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I was doing a little keyword research earlier this week and happened to notice that “dayparting” was spiking in terms of the amount of volume on Google. 

You might remember that word from last year when it was the subject of a lot of conversations in meetups and Amazon sellers conferences. Ultimately, the topic of dayparting slid back into relative obscurity. At least until Amazon made a recent announcement. 

But first . . .

What is Dayparting?

Dayparting is the strategy of distributing or scheduling your ad budget for certain times of the day in order to achieve better results (think higher RoAS/lower ACoS). It’s long been understood that buyer behavior varies dramatically throughout the course of the day. Why not adjust your marketing strategy to match it? 

Google’s Ad platform has for some time now, allowed advertisers to closely monitor their KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) hourly, 24 hours a day. 

Now that Amazon has made that same data available . . . 

What is Amazon Marketing Stream?

Dayparting is back in a big way and is now rocketing up Google’s keyword rankings due to the fact that Amazon has recently launched Amazon Marketing Stream (Beta). 

Amazon Marketing Stream (Beta), is an Amazon product that delivers Amazon Ads campaign metrics and information to advertisers’ or integrators’ AWS accounts via a push-based model in near real-time. 

You can subscribe to campaign data sets available on Amazon Marketing Stream using your existing Amazon Ads API token and by providing your AWS account details. Once subscribed, Amazon Marketing Stream will deliver hourly performance metrics, with details such as targeting expression performance by placement and budget consumption messages in near real-time. 

(Amazon says that “other campaign data sets will be available for subscription in the coming months.”

These new insights are going to streamline Amazon PPC management. They will help open the door to data-driven intra-day (or, dayparting) optimization and bidding strategies for Amazon PPC campaigns.

Almost overnight, this innovative release makes visible the data that fuels Amazon dayparting strategies. 

Why Is This Big News for Amazon Sellers? 

Having access to Amazon’s data allows you to stand on the online marketplace giant’s shoulders to see farther into your ecommerce future. This is the kind of data that at the very same time, saves you money and helps you to optimize your Amazon PPC management. 

• Improved data granularity – Traffic and conversion data is summarized hourly, compared with a daily granularity if you’re using the reporting API. The data is streamed automatically to your AWS account, which you’ll provide when you subscribe to the Amazon Marketing Stream data set.
• No throttling – With Amazon Marketing Stream data streaming, you no longer need to make frequent API calls for intra-day updates. This helps to prevent throttling while also increasing data accuracy.
• Near real-time messaging – Get notified about budget consumption, such as when campaigns are running out of budget.
• More reporting dimensions – While API-based reports can show performance at the placement or the ad level, Amazon Marketing Stream can show all dimensions available in a single dataset. While API-based reports can show performance at the target ID, placement or the ad level, Amazon Marketing Stream can show data for these dimensions all together. This allows you to see granular data such as keyword performance for a given placement that isn’t available without Amazon Marketing Stream. This gives you more insights to help you improve campaign efficiency.
• Insights on deltas instead of aggregates – Amazon Marketing Stream allows you to better understand how campaigns are performing by pushing the delta values instead of aggregates. This helps you see how campaign performance is changing over time. 
• Simplified workflow – With Amazon Marketing Stream, you can access all of your advertising data from your AWS account natively. Additionally, Amazon Marketing Stream pushes changes to your data instead of snapshots. This simplifies the extract, transform, and load (ETL) process by showing you exactly what has changed when new data arrives. Without Amazon Marketing Stream, you need to pull a snapshot report, and then compare it with your native data store to know what changed—a process that is less efficient.

Where is Amazon Marketing Stream Available?

• North America: United States, Canada, Mexico

Who Can Use It?

• Agencies
• Tool providers
• Direct advertisers including vendors and sellers

How Do I Access It?

• Amazon Ads API

How CANOPY Management’s Amazon Ad Pros Can Help

One of the best and worst things about all this new access to technology is how quickly everything is moving. Whether it’s a new Tesla automobile, or a tool for advertising on Amazon, the level of knowledge and experience required to use it properly has risen just as dramatically. 

Shade-tree mechanics used to be able to work on their own cars in the driveway. Now, the idea of making a small repair to your EV (Electric Vehicle) is more suited to someone who spent their postgraduate years studying mechanical engineering at MIT or Stanford. 

Similarly, these recent advances in data transparency has made it possible for Amazon sellers to “lift the hood” of their Amazon PPC advertising. 

Unfortunately, the following screenshot shows you the first thing that you will see on an Amazon Marketing Stream onboarding page. 

That’s not a Chevy we’re looking at. It’s one more reason why reaching out to an Amazon PPC Agency expert at CANOPY Management has become the first step for increasing numbers of e-commerce sellers looking to get to the next level. 

CANOPY Management is a full-service marketing agency for Amazon sellers. Our team consists of former Amazonians, multi-million dollar sellers, and award-winning experts. When you consider the many ways that CANOPY Management can help you grow your business, you’ll see why selling on Amazon is much easier “under the Canopy”:

• Strategic Growth Planning
• Listing Copywriting Optimization
• Listing Photography
• Product Videography
• Advertising Management
• Customer Service
• Demand Side Platform (Amazon DSP)
• Amazon Posts
• Full Service Management
• Amazon Review Aggregation