Send data to Amazon Ads

Amazon Ads is an online advertising platform that helps brands meet their audiences where they shop, read, listen, and watch.

Warning

Please ask your Amperity representative for assistance with setting up Amazon Ads as a destination within your tenant.

Amperity can manage audiences within Amazon Ads for use with a variety of advertising and paid media channels, such as:

  • Sponsored ads for products and brands that appear within search results on the Amazon website and within the mobile app.

  • Sponsored display ads that reach audiences as they browse, research, or buy products on Amazon, on Twitch, or by using Amazon DSP, a demand-side platform that allows you to programmatically buy ads to reach new and existing audiences on and off Amazon.

  • Video ads for streaming TV and online video. Streaming TV ads can appear on Twitch, live sports events, top TV and network broadcaster apps, and curated news on Fire TV. Online video ads reach audiences on Amazon-owned sites, including IMDb.com and Twitch and may appear on third-party sites through Amazon Publisher Direct.

  • Audio ads that are heard during breaks in premium audio content, including first-party Amazon Music ad-supported tiers, connected TV environments, Twitch News, Alexa-enabled devices, and third-party sites through Amazon Publisher Direct.

  • Access to a secure, privacy-safe, and cloud-based clean room solution when the instance name for your brand’s Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) account is configured.

Note

This destination uses the Amazon Ads API to manage audiences. If the audience does not exist, Amperity will create it. If the audience exists, Amperity will update the list of members to match the list that is sent.

This topic describes the steps that are required to send audience lists to Amazon Ads from Amperity:

  1. Get details

  2. Add destination

  3. Add data template

Get details

Amazon Ads requires the following configuration details:

Detail one.

Configuration details for Amazon Ads.

  1. An Amazon Ads demand-side platform (DSP) advertiser.

  2. Optional. Your brand’s instance of Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC).

    Important

    If an instance for Amazon Marketing Cloud is not configured, the connector will skip adding audience members to Amazon Marketing Cloud.

    If an Amazon Marketing Cloud instance is configured, the connector will attempt to use an existing connection for Amazon Marketing Cloud or will create a connection between the chosen demand-side platform advertiser and the instance for Amazon Marketing Cloud.

Detail two.

Details for the audiences in Amazon Ads that will be managed by Amperity.

  1. An audience name and description. If there is not an audience that exactly matches the one sent from Amperity to Amazon Ads, Amperity will create a new audience.

  2. The amount of time (in seconds) an audience member will belong to this audience, after which they are removed. Maximum value: “34,300,800” (which is the equivalent of 9528 hours or 397 days).

    Tip

    Set this value to “0” to remove all audience members.

  3. Leave the the external ID setting empty.

Detail three.

Use a query to return an audience that contains any of the following attributes:

SELECT
  ,amperity_id
  ,email
  ,phone
  ,address
  ,city
  ,state
  ,postal
  ,country
  ,given_name AS 'firstname'
  ,surname AS 'lastname'
FROM Customer_360

Important

The following columns are required:

  • amperity_id

  • If first and last names are returned, the column names must be firstname and lastname

  • country is required by the Digital Markets Act.

A phone number must be in E.164 format format. Amperity applies hashing to the PII by default.

All personally identifiable information (PII)—email, phone, address, and so on—is sent to Amazon Ads as SHA-256 hashed data.

About Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC)

Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) uses pseudonymized inputs from Amazon Ads campaign events, such as ad impressions, ad clicks, and ad-attributed conversions that span across media including streaming TV, audio, video, display, and sponsored ads. These inputs are uploaded into a dedicated instance of AMC—a “clean room”—after which that data stays within that instance and cannot be accessed or exported by Amazon.

Audience analysis takes place within Amazon Marketing Cloud, including across dimensions like audiences, device, time, or campaigns. Results are aggregated and may be exported as anonymous reports.

Amperity can send data to your brand’s instance of Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) when the instance name is configured alongside the demand-side platform (DSP) advertiser to which this destination will send data.

Configure OAuth

OAuth is an open standard for access delegation, commonly used to grant websites or applications access to information on other websites.

Use OAuth to configure Amperity to send audience lists to Amazon Ads.

To configure OAuth

Step 1.

Open the Destinations tab and click Add Destination. The Add Destination dialog box opens.

Select Amazon Ads from the Plugin drop-down, and then from the Credential drop-down, select Create a new credential.

This opens the Create New Credential dialog box.

Step 2.

In the Create New Credential dialog box, click “Generate authorization URL”.

