Keeping up with your advertising campaign performance can be a big commitment, particularly for smaller sellers. However, resources are available that can make accessing information a little easier, especially for those selling on Amazon. Amazon Marketing Stream is an advertising monitoring resource that can make accessing and collecting data quick and easy, informing you of campaign performance and other key metrics in real-time. In this post, we’ll uncover what you need to know about Amazon Marketing Stream to best leverage its abilities.

Key takeaways

• Amazon Marketing Stream is an innovative alternative to manual API pulls of aggregate data.
• With Amazon Marketing Stream, sellers and advertisers can access information across numerous data sets, including conversions and traffic, and messaging to keep advertisers informed as performance fluctuates.
• The biggest benefit of an automated and always-updating resource like Amazon Marketing Stream is its ability to support data-centric decision-making. It provides opportunities to learn seller behavior and analyze available metrics for trends, which can help save money and improve outcomes.

What is Amazon Marketing Stream?

Amazon Marketing Stream is what Amazon refers to as a “data-streaming service.” Essentially, this is a tool that advertisers can use to automate the process of pulling campaign information and monitoring performance trends. 

Once set up, users can subscribe to different data sets, which will be refreshed throughout the day and delivered via an advertiser or seller’s AWS account. By using a push notification system, users can keep an eye on how things are progressing in a way that reduces the number of manual API checks required.

Why is Amazon Marketing Stream important for advertisers?

As with most advertising-related tools, the biggest benefit to advertisers is the quality and availability of data. Amazon focuses on a few different priorities through this platform, like:

• Improved data granularity through the use of reporting that refreshes hourly, giving users the ability to look at figures in greater detail.
• Increased reporting dimensions, including the ability to show performance on many levels rather than what’s limited to a single data set.
• Promotion of delta values over aggregates to allow for closer monitoring of campaign performance over time.
• A simpler workflow, with all information natively available through the AWS interface rather than across different API tools.

Data types available

Amazon Marketing Stream is intended to be flexible and highly functional, serving the most advertisers possible no matter the points of priority. These are the data types most valuable to those using—or considering using—Amazon Marketing Stream.

Reporting data

The reporting data includes many basic metrics advertisers look at closely, like conversions and traffic. This refreshes hourly and is available as raw, unprocessed, unfiltered data for users to best configure outputs to their needs or analytics platforms.

Messaging data

Messaging data refers to the amount of information Amazon provides as automated messages to users based on their preferences. This can come in the form of push notifications or other messaging functionality and largely relates to the changing status of campaign performance. This can include:

• Changes to an ad, ad group, campaign, and targeting entities.
• Budget consumption data, including budget changes of over 5%.
• Product eligibility.
• Bid recommendations.

The information available and notification options can be thoroughly customized so that users receive messages with the most important insights. Messaging is generally managed hourly, so users can make real-time decisions without seeing problems after the fact or missing out on optimization opportunities.

Recommendations

In addition to providing information based on reporting needs, Amazon Marketing Stream can also offer recommendations to best support performance across the marketplace. These recommendations can be things like ways to optimize Amazon campaigns already in place, as well as suggestions for new campaigns to improve performance across a full ad portfolio.

Dayparting

Understanding how activity shifts throughout the day can be a vital metric for advertisers to track, particularly as performance trends can inform ways to improve overall strategy. With dayparting data, advertisers can leverage dynamic pricing to adjust budgets based on the time of day to avoid wasting ad spend in slow periods while remaining competitive at peak purchasing times.

Who can use Amazon Marketing Stream?

Amazon Marketing Stream is available to Amazon partners and select tool providers, including self-service advertisers and integrated Amazon advertising software. This means that Amazon’s data-streaming product can be used through Amazon’s own interfaces and combined with other robust eCommerce tools that sellers may use

While Amazon Marketing Stream was first rolled out in North America, sellers from countries across the European Union, the Middle East, and areas of Oceania can now access the platform.

Amazon does not charge additional fees to use Amazon Marketing Stream, though Amazon does note that some costs may be incurred using AWS as a whole.

How can advertisers leverage Amazon Marketing Stream?

The beauty of Amazon Marketing Stream is the many ways it can support the seller and advertiser experience. Like most reporting tools, results are designed to improve campaign efficiencies, showcase trends and changes to behavior, and help optimize the performance of ads across the Amazon Marketplace. There are numerous ways users can leverage the abilities of Amazon Marketing Stream, with some of the most valuable opportunities as follows:

Identify shopping behaviors

When are customers most likely to click on your pages? What use of keywords or phrases are the most influential? Are you using ad campaign spend in logical and appropriate ways? If you’re not sure or think you have more to learn, Amazon Marketing Stream can help.

By offering hour-by-hour refreshes of campaign information, messaging surrounding key data points, and raw reporting outputs for granular analysis, you can easily look for trends that may inform shopping behaviors. And, once you’ve identified patterns, you can use them to tailor your campaigns to increase conversions.

Capitalize on seasonal trends

While many products are evergreen and are always of value, many others are more useful in some seasons versus others. However, without understanding how shopper activity fluctuates over time, it can be harder to see these trends. The information available through Amazon Marketing Stream makes it easier to parse this information almost instantaneously, which can make it easier to automate targeting at times when ad spend will be the most beneficial.

Take advantage of campaign optimization opportunities

When it comes to analyzing advertising opportunities, you don’t want to find yourself behind the eight ball. With a regular stream of updated activity, you’ll always get a snapshot of how your ads are performing, both in general and against the business objectives you’ve set. If optimization opportunities come up, you’ll know about them right away, as the messaging data is often centered around changes in the ad environment.

If, for example, you see a notable change in budgets, you can take that as a sign to evaluate whether you need to push forward or pull back. This sort of quick decision-making ability can help you save money or ensure you’re making a smart investment.

Access timely data

While there’s something to be said for analyzing historical data, metrics and KPIs are most useful when delivered in a timely manner. The ability to act quickly can’t be underestimated, particularly in an industry where getting ahead often means having an ever-updating strategy.

One of the biggest benefits of Amazon Marketing Stream is the access to regularly refreshing analytics delivered to you based on your preferences. There’s no need to take time out of your day to make manual pulls from Amazon’s API or face delays due to throttling issues; instead, data is delivered based on your priorities and campaign goals. With hourly refreshes and messaging of important changes, you’ll never miss out on opportunities due to outdated information.

Make data-informed decisions

Amazon Marketing Stream’s primary function is delivering data on an ongoing basis without manual interference—in short, automatically putting data in your hands to guide the decision-making process. By promoting both real-time information and raw data sets, users have the ability to leverage information in the way that makes the most sense for their needs. These resources can take the guesswork out of making choices regarding everything from campaign objectives to advertising budgets, helping boost efficiencies and keep you ahead of the competition.

Interested in seeing the benefits of automation to maximize advertising effectiveness? Trellis can help. Reach out to us today.