Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) has transformed how advertisers analyze their campaign performance on & off Amazon. Among the various insights that AMC provides, Ad-attributed Branded Searches linked with DSP ads have proved to be a powerful lever for advertisers. This article explores what Ad-attributed Branded Searches are, their significance, and how advertisers can leverage these insights using AMC to refine their Amazon DSP campaigns.
AMC as a Privacy-Safe Clean Room Environment
Amazon Marketing Cloud is a privacy-friendly clean room that enables advertisers to analyze user-level event data in a compliant and aggregated way. Instead of viewing personally identifiable information, AMC makes it possible to securely analyze ad impressions, clicks, searches, and purchases in a controlled environment.
This enables advertisers to responsibly derive insights like ad-attributed branded searches while still offering the richness needed for advanced DSP optimization.
Defining Ad-attributed Branded Searches
Ad-attributed Branded Searches refer to instances where a shopper searches for a brand’s specific keywords after interacting with an advertisement. In the context of Amazon DSP ads, this means that after seeing or engaging with a DSP display ad, the user searches for the brand on Amazon. These searches are a key signal of brand awareness and intent driven by the advertisement.
Custom Attribution Modeling & Flexible Lookback Windows
Whereas traditional DSP reporting requires attribution windows to be predefined, AMC allows advertisers to create their own attribution models through SQL queries.
Advertisers can then examine their branded searches over various look-back periods, such as 7-day, 14-day, or 30-day windows, to determine the length of time that DSP exposure affects search behavior.
Furthermore, AMC also enables advertisers to distinguish between the following types of branded searches:
View-through branded searches
Click-through branded searches
This granular attribution modeling offers greater visibility into upper-funnel impact. It allows more factual budget allocation for awareness plus consideration campaigns.
Why is this important?
Branded searches indicate that customers remember your brand after being exposed to your ads, which can imply that your DSP campaign has successfully driven brand recall and purchase intent. These searches often lead to conversions, as customers seeking branded terms are more likely to buy from the brand they are searching for.
How AMC Connects DSP Ads to Branded Searches
AMC provides a granular view of how your Amazon DSP ads influence lower-funnel activities like branded searches and purchases. Here's how AMC tracks the journey:
Impression Tracking: Every DSP ad served is logged at the event level in AMC.
User Engagement: AMC identifies when a user has engaged with the ad (e.g., through clicks or views).
Attribution Window: Within an attribution window of 14 days, AMC can attribute a branded search to a user who was exposed to a DSP ad.
Branded Search Event: When a user searches for the brand (or a keyword associated with the brand), AMC matches this event to the prior DSP ad exposure.
Key Insights from Ad-attributed Branded Searches
Ad-attributed Branded Searches provide several actionable insights that can enhance your DSP campaign strategy. Here are a few of the key takeaways:
1. Brand Awareness Impact:
The number of branded searches attributed to your DSP ads reveals how well your campaigns are driving brand awareness. A rise in these searches can indicate that your ads are effectively making an impression on customers, even if they don’t immediately click through to the product page.
2. Measuring Incremental Branded Search Lift
AMC allows advertisers to compare the exposed audience to the unexposed audience to measure the true lift. By running holdout tests or audience comparison queries, brands can assess be it is the DSP ad that drove new branded searches or merely accelerated the existing purchase intent.
It is critical to understand the incremental effect to effectively assess the upper-funnel DSP investment and prevent over-attribution of the natural brand demand.
3. Customer Intent:
Tracking branded searches gives insight into customer intent. Customers who actively search for your brand after seeing an ad are expressing a higher level of interest, which can guide your remarketing and retargeting strategies.
4. Multi-touch Attribution:
AMC allows you to see how DSP ads fit into the broader customer journey, especially in multi-touch campaigns. For example, if a user sees a DSP ad and then performs a branded search, this insight can help refine your attribution models to give more credit to display advertising. Learn more about multi-touch attribution in Understanding Multi-Touch Attribution in Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC).
Funnel Optimization:
By understanding the relationship between DSP ads and branded searches, advertisers can optimize their campaigns for both upper-funnel (awareness) and lower-funnel (consideration) stages. If your DSP ads are generating high branded searches but low conversions, it might indicate a disconnect between awareness and the product offering or landing page experience.
Using AMC to Improve DSP Ad Campaigns
With AMC, the insights from branded searches can be used to make data-driven adjustments to your DSP campaigns. Here’s how you can leverage these insights:
1. Refine Audience Segmentation
If AMC data shows that certain customer segments are more likely to search for your brand after seeing a DSP ad, you can refine your audience targeting. For example, segment your audience by:
Geography: If one region shows higher branded searches, allocate more DSP budget to that region.
Demographics: Use AMC data to identify which demographics are engaging with your ads and searching for your brand.
Behavioral Segments: If users who view specific products or categories are more likely to perform branded searches, target similar audiences more aggressively. Learn how to classify users effectively with Understanding Audience Types in Amazon DSP.
2. Optimize Creative Assets
If branded searches peak after showing specific types of creative (e.g., video vs. static image), adjust your DSP ads to prioritize those formats. AMC allows you to break down performance at the creative level, ensuring that your best-performing ads get the most exposure.
3. Adjust Bidding Strategy
By analyzing how branded searches lead to conversions, you can adjust your bidding strategy to allocate more budget to DSP ads that drive brand searches. Ads that generate significant branded search volumes may warrant higher bids, as they have a greater likelihood of moving customers through the funnel.
4. Cross-channel Synergy
AMC helps you understand how DSP ads work in conjunction with other channels (e.g., Sponsored Products, organic search). You may find that DSP ads are excellent for driving awareness and branded searches, while Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands ads are more effective at converting those searches into sales. By understanding these relationships, you can better allocate your budget across channels.
Creating and Activating AMC-Based Audiences in Amazon DSP
In addition to reporting, AMC allows advertisers to build highly valuable custom audiences through branded search behavior.
Examples include:
Users who viewed DSP ads and then searched branded terms
Users who searched branded keywords but didn’t convert
High-frequency branded searchers with engagement
These audiences can be launched directly in Amazon DSP for sequential messaging, retargeting, or suppression.
Through the creation of actionable audiences from branded search data, advertisers shift from analysis to execution.
How Can Hector Help You?
Hector’s powerful reporting dashboard simplifies accessing AMC insights, eliminating the need for complex SQL queries. With an intuitive interface, it delivers actionable insights that empower you to make timely, informed decisions.
Unlock the potential of AMC with Hector and drive incremental growth for your brand.
If you’re new to AMC, Hector can help you start by setting up your own AMC instance. Discover essential reporting capabilities with Amazon Ads Reporting.
Conclusion
Ad-attributed Branded Searches provide powerful insights that help advertisers assess the impact of DSP ads on brand awareness and customer intent. With AMC, advertisers can analyze these insights at a granular level, allowing for data-driven adjustments to audience segmentation, creative assets, and bidding strategies. By optimizing DSP campaigns to drive more branded searches, brands can strengthen their presence on Amazon and drive more conversions over time.
AMC’s ability to track and measure branded searches as part of the full funnel ensures that you not only build awareness but also turn that awareness into measurable, actionable results.