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How AMC Went from Overpromised and Underdelivered to True Growth Engine
12 Min Read | JUNE, 2026 | BY Benjamin Weyrich
Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) launched in 2021. For the brands and agencies that got in early, the experience was a mix of genuine excitement and repeated disappointment. The promise was enormous, but the delivery, for a long time, was not.
That gap between promise and performance is exactly why many brands are still sitting on the sidelines in 2026. And it is exactly why that decision is now costing them.
Understanding the timeline of AMC features – what worked, what did not, and when things actually changed – is the fastest way to cut through the noise and act on what matters.
What you'll find in this article
- A year-by-year breakdown of AMC's feature evolution
- Why early features failed to deliver real impact
- Which 2025 and 2026 features are worth prioritizing now
- A practical framework for scoring AMC feature impact
New to AMC? For a foundational overview of what AMC is and how it works, read our article here.
2021: Insights Without Activation & The Frequency Capping Trap
As the first agency worldwide to access Amazon Marketing Cloud, we’ve had a front row seat (no pun intended) to both the highs and the lows of AMC throughout the years.
The flagship use case in 2021 was frequency capping. The idea was straightforward: use AMC to identify the ideal number of ad touchpoints before a customer converts, then apply that insight in DSP to cap frequency accordingly.
There was, however, a structural problem: AMC analysis ran at a granular level – product, segment, audience – but DSP frequency caps operated at order level. The two did not connect cleanly, which meant the insight existed, but the activation did not. In other words, brands could see the answer, but they could not use it.
The next two years brought more analytical depth – and the same activation ceiling.
2022–2023: Measurement Got Richer, Activation Stayed Stuck
Dayparting (2022)
AMC could now show how time of day and day of week influenced sponsored ads and DSP performance. Useful insight, right? But the problem was that sponsored ads did not support dayparting natively, and most third-party bid management tools were not ready for it either. Same story as before: Brands had the data, but the infrastructure to act on it was missing.
Lifetime value and path to conversion (2023)
Amazon introduced what it called lifetime value analysis – a one-year lookback window covering media touchpoints. Path to conversion showed how customers moved across DSP, sponsored ads, and sponsored brands before purchasing.
Amazon's own slides showed conversion rates spiking when all three channels were in play. In practice, finding a single customer who had seen all three was rare. The insight was theoretically powerful, and the activation was theoretically possible.
Audience creation (2023)
This was the first real step toward activation. AMC could now build audiences – for example, top lifetime value customers – and push them into DSP campaigns.
It was a meaningful shift. The limitation was that DSP represented, on average, 25% or less of most brands' total Amazon media budget. Applying a powerful audience to a small slice of spend produced limited total impact.
"Now is the time to forget everything you learned about AMC in the past. All of the things that don't work and learn about how things actually work now."
Benjamin Weyrich
2024–2025: The Activation Era Begins and Changes the Math
2025 was the year AMC delivered on its original promise.
The single biggest shift: custom audiences built in AMC became available in sponsored ads, not only in DSP. For most brands, sponsored ads account for 75% or more of their total Amazon media budget. Unlocking AMC audiences across that full budget base changed the impact calculation entirely.
Three other developments compounded that shift:
- First-party data upload: Three years ago, uploading first-party data to AMC was technically unreliable, with match rates as low as 0.5% and no clear explanation for why. In 2025, the process takes 30 minutes via direct integration or Amazon's own UI. It works. And the audiences built from it can be activated immediately.
- Five-year lookback dataset: AMC now includes five years of historical data, covering both paid and organic conversions. For most brands, this is the longest continuous customer journey they have ever been able to measure.
- Streaming TV signals: AMC began incorporating streaming TV data, with full streaming TV targeting via AMC arriving in 2026 – across Amazon-owned and third-party streaming inventory.
What Makes an AMC Feature Worth Acting on Now
Not all AMC features carry equal weight. Three factors determine real-world impact:
Factor 1: Budget reach
What share of your total media budget does this feature affect?
Factor 2: Uplift potential
How much performance improvement is realistically achievable?
Factor 3: Ease of activation
How quickly and reliably can you move from insight to action?
Early AMC features scored poorly on all three. The frequency capping insight applied to a small DSP budget. Dayparting required third-party tools that were not ready. Path to conversion was analytically interesting and operationally inert.
The features available today score well across all three. Custom audiences in sponsored ads affect the majority of your budget. First-party data upload is a 30-minute task. The five-year lookback dataset is priced for broad adoption.
Common mistakes brands make when evaluating AMC
- Dismissing AMC based on experiences from 2021–2023
- Treating AMC as a DSP-only tool when audiences now extend to sponsored ads
- Underestimating the impact of first-party data because early match rates were poor
- Waiting for internal SQL expertise before starting
- Assuming the no-code AI interfaces Amazon offers unlock the same use cases as a structured AMC implementation
Stop Waiting and Start Leveraging AMC Today
From 2021 to 2023, the gap between feature launch and mainstream adoption was roughly three years. Features were difficult to use, limited in reach, and inconsistent in results.
Back then, waiting was a reasonable response. That dynamic has now reversed.
The features launching in 2025 and 2026 are reaching adoption in approximately one year. They are easy to activate, affect most of your media budget, and deliver high-impact results. Larger brands are moving fast. The competitive window is compressing.
The brands that went ahead with AMC in 2025 are already building audience infrastructure, activating first-party data, and measuring customer lifetime value across five years of history. The brands waiting for a better moment are watching that advantage grow.
If you want to understand what AMC can do for your specific brand and budget mix, book a consultation with Lukas Helmers. We have been working with AMC since day one — through every version of it — and we know exactly where the value is now.
About the author
Benjamin Weyrich
He is the Founder and Managing Director of CATAPULT and CPO at Front Row Group. With around ten years of experience in ecommerce and business intelligence, he focuses on strategic consulting for global brands aiming to strengthen their market position both on and beyond Amazon. Through his deep expertise, he helps companies make data-driven decisions and scale their growth across digital channels.
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