Ad Intel: 5 ways to build and measure awareness using Amazon Marketing Cloud and other advanced tools

For brands looking to scale on Amazon, brand awareness isn’t just a top-of-funnel concept, it’s the entry point to the entire customer journey. While the path to purchase is rarely linear, awareness is always the first step. From display ads to social, brand visibility plays a critical role in product discovery, differentiation, and ultimately, consideration.

At Ad Advance, we specialize in upper-funnel strategy and were among the earliest adopters of Amazon DSP and Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC). We’ve built proprietary tools, audience frameworks, and measurement systems that allow us to test, learn, and refine at scale. Today, our focus is on helping brands not just reach but resonate with the right customers. That means leveraging clean-room data, custom attribution, and audience-level analytics to close the loop from impression to purchase.

Let’s dive into five actionable tips that intermediate to advanced sellers can use to level up their brand-building strategy on Amazon.

Tip 1: Use AMC audiences to supercharge sponsored ads reach

Start using AMC to build custom audiences and improve the precision of your sponsored ads campaigns. AMC is a secure, privacy-safe, and cloud-based clean room solution and allows you to generate custom audiences, such as lookalikes of past purchasers or high-engagement shoppers. Now you can combine the high-volume keywords that you’re already monitoring with AMC-generated audiences to accomplish broad reach and higher purchase intent. Think of it as a turbocharged top of search campaign with smarter spend.

For example, a premium brand in a crowded category faced stiff competition on a broad, high-volume keyword. We tested two Sponsored Brands campaigns, one using standard keyword targeting, and another layering in AMC lookalike audiences. The results spoke for themselves:¹

Tip 2: Capture non-Amazon traffic with attribution and remarketing

Use Amazon Attribution to measure the on-Amazon impact of your non-Amazon channels (e.g., email, search, social, display, and influencer), then reengage non-converters with Amazon DSP campaigns. Some shoppers begin their journey with a search engine. Driving that traffic straight to your Amazon listings helps to accelerate your reach and boost on-Amazon performance. Bonus: Attribution campaigns often qualify for a 10% Brand Referral Bonus.

We saw this strategy’s effectiveness in action: We drove 40,000 clicks from search ads to a client’s Amazon listings at just $0.19 CPC, totaling $7.6K in spend.² Attribution tied this traffic to $11.2K in attributed sales (1.5x return on ad spend (ROAS)), plus ~10% Brand Referral Bonus.³ But the real magic was in remarketing: we used Amazon DSP to follow up with non-converting visitors and saw a 7.5x ROAS on those efforts.⁴

The combined results were impressive:⁵

• $202K+ in attributed sales across both tactics
• Boosted organic rank via external traffic
• Robust remarketing pool for sustained performance

This demonstrates how pairing external traffic with remarketing unlocks a scalable, full-funnel approach.

Tip 3: Align creatives to lifestyle and in-market audiences

Tailor your upper-funnel creatives based on distinct lifestyle or in-market audience segments. A shopper interested in heart health has different motivations than someone focused on aging support. Matching the message to the mindset ensures that each impression resonates—and that performance improves across the funnel.

Ahead of a major one-day shopping event, Tru Niagen needed to quickly boost new customer acquisition. We used AMC to segment audiences by health focus, then deployed custom creatives aligned to each group. This strategy included:

• Lower-cost introductory products to reduce trial barriers
• Real-time bid optimization via Amazon Marketing Stream
• Tentpole campaigns aligned with high-traffic events

The results demonstrated the power of this approach:⁶

• 93% increase in NTB orders
• 67% lift in Subscribe & Save
• 40% overall sales growth
• 12% drop in acquisition costs

Upper-funnel creative alignment isn’t just aesthetic, it’s strategic. When tailored to the audience, the results follow.

Tip 4: Measure customer lifetime value, not just conversions

Use AMC to measure new-to-brand lifetime value (LTV) and shift key performance indicators (KPIs) from ACOS to cost per acquisition (CPA). Not all customers are created equal. By prioritizing introductory products with high reorder or Subscribe & Save rates, even if initial ACOS is higher, you can grow long-term revenue more efficiently. Because CPA focuses on acquiring valuable new customers, it’s a stronger predictor of long-term growth than short-term ACOS efficiency.

Looking back at Tru Niagen’s experience, we extended our NTB strategy by analyzing which first-purchase products had the highest LTV. With that data, we:

• Prioritized those SKUs in acquisition campaigns
• Matched creatives to the audiences most likely to reorder
• Optimized for CPA instead of just ACOS

The results demonstrated the effectiveness of this LTV-focused approach:⁷

• NTB share rose from 30% to 45%
• Customer acquisition costs dropped 12%
• Q1 became Tru Niagen’s best-ever quarter on Amazon

The takeaway? Building a brand means building customer relationships—not just one-time transactions.

Tip 5: Leverage first-touch attribution for true upper-funnel impact

Use AMC to measure First-Touch Attribution and understand the role of awareness campaigns in conversion. Amazon’s default Last-Touch Attribution often undervalues the ads that introduced a customer to your brand. According to Ad Advance’s AMC analysis, the sweet spot for conversion frequency is 7–9 impressions.⁸ The first one is often the most influential.

During New Year’s peak season, AlgaeCal launched a Streaming TV (STV) campaign to promote its Vitamin D3 Complete supplement. We tracked the full journey in AMC—from first touch to final conversion. The results were:⁹

• 78% lift in branded searches in January
• 37% of Q1 ad-attributed sales traced to STV as the first touch
• 1,100% year-over-year sales lift for the product
• 12% of total subscribers driven by the STV campaign

Don’t overlook upper-funnel ads just because they don’t close the deal. They often open the door. If you're exploring Streaming TV ads for the first time, Sponsored TV is a simple way to start. It's available to all brand owners through the ad console and doesn't require a minimum spend.

Upper funnel, bottom-line impact

From smarter audience reach to multi-touch measurement, brand building on Amazon is no longer a guessing game—it’s a science. The tools exist to not only drive awareness, but to measure and optimize its impact across the funnel.

At Ad Advance, we’ve built our agency around this very philosophy. We help brands go beyond keywords and bids to understand the people behind the clicks, because that’s how lasting brands are built.

About the Author

Joe Shelerud is CEO of Ad Advance, an Amazon Ads Advanced Partner blending data-driven strategy and tech to help brands grow through full-funnel Amazon advertising.

Sources

¹ Ad Advance, US, 2025.

^2–5 Ad Advance, US, 2022.

^6-8 Ad Advance, US, 2023.

⁹ Ad Advance, US, 2024.