketing Stream is another of its key advantages. Instead of a broad daily snapshot, advertisers get a breakdown of activity for every hour of the day.

Advertisers can analyze performance by dimensions such as keyword and placement (e.g., top of search vs. product detail page) using the available datasets and joining/aggregating them to see the full picture and build smarter intraday strategies.

What Kind of Data does Amazon Marketing Stream Provide?

Amazon Marketing Stream (AMS) provides two complementary data flows: (1) hourly campaign metrics (e.g., impressions, clicks, cost, conversions, sales) and (2) near-real-time campaign-change messages delivered through a push-based system. Together, these help advertisers act faster without waiting for next-day reports. 

Reporting Data (Hourly Campaign Metrics) 

AMS delivers hour-by-hour performance for Sponsored Ads via dedicated datasets—traffic tables include impressions, clicks, and cost, while conversion tables include attributed conversions and sales. From these fields, you can derive efficiency metrics such as CPC (cost ÷ clicks) and ACoS (ad spend ÷ ad-attributed sales). These Amazon ads campaign metrics give advertisers a clear timeline of how their campaigns perform throughout the day and help refine bidding strategies with more precision.

For example, if conversions are consistently higher during the late afternoon, advertisers may shift budget toward that window. Similarly, they can reduce or pause spend during less efficient hours. This level of control is what makes hourly metrics valuable for time-based strategies like dayparting.

Messaging Data (Near Real-Time Alerts)

AMS also pushes near-real-time messages about campaign changes, including budget-usage updates and other management changes across entities (for example, campaign/ad group/target updates). These signals help teams maintain uptime, catch issues early, and adjust quickly.

This messaging layer is especially helpful for those managing a large number of campaigns, where small disruptions can go unnoticed until they impact performance. Stream messages act as early warnings and make it possible to correct course right away.

Optimization Recommendations

Select advertisers can subscribe to a campaign diagnostics & recommendations (beta) dataset that surfaces optimization suggestions (e.g., bid or targeting ideas) directly through AMS. These may include bid adjustments, targeting refinements, or alerts about opportunities based on observed patterns in the data. Teams can review these programmatically or via partner tools, such as atom11. By combining hourly metrics with these real-time prompts, advertisers can build more responsive and efficient workflows.

What are the Benefits of Amazon Marketing Stream?

Amazon Marketing Stream gives advertisers the power to respond to data as it unfolds. Unlike traditional reporting that shows results after the fact, this system opens the door to same-day optimization. Brands and agencies can act on what is happening in the moment rather than reacting to what has already occurred. The benefit is greater control over spend, better alignment with buyer behavior, and more room to test and improve campaign strategies.

Optimize High-Performing Hours with Intraday Bidding

A key advantage of hourly reporting is the ability to pinpoint which hours deliver the best return. Advertisers can look at or derive metrics like impressions, conversions, cost per click, and ACoS broken down by the hour. This helps identify windows of strong performance that may otherwise be hidden in daily summaries. For instance, certain hours in the evening during high-volume events like Prime Day often show stronger conversion trends.

By isolating these high-performing time blocks, the budget can be concentrated when it is most likely to drive results. Instead of allocating spend evenly throughout the day, advertisers can focus on the moments that matter most. You can explore more approaches in our blog on bidding strategies for Amazon, which outlines how to use intraday data to guide smarter bidding.

Increase Sales via Dayparting for Books or Evergreen Products

Some products, such as books or everyday household items, follow fairly consistent buyer patterns. With Amazon Marketing Stream, advertisers can study the timing of clicks and purchases over several days or weeks. This helps shape accurate time-based schedules, a strategy often referred to as dayparting.

Brands can then design campaigns that automatically become more visible during peak shopping hours and pause or reduce bids when traffic slows. This kind of targeting can lead to better ad performance without increasing total spend.

Enhance Budget Efficiency with Stream-Based Adjustments

Effective use of your campaign budget starts with timely insights. Stream-based data allows advertisers to monitor spend throughout the day and intervene before performance dips. If budget consumption is high without corresponding conversions, advertisers do not have to wait for the next day’s report to find out.

Stream alerts and metrics make it possible to pause underperforming ads, adjust bids downward, or redirect funds to better segments in real time. This helps protect return on ad spend and ensures each dollar is used more effectively. You can also explore strategies to reduce your ACoS using data-informed adjustments.

What are the Limitations of AMS? How do I Overcome Them?

While Amazon Marketing Stream delivers real-time data and automation potential, it does have a few limitations, such as missing retail signals, a lack of FIFO queue support, and the need for technical setup. These challenges can be overcome with supplemental tools, data integrations, or ready-to-use platforms.

Retail Data Not Yet Available

The stream does not currently include retail signals such as stock levels or price changes. This means advertisers cannot directly see whether an item is out of stock or if its price was adjusted, even though these factors strongly influence ad performance. To get a complete picture, advertisers often need to combine AMS with external sources or tools that pull retail insights separately.

FIFO Queues Not Supported

Amazon Marketing Stream relies on simple standard queues for delivering data. It does not support First-In-First-Out queues, which can make it harder to ensure messages are processed in the exact order they were generated. For advertisers handling large volumes of detailed campaign data, this can pose a challenge if they rely on strict sequencing or need to guarantee that each message is processed only once.

