AMC Paid Features 2026: What Each Adds and When It Pays

Free Amazon Marketing Cloud only sees shoppers your ads touched. AMC paid features show the rest: organic buyers, five years of purchases, Brand Store browsing and what people watch on Prime Video.

This guide covers the paid features Amazon lists in 2026, what each adds, the questions each answers in plain query logic, the limits, a worked example of whether a subscription pays for itself, and how to start.

What Are AMC Paid Features?

AMC paid features are premium datasets in Amazon Marketing Cloud that sit beside the free ad tables in your instance. Amazon calls them the premium subscription model for AMC, and you add them per instance from the Paid features (beta) tab.

AMC itself is available at no cost to eligible advertisers. Its free tables hold your DSP and sponsored ads impressions and clicks plus the conversions attributed to them.

That is the gap paid features close. A shopper who bought your product without seeing an ad doesn't exist in free AMC.

Our Amazon advertising reports guide covers where AMC sits next to the standard reports. Paid features are the layer for questions those reports can't reach.

What Changed in 2025 and 2026

Most pages on this topic still describe three subscriptions: Amazon Insights, Experian and Foursquare. That list is out of date.

1. Amazon Retail Purchases Arrived

On May 23, 2025 Amazon added Amazon Retail Purchases, five years of store purchase history. It launched at $500 a month for measurement after a 60-day trial, and free for building audiences.

2. More Advertisers Got AMC

Since September 16, 2025, sponsored ads advertisers can open AMC from the ads console without a partner. More instances means more advertisers seeing the Paid features tab for the first time.

3. Prime Video Signals Joined the List

At unBoxed 2025 Amazon launched Prime Video Insights in open beta in the US, Canada, Japan and Australia on November 11, 2025, with Europe following in Q1 2026. The same event stretched AMC's ad traffic lookback from 13 to 25 months.

4. Amazon's Own Paid Features Became Free for 2026

Amazon's paid features overview says that from June 1, 2026, all of its first-party (1P) paid features are free to query through December 31, 2026. That covers Amazon Insights, Amazon Retail Purchases, Prime Video Insights, Prime Video Channel Insights, Amazon Your Garage and Brand Store Insights.

You still subscribe on the Paid features page, and existing subscriptions converted to $0 automatically. Third-party features such as Experian still charge. Amazon hasn't said what happens on January 1, 2027.

5. Two Datasets Left the List

Amazon says the NCS CPG Insights Stream feature has been discontinued. Foursquare Store Visit Insights no longer appears in Amazon's list of paid features at all, so we've removed it from this guide.

6. Amazon Ads Agent and the AMC Expert Tool

At unBoxed on September 29, 2026, Amazon renamed its unified platform Amazon Ads Agent. It also announced the AMC Expert Tool, which turns a plain-language request into AMC SQL for AI agents. The conversational features are in closed beta and rolling out.

The Full List of AMC Paid Features in 2026

These are the paid features on Amazon's overview page as of October 2026. Availability and eligibility come from the same page.

Amazon Insights is one subscription for advertisers who sell on Amazon. Brands that don't sell on Amazon can buy Audience Segment Insights on its own.

What Each Paid Feature Adds and the Questions It Answers

For each one: what it adds over free AMC, the question it answers, and the query logic in plain words.

1. Flexible Shopping Insights: Ad-Exposed vs Organic Sales

Flexible Shopping Insights adds the `conversions_all` table: every conversion for your tracked ASINs, ad-exposed or not. Its `exposure_type` field marks a purchase ad-exposed when it came within 28 days after an ad traffic event.

• Question: What share of my sales did ads touch, and do ad-exposed buyers come back more often?

• Logic: Count purchasers by `exposure_type`. Then, for each group, count those with a second purchase within 90 days.

This is also where Sponsored Products new-to-brand finally gets a denominator. Our new-to-brand metrics guide uses it for time to second purchase and cohort value.

2. Audience Segment Insights: Who Your Buyers Are

Audience Segment Insights adds in-market and lifestyle segment membership for every user in your AMC data. Free AMC only shows segments for DSP traffic you bought against.

• Question: Which in-market and lifestyle segments over-index among my buyers, including the ones who came from sponsored ads?

• Logic: Join purchasers to segment membership, then compare each segment's share of buyers with its share of everyone your ads reached.

