Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) — Data Scope and Update Frequency

What AMC Provides

Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) is Amazon's privacy-safe data clean room. It lets advertisers analyse cross-channel audience and conversion data at the user level — without exposing personally identifiable information — across Sponsored Ads (SPA) and Amazon DSP. In emax digital, AMC powers the dashboards in the Marketing Cloud (AMC) section.

Prerequisite: AMC-based dashboards require an active Amazon DSP + AMC connection. The customer must have an active AMC instance. Contact your emax digital account manager to configure AMC.

Data Scope and Update Frequency

Update frequency: AMC data updates daily.
14-day lag: Data for any reporting period is fetched 14 days after the period ends, so Amazon's standard 14-day attribution window can close. Complete results for a given week or month are available on day 15 after that period closes.
Standard attribution window: AMC conversion metrics use a 14-day click + 14-day view model, which can differ from your Sponsored Ads or DSP console settings.
Privacy thresholds: AMC enforces minimum audience sizes. Segments or paths with very small user counts may be suppressed.
Marketplace scope: AMC analyses are run per marketplace; figures are not aggregated across marketplaces.

Why AMC Numbers Differ from Sponsored Ads and DSP Console Reports

This is expected behaviour — not a data error. Three structural factors drive the difference:

1. Unrecognised Users — The Biggest Factor

AMC connects ad events to conversion events by matching them to the same user. When Amazon cannot identify a user, that event cannot be linked to a conversion. Unrecognised users arise from ad blockers, privacy opt-outs, iOS ATT, unauthenticated browsing, and cookie blocking. The ad consoles use Amazon's internal identity graph (unavailable in AMC), allowing them to attribute a broader set of conversions.

Typical data coverage: Due to unrecognised users, AMC analyses typically cover only around 40–60% of all user activity — particularly in EU marketplaces where privacy opt-out rates are higher. AMC-based metrics are based on the identifiable subset of users, not the full audience.

2. Attribution Model Differences

The ad consoles use different date-assignment methods depending on the programme — Sponsored Products uses Traffic Event Time (sale backdated to the ad date), while DSP uses Conversion Event Time (sale recorded on the purchase date). AMC applies one harmonised method across all programmes, which means it will always differ from at least one console.

3. Aggregation Thresholds

AMC enforces column-level privacy thresholds. When fewer than 100 distinct users (or fewer than 2, for some columns) are behind a dimension, the label is suppressed — but the metric totals are still complete. Total Ad Sales, purchase counts, and other core metrics are never reduced by thresholds.

Threshold level	Min. distinct users	What happens
None	No restriction	Always returned (impressions, clicks, sales)
Low	≥ 2	Label shown only if ≥ 2 distinct users
Medium	≥ 100	Label replaced with null below threshold
High	≥ 100 + no literal filtering	Same as Medium; direct filtering also blocked
Very High	Never shown	Can only be used for counting (e.g. user IDs)

Summary

Factor	Impact	Can it be mitigated?
Unrecognised users	Largest	Limited — Amazon-side constraint
Attribution model differences	Medium	Partially — AMC harmonises method but differs from consoles
Aggregation thresholds	Smallest	Yes — emax digital optimises queries to minimise effects

Bottom line: AMC is not designed to replicate console numbers. Expect AMC Ad Sales to be lower than the sum of Sponsored Ads + DSP console reports — this is normal.

Custom Attribution in AMC

Please note: emax digital does not query Custom Attribution by default — only as a scoped custom project. Speak to your account manager if you want a custom attribution analysis.

Custom attribution in AMC lets you choose a lookback window (up to 28 days) and select how credit is split across touchpoints. Amazon provides standard query templates for First Touch, Last Touch, Linear, and Position-based models.

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