Einleitung
If you're running ads on Amazon, you know the pressure is on to make every dollar count. Generic targeting and keyword bidding aren't enough anymore. The real growth comes from finding your best customers—the ones who spend more, buy more often, and become true brand advocates. So, how do you find them? The answer lies in mastering Amazon High Volume Audiences. This isn't just a buzzword; it's a fundamental shift in how smart brands are scaling their business on the world's largest marketplace. We're going to break down exactly what these audiences are, how to build them using powerful tools like Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), and how to activate them to dramatically improve your return on ad spend. This is the advanced playbook you've been looking for. For brands that want to go even deeper, our Marketplace Advertising & Analytics services provide the hands-on expertise to turn these insights into profit.
Wichtige Erkenntnisse
Amazon High Volume Audiences (HVA) are segments of top-spending, high-intent shoppers identified using Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC).
AMC's HVA Solution provides a no-code, point-and-click interface to analyze customer spending percentiles and build custom audiences.
The "High likelihood to purchase" audience in Sponsored Products' bid adjustments is a powerful tool for lowering ACOS by focusing on high-propensity buyers.
Lookalike audiences, built from a seed of your best customers, consistently deliver 3-5x higher ROI by finding new shoppers with similar behaviors.
Success should be measured not just by ROAS, but by deeper metrics like incremental sales, new-to-brand customer rate, and Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV).
What Exactly Are Amazon High Volume Audiences?
Let's cut through the jargon. Amazon High Volume Audiences aren't just another retargeting list. This is about surgically identifying and engaging the customer segments with the highest spending potential on Amazon. Think of it as moving from a shotgun blast to a sniper rifle. Instead of showing your ads to everyone who searched for "running shoes," you're focusing on the shoppers who consistently buy premium brands, spend more per order, and come back for more.
This level of precision is made possible by one core piece of technology: Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC). If you're not familiar, AMC is Amazon's secure "clean room" environment. It allows advertisers to analyze their campaign data alongside Amazon's shopping signals without compromising user privacy. You can see how shoppers interact with your ads across Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and the Amazon DSP, mapping the entire journey from first glance to final purchase.
Who Gets Access to AMC?
Here’s the important part: access to AMC is generally available to advertisers who use the Amazon DSP. It's considered an advanced tool, so it's not something you'll find in the basic Seller Central dashboard. It’s designed for brands that are serious about scaling their advertising and want to move beyond surface-level metrics. We've seen firsthand how this tool transforms a brand's approach from simply spending on ads to making strategic investments in customer acquisition.
The Engine Behind HVA: A Deeper Look at AMC Solutions
For a long time, the power of AMC was reserved for those who could write complex SQL queries. It was powerful but not exactly user-friendly. That's changed. Amazon introduced AMC Solutions, which are essentially point-and-click workflows that make sophisticated analytics accessible to campaign managers and brand owners, not just data scientists.
The first and most important of these is the High Value Audiences (HVA) solution. It’s designed to do one thing exceptionally well: turn your historical sales data into actionable audience segments you can immediately use.
How the HVA Solution Works
When you first launch the HVA solution, AMC gets to work analyzing your data. This initial process can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 24 hours, depending on your sales volume. Once it's done, the real insights begin.
The core of the HVA solution is its percentile bucketing model. It automatically groups your customers based on their spending over the last few months. You'll see clear visuals breaking down your customer base into buckets like:
Top 5% of spenders (your superstars)
70-95% percentile (your loyal base)
0-5% percentile (your infrequent buyers)
For each bucket, you see the total number of customers, how many are reachable with ads, their average spend, and what percentage of your total sales they represent. Often, you'll find that the top 20-30% of your shoppers are driving 70-80% of your revenue. This is the group you need to focus on.
Related Reads:
Building Your First High-Value Audience in AMC
Okay, you've seen the data. Now what? The HVA solution makes it incredibly simple to turn these insights into a live audience for your ad campaigns. The process is all about refining and filtering to get the exact segment you want.
Step 1: Refine Your Audience with Filters
You start with the percentile buckets and then layer on powerful filters to hone in on your ideal customer. These filters include:
Percentile Selection: Simply click the spend buckets you want to target. Want to focus only on your top 5%? Just select that group.
New-to-Brand (NTB): You can choose to include only first-time buyers within your high-value segments. This is perfect for building loyalty from day one.
Product/ASINs: Want to find top spenders who bought a specific product? You can filter by ASIN, keyword, or even upload a list.
Exposure Type: This is a fascinating one. You can choose to target customers whose purchases were influenced by an ad (ad-exposed) or those who bought organically (non-ad-exposed).
