Amazon DSP

Sponsored Products can only sell to people already typing your category into Amazon. When you have taken most of that demand, growth stops looking like better bidding and starts looking like more demand. That is what DSP is for.

Amazon DSP is Amazon's programmatic platform. It uses Amazon's purchase data — actual buying behaviour, not survey panels or third-party cookies — to reach shoppers on Amazon, on Fire TV and Twitch, and across the open web. Used properly it is the only channel that lets you buy Amazon-quality audience data outside Amazon.

Used badly it is the fastest way to spend $15k on impressions nobody remembers.

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Is your brand ready for DSP?

We will tell you no when the answer is no. DSP works when:

• You are past roughly $100k/mo on Amazon, so retargeting pools are large enough to be efficient
• Your listings already convert — DSP sends colder traffic than search, so a weak detail page fails faster here
• You have inventory depth to hold 60–90 days of scaled demand
• You can commit a defined test window and budget floor, not $2k of leftovers

If you are below that, PPC, listing work and organic rank will return more per dollar. We would rather send you back in two quarters than sell you a channel you cannot feed.

What we run

Audience architecture

Not one "retargeting" line item. A ladder:

• Remarketing: detail-page viewers by recency window, cart abandoners, past purchasers due for repeat
• Competitor conquesting: shoppers who viewed or bought specific competitor ASINs
• In-market and lifestyle: category in-market segments plus behavioural overlays that match your buyer
• Lookalikes built from your own purchaser base
• Suppression of recent purchasers so you stop paying to advertise to people holding your product

Each audience gets its own creative and its own CPA expectation. A lapsed purchaser and a cold in-market shopper should never see the same ad or be judged on the same number.

Full-funnel creative mix

Static display for efficient retargeting, responsive e-commerce creative for detail-page traffic, and video — including Streaming TV — for upper-funnel demand where your category has genuine consideration. We direct and produce the creative; you approve it.

Streaming TV where it earns its place

STV is priced like brand advertising and should be judged like it: reach, frequency, new-to-brand orders and search-volume lift on your brand terms. We run it when the category rewards awareness, and we say so when it does not.

Measurement that survives scrutiny

• New-to-brand orders and rate as the primary growth metric
• Total ROAS vs DSP-attributed ROAS, reported side by side
• Brand search volume lift during and after flights
• Amazon Marketing Cloud lift analysis and path-to-purchase reads on accounts large enough to support it
• Incrementality testing with geo or audience holdouts where budget allows

If a line item cannot show incremental orders, we shut it off. Attribution windows get reported honestly, including how much of the credit is retargeting people who would have bought anyway.

How DSP compounds with PPC and organic

DSP is not a replacement for Amazon PPC. It is the layer above it.

Upper-funnel DSP creates branded search. Branded search converts at your highest rate and lowest cost. That volume lifts your organic rank on category terms, which lowers the paid share of voice you need on the same terms next quarter. Retargeting DSP recovers the 90%+ of detail-page visitors who leave without buying — traffic you already paid for once in PPC.

Run alone, DSP looks expensive. Run as the top of an integrated funnel with account management holding the operations steady, it lowers your blended cost of a new customer.

What a DSP engagement looks like

Weeks 1–2 — Foundation. Audience mapping, ASIN prioritisation, creative brief, measurement plan and a stated hypothesis per line item. Weeks 3–6 — Test. Retargeting and conquesting live first, because they prove mechanics fastest. Frequency caps set deliberately, not left at platform defaults. Weeks 7–12 — Scale. Winning audiences funded, upper-funnel and STV introduced only if the lower funnel is efficient. Monthly incrementality read. Ongoing. Creative refresh cadence, audience pruning, and a quarterly review of whether DSP is still the best home for the next dollar.

Frequently asked questions

Q: What is the minimum spend for Amazon DSP? A: Amazon's managed-service minimums have historically started around $35k; through a self-service seat, meaningful tests generally start near $5k–$10k/mo. Below that, frequency is too thin to learn anything.

Q: Is DSP better than Sponsored Products? A: Different jobs. Sponsored Products harvests existing demand. DSP creates and recovers demand. Brands that scale past the keyword ceiling almost always end up running both.

Q: Do we need our own creative team? A: No. We produce display and video creative in-house as part of the engagement.

Q: How long until DSP works? A: Retargeting usually reads within 3–4 weeks. Conquesting and in-market audiences need 6–8. Upper-funnel and STV should be judged on a quarter, never a week.

Q: Can DSP be used for product launches? A: Yes, and it is underrated for that — but only with enough inventory and a listing that converts. Otherwise you are paying to send traffic to a page that leaks.

Proof

Read how we scaled From You Flowers on Amazon →

Deeper background: the Amazon DSP advertising guide.

Book a Gap Analysis

45 minutes, no slides. We will tell you whether DSP is your next lever or a distraction — and what to do instead if it is.

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