Short version: Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) is Amazon's own shopper-level analytics environment — the same tool agencies have used for years to see past what a campaign report shows. Since September 2025, any seller running Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, or Sponsored TV can open it for free, directly in the Ads console, with no DSP spend and no partner required. This guide covers what AMC actually holds, how to open it, and four things an ordinary seller can check without writing a line of SQL.

If you've only ever heard of Amazon Marketing Cloud as "the agency thing with DSP and SQL," that's an accurate description of what it used to be — and an outdated one. Amazon now hands the same clean room to every seller running sponsored ads, self-service, from inside the ads console you already use. The reason it's worth ten minutes of your time: your Sponsored Products campaign report can tell you an ad spent $340 and generated $1,020 in sales, but it can't tell you whether that sale came from a first-time customer or the same person who buys from you every month. AMC can, because it's the only place Amazon lets you see the shopper underneath the campaign total.

What Amazon Marketing Cloud actually is

Amazon describes AMC as a secure, privacy-safe, cloud-based clean room where advertisers run analytics and build audiences across pseudonymized signals — hundreds of fields covering the impressions, clicks, and conversions tied to your own ads. You can also upload your own pseudonymous data (a customer list matched to Amazon's) and combine it with your ads signals. AMC does not hand you anyone's identity: Amazon's own AMC page states the platform has "built-in aggregation thresholds ensuring user privacy," and that outputs are always aggregated and anonymous, never row-level shopper detail. In practice, that means every result you see is a number describing a group of shoppers, never a named individual — the same privacy boundary that keeps this compatible with the "we never pool seller data across accounts" line OptimalCentral holds elsewhere.

What makes AMC different from the reports you already get is that it keeps the shopper as the unit of analysis instead of collapsing everything into a campaign or keyword total. That single difference is what unlocks the four use cases below.

Free self-service access — no DSP required (2025 update)

For most of AMC's history, getting into it meant running Amazon DSP with real budget behind it, or going through a managed-service partner. That changed on September 16–18, 2025: Amazon's own announcement states AMC "now provides instant, self-service access for sponsored ads advertisers directly within their Amazon Ads account," open to anyone running Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, or Sponsored TV campaigns — no DSP contract, no minimum spend, no partner in the middle. DSP advertisers already had access before this change; this specifically opened the door for sellers who only run sponsored ads.

Amazon paired the wider access with a friendlier front door: a new AMC homepage with no-code query templates, so a first-time visitor isn't staring at a blank SQL editor.

How to open AMC in your Ads console

  1. Log in to your Amazon Ads console (advertising.amazon.com).
  2. Look in the left-hand navigation for Measurement & Reporting, then Amazon Marketing Cloud.
  3. Click it. If you don't have an AMC instance yet, Amazon sets one up for you as part of opening it — there's no separate signup form to fill out first.
  4. You land on AMC's homepage, where no-code analysis templates are ready to run immediately; a SQL query editor is also available if and when you want it.

This rollout covers 40+ regions, so most sellers reading this in the US, UK, EU, or several other marketplaces should see the option already live in their console.

What a seller can learn without writing SQL

You don't need to be an agency running a six-figure DSP budget to get something useful out of AMC's no-code templates. Four questions an ordinary Sponsored Products seller can answer that a normal campaign report structurally can't:

  • Cost per new customer, not just cost per sale. Amazon defines a shopper as "new-to-brand" if they haven't converted with your brand in the past 12 months. A campaign-performance template splits your orders into new-to-brand vs. repeat, so you can see what it actually costs you to bring in a first-time buyer — a number a blended ACOS hides completely.
  • Which of your own products get bought together. Because AMC tracks the same pseudonymous shopper across ads, you can see when people who buy Product A also end up buying Product B — a real cross-sell signal your Business Reports can't surface, since they report each ASIN's sales in isolation.
  • Whether reaching someone twice converts better than once. AMC can show how conversion changes with exposure frequency, and whether shoppers reached by two or three ad types (say, Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands together) convert at a different rate than shoppers who only saw one.
  • Search terms that reach shoppers who never buy. Instead of only seeing a search term's aggregate zero-order spend, AMC can isolate search terms that reach the same non-converting shoppers repeatedly — a sharper starting list for negative keywords than spend-with-no-orders alone.
Worked example — insulated travel mug, $3,000/month Sponsored Products spend

The seller's Sponsored Products report shows $3,000 spent, $9,400 in attributed sales — a 32% ACOS that looks fine on its own. Running AMC's campaign-performance template splits those sales: 61 orders were new-to-brand, 140 were repeat buyers already in the seller's customer base.

