Amazon DSP

Amazon DSP Targeting: 11 Targeting Options Explained

Archit Arora

27 Sep 2023

Amazon DSP (demand side platform) provides a multitude of targeting options, ranging from customer demographics, and behavioral targeting to contextual and remarketing.

To make the most of your Amazon DSP campaigns, it’s important to understand these targeting options and how they can align with your advertising goals.

In this blog post, we’ll break down the different Amazon DSP targeting options and explain how each one can play a big role in creating a full-funnel DSP advertising strategy.

1. Behavioural targeting

Target audiences based on their past actions, such as targeting people who have browsed a specific category in the past 30 days, clicked on a particular product listing or viewed your product video. These campaigns are best for creating awareness; hence, they will be helpful to attract top of the funnel audience.

For instance, let’s say you’re a company that sells outdoor camping gear on Amazon, and you want to create awareness for your new line of camping tents. You can use Amazon DSP behavioral targeting to reach potential customers who have shown an interest in the camping equipment.

2. Lifestyle targeting

Target audiences who have demonstrated specific lifestyle behaviors or interests that align with your products or services. This can, once again, be utilized to create awareness about your product among your target audience.

For example, if you sell automotive parts for Ford Motor Company, you can target audiences who own Ford vehicles.

3. Interest based targeting

Interest-based targeting allows you to focus your advertising on people who have shown an interest in specific topics or categories.

For instance, if you’re selling a Marvel-themed hoodie, you can target your ads to individuals who have expressed an interest in Marvel movies and TV shows on IMDb, increasing the chances of reaching potential customers who share that interest

4. Life event based targeting

It is an interesting DSP targeting option that allows you to target people more likely to be interested in your products or services due to their recent life events or behaviors.

For example, if you sell products for newborn babies, you can target an audience who have recently become parents. This can be helpful for both generating awareness and creating consideration for your product, making it an ideal targeting option for top and mid-funnel ads.

5. Demographic targeting

Targeting a specific group of people based on certain characteristics, such as age, gender, income, location, etc., can be useful for creating awareness of your product and reaching a large number of people who fit your target audience’s characteristics. For instance, you can target women aged 25-34 in the United States.

6. Device targeting

Targeting an audience who have used specific user devices, such as manufacturer, operating system, and type, is also beneficial for Top-of-Funnel marketing. This targeting can be useful if you’re selling particular accessories or peripherals designed for specific devices.

7. In-Market targeting

Target individuals who have recently expressed an interest in products or services similar to what you offer. This targeting can prove beneficial for both mid-funnel and bottom-funnel advertising, as the targeted audience is more likely to purchase shortly.

For instance, if you are selling running shoes, you can focus on people whose shopping behaviors suggest they are inclined to buy running shoes.

8. Contextual targeting

With contextual targeting, you can display your ads on websites, apps, and product pages that are contextually relevant to your advertised products or services. This ensures that ads are shown to users who are likely to be interested in your offering.

For example, if you are selling ‘dog food,’ you can target the dog food category on Amazon to display your ads on all the listings in that category.

9. Remarketing/Retargeting

You can target an audience that has searched for, viewed, or purchased your product or a product similar to yours. These targeting options are useful for bottom-of-funnel advertising, allowing you to retarget consumers for conversion.

Different types of Remarketing targets available in Amazon DSP:

Pixel-Based Remarketing: Retarget shoppers on Amazon who have visited your brand’s website.
Views Remarketing: Retarget shoppers who viewed a product on Amazon but didn’t make a purchase.
Purchased ASIN Remarketing: Retarget shoppers who have bought a product on Amazon.
Brand Halo Remarketing: Retarget shoppers who viewed other products from your brand.
Similar Product Remarketing: Retarget shoppers browsing products similar to yours.

10. Audience lookalike

Reach out to people who share similar traits and characteristics with your current DSP audience. By doing this, you can expand your reach to a larger group of potential customers who are likely interested in your products or services. This approach is particularly useful for introducing your products to new audiences (Top-of-Funnel) and encouraging them to consider what you offer (Middle-Funnel), as it helps build awareness and generate interest among people who resemble your existing customers.

11. Third-Party Audiences

If you don’t want your targeting to be limited to Amazon’s first-party data, Amazon has also integrated various options to leverage third-party audience data.

You can incorporate an Amazon Ads tag manager into your website to measure the traffic coming to your website and target them through your Amazon DSP ad.
You can also leverage hashed audiences originating from your brand’s CRM data.

You can also use data from various branded data providers. These audiences are from large brands that have a large number of audience data, such as Mastercard, Oracle, Comscore, etc., opening a completely new audience base for Amazon advertisers to promote their products.

Check out more resources related to Amazon DSP:
- Amazon DSP Frequency Capping: Setup & Best Practices
- Amazon DSP Ad Types: When to Use Them (With Examples)

Ready to get started with Adbrew?

Adbrew provides cutting-edge automation, expertly curated strategies, and data-driven insights for brands to thrive on Amazon.

Final Thought on Amazon DSP targeting

Amazon offers a host of targeting options to DSP advertisers to display their ads to a large number of people at different stages of the buying journey. We hope that this guide has provided you with clarity on which targeting type you should use for different types of DSP ad campaigns in your overall advertising funnels.