The segments that over-index become DSP targeting. Our Amazon DSP targeting guide covers how to use them.

3. Amazon Retail Purchases: Five Years of Purchases

Amazon Retail Purchases holds up to 60 months of Amazon store purchases with order item detail. Amazon says its scope matches the Business Reports "By ASIN Detail" view in Seller Central, or Retail Analytics in Vendor Central.

• Question: What is a customer worth over three years, and which first product leads to the biggest baskets?

• Logic: Find each customer's first purchase of your brand, then sum their purchases over the following 12, 24 and 36 months, grouped by that first ASIN.

This is the dataset for durable goods and long replenishment cycles. A mattress or a stroller buyer rarely returns inside AMC's 25-month traffic window.

4. Prime Video Insights: What Your Customers Watch

Prime Video Insights adds viewing signals: content title, content type and show-level information, with a 13-month lookback. Amazon notes coverage is limited to users you've reached, joined through your ad traffic tables.

• Question: Which shows and genres do my buyers watch, and how big is the overlap with Prime Video viewers?

• Logic: Join purchasers to `pv_streaming_events_feed`, then rank content types by the share of buyers who watched them.

It informs where Prime Video ads will find your customers. Prime Video Channel Insights is a separate dataset, open only to companies that run a Prime Video Channel.

5. Brand Store Insights: What Happens in Your Store

Brand Store Insights adds store page views, dwell time and widget-level engagement. Its `ingress_type` field says how each visit arrived: search, the detail page byline, ads or store recommendations.

• Question: Do shoppers who reach my store from ads browse longer and buy more than those who arrive from search?

• Logic: Group store visits by `ingress_type`, average dwell time and pages per visit, then join visitors to purchases.

If your Sponsored Brands ads land on the store, this tells you which pages hold attention. Our Brand Store guide covers the build.

6. Amazon Your Garage: Vehicle Owners

Amazon Your Garage associates users with the vehicles saved in Amazon's garage feature: type, make, model and configuration.

• Question: Which vehicle owners buy my auto parts, and who owns a compatible car but hasn't bought?

• Logic: Join purchasers to vehicle make and model, then find owners of compatible models with no purchase.

7. Experian Vehicle Purchase Insights: Car Sales

Experian Vehicle Purchase Insights links ad exposure to actual vehicle purchases in the US. It is third-party data, it still requires a paid subscription, and it has no audience table.

• Question: Did households that saw our DSP campaign buy our vehicle?

• Logic: Compare purchase rates by make and model for exposed households, by campaign and path.

Limits to Know Before You Subscribe

• DSP audiences only. Amazon lists select paid feature tables as audience sources for Amazon DSP. A five-year lapsed-buyer audience can't become a Sponsored Products bid boost; our AMC custom audiences guide has the full activation rules.

• Regional gaps. Retail Purchases audiences exclude UK and EU purchases, though measurement queries include them.

• Aggregated output only. Every result is subject to AMC's aggregation thresholds. Small segments come back blank.

• Eligibility. Retail Purchases needs a linked selling account, Brand Store Insights an active store. If you aren't eligible, Subscribe stays greyed out.

• Instance-level. Every user on the instance gets the feature. Cancel and you wait 24 hours to re-subscribe.

• Exposed isn't incremental. Ad-exposed buyers were often going to buy anyway, because ads target likely buyers. The exposed vs organic split shows reach into your customer base; a holdout shows lift.

Does an AMC Paid Feature Pay for Itself?

In 2026 the question is easy for Amazon's own features: they're free. The real decision is whether to keep paying in 2027, if Amazon reintroduces fees, and whether Experian is worth it today.

Our test is simple. A subscription pays when the budget it moves, times the improvement in return on that budget, times your margin, beats the fee plus the analyst time.

Here is the arithmetic for an illustrative brand spending $80,000 a month across sponsored ads and DSP.

1. Cost. We use $500 a month, Amazon Retail Purchases' 2025 list price, as a stand-in. Add 6 hours of analysis at $75: $950 a month.

2. Finding. Flexible Shopping Insights shows an $8,000-a-month DSP retargeting tactic reaches buyers who mostly purchase anyway. A holdout puts its incremental ROAS at 0.8.

