Put Amazon’s Data to Work with Amazon Audience Builder

Amazon’s servers are a treasure trove of beautiful, sparkling customer data. Alas, the treasure remains largely buried. However, advertisers can still leverage the data by using Amazon Audience Builder to reach prime targets with their ad campaigns.

The Amazon Audience Builder is a self-service tool that allows advertisers to create audiences based on relevant shopping interactions on Amazon. There are countless audiences that can be created using this information—from shoppers who prefer natural products to those who own a luxury car.

The goal in segmenting the data? Find the most relevant consumers for your message.

How Does Amazon Audience Builder Work?

The Audience Builder tool allows brands to create consumer groups they can target with ad campaigns on and . These target audiences are compiled by Amazon based on chosen inputs from advertisers. Inputs can include search keywords, detail page views (these can be either a brand’s products or a competitor’s products), purchase information, or even an individual brand’s own customer lists (such as CRM data).

Once you have developed your audiences, they can be used as targets for your Amazon advertising campaigns. Multiple audiences can be employed for a single campaign, and Amazon will only create audiences with consumers they classify as “active.”

Build Audiences for the Whole Funnel

Since a wide variety of audiences are available, there are many ways they can be used. Here are a few:

Build Awareness. Capture customers who are starting the product journey by creating audiences around keywords related to your brand. For this goal, you will want to look at KPIs including impressions, detail page views, and clicks to best measure success.

Target Competitors. Attract attention to your own brand and divert traffic from competitors by creating audiences made up of shoppers interested in your general category, or those who have viewed detail pages of products similar to yours. For this, you are able to enter in specific competitor ASINs to create the audience segment.

Retargeting. Circle back to the customers who have viewed your product’s detail page, but not made a purchase, or who have purchased complementary products (both under your brand, as well as other similar brands and products).

How to Use Amazon DSP Audience Builder

Following are the steps to build and target audiences

1. Click on “Audiences” in the side navigation of your Amazon DSP account.
2. Click the “New audience” button to create a new audience.
3. Select one of the radio buttons: Click the “Products” button to create your audience based on their shopping interactions with certain ASINs. Or select “Hashed audience” to utilize an existing audience and activate that audience in an Amazon Advertising campaign. Or select “Pixel traffic” for creating an audience based on pixel traffic.
4. Click “Next”.

If the “Products” radio button is selected, next steps are:

1. Select the ASINs that you want use to create your audience; you can add up to 1,000 ASINs.
2. Select which Amazon marketplace the products are sold on.
3. Click “Add.”
4. Check the box next to the shopping interactions you would like to use to build your audience. Each checked box will create one audience.
   • Product views
   • Product purchased
   • Similar product views, or
   • Product searches
   • You will also want to select your “lookback window” (30, 60, or 90 days).
5. Name your audiences.
6. Click “Create.”

It can take up to 24 hours for your audiences to become available to use in DSP. After 24 hours, you can check the status. The audiences with the active status can be applied to the Amazon Advertising campaigns in DSP.

With Audience Builder, the brands can also negatively target specific brands and ASINs that the ad will not be matched to.

When “Hashed audience” is selected, next steps are:

1. Select your file’s data type.
2. Prepare your CSV or TXT file (both comma delimited) by including as many data attributes as you can to get the highest match rate. Amazon can accept any combination of the following data attributes: Email, phone, address, city, state/province, zip/postal code, first name, and last name. Amazon can also accept mobile advertising IDs if submitted in a file of their own.
3. Enter a name and description for your audience. The name will appear in the Audiences field for line items.
4. Optional: Uncheck/check the box based on your preference to create lookalike audiences based on this hashed audience.

In the case of choosing “Pixel traffic,” next steps are:

1. Select “Pixel traffic.”
2. Enter a name and description for your audience. The name will appear in the Audiences field for line items.
3. Using Query builder, click “edit” under Include or Exclude, select the pixels you want to include or exclude in the audience, and click “OK.” You can change this after your orders and line items are live.
4. Enter the number of times during a specified number of days a user must visit the selected pixel before they are included in or excluded from the audience. You can change this after a campaign is live. It takes 15 days for pixel frequency to be updated in all reporting.
5. Click “Create.”

What Do I Need to Get Started?

A bit of Amazon Advertising practice. If you have not used Amazon Advertising previously, get your feet wet there first. Once you understand the basics and have a solid strategy in place, you can put the Audience Builder tool to work for your campaigns.

A strategy. Can you answer this question: How does this particular audience help me reach my campaign goals? If the answer doesn’t slide right off your tongue, give yourself a bit more time to figure out what you’re after.

Knowledge of Programmatic. While the tool is self-service, it takes a little know-how. If you don’t have a strong understanding of programmatic, that’s okay! We’re here to help.