Step 2: Activate Your Audience
Once you've applied your filters, you move to the activation flow. Here, you'll name your audience and choose its type:
Rule-based: This is for remarketing. You're targeting the exact customers you just filtered for—for example, "re-engage top 5% of spenders who haven't bought in 90 days."
Lookalike: This is for acquisition. AMC uses your filtered audience as a "seed" to find a much larger group of new shoppers on Amazon who share similar browsing and buying behaviors.
After you create the audience, it gets pushed to the Amazon DSP, typically appearing within 48 hours, ready to be used in your campaigns. This seamless path from insight to activation is what makes the platform so powerful for agile brands.
Activating HVA with Bid Boosting in Sponsored Ads
While AMC and the DSP are the pinnacles of audience targeting, Amazon has quietly rolled out a powerful feature that brings audience intelligence directly into your everyday Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaigns. It’s called Audience bid adjustments, and it’s a game-changer.
You won't find it in the main "Targeting" section. It's tucked away under Bid adjustments → “Increase bids for audiences built by Amazon.” This feature lets you apply a bid multiplier to specific audiences, telling Amazon you're willing to pay more to get your ad in front of these high-intent shoppers.
The Three Audiences You Can Boost
Amazon gives you three pre-built audiences to work with. We've tested them extensively, and one is a clear standout.
Here’s a breakdown:
Audience Type | Best For | Recommended Starting Bid Boost |
|---|---|---|
Purchased brand’s product (last 3 months) | Classic retargeting for repeat purchases or cross-selling complementary items. | +15-25% |
Clicked/Added to cart but not purchased (last 3 months) | Re-engaging high-intent shoppers who were close to converting. Excellent for closing the loop. | +20-30% |
High likelihood to purchase (propensity) | The top performer. This is Amazon's predictive audience, identifying shoppers most likely to buy your product next. | +25-40% |
A Mini-Playbook for Bid Boosting
Getting started is simple. In your campaign settings, navigate to Bid adjustments and select "Audiences."
Prioritize "High likelihood to purchase" first. This audience consistently delivers the lowest ACOS.
Start with a conservative boost of +20–30%. Don’t jump straight to +900%. Let the data guide you.
Monitor performance closely for 5-7 days. Compare the ACOS of the Audience placement against your campaign's total ACOS.
Adjust based on results. If the audience ACOS is well below your target, increase the boost. If it's too high, dial it back.
In one of our recent skincare launches, the campaigns had a total ACOS between 32–47%. The segments boosted with "High likelihood to purchase" consistently delivered an ACOS of 11–22%. That’s the power of layering audience intelligence onto your keyword and product targeting.
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Atomic Segmentation: The Next Frontier
Once you've mastered HVA and bid boosting, it's time to explore the most advanced strategy available today: atomic segmentation. This is about creating hyper-specific micro-segments by combining multiple data signals within AMC.
It’s no longer just about high spenders. With atomic segmentation, you can build an audience of shoppers who:
Are in the top 10% of spenders in the category.
AND have viewed your product three times but not purchased.
AND recently searched for a competitor's brand name.
AND previously bought a complementary product from your catalog.
This level of granularity is what separates leading brands from the rest of the pack. The results speak for themselves. According to a 2025 study by ECG Agency, advertisers using these techniques have seen up to a 9.4x Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and a 49% lift in incremental sales.
The same study found that "Brands using atomic segmentation see 4.9x higher LTV through psychographic nurturing." This isn't just about making one sale; it's about acquiring customers who will deliver value for years to come. It requires a deep understanding of data, something we help brands navigate with our Marketplace Advertising & Analytics services.
Scaling Success with Lookalike Audiences
Remarketing to your best customers is smart, but it’s a finite group. The key to sustainable growth is finding more of those customers. This is where AMC Lookalike audiences become your most powerful acquisition tool.
As mentioned, a lookalike audience uses a "seed" audience—like your top 5% of spenders or your most loyal Subscribe & Save members—to find new shoppers who exhibit similar behaviors. Amazon’s machine learning analyzes thousands of signals to build a profile of your ideal customer and then finds them across the marketplace.
The performance uplift is dramatic. Amazon Ads reports that these audiences often yield 3–5x higher returns compared to generic, interest-based targeting. A case study with Envision Horizons highlighted this, stating, "Their AMC lookalike audiences delivered 3–5x better return on ad spend... higher add-to-cart rates (13% vs. 9%)... better conversion rates (23% vs. 12%)."
