Advanced PPC Strategy Articles

These days, eCommerce advertising is standing room only. It’s becoming harder and harder for brands to rise above the crowd and differentiate.

Most sellers are using identical search strategies—yet few are willing to increase their spending to make a meaningful difference. In other words, you have an opportunity.

Capitalizing on it means moving beyond conventional tactics. Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) gives you the information you need to create your own playbook based on actual customer behavior data rather than generic strategies. Here’s how it’s done.

Why Use AMC Data?

As eCommerce matures, sellers are shifting their focus from expanding market share to optimizing profitability. According to research, 47% of retailers identified profitability as a primary driver of increasing margins.

To keep profitability strong, it’s not enough to blindly scale what already seems to be working. You also have to know what not to do. 

Insights from your AMC data can help you:

• Identify your most effective ad campaigns and sequences
• Reach broader and more granular audiences
• Get deeper new-to-brand insights
• Analyze gateway ASINs
• Conduct deeper conversion rate analysis

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Simple Strategies to Boost Ad Performance Using Data from AMC

While many brands know about AMC, few use it effectively due to the steep learning curve.

"These data sets are really powerful in terms of the insights that you can drive from bringing the right AMC data sets together,” explains Trellis Co-Founder Krishna Vemulapali. “The struggle is, it still takes a data scientist or a software developer to do that and depending on how big a brand is, it's really about how do you tap into the potential."

The good news is, you don’t have to be a data scientist to use your AMC data to your advantage. Here are seven ways to gain a competitive advantage.

1. Use Advanced Audience Segmentation and Targeting Strategies

AMC insights let you move beyond basic targeting to reach highly specific audience segments based on detailed behaviors, interactions, and demographic data. This is where the real power of AMC shines: creating custom Amazon audiences around specific shopping behaviors that match your business objectives.

You can create rules-based audiences using:

• Behavioral triggers
• Purchase history
• Engagement patterns
• Past interaction with ads
• Demographics

What do these strategies look like in practice? Here are a few example use cases and segments you could create:

• High-value kitchen gadget spenders
• People who bought one product but not a complementary one
• Shoppers who viewed a product more than once but haven’t purchased
• Audience segments around halo products

You can then create sponsored display ads to use DSP retargeting strategies to reach these users both on and off Amazon.

💡 Pro Tips:

• Create distinct audience segments for different parts of your funnel (awareness, consideration, purchase)
• Use engagement metrics like view frequency and time spent on page to identify high-intent customers
• Apply bid multipliers on high-value customers (especially when they're coming through search results)
• Refresh your audiences regularly to capture changing consumer behaviors

This strategy rests upon a fundamental question: If you could layer an audience onto any keyword or search across sponsored products or sponsored brands, who would that audience be? Start there with AMC targeting and segmentation.

2. Build Lookalike Audiences

Think about your most valuable customer. Wouldn’t it be nice to clone them and have two valuable customers?

Lookalike audiences with AMC data make it happen, letting you expand your reach by identifying potential new customers who mirror your most valuable shoppers.

With lookalike audiences, you can build seed audiences using AMC data, then target them with Amazon Ads and Amazon DSP. Specialized tools like Trellis’ Audience Builder + integrate DTC or Shopify data, create audiences, and link to sponsored ads and DSP campaigns for a cohesive cross-channel strategy.

Lookalike audiences are particularly effective for:

• Scaling customer acquisition
• Optimizing retargeting campaign
• Building brand loyalty
• Testing new market segments

By connecting your DTC or Shopify store directly to AMC data, you gain access to exact audiences, lookalike audiences, and retargeting campaigns that can dramatically improve your targeting precision.

💡 Pro Tips:

• Start with a high-quality seed audience of your best customers for more accurate lookalikes
• Test different lookalike audience sizes to find the balance between reach and relevance
• Create separate campaigns for lookalike audiences to measure performance independently
• Combine lookalike audiences with additional targeting criteria for more precise results

➡️ See it in action: Audience Builder +

Audience Builder + connects your DTC data from Shopify, BigCommerce, or Magento directly to Amazon Marketing Cloud, turning your first-party data into actionable audiences.

