AMC for Amazon DSP Advertisers: What Changes When DSP Is in Your Instance

Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) answers questions the ad consoles cannot: which combinations of ads lead to a purchase, which shoppers came in new to your brand, who bought once and never came back. Sponsored ads advertisers can get an AMC instance on their own now. But an instance that only sees sponsored ads can only answer half of those questions once you run DSP.

This post is about the instance: what DSP adds to it, how to set it up so it survives a change of seat, and the ways to work with it. For the app that reads it without SQL, see AMC Workspaces for DSP advertisers.

What AMC sees, and what DSP adds

AMC is a clean room. Event-level ad data stays on the Amazon side, and you query it with SQL to get aggregated results. What the instance can tell you depends on which advertisers are attached to it.

With sponsored ads only, AMC sees sponsored ads impressions and clicks and the conversions tied to them.
With a DSP advertiser attached, it also sees DSP impressions, including display and video reached off Amazon. That is what lets you ask how DSP and sponsored ads work together, instead of reading each console on its own.
With a paid dataset, it sees more purchases. Amazon sells Retail Purchases, which covers every purchase of your products in the Amazon store over a much longer window whether or not an ad was involved, and Flexible Shopping Insights. Both are separate subscriptions from Amazon.

The default tables only see purchases Amazon can tie to an ad. Amazon expanded the advertising lookback for those tables from 13 months to 25 months in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France, Austria, Turkey and Japan. Plan your questions with that in mind.

Questions that need DSP in the instance

Overlap. How do sales, new-to-brand customers and average order value differ for shoppers reached by sponsored ads only, DSP only, and both?
Path to conversion. Which sequences of touchpoints most often come before a purchase, and where does a DSP impression sit in them?
Reach and frequency. How many unique shoppers did DSP reach, and at what frequency do conversions level off?
New-to-brand. Which DSP campaigns bring in buyers who had not bought from your brand before, and at what cost?
Audiences. Who viewed but did not buy, or bought once and lapsed, so you can target them in DSP or sponsored ads?

None of these can be answered from a sponsored-ads-only instance, because the DSP side of the exposure is missing. The default instance Amazon provides for sponsored ads has no DSP connection, no cross-walk between advertiser IDs, no SQL and no API. A MixShift AMC instance has the DSP advertiser attached and the SQL, API and console access to ask these questions.

Multiple advertiser IDs: why it matters when you change seats

An AMC instance can hold more than one DSP advertiser ID. This sounds like a detail. It is the thing that decides whether your history follows you.

DSP advertisers live on a seat. If you move from one seat to another, you get a new advertiser ID. If your AMC instance only knew the old ID, your history would stay behind with it. Because an instance can hold both, the old ID can stay attached next to the new one, and your queries keep working across the move.

When you evaluate any DSP provider, ask:

Is my AMC instance mine, or is it the provider's?
Can my current advertiser ID and any historical IDs be attached to it?
If I leave, does the instance stay with me?

On the MixShift DSP seat, every advertiser gets an AMC instance, included and not a paid upgrade. It is cross-source: DSP and sponsored ads advertiser IDs, current and historical, are consolidated in one instance. If you are migrating from another seat, tell us on the form and we attach your existing DSP advertiser ID so the old history stays queryable next to the new. If you leave later, the instance and its data stay yours, and it can keep your historical ID attached alongside whichever seat you move to.

Four ways to work with the instance

1. Ready-made reports, no SQL

Every advertiser on the MixShift DSP seat comes with AMC Workspaces, the MixShift AMC app. It runs ready-made reports against the instance, including Sponsored Ads + DSP Overlap, New-to-Brand Drivers, Path-to-Conversion, Reach & Frequency Optimization and DSP Geo Performance, each with the method behind the result. You can schedule them and send audiences to a DSP advertiser or sponsored ads account. It is free while in beta and will be priced separately at launch.

AMC Workspaces for DSP advertisers covers the full report list, audiences and setup.

2. SQL in the AMC console

Your instance also shows up in the AMC console from Amazon, with its library of query templates. If you write SQL, nothing stops you from running your own queries alongside the ready-made reports.

3. API and your own tools

The instance has programmatic access. Query it from your own data stack or bring any AMC client you like. The MixShift Builder Platform also exposes AMC over MCP and API, including creating an audience on a DSP advertiser or sponsored ads account with a preview before anything is created.

4. Ask in Claude

With the MixShift plugin for Claude, you can ask in plain language, for example "how many of last month's purchasers saw both our display ads and our sponsored ads?". Claude finds your instance, checks which data sources it has, writes the query and runs it on the Amazon side. AMC queries take minutes, not seconds, and results come back as a CSV.

You can also ask for an audience: "lapsed buyers, 180 to 365 days ago, refreshed weekly". Claude writes it, shows you a preview, and creates it on your DSP advertiser only after you confirm. The AMC in Claude guide has more examples.

A first week with AMC and DSP

Confirm the instance has both sides. Check that your DSP advertiser ID and your sponsored ads advertiser are attached. If you sell through Seller Central, make sure your DSP advertiser has your merchant token so sales are deduplicated between DSP and sponsored ads.
Run the overlap report over the last full month or quarter. This is the baseline for every DSP budget decision after it.
Run new-to-brand drivers. Separate DSP campaigns that bring in new buyers from ones that follow existing ones.
Build one audience from what you learned, such as product page viewers who did not buy, and use it in a single DSP line item.
Schedule the overlap report monthly so you can see whether the change worked.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need DSP to use Amazon Marketing Cloud?

No. Sponsored ads advertisers can use AMC. But without a DSP advertiser attached, the instance cannot see DSP impressions, so it cannot tell you how DSP and sponsored ads work together. AMC Workspaces, the MixShift AMC app, also works without a MixShift DSP seat: you need a MixShift AMC instance and a subscription, and pricing is on request.

Can one AMC instance hold multiple DSP advertiser IDs?

Yes. An AMC instance can hold more than one DSP advertiser ID. That lets your historical advertiser ID stay attached when you move to a new seat, so your history remains queryable alongside the new advertiser.

Is AMC included with MixShift DSP access?

Yes. Every advertiser on the MixShift DSP seat gets an AMC instance, included in the $500 per month access fee. Every advertiser also gets AMC Workspaces, the AMC app with ready-made reports and an audience builder, free while in beta.

Do I need to know SQL to use AMC?

Not if you use ready-made reports in AMC Workspaces or ask in Claude. If you do write SQL, you can query the instance directly in the AMC console or through the API.

What happens to my AMC data if I stop using a DSP provider?

It depends on whether the instance is yours. Ask before you start. On the MixShift seat, your instance can keep your historical DSP advertiser ID attached when you move to another seat, so your data and queries are not locked to ours.