3. Move. That $8,000 goes to a prospecting tactic measured at an incremental ROAS of 2.0.

4. Gain. $8,000 × (2.0 − 0.8) = $9,600 more sales a month. At a 30% margin, that's $2,880.

5. Verdict. $2,880 ÷ $950 = 3.0 times the cost. The break-even is $950 ÷ (1.2 × 0.30) ≈ $2,640 of budget moved a month.

If you can't name about $2,600 a month of spend the answer could move, skip the subscription. In the accounts we manage, that rules out most brands spending under $20,000 a month, unless one big question (a launch, a durable product's lifetime value) justifies a month.

Judge the result on TACOS and incremental sales, not attributed ROAS. Our Amazon attribution guide explains why the two differ.

How to Get Started With AMC Paid Features

1. Get AMC Access

Sponsored ads advertisers can open AMC self-service from the ads console. DSP advertisers using DVA+ advanced settings ask their Ad Tech account executive, and partners on the Amazon Ads Partner Network can provision it for you.

2. Write Down the Decision

Pick one question whose answer changes spend: "Is branded retargeting buying sales we'd get anyway?" If no budget moves either way, the analysis is a curiosity.

3. Check What You're Eligible For

Open the Paid features (beta) tab. Features not offered in your marketplace don't appear; features you aren't eligible for can't be subscribed. Billing runs through a Sponsored Ads or DSP self-service billing account, or Amazon Ads Incentive Center measurement funds.

4. Start From the Use Case Library

The use case library holds Amazon-written queries, formerly the instructional query library. Filter by "Tables used" to find the ones built on a paid feature, and by "No code" for templates that only ask for campaigns or ASINs.

5. Subscribe or Start the Trial

Click See options, pick the billing account, accept the AMC terms and click Subscribe. Through December 31, 2026, Amazon's own features show $0. The 60-day free trial is the route for Experian.

6. Let AI Write the First Draft of the SQL

Ads Agent in AMC writes queries from plain English, and the AMC Expert Tool does the same for outside AI agents. Read the date range, the ASIN list and the `exposure_type` filter before you run anything.

7. Schedule a Review Before January

Amazon hasn't published 2027 terms. Put a date in early December to decide which subscriptions earned their keep, using the break-even math above.

Mistakes We See With AMC Paid Features

• Subscribing without a question. The free window makes this tempting. A table nobody queries costs nothing now and wastes an analyst later.

• Reading exposed vs organic as lift. Ads target likely buyers, so exposed shoppers convert more by design. Run a holdout before you cut or scale.

• Planning sponsored ads audiences on paid tables. They activate in Amazon DSP. Without a DSP plan, a paid feature is measurement only.

• Ignoring regional rules. A UK brand's Retail Purchases audience won't contain UK purchases.

• Forgetting the January decision. Amazon hasn't said how subscriptions behave if fees return in 2027. Check the Your subscriptions list in December and cancel what you don't use.

• Pulling stale guides. Foursquare and NCS are gone; lists of "three subscriptions" are from 2024.

How We Use AMC Paid Features in Adbrew

Everything above works in the AMC console. What doesn't scale is the rest: writing the joins, keeping queries current as tables change, and turning findings into budget moves across many brands.

Adbrew is an agentic retail media management platform for Amazon and Walmart, and AMC sits in it next to Sponsored Ads, DSP and Marketing Stream:

• AMC without SQL. Adbrew can create your AMC instance or connect yours. Pre-built reports (path to conversion, time to conversion, overlap, new-to-brand, cost of new customer acquisition) refresh daily; Enterprise plans add custom queries.

• Audiences that reach DSP. Paid feature audiences need a DSP seat. Amazon DSP runs through Adbrew's seat with no minimum spend, with the same rules you set for bids and budgets.

• Adbrew Intelligence. Ask "compare repeat rates for ad-exposed and organic buyers of our top 10 ASINs", and the agent drafts the analysis. Through Adbrew MCP the same work runs from Claude or ChatGPT, and changes apply only after you approve them.

K2 Health used AMC through Adbrew and lifted conversions 20.28%. Our Amazon DSP reports guide shows how AMC fits a weekly reporting routine.

Start With One Question

AMC paid features are worth exactly as much as the decision they change. In 2026 Amazon's own datasets cost nothing to try, which makes this the cheapest time to find out which ones earn a place in your plan.

Want ad-exposed vs organic analysis, segