Introduction
Sreenath Reddy: Hey Joe, how are you?
Joe Shelerud: Good. How are you doing, Sreenath?
Sreenath Reddy: Excellent. Fun conference.
Joe Shelerud: Oh yeah. It's been good being here at Prosper.
Sreenath Reddy: Yes, absolutely. I'm looking forward to this chat. I’m Sreenath Reddy, Co-founder and CEO of Intentwise. At Intentwise, we focus on advertising optimization and data automation and analytics. We've been doing this for over six years and are an advanced partner with Amazon Ads.
Joe Shelerud: I'm Joe Shelerud, Co-founder and CEO of Ad Advance. We're a full-service retail media agency. We started in the Amazon space, and before that, I was a seller—about a decade ago—selling organic chemistry model kits. I’m a chemical engineer by training. That journey into Amazon ads eventually led to starting the agency.
How Amazon Ads Have Evolved
Sreenath Reddy: Let’s walk through how the Amazon ad space has evolved.
Joe Shelerud: Back when I started, Sponsored Products were the only real ad type. We had keyword targeting, auto and manual campaigns—but no product targeting yet. Over time, we saw Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, DSP, Amazon Attribution, and more come online.
Sreenath Reddy: It’s been amazing to see how much control advertisers have now. But the fundamentals haven’t changed. If you have a differentiated product and it's well-packaged—what we call “retail ready”—Amazon ads will amplify that. But the foundation has to be strong first.
Retail Readiness First
Joe Shelerud: Absolutely. When I think about retail readiness, it’s the images, especially the first one. Optimized titles. Bullet points that clearly explain features, differentiation, and use cases. And we have so many tools now to audit detail pages. That’s the first thing we check before running ads.
Sreenath Reddy: One mistake I see a lot is people jumping into ads before they’re ready. Your time and money should go to the areas with the biggest impact.
A Layered Advertising Strategy
Joe Shelerud: For new sellers, I always recommend a layered approach. Start with Sponsored Products—auto campaigns are great to begin with. Then layer in manual targeting, product targeting, placement multipliers. Sponsored Products often account for 70–80% of budget. Then build into Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and DSP.
Sreenath Reddy: The strategy has to evolve beyond just launching auto campaigns. Now, it requires keyword research, category and product targeting, and even audience-based strategies.
What is Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC)?
Sreenath Reddy: Let’s shift to Amazon Marketing Cloud. How would you explain AMC to someone unfamiliar?
Joe Shelerud: Think of it as a shopper’s full journey—from search to purchase. AMC gives you anonymized, shopper-level signals like impressions, clicks, add to cart, wishlist, conversions. You can finally analyze how upper and lower funnel ads connect and answer questions that weren’t possible before.
Top Use Cases for AMC
Sreenath Reddy: What are some high-value AMC use cases you’re seeing?
Joe Shelerud: I break it into two categories: insights and audience creation. On the insights side, you can do path to conversion analysis, attribution modeling, incrementality testing, overlap between Sponsored Ads and DSP, and frequency cap optimization. On the audience side, AMC lets you build very specific custom segments—like a lookalike of your Subscribe & Save customers—and activate them across Sponsored Ads and DSP.
Going Beyond ROAS
Sreenath Reddy: Many brands still focus heavily on ROAS. How do you respond to that?
Joe Shelerud: ROAS is helpful but limited. One of our clients—a publishing company with 2,400 products—found that just 11 or 12 of them drove the majority of new-to-brand customers. They reallocated budget toward those products, even though ROAS decreased, because the long-term value was higher. AMC helped identify those insights.
Sreenath Reddy: That’s the value of AMC—seeing beyond the last click and connecting the full funnel.
Audience Targeting and Sponsored Ads
Joe Shelerud: One game-changing AMC use case is pushing audiences into Sponsored Ads. If someone has already interacted with your brand—say viewed a product—and they search again, you can bid more aggressively on them. We've seen significant conversion rate improvements by layering in high-intent audiences like this.
Sreenath Reddy: And you can also go after the 95% of users who don’t click your ad. AMC allows you to remarket to them—something you couldn’t do before.
Lifetime Value and Gateway Products
Sreenath Reddy: What other metrics are brands getting smarter about?
Joe Shelerud: Lifetime Value (LTV) is a big one. Say someone buys a $20 supplement and comes back to buy it four more times—now that person is worth $100. AMC helps surface products that lead to higher LTV, so you can shift budget toward those “gateway” products.
Sreenath Reddy: And AMC also helps you understand time to purchase—how long it really takes someone to convert after seeing your ad.
Joe Shelerud: Exactly. It’s usually longer than expected. That insight informs ad frequency and budget planning.
Where AMC Is Going
Sreenath Reddy: What future developments in AMC are you most excited about?
Joe Shelerud: The ability to bring in external data. Right now we can upload hashed DTC lists to create lookalikes. But if Amazon expands this, the insights will be even more powerful. Amazon is also bringing in third-party datasets—like vehicle purchase data and brand store activity.
Sreenath Reddy: And it’s not just ecommerce anymore. Amazon has ad inventory on Prime Video, Twitch, Wondery, even the NFL. AMC connects those media signals back to your audience data.
Gen AI in AMC
Joe Shelerud: Another exciting development is AMC's generative AI. You can type in natural language—like “create an audience of repeat purchasers”—and AMC will generate the query. It still needs a human to verify, but it’s speeding up workflows.
Sreenath Reddy: I’ve seen that too. It’s getting better. Hopefully it gets to 90–95% accuracy soon.
How to Drive AMC Adoption
Sreenath Reddy: One of the big questions we hear is: how do you increase AMC adoption inside an organization?
Joe Shelerud: Start with your business goals. Don’t begin with data—start with strategy. Define your goals, develop key questions, and then use AMC to answer them. That guides which reports or audiences you actually need to run.
Sreenath Reddy: That’s a great framework: Goals → Strategy → Questions → Insights → Action.
Joe Shelerud: The quality of your results is directly tied to the quality of your questions. I call it an AMC roadmap.
Sreenath Reddy: I’d also add—get someone on your team AMC certified through Amazon’s Learning Console. It’s worth it.
Final Takeaways
Joe Shelerud: If you’re just starting with Amazon Ads, begin with Sponsored Products and build from there. As your strategy matures, AMC becomes the tool that ties it all together—ads, insights, audiences, and lifetime value.
Sreenath Reddy: That’s a great finish.
Joe Shelerud: Always great talking to you, Sreenath.
Sreenath Reddy: Likewise. Thanks, Joe!