Audience Targeting

Audience targeting refers to delivering advertising to predefined groups of users who share specific characteristics, behaviors, or interests. Instead of steering ads by search terms or placements, the advertising is tied to the user themselves – regardless of which page they happen to be visiting or which search term they entered.

Within the Amazon ecosystem, audience targeting is especially powerful because Amazon has one of the world's largest first-party data sets. Amazon knows not only its users' browsing behavior but also their actual purchase behavior – and can build audiences based on real transactions. That makes Amazon audience targeting far more precise than comparable approaches at Google or Meta, which rely primarily on search behavior and page views.

Amazon provides a whole range of audience segments that can be used depending on the campaign goal and funnel stage. The most important types at a glance:

Amazon DSP offers the most extensive audience-targeting options in the Amazon ecosystem. Here, advertisers have access to thousands of predefined segments and can additionally create, combine, and refine their own audiences.

Sponsored Display offers simplified audience targeting directly in the Advertising Console – without DSP access. The options are less granular, but well suited for getting started.

For sellers without DSP access, Sponsored Display is the most important channel for audience-based targeting on Amazon. The barrier to entry is low, and the audiences can be selected directly during campaign setup.

• Full-funnel approach: Use Lifestyle Audiences for awareness, In-Market Audiences for consideration, and Retargeting Audiences for conversion. Each funnel stage needs its own audiences, creatives, and bids.
• Competitor conquesting: In Amazon DSP, create custom audiences based on competitor ASINs. Users who have viewed or bought competing products are obviously interested in your category.
• Test segments, don't guess: Start with 3–5 audience segments per campaign and compare performance. Pause underperforming segments after 2–3 weeks and scale the winners.
• Audience exclusions: Actively exclude segments to avoid wasting budget. Example: exclude buyers from the last 30 days from view-retargeting campaigns.
• Frequency capping per audience: Warm audiences (retargeting) tolerate higher frequencies than cold ones (lifestyle). Adjust the frequency caps accordingly.

Keyword targeting (as used in Sponsored Products) and audience targeting are not opposites but complementary strategies. Keyword targeting captures active demand – the user is searching right now. Audience targeting proactively reaches out to the user – even when they aren't searching at the moment, e.g. via Programmatic Advertising.

The strongest combination: keyword campaigns for direct demand, audience campaigns for building brand awareness and expanding the customer base. Over the long term, audience campaigns increase branded searches, which in turn makes the keyword campaigns perform better.