Copy the URL, and then provide the URL to a user who has credentials that allow access to Amazon Ads. The user must log in and complete the steps required by the OAuth process for Amazon Ads.

After this is completed, you will be redirected to the Credentials page in Amperity.

Verify the credential is on the page, and then return to the Destinations tab.

Step 3.

Open the Destinations tab and click Add Destination. The Add Destination dialog box opens.

Select Amazon Ads from the Plugin drop-down, and then from the Credential drop-down, select the credential that is authorized to access Amazon Ads.

Note

The value for the Refresh Token setting is updated automatically after you select the credential.

Reauthorize Amperity

You may need to reauthorize access to Amazon Ads. This is necessary when an authorization token has expired or when it has been removed by someone with permission to manage access within Amazon Ads. To reauthorize access to Amazon Ads, follow the steps to configure OAuth and create a new credential.

Add destination

Configure Amperity to send audience lists directly to Amazon Ads.

To add a destination

Step 1.

Open the Destinations tab to configure a destination for Amazon Ads. Click the Add Destination button to open the Destination dialog box.

Name, description, choose plugin.

Enter a name for the destination and provide a description. For example: “Amazon Ads” and “This sends audience lists to Amazon Ads”.

From the Plugin drop-down, start typing “ama” to filter the list, and then select Amazon Ads.

Step 2.

Credentials allow Amperity to connect to Amazon Ads.

The credential type is set automatically. You may use an existing credential or you may add a new one.

Choose an existing credential or add credential.

Select an existing credential from the Credential drop-down.

– or –

Select Create a new credential from the Credential drop-down. This opens the Credential dialog box.

To create a new credential for Amazon Ads, generate an authorization link, and then use that link to log into your Amazon Ads account. After you have completed that process, you will be provided a refresh token. Add the value for the refresh token to the Refresh Token setting in Amperity.

Set the following credentials for Amazon Ads.

When finished, click Save.

Step 3.

Each destination has settings that define how Amperity will deliver data to Amazon Ads. These settings are listed under the Settings section of the Destination dialog box.

Use the DSP advertiser dropdown to select a demand-side platform that is associated with your Amazon Ads account.

Optional. Use the AMC instance dropdown to select an Amazon Marketing Cloud instance.

Step 4.

Business users are assigned to the Amp360 User and/or AmpIQ User policies. (Amp360 User allows access to queries and orchestrations and AmpIQ User allows access to segments and campaigns.) A business user cannot select a destination that is not visible to them.

Business users – including users assigned to the DataGrid Operator policy – may have restricted access to PII.

What is restricted access to PII?

Restricted PII access is enabled when the Restrict PII access policy option that prevents users who are assigned to that option from viewing data that is marked as PII anywhere in Amperity and from sending that data to any downstream workflow.

You can make this destination visible to orchestrations and allow users with restricted access to PII to use this destination by enabling one (or both) of the following options:

Allow business users access to this destination.
Step 5.

Review all settings, and then click Save.

Save the destination.

Important

You must configure a data template for this destination before you can send data to Amazon Ads.

Add data template

A data template defines how columns in Amperity data structures are sent to downstream workflows. A data template is part of the configuration for sending query and segment results from Amperity to an external location.

About paid media campaigns

Amperity provides the right set of data to support your brand’s paid media advertising with Amazon Ads.

  1. Merged Customers vs. Unified Paid Media

    The Merged Customers table contains each of your customers’ best profiles.

    The Unified Paid Media table contains all your customer’s known profile data.

    Your brand will require additional data templates to use the Unified Paid Media table alongside the Merged Customers table to support paid media campaigns.

  2. Enable dedicated data templates for each table.

    Use a consistent naming pattern to label data templates that use data from the Merged Customers table. For example: “Best profile”.

    Use a consistent naming pattern to label data templates that use data from the Unified Paid Media table. For example: “Full profile”.

  3. After data templates are configured for both tables, use the default attributes component on the Campaigns page to configure which attributes will be associated with the destination, including the table from which those attributes will be pulled.

    The selected table will affect your brand’s downstream match rates and overall customer matches within your paid media campaigns. The decision behind which table to use depends on your brand’s downstream use case and the type and amount of customer profile data your brand wants to use to match customers.

    You brand should expect to see higher match rates when sending audiences from the Merged Customers table, but a higher number of matched customer profiles when sending audiences from the Unified Paid Media table. Use A/B testing to compare the results from each table, after which your brand can use the audience that works best for your campaigns.