"If you're a DTC brand, you're sitting on a gold mine of first-party data,” says Teja Srivatsavai, Trellis Head of eCommerce Growth. “We make it simple to plug your data into AMC and connect the dots across platforms."

With Audience Builder +, you can:

• Retarget your highest-value DTC customers on Amazon
• Create lookalike audiences based on your best customers
• Recover abandoned carts through remarketing
• Apply bid multipliers to high-converting customer segments
• Optimize campaigns based on lifetime value instead of just ROAS

This tool helps you understand how DTC purchases impact repeat sales on Amazon, driving higher customer acquisition and lifetime value with lower cost per click. The result is a more efficient advertising strategy that focuses on the right customers from the start.

To see how Audience Builder + helps you generate more profits, check out the full product tour.

3. Use New-to-Brand Metrics to Drive High-Value Customer Acquisition

Amazon Ad Console only shows new-to-brand metrics for certain ad formats. Unlocking AMC insights through a platform like Trellis gives you visibility across all ad formats.

With complete data, you can access information on NTB vs. repeat sales to understand your acquisition performance. This allows you to create unique ad creative for new customers by identifying messaging and visuals likely to resonate with them based on actual purchase data.

You can also identify gateway ASINs or hero products that effectively bring in NTB conversions, then optimize ad strategies and product listings around these key products. This approach helps you optimize ACoS while maintaining healthy growth.

💡 Pro Tips:

• Set specific NTB goals alongside efficiency metrics like ACoS
• Allocate a portion of your budget specifically for new-to-brand acquisition
• Use lookalike audiences to target high-value prospects
• Capture more NTB customers with dynamic pricing
• Target competitor shoppers with sponsored ads

By focusing on high-value NTB acquisition, you ensure sustainable growth while maintaining profitability. When executed correctly, this approach builds a foundation for long-term success on Amazon.

4. Optimize for LTV, Not Just New-to-Brand Acquisition

Short-term metrics like RoAS can help you lower costs—an important goal for any brand. However, sustainable long-term profitability requires a focus on customer loyalty, which means shifting from a purely acquisition-focused ad strategy to one that prioritizes retention and relationships.

The first step: Understanding Lifetime Value to Customer Acquisition Cost (the golden ratio). LTV:CAC helps you determine which strategies and products actually keep customers coming back. This is a fundamental shift away from optimizing solely for immediate sales.

To optimize for LTV, look past RoAS and ACoS to prioritize LTV as a key metric for campaign success. This means tailoring strategies to attract and retain the most valuable customers. This often means being willing to increase CAC to bring in customers who will generate more value long-term.

This approach also helps you look beyond gateway ASINs to understand and identify halo rank and hero products that drive sales for other items in your catalog. By focusing on these key products, you can earn more repeat purchases and create a ripple effect across your entire product line.

💡 Pro Tips:

• Calculate LTV ratios for different product categories to prioritize ad spend on hero products with the highest lifetime value
• Use dynamic pricing on key products to boost overall LTV
• Create specific remarketing campaigns for first-time buyers with complementary product recommendations
• Run sponsored product ads with a mix of broad and exact match phrases targeting high-volume, relevant search terms
• Target recent purchasers with cross-selling campaigns featuring related products
• Monitor changes in LTV over time to measure and adjust your strategies

The golden ratio helps you determine whether your acquisition costs are justified by customer lifetime value, providing a more complete picture of advertising effectiveness than single-purchase metrics alone.

5. Understand Path-to-Purchase

Path-to-purchase analysis reveals all the different ad types a shopper sees before making a purchase. Most sellers are familiar with first and last-touch attribution—but what about all the moments in between?

"If I'm shopping,” says Krishna, “the odds are, I've interacted with multiple organic listings, multiple ad placements, before I've made that shopping decision.” That’s where multi-touch attribution and path-to-purchase analysis come in.

With this data, you can determine which campaigns are truly contributing to conversions. For example:

• Are there campaigns you shouldn’t turn off because they’re (indirectly) supporting overall effectiveness?
• How does Sponsored Display interact with Sponsored Product?
• How does Amazon DSP feed other campaigns?
• Cross-product association: What do customers buy first and next?

Path-to-purchase data helps you answer questions like these to map the customer journey—then optimize it by identifying potential bottlenecks or drop-off points and finding ways to keep customers engaged.

💡 Pro Tips:

• Analyze the most common paths to purchase to identify critical touchpoints
• Look for patterns in the sequence of ad exposures that lead to conversion
• Cross-match first-party DTC or Shopify data with AMC data to see how customers move between channels
• Test different ad sequencing strategies based on path-to-purchase insights

Optimizing your path to purchase can speed up the customer journey, decreasing your CAC while improving conversion rates.

"Last-touch attribution is doing more of the same,” says Trellis Chief Evangelist Ali Babul. “Multi-touch attribution is where it will actually power you and get you profitable growth as well."

Trellis gives you shopper insights, including path-to-purchase, powered by AMC data to help you ensure every dollar contributes to your customer conversion path. Book a demo to see how it works.

6. Get In-Depth Cross-Channel Attribution Insights

Speaking of the customer journey… for a complete picture of all touchpoints, you need data on each marketing channel, both on and off Amazon. AMC insights help you understand customer interactions across channels and determine the best media mix for your brand.

Amazon provides useful attribution insights, but it’s all about how you use them. Combine AMC data with data from Amazon Attribution and Amazon DSP attribution get comprehensive insights on your channels, including:

• Purchases
• Add to carts
• Detail page views
• Conversion rates
• Total sales

Together, all this data gives you visibility into how your marketing efforts work together across channels. With this information, you can identify marketing channels with the highest ROI and execute a full-funnel targeting strategy.

💡 Pro Tips:

• Compare performance across channels to identify the most efficient customer acquisition paths
• Use attribution data to allocate budget across channels based on their contribution to conversions
• Create coordinated messaging across channels based on attribution insights

Understanding how all your channels work together—not just individually—builds the foundation for truly integrated marketing campaigns.

7. Accurately Measure Incrementality to Optimize Ad Spend

If profitability is your goal, measuring incrementality is your first stop along the way—and AMC data gets you on the bus.

AMC metrics help you understand true incrementality and allocate spending for profitable growth. It takes you beyond simple metrics to reveal the actual impact of your advertising on purchasing behavior.

We’re talking about long-term value-focused metrics like:

• Average Revenue per User (ARR)
• Average Purchase Value (APV)
• Average Purchase Frequency Rate (APFR)
• LTV

You can use advanced attribution models based on metrics like LTV by ad exposure to understand how different ad touchpoints contribute to lifetime value and profitability.

This perspective helps you evaluate whether spending more to acquire a customer is justified by their potential lifetime value. Armed with this insight, you can apply bid multipliers for high-value audiences (both rules-based and lookalike) to optimize ad spend based on precise targeting.

💡 Pro Tips:

• Use incrementality data to identify diminishing returns on ad spend
• Allocate budget based on incremental impact rather than total attribution
• Use granular data on cost and profit at the category and product level to inform spend allocation, shifting budget to more profitable areas

Incrementality testing is the key to understanding your advertising's true impact and avoiding wasted spend on customers who would have purchased regardless of ad exposure.

Beyond Basic Targeting: Maximizing Profitability With AMC Insights

The days of relying solely on basic search strategies are over. New data sets available through AMC provide deeper insights into the effectiveness of your advertising, including cross-channel impact, RoAS, and path to purchase.

With these seven strategies, you can create a more targeted, efficient, and profitable advertising plan. The result is marketing that not only drives immediate sales, but builds sustainable growth and customer loyalty.

Grow your brand's profitability. 🌱 Learn how Trellis combines key insights from Amazon DSP with AMC data to get your ads in front of the audiences most likely to convert. Book a demo.