8 Targeting Strategies for AMC Audiences

Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) is reshaping how advertisers approach strategy. It’s replacing guesswork with rich shopper data, enabling retailers and sellers to track performance and optimize campaigns with utmost precision. 

AMC gives you a clearer picture of the customer journey, whether you’re retargeting viewers from your streaming TV ads or tracking how different channels work together. And with Amazon’s new generative AI tool, where sellers and agencies can build AMC reports without any SQL expertise, audience segmentation and building complex audience queries have never been this easier or faster. One key strategy for advertisers is targeting Amazon Marketing Cloud audiences based on their behavior and intent, making it easier to convert high-value prospects into loyal customers.

But building AMC audiences is just the beginning. The real value lies in unlocking their full potential with proven AMC audience targeting strategies that deliver measurable results, whether by targeting high-intent shoppers, reconnecting with inactive buyers, or tailoring messages by region or season.

This blog will cover:

1. What are AMC audiences?

2. Six types of AMC audiences

3. 8 AMC audience targeting strategies

4. Common mistakes in targeting strategies of AMC audiences (+fixes)

Whether you're new to Amazon Marketing Cloud or looking to optimize existing campaigns, these targeting strategies for AMC audiences will help you achieve better performance and higher ROI.

What are AMC Audiences? 

Amazon Marketing Cloud uses Amazon’s vast data ecosystem to create precise audience segments. These audience segments, called AMC audiences, are generated by analyzing a blend of three key data sets: 

• Transactional data reveals customer purchase behavior, helping identify what they buy and how often. 

• Browsing data tracks what customers look at on Amazon, showing their interests and potential buying intent. 

• Engagement data tracks how customers interact with ads and detail pages, providing insights into their level of engagement with your marketing efforts. 

AMC segments audiences into groups by combining these behavioral data sources. These segments include frequent buyers, high-intent shoppers, and those who engage with specific types of content. With this segmentation, you can create highly targeted, personalized campaigns to improve ad relevance and drive conversions. 

4 Types of AMC Audiences You Should Target

Below are the 4 AMC audience types and their behavior/patterns:

1. High-Intent audiences

High-intent users are extremely close to conversion. They’ve already engaged with the product and moved it into their cart, representing a warm lead. A gentle nudge or reminder could be all it takes to encourage them to complete the transaction.

2. High-value audiences 

High-value audiences (i.e., audiences that have purchased for a specific amount from your brand in the last 365 days) represent your most profitable customer segment. They demonstrate strong brand loyalty and higher lifetime value, making them ideal for premium product promotions, exclusive offers, and loyalty campaigns.

3. New-to-brand customers 

New-to-brand (NTB) customers have never interacted with your brand. Targeting this group increases brand awareness and attracts first-time buyers.

You can target this AMC audience segment by running sponsored brand ads for your products. You can also optimize for broader keywords to target users who have not been exposed to your brand.

4. Purchase-based audiences 

Purchase-based audiences consist of users who have already made a purchase. They can be segmented by purchase recency, frequency, or product category to create targeted retention and upselling campaigns. For example, targeting customers who purchased cosmetics with complementary makeup accessories or replenishment reminders.

Understanding these audience types is essential before implementing advanced strategies. Whether you’re focusing on high-intent shoppers or new-to-brand customers, targeting AMC audiences effectively can help you achieve more relevant and personalized campaigns that drive conversions and maximize your return on investment.

8 Targeting Strategies for AMC Audiences

Master these proven strategies to maximize your AMC audience performance. Targeting AMC audiences with the right strategies at each stage of their journey will allow you to create highly personalized, behavior-driven campaigns. Whether through behavioral targeting, retargeting, or leveraging AI tools, fine-tuning your approach to each audience type is key to achieving better results and lower ACoS.

1. Behavioral targeting

With AMC, you can build precise, behavior-driven audience segments based on how users engage with your products–across browsing, add-to-cart activity, and purchase history. The goal is to identify not just what customers are doing, but where they are in their purchase journey, and to deliver messaging that fits their stage and intent.

Following are some behavioral AMC audience targeting strategies you can start with:

Engage users who have seen only one ad type

Retarget these users with personalised messaging that builds on their demonstrated interest and presents a clear, compelling reason to act. Use dynamic creatives to display product variations or exclusive offers tailored to their browsing behaviour. 

To increase the chances of conversion, optimize your follow-up ads with strong calls to action (CTAs) and interactive elements that encourage engagement.