Choosing the right audience type depends entirely on your campaign goal. Here's a simple comparison:
Feature | Rule-Based Audiences | Lookalike Audiences |
|---|---|---|
Primary Goal | Remarketing & Re-engagement | New Customer Acquisition & Scaling |
Audience Type | Existing shoppers who have interacted with your brand. | New shoppers who behave like your best customers. |
Common Use Case | Targeting users who added to cart but didn't buy. | Finding new buyers for a product launch. |
Platform | Amazon DSP | Amazon DSP |
Using a combination of both is key. Nurture your existing high-value shoppers with rule-based campaigns while continuously filling the top of your funnel with high-potential new shoppers via lookalike campaigns. It’s a strategy we implement for brands looking to do more than just grow—they want to dominate their category.
How Do You Measure the True Impact of HVA?
Focusing on ACOS and ROAS is important, but it only tells part of the story. To understand the real value of targeting high volume audiences, you need to look at deeper, more meaningful business metrics. The beauty of AMC is that it allows you to measure what truly matters.
Beyond Basic Metrics
Here are the key performance indicators (KPIs) that top brands are tracking:
Incremental Sales: How many sales would you have gotten anyway versus how many were a direct result of your ads? AMC helps quantify this "lift," proving the true value of your ad spend.
New-to-Brand (NTB) Customer Rate: Acquiring new customers is the lifeblood of any brand. AMC can track the percentage of sales that come from first-time buyers. Data from BTR Media suggests that AMC’s cross-channel analytics can boost new-to-brand conversions by 21% compared to siloed campaigns.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): Are you acquiring one-time buyers or loyal fans? By analyzing purchase frequency and order value over time, you can measure the long-term profitability of the customers you acquire through HVA campaigns.
Path to Conversion: Did a shopper see a DSP video ad, then click a Sponsored Brand ad a week later before finally buying? AMC lets you connect the dots across multiple touchpoints to understand which ad formats are most effective at different stages of the funnel.
Tracking these advanced metrics requires a dedicated focus on data. At Fifth Shelf, our proprietary platform and analytics team are built to move beyond surface-level reporting. We help brands understand the complete financial picture of their advertising, ensuring every dollar is working towards profitable, long-term growth. If you feel like you're flying blind, it might be time for a free brand audit to see what you might be missing.
Cross-Channel Amplification and Competitive Gaps
One of the most underutilized strategies is taking the audience intelligence you gain from Amazon and applying it elsewhere. The profile of your high-value Amazon customer—their interests, their browsing habits, their brand affinities—is a goldmine of data you can use to improve your targeting on other platforms.
Leveraging Amazon Insights Everywhere
Imagine knowing your best Amazon customers are also highly interested in sustainable living and fitness. You can use that insight to refine your audience targeting for:
Walmart Connect Campaigns: Target similar lifestyle segments on Walmart's growing retail media network.
TikTok & Meta Ads: Build interest-based audiences that mirror the psychographics of your top Amazon spenders.
Your Shopify Store: Tailor your email marketing and on-site personalization to appeal to the values you know resonate with your best customers.
This turns Amazon from just a sales channel into a powerful engine for customer discovery that fuels your entire multichannel ecommerce strategy.
Where Competitors Fall Short
When we analyze the competitive landscape, we see the same gaps over and over. Many articles and agencies talk about audience targeting in generic terms. Very few provide deep, actionable guidance on the "how."
They often miss:
The integration of organic data: They focus on ad-exposed data but ignore the wealth of information from organic purchases.
Practical bid boosting tactics: They don't explain the nuances of starting small and iterating based on performance.
Cross-channel activation: They treat Amazon as a silo, failing to connect the dots to a brand's broader digital footprint.
Closing these gaps is what an ecommerce accelerator does. It's not just about managing ads; it's about building a cohesive, data-driven growth engine that leverages every available tool to its fullest potential.
Fazit
The era of "set it and forget it" advertising is over. To win on Amazon and beyond, brands must move from broad targeting to precise, data-driven audience engagement. Amazon High Volume Audiences, powered by the analytical might of AMC and activated through the DSP and Sponsored Ad bid boosting, is the new blueprint for profitable growth. It's about spending smarter, not just spending more.
By identifying your top customers, understanding their behavior, and finding more people just like them, you create a sustainable cycle of acquisition and retention. You stop wasting money on low-intent shoppers and instead invest in relationships that build long-term value. This is the strategy that separates market leaders from everyone else. If you're ready to make that leap, we're here to help you navigate the complexities and unlock your brand's true potential.
Sources
PPC Land. "Amazon Marketing Cloud unveils high value audiences solution."
Intentwise. "The Amazon guide to reaching high-value shoppers."
ECG Agency. “Atomic Audience Segmentation: Advanced Amazon Ads Strategy for 2025.”
BTR Media. “Amazon Advertising: Must-Have Strategies for 2025.”
Amazon Ads. "Introducing the high value audiences solution in AMC."