Attributing spend proportionally to the new-to-brand share puts cost per new customer at roughly $15 — a number the ACOS alone never showed, and the one the seller actually needs to decide whether this campaign is worth funding to grow the customer base, versus one that's mostly just re-selling to people who'd have bought anyway.

AMC vs. your regular Sponsored Products reports

Nothing above replaces your standard campaign reports — you still need those for spend, clicks, and ACOS by keyword. AMC answers a different question: reports aggregate by campaign, keyword, or ASIN, so the shopper is gone before you ever see a row of data. AMC is the one place Amazon lets that shopper dimension survive, subject to its privacy thresholds — which is exactly why new-to-brand cost, product overlap, and cross-ad-type exposure only exist inside it.

Checklist: getting value from AMC in 30 minutes

  • ☐ Confirmed you're running Sponsored Products, Brands, Display, or TV (any one qualifies for free access)
  • ☐ Opened Measurement & Reporting → Amazon Marketing Cloud in the Ads console
  • ☐ Let Amazon auto-provision an instance if you don't already have one
  • ☐ Ran a no-code campaign-performance template to see new-to-brand vs. repeat orders
  • ☐ Calculated cost per new customer from the new-to-brand share of spend and orders
  • ☐ Noted any search terms or exposure patterns worth acting on in your next PPC audit

Skip the templates — get the shopper-level analysis as cards

AMC Insights connects to your own AMC instance and runs nine pre-built, shopper-level analyses automatically: new-to-brand orders vs. repeat, cost per new customer, gateway products, six-month customer spend, and wasted reach you can turn into negative keywords with your approval. No SQL, no templates to configure by hand. Included on the Enterprise plan.

See AMC Insights →

Not ready for AMC's shopper-level view, or running less ad spend than makes checking it daily worthwhile? OptimalCentral's Ads Audit finds wasted spend, high-ACOS bids, and negative-keyword candidates straight from a Bulk Operations export or a connected Ads account — no AMC instance needed — and it's included on every OptimalCentral plan, with a 14-day free trial.

Once you know what an ad-driven sale is actually costing you to acquire, the next step is auditing where that spend leaks — our Amazon PPC audit checklist walks through finding wasted spend and building a negative-keyword list, and our guide to what counts as a good ACOS covers the metric AMC's new-to-brand split sits on top of.

Frequently asked questions

What is Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC)?

Amazon's own clean-room analytics environment — a secure, privacy-safe, cloud-based solution for performing analytics and building audiences across pseudonymized signals like impressions, clicks, and conversions tied to your ads, at the shopper level rather than aggregated into a campaign total.

Do I need Brand Registry, a DSP contract, or a partner to access AMC?

No, not anymore. Since September 2025, any advertiser running Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, or Sponsored TV gets instant, self-service access directly in the Ads console — no DSP spend minimum, no partner or agency in the middle, no approval wait.

How do I open AMC in my Amazon Ads console?

Log in to your Ads console and look in the left-hand navigation under Measurement & Reporting for Amazon Marketing Cloud. Clicking it opens AMC's homepage, sets up a new instance automatically if you don't have one, and surfaces no-code templates ready to run in a few clicks.

Can I use AMC without knowing SQL?

Yes. Amazon ships pre-built, no-code query templates for the most common questions, including campaign performance and audience insights, where you fill in parameters like a date range or ASIN list instead of writing a query. Custom SQL is available but not required.

How is AMC different from my regular Sponsored Products reports?

Your campaign reports aggregate by campaign, keyword, or ASIN, so the individual shopper disappears before you see the data. AMC keeps the shopper as the unit of analysis (pseudonymously, only ever returned in aggregate above Amazon's built-in privacy thresholds) — the only way to see new-to-brand cost, product overlap, or cross-ad-type exposure effects.

Do I have to write AMC queries myself to use OptimalCentral's AMC Insights?

No. AMC Insights runs nine pre-built, shopper-level analyses against your own connected AMC instance and returns readable cards — new-to-brand orders vs. repeat, cost per new customer, wasted reach, and more — with no SQL. You do need an AMC instance connected to your Amazon Ads account first, which is the free, self-service step this article covers.