Amazon DSP advertising that builds demand beyond the search bar

Amazon DSP (demand-side platform) is Amazon's system for buying display, video, audio and streaming TV ads programmatically. It targets audiences built from Amazon's first-party shopping data and serves ads on Amazon, on Amazon-owned properties such as Fire TV and Prime Video, and across third-party websites and apps. Targeting works by audience instead of by keyword.

Sponsored Ads capture shoppers who are already searching. Brands that keep growing eventually run short of profitable search demand, and DSP lets them reach people earlier: shoppers who browsed the category, bought from a competitor, or viewed your product and left. As an Amazon DSP agency, we run it alongside your Sponsored Ads and measure every campaign in Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC). For a longer primer, read Amazon DSP explained.

DSP pays back when there is demand worth amplifying. Before we recommend it, we check four things:

• The products you would promote already sell, and have enough reviews to convince a shopper who has never heard of your brand.
• Sponsored Ads already work. DSP suits brands spending about $10k a month or more on Sponsored Ads with healthy conversion, because DSP builds demand and search campaigns turn it into orders.
• Shoppers have a reason to come back: a product people reorder, a higher-priced item with a long consideration window, or a catalog customers buy into piece by piece. These get the most from retargeting and audience work.
• There is budget for a real test.

If something on this list is missing, we'll say so and sequence the work, usually fixing search campaigns and listings first so you don't pay for reach you can't convert. Our Amazon DSP guide covers when DSP is premature in more detail.

There are three ways to buy Amazon DSP.

Self-service makes sense when you already employ someone who can build audiences, manage creative and read AMC. If you don't, an agency gets you the same access without the hire. For how the two ad systems differ, see Amazon DSP vs Sponsored Ads.

Last-click reports undercount DSP, because most of its work happens before the search that ends in a sale. We measure it in Amazon Marketing Cloud, Amazon's clean-room analytics service, where DSP and Sponsored Ads events can be joined at the shopper level without exposing personal data.

What we look at:

• New-to-brand customers: how many buyers exposed to DSP had not bought from your brand in the past 12 months, and what each one cost.
• View-through conversions: purchases by shoppers who saw an ad without clicking it, compared with a similar group that didn't see it.
• Path to purchase: which sequence of DSP and search touchpoints most often ends in an order, so budget follows the paths that convert.
• Halo on search: whether branded searches and Sponsored Ads conversion rise while DSP is live.

These numbers decide whether we scale an audience or cut it. More on the tool in Amazon Marketing Cloud explained, and on audience options in Amazon DSP audiences and targeting.

DSP is priced like the rest of our work: a fixed monthly base plus a small percentage of ad sales, so what we earn follows your results. Media spend is billed separately from our fee.

Before launch we agree what DSP is for in your account (new-to-brand growth, retargeting return or reach into a new audience) and report on it in the same weekly summary as your Sponsored Ads. DSP works best next to a healthy search program. If yours isn't there yet, we'll fix that first, and our Amazon PPC management page explains how. To see where your account stands, start with a growth plan.