Technical Setup Required

Setting up Amazon Marketing Stream requires backend infrastructure to receive, store, and manage a continuous stream of campaign data. Advertisers must work through the Amazon Ads API and build a pipeline that can process incoming messages without delay. These complex technical operations can be a barrier for smaller teams or businesses without engineering resources. In such cases, working with a ready platform like atom11 can simplify the process.

How Can You Get Started with Amazon Marketing Stream?

To get started with Amazon Marketing Stream, advertisers need three main components: access to the Amazon Marketing Stream API, subscriptions to the right datasets, and a data pipeline (or tool) to process the stream. The setup may seem technical at first, but with the right tools or platforms, implementation becomes much more manageable.

Step 1: Access Through AWS and Amazon Ads API

Amazon Marketing Stream is not available through the regular Seller Central or Vendor Central dashboards. To access it, advertisers must be connected to the Amazon Marketing Stream API through an active AWS account and have an active developer account. This connection is the foundation that allows data to be delivered directly to your systems without delay or manual effort.

Step 2: Subscribe to the Right Datasets

Once connected, advertisers need to subscribe to the data sets that align with their campaign goals. Amazon Marketing Stream offers two primary categories: reporting data sets that include hourly performance metrics, and messaging data sets that provide near-real-time alerts about campaign changes. Together, these campaign data sets offer a comprehensive view of ad activity throughout the day, helping advertisers make faster, more informed decisions.

Step 3: Build a data pipeline or use an integrated tool 

Handling a continuous flow of campaign data requires a pipeline that can ingest, store, and analyze information as it arrives. Teams with engineering support can build their pipeline, but for many advertisers, it is easier to use an integrated tool that is already set up for this purpose. Amazon PPC software, such as atom11, offers a plug-and-play experience with built-in dashboards and automation features, allowing users to benefit from AMS without technical overhead.

Next Step: Leverage Amazon Marketing Stream with atom11 

Once Amazon Marketing Stream is activated, the next challenge is making sense of the data and turning it into decisions. This is where atom11 comes in. It simplifies complex campaign data and offers advertisers a more streamlined view of performance.

The platform also supports rule-based automation and strategic campaign controls that work alongside Amazon Marketing Stream to improve daily execution. You can explore the full set of tools that support these capabilities on the atom11 tools page.

Turn hourly AMS output into an interpretable view

Amazon Marketing Stream delivers raw hourly records that can be overwhelming to process manually. Atom11 helps make this information easier to interpret by organizing it into dashboards that highlight key trends. Advertisers can review performance by time blocks, making it easier to identify when spend, conversions, or click-through rates are highest. This time-based visibility is useful for shaping strategies like intraday bidding and dayparting.

Make More Informed Bidding Decisions

Using Amazon Marketing Stream data, Atom11 gives advertisers better visibility into campaign performance throughout the day. This allows teams to identify which hours or days perform best and adjust bids accordingly. While the platform does not claim to offer AI-powered bidding suggestions, its structured reporting and scheduling features help advertisers act faster and with greater precision.

Automate Dayparting with Stream-Based Rules

Atom11 allows advertisers to set rules that apply to specific hours or time windows. These rule-based schedules can help brands increase visibility during high-performing periods and reduce spend when performance is lower. This kind of dayparting strategy becomes much easier when hourly data is available in near real time, which is exactly what AMS provides.

Apply broader rule-based automations

Beyond hourly bidding strategies, Atom11 supports rules for managing budgets, ad placement, and other advanced campaign optimization. Advertisers can set triggers to pause or adjust campaigns when certain conditions are met. These controls help reduce the need for constant manual monitoring and improve operational efficiency across accounts.

Conclusion

Amazon Marketing Stream changes the way advertisers approach performance data. Instead of reacting to daily reports, brands and agencies can now act in the moment. Hourly metrics and real-time alerts allow for sharper targeting, faster decisions, and better budget use.

However, AMS is not plug-and-play. It requires infrastructure and a clear plan to handle the incoming stream. That is where tools like atom11 become essential. They take the complexity out of stream data and turn it into insight. From dayparting to campaign automation, atom11 makes it easier to run smarter ads and capture more value with every click.

For advertisers looking to move beyond basic reporting and make the most of each campaign hour, combining AMS with a platform like atom11 is a strong next step.

Book a demo to see how atom11 can help you simplify your setup and start leveraging Amazon Marketing Stream more effectively.

FAQs

What is Amazon Marketing Stream?

Amazon Marketing Stream is a service that delivers near real-time updates to advertisers through the Amazon Ads API. It includes hourly data on performance metrics and alerts about campaign events.

What are the benefits of using Amazon Marketing Stream?

Advertisers can respond faster to changes in campaign performance, optimize hourly bids, reduce wasted spend, and improve return on ad spend. The data is more timely and detailed compared to traditional reporting methods.

Is Amazon Marketing Stream free?

​​Yes, there is no additional cost to use Amazon Marketing Stream itself. However, setup and API access require technical integration or support from a platform partner.

How is Amazon Marketing Stream different from the Ads API?

Traditional APIs require advertisers to request reports and wait for delivery. AMS, on the other hand, pushes updates automatically as events occur, allowing for faster and more efficient campaign management.

Can AMS data improve intraday bidding performance?

Yes. By using hourly data, advertisers can identify the best and worst performing time slots and adjust bids or budgets throughout the day to maximize impact.

Does Amazon Marketing Stream support Sponsored Display?

As of now, Amazon Marketing Stream supports Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands. Sponsored Display is not currently included, but future updates may expand the coverage.