To add a data template

Step 1.

From the Destinations tab, open the menu for a destination that is configured for Amazon Ads, and then select Add data template.

This opens the Add Data Template dialog box.

Step 1

Enter the name of the data template and a description. For example: “Amazon Ads” and “Send audience lists to Amazon Ads.”.

Step 2.

Verify business user access to queries and orchestrations and access to segments and campaigns.

A business user may also have restricted access to PII, which prevents them from viewing and sending customer profile data.

Step 2.

If business user access was not configured as part of the destination, you may configure access from the data template.

Important

To allow business users to use this destination with campaigns, you must enable the Available to campaigns option. This allows users to send campaign results from Amperity to Amazon Ads.

If you enable this option, the data extension settings require using campaign name and group name template variables to associate the name of the data extension to your campaign.

Step 3.

Verify all configuration settings.

Verify settings for the data template.

Important

The audience name must exactly match an audience in Amazon Ads to update membership. If there is not an audience that exactly matches the one sent from Amperity to Amazon Ads, Amperity will a new audience.

Leave the External ID setting empty.

Set the membership duration in seconds. For example, an audience that lasts 180 days should have a value of “15,552,000” for the Membership duration setting.

Note

When the advertiser ID and marketplace settings are not configured as part of the destination, you must configure them as part of the data template before making this destination available to campaigns.

Step 4.

Review all settings, and then click Save.

Save the data template.

After you have saved the data template, and depending on how you configured it, business users can send audience lists to Amazon Ads.

Workflow actions

A workflow will occasionally show an error that describes what prevented a workflow from completing successfully. These first appear as alerts in the notifications pane. The alert describes the error, and then links to the Workflows tab.

Open the Workflows page to review a list of workflow actions, choose an action to resolve the workflow error, and then follow the steps that are shown.

Step one.

You may receive a notifications error for a configured Amazon Ads destination. This appears as an alert in the notifications pane on the Destinations tab.

Review a notifications error.

If you receive a notification error, review the details, and then click the View Workflow link to open this notification error in the Workflows page.

Step two.

On the Workflows page, review the individual steps to determine which step(s) have errors that require your attention, and then click Show Resolutions to review the list of workflow actions that were generated for this error.

The Workflow page, showing a workflow with errors.
Step three.

A list of individual workflow actions are shown. Review the list to identify which action you should take.

Choose a workflow action from the list of actions.

Some workflow actions are common across workflows and will often be available, such as retrying a specific task within a workflow or restarting a workflow. These types of actions can often resolve an error.

In certain cases, actions are specific and are shown when certain conditions exist in your tenant. These types of actions typically must be resolved and may require steps that must be done upstream or downstream from your Amperity workflow.

Amperity provides a series of workflow actions that can help resolve specific issues that may arise with Amazon Ads, including:

Step four.

Select a workflow action from the list of actions, and then review the steps for resolving that error.

Choose a workflow action from the list of actions.

After you have completed the steps in the workflow action, click Continue to rerun the workflow.

Invalid advertiser account ID

Amazon Ads requires a valid advertiser account ID to be associated with an advertiser. When an advertiser is not associated with an advertiser account ID — such as when an advertiser account ID has been deleted — Amperity will be unable to manage audiences within Amazon Ads and a workflow action will be shown.

To resolve this error, verify that the advertiser account ID exists in Amazon Ads, and then update Amperity for the correct advertiser ID (if necessary).

  1. Open the Amazon Ads management console and verify your advertiser account ID.

  2. Open the Destinations page in Amperity, and then open the destination for Amazon Ads that is associated with this workflow.

  3. Update the destination for the correct advertiser account ID.

  4. Return to the workflow action, and then click Resolve to retry.

Invalid credentials

The credentials that are defined in Amperity are invalid.

To resolve this error, verify that the credentials required by this workflow are valid.

  1. Open the Credentials page.

  2. Review the details for the credentials used with this workflow. Update the credentials for Amazon Ads if required.

  3. Return to the workflow action, and then click Resolve to retry this workflow.

Missing required field

Amazon Ads requires the country field to be included in query results. This helps Amazon Ads identify if user data was collected within a country that is regulated by the Digital Markets Act, a European Union regulation that seeks to make the digital economy fairer and more equitable for all participants.

To resolve this error, verify that country is included in the query results.

  1. Open the Queries page, and then open the query used with this workflow.

  2. Verify that “country” is included in the query results. Update the query if required.

  3. Return to the workflow action, and then click Resolve to retry this workflow.