Retarget cart abandoners

ATC (add-to-cart) is one of AMC's strongest lower-funnel intent signals (often unavailable in standard DSP audiences). But not all abandoners are equal. While some are highly convertible, others might have abandoned their carts days ago and are no longer in-market. 

To improve performance:

• Focus on users who added to cart within 24-72 hours. This window typically yields the highest return.

• Prevent overlap with those who may have purchased a similar or substitute item.

Upsell to loyal customers

One of the AMC benefits is that you can target customers who purchased a few times within a product category, viewed complementary or premium PDPs (product detail pages) but didn’t convert, or are not currently using ‘Subscribe & Save’ for CPG (consumer packaged goods) upsells. 

Let’s suppose a customer frequently purchases your basic protein powder. With AMC, you can identify that they’ve recently viewed the premium version twice but haven’t made any purchase. You serve them a personalized ad offering a sample bundle or a mini freebie of the premium product, driving both AOV and product discovery.

2. Use AI for custom audience creation 

Amazon's new generative AI tool transforms natural language descriptions into ready-to-run SQL queries, eliminating technical barriers to advanced audience building.

How to implement:

• Open AMC's AI SQL generator

• Describe your audience goal in plain language: "Create an audience who viewed product pages but haven't purchased in the last 7 days."

• Review the generated SQL logic

• Run the query and activate audiences in Amazon DSP or Ads Console.

Here are its benefits:

• Helps in retargeting more precisely.

• Helps build segments that exclude users who have already converted.

• Helps in cross-channel targeting by creating groups based on behavior across streaming TV, audio, and shopping platforms.

• Speeds up creation and comparison of multiple audience segments without waiting for data teams.

• Helps understand audience logic as the tool shows how it builds each structured query, allowing you to make tweaks to it.

atom11’s AMC Suite provides pre-built audience templates that accelerate implementation of proven AMC audience targeting strategies for common scenarios like cart abandoners, high-value new-to-brand customers, and DSP-exposed users, plus custom audience creation to meet specific targeting needs.

3. First-Party Data Integration

First-party data integration represents one of the most powerful targeting strategies for AMC audience segments, enabling precise retargeting based on known customer behaviors. Upload hashed email lists from website purchases, newsletter signups, or loyalty programs to match with Amazon's logged-in user base.

Implementation process:

• Hash and upload first-party data following Amazon's guidelines

• AMC matches your data with Amazon user profiles

• Build retargeting audiences based on Amazon behaviors (product views, searches, cart activity)

• Launch targeted campaigns across Amazon's advertising platforms

Example application: Create custom audiences of website visitors who viewed specific products but didn't purchase, then retarget them with Amazon ads featuring those exact products plus complementary items.

4. Lookalike audience modeling

Lookalike modelling in Amazon Marketing Cloud uses machine learning to find new users who behave like your best customers. For example, if your top customers purchase twice a month, spend $150 per order, and prefer tech and gaming products, the model identifies others with similar patterns. 

These high-value customers form your seed audience, and the similar users are your lookalike audience. You can use these lookalike segments to run upper-funnel campaigns through Amazon DSP or Sponsored Display Ads, helping you reach more relevant users with higher chances of converting. 

To get started and ensure profitable growth, define your seed audience based on actual purchase data, such as the top 30% of spenders, and activate lookalikes to scale acquisition without wasting spend.

5. Product-Specific Targeting (ASIN-Level)

Use ASIN filters to identify high-demand products and optimize campaigns around seasonal bestsellers or high-margin items. This granular approach of ASIN targeting maximizes ROI by focusing spend on your most valuable inventory.

Key applications:

• Seasonal optimization: Prioritize ads for ASINs showing increased demand

• Cross-selling opportunities: Target customers who bought wireless headphones with ads for charging stations

• Recovery campaigns: Retarget users who viewed but didn't purchase specific ASINs with tailored messaging addressing potential objections

Advanced tactic: Analyze why customers didn't convert on specific ASINs: price sensitivity, missing features, or unclear benefits and then create targeted campaigns addressing those specific barriers.

6. Sequential Messaging Across Channels

Sequential messaging represents one of the most sophisticated targeting strategies for AMC audience coordination across multiple platforms based on the customer journey stage. AMC's cross-channel data reveals how customers move between Amazon, social media, search, and email before converting.

Channel strategy by funnel stage:

Implementation: Use AMC's Path to Conversion queries to identify which channels initiate awareness versus which drive final conversions, then allocate budget accordingly.

7. Performance-driven targeting 

Align audience building with specific business objectives rather than generic engagement metrics. Focus on audiences that drive measurable business value like new customer acquisition, subscription growth, or category expansion.

Strategic approach:

• Define clear KPIs (new-to-brand acquisition, Subscribe & Save growth, repeat purchase rate)

• Analyze historical patterns of users who achieved these outcomes

• Identify media behaviors that correlate with goal completion

• Build audiences reflecting high-conversion behavioral signals

• Activate campaigns focused on users most likely to achieve your specific objectives

Example: For subscription growth, target customers who've made 2+ purchases in a category, viewed subscription options but haven't converted, and show consistent monthly purchase patterns.

Performance-driven approaches represent the most ROI-focused targeting strategies for AMC audience optimization, ensuring every dollar spent drives measurable business outcomes.

8. Ad-exposed vs. non-ad-exposed segmentation

Measure true advertising impact by comparing conversion behavior between users who saw ads versus those who didn't. This strategy helps identify which channels actually influence purchases versus those receiving credit for existing demand.

Analysis framework:

• Segment users by ad exposure within conversion windows (7, 14, 28 days)

• Compare conversion rates, order values, and time-to-purchase between segments

• Identify which ad types and channels drive incremental conversions

• Reallocate budget toward high-impact touchpoints

Optimization tactics:

• Non-exposed converters: Retarget with marketing strategies like product bundles, time-sensitive offers, or use-case specific messaging

• Exposed non-converters: Adjust creative messaging, test different value propositions, or modify targeting parameters

  
  

5 Common Mistakes in AMC Audience Targeting Strategies (+ Fixes)

Even with powerful AMC audience targeting strategies available, brands often miss the mark on execution. Here are five common pitfalls in AMC custom audience targeting and best practices to fix them for better reach, performance, and ROI.

1. Over-segmentation

Advertisers often over-engineer their audience segmentation in AMC, adding too many filters like age, geography, brand interactions, product categories, and intent signals all at once. This results in small, fragmented audiences that underdeliver or don’t scale across DSP campaigns or other platforms.

When audience size drops below a viable threshold, advertising campaigns suffer from low reach, under-delivery, high CPMs (cost per mile), and limited learning.

Do this instead:  Focus on a few high-impact behavioral signals like “viewed PDP 2+ times in the last 7 days,” or “added to cart but didn’t convert.” 

Combine these with basic constraints like geography or recency, but avoid stacking too many criteria. If scale is an issue, use lookalike modeling within AMC to expand reach without sacrificing targeting precision.

2. Neglecting data freshness

Reusing the same AMC audiences for weeks can hurt performance, especially during peak retail periods. Shopper behaviour evolves fast. Outdated audiences (like inactive buyers, disinterested users, or those now buying from competitors) can lower engagement and waste spend.

Do this instead: Set AMC audience logic to use rolling windows. Target data from recent time frames, like the last 7 or 14 days, to ensure you're reaching the most relevant users. Use scheduled queries or integrate with a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to refresh your audience segments weekly or biweekly. This helps keep your audiences current and aligned with real-time shopper behavior. Monitor performance drop-offs. In fact, declining CTR or CVR can signal stale data.

3. Ignoring cross-channel behavior

Targeting AMC audiences with only Amazon retail and media signals in mind can miss the impact of external touchpoints like Meta, Google, email, or influencer-driven traffic.

Buyers often move between platforms. If you don’t account for off-Amazon activity, you lose visibility into how customers are truly discovering and converting. That leads to disconnected messaging and inefficient spending.

Do this instead: Use AMC’s integration with clean rooms or CDPs to ingest off-Amazon exposure (like Meta impressions, Google clicks) and analyze conversion paths. Look for journey behaviors like: Meta ad → Amazon search → PDP view → purchase. Then adjust messaging across platforms accordingly.

4. Insufficient testing

Without controlled experiments in your targeting strategies for AMC audience segments, you can't identify what's actually driving better results. What resonates with a retargeting audience may not work for mid-funnel or new-to-brand shoppers. One version of your ad isn’t enough to know what works.

Do this instead: Use AMC to design controlled A/B or multivariate tests. Split audiences based on engagement (e.g., cart abandoners vs. PDP viewers), test different creatives, or shift message timing. 

Track and compare results using AMC metrics: conversion rate, average time to purchase, ROAS, and assisted conversion impact. Then, conclude whether the variable(s) you changed significantly impacted any metrics.

5. Overlooking privacy and data governance

Targeting AMC audiences without complying with data privacy laws (GDPR, CCPA) or Amazon’s policies can delay campaigns, trigger audits, or restrict targeting capabilities.

Do this instead: Use only Amazon-sanctioned data within AMC. Never export or combine user-level data outside of clean room environments. Work with legal teams to vet data handling practices, especially when syncing to external platforms. 

Stick to aggregated, anonymized insights and audience IDs, not raw user-level data.

The bottom line

AMC gives you the data to stop guessing – so you can reach the right people, at the right time, with the right message. The strategies we’ve covered above (from cross-channel syncing and KPI-driven targeting to smarter retargeting) can help you unlock better campaign performance results without wasting budget. 

By applying effective AMC audience targeting strategies, you can gain deeper, actionable insights into customer behavior. These AMC audience targeting strategies work best when implemented systematically, starting with 2-3 approaches that align with your business objectives. 

Atom11, an Amazon ad automation software, makes Amazon Marketing Cloud easier to use without any SQL expertise. With its AMC suite, you can request an AMC instance from our expert support team, access audience templates, check ready to run reports, get customised audiences and performance reports, and more. 

Want to learn more about our capabilities? Book a demo with atom11 today!

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What are AMC audiences?

AMC audiences are custom audience segments created within AMC. They’re built using anonymized, event-level data from across Amazon’s ecosystem, such as ad impressions, product views, and purchases. These audiences let advertisers target users based on specific behaviors, like browsing high-margin ASINs or engaging with ads during a promotional window.

2. How does audience targeting work?

Audience targeting works by delivering ads to users who meet specific behavioral data, demographic data, or contextual criteria.  In AMC, this is done by analyzing detailed shopper data, such as browsing history, purchase behaviour, and ad interactions, to build precise segments. This predictive analysis helps ensure ads can be tailored and served to those segments across Amazon’s DSP and other platforms.

3. What is AMC in Amazon advertising or rather what is AMC in digital marketing?

AMC (Amazon Marketing Cloud) is Amazon’s advanced analytics platform for advertisers. It provides access to pseudonymized, event-level data across the customer journey. Advertisers use it to analyze performance, build custom audiences, and optimize campaigns across Amazon properties using SQL-based queries.

4. What allows for highly specific audience targeting?

Highly specific audience targeting is enabled by combining granular behavioural data (like product views, purchases, or time spent) with ASIN-level filtering, custom queries, and cross-channel attribution. AMC’s SQL-based environment lets Amazon advertisers define audiences with extreme precision, based on real shopper activity across multiple touchpoints.

5. What types of AMC audiences should I be using throughout the funnel?

When considering the types of AMC audiences to use throughout your marketing funnel, it can be beneficial to segment them based on their engagement levels and behaviors. Here are some audience types you might consider: 

1. Awareness Audiences: Target individuals who are just becoming aware of your brand or product. Use broad targeting strategies to cast a wide net and reach a broader audience. 

2. Consideration Audiences: Focus on users who have shown interest in your offerings but haven't yet converted. Retargeting ads and informative content can help move them further down the funnel. 

3. Conversion Audiences: These include users who are close to making a purchase decision. Present them with compelling offers or testimonials to encourage conversion. 

4. Loyalty Audiences: Engage customers who have already made a purchase. Encourage repeat business through loyalty programs, exclusive offers, or personalized communications. 

5. Advocacy Audiences: Target your most satisfied customers to turn them into brand advocates. Encourage them to leave reviews, refer friends, or share their experiences on social media. 

6. What is the audience targeting model?

The audience targeting model refers to the strategy of segmenting and reaching specific groups of people based on shared characteristics such as demographics, interests, behaviors, or past interactions. This model helps marketers deliver more relevant content and ads to the right audience at the right time, improving engagement, conversion rates, and overall campaign efficiency.

7. What is strategy for target audience?

A strategy for target audience refers to the plan a business uses to identify, reach, and engage the specific group of people most likely to be interested in its product or service. It involves analyzing demographics, behaviors, needs, and preferences to tailor messaging, channels, and offers that resonate with that audience, ultimately improving marketing efficiency and driving better results.

8. Where can you activate AMC audiences?

AMC audiences can be activated in your advertiser account (DSP or sponsored ads). These audiences can be used for targeting in Amazon DSP or Sponsored Display Ads and also in bid modifiers in Sponsored Products and sponsored Brands.