It’s no secret today’s Amazon ecosystem is complex. Shoppers bounce between Sponsored Ads, Amazon DSP, Streaming TV, organic search, and even your D2C site before they ever convert. The brands that win aren’t the ones chasing attribution credit: they’re the ones proving incremental growth.
That’s where Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) comes in.
At Code3, we don’t treat AMC as a “nice-to-have” reporting tool. We treat it as the foundation of modern incrementality measurement, smarter audience strategy, and long-term growth on Amazon.
Let’s break down how AMC actually works, how we use it, and most importantly: what it means for your brand.
Amazon Marketing Cloud: More Than a Reporting Dashboard
AMC is Amazon Ads’ privacy-safe, cloud-based clean room. It allows advertisers to analyze pseudonymized Amazon Ads signals alongside their own first-party data. Translation: AMC lets you see the entire customer journey, not just the last click before conversion.
Unlike standard Amazon reporting, AMC enables custom SQL-based analyses that answer questions most brands are still guessing at, including:
- Which tactics are actually driving incremental sales, versus capturing demand that already existed?
- How do Sponsored Ads and Amazon DSP work together across the path to purchase?
- Which audiences deliver the strongest New-to-Brand impact?
- Where does lifetime value (LTV) actually come from?
This is the difference between knowing what happened and knowing why it happened.
Code3’s POV: Incrementality Is the Only Metric That Matters
At Code3, we believe growth only counts if it’s incremental. If an ad “performed” but simply intercepted a shopper who was already going to buy, that’s not growth, that’s budget leakage.
Our AMC philosophy is simple:
- Measure what actually changed because of media.
- Reduce wasteful retargeting.
- Prioritize net-new customers and future value, not short-term attribution wins.
AMC gives us the tools to do exactly that and to turn those insights into real optimizations.
How Code3 Uses Amazon Marketing Cloud in Practice
1. Building More Incremental Audiences (and Cutting Waste)
One of the fastest ways to improve performance is to stop paying for conversions you didn’t influence. We use Amazon Marketing Cloud to design smarter audience logic that protects incrementality. For example:
Exclusions for incrementality:Using AMC, we exclude Add-to-Cart (ATC) users from certain retargeting pools. Why? Because retargeting someone who already showed strong purchase intent often just steals credit from organic or lower-cost touchpoints.
Frequency-based retargeting:AMC helps us identify shoppers who visited a Product Detail Page multiple times within a set window. These high-intent users may justify more aggressive bidding, while chronic browsers who never convert are excluded to reduce wasted impressions.
Search-to-Display synergy:This is where AMC shines. We connect Sponsored Ads and Amazon DSP by:
- Retargeting shoppers who searched non-brand keywords but never reached your PDP
- Excluding brand purchasers and competitor buyers
The result: display budgets support discovery, not redundancy.
2. Connecting Amazon and D2C Strategies
Your customer doesn’t see Amazon and D2C as separate ecosystems, so neither should your measurement. AMC allows Code3 to create a unified view of shopper behavior across Amazon and your owned channels.
We use this to:
- Retarget shoppers who browsed your D2C site but didn’t convert, guiding them to Amazon where friction is lower and intent is often higher
- Identify which channel a shopper is most likely to convert in profitably and steer spend accordingly
This isn’t about favoring Amazon over D2C. It’s about letting data dictate the most efficient path to purchase.
3. Strengthening Brand Loyalty and Lifetime Value
Incrementality doesn’t stop at the first purchase. With Amazon Marketing Cloud, we build audience strategies focused on retention and lifetime value, including:
- Targeting customers who purchased Product A but not Product B to drive cross-sell
- Identifying high-value customers who exceed purchase thresholds and prioritizing them for loyalty-focused messaging
AMC allows us to move beyond acquisition metrics and invest in audiences that actually grow long-term revenue.
How Code3 Measures Incrementality Using AMC
There’s no single “perfect” incrementality test. Instead, we use AMC-powered frameworks that continuously quantify and optimize it. Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Prioritizing Tactics That Drive Incremental Reach
For most clients, we allocate 60–65% of media investment to tactics that are inherently more incremental, including:
- In-Market audiences
- Similar Product View
- Conquesting
- Contextual targeting
These tactics expand reach to shoppers who weren’t already in the brand’s ecosystem.
Designing Smarter Exclusions
AMC reporting helps us identify where exclusions are needed to protect incrementality, such as:
- Past purchasers
- PDP viewers
- Brand keyword audiences
This ensures upper- and mid-funnel strategies are focused on net-new exposure, not recapturing known demand.
Analyzing New-to-Brand Behavior Across Channels
We closely analyze New-to-Brand Detail Page Views (DPVs) and purchase rates across:
- Sponsored Search
- Amazon DSP
- Streaming TV
This allows us to identify which channels and tactics are most effective at acquiring new customers—not just converting existing ones.
Optimizing Frequency and Sequencing
Using overlap and frequency-to-conversion analysis in AMC, we determine:
- How many exposures are actually needed to drive conversion
- Which channels work best together, and in what order
The outcome is more efficient spend, better customer experiences, and stronger incremental impact.
What This Means for Your Brand
Partnering with Code3 means more than “having access” to Amazon Marketing Cloud. It means working with a team that knows how to operationalize AMC insights into decisions that move the business forward.
With Code3, you get:
- Clear, actionable insights from complex AMC data, not dashboards without direction
- Media strategies built around incrementality, New-to-Brand growth, and lifetime value
- An integrated measurement framework that connects awareness, conversion, and loyalty across Amazon and beyond
At the end of the day, we’re not interested in vanity metrics or last-click wins. We’re focused on making sure every dollar you spend is actually growing the business.
That’s the power of Amazon Marketing Cloud when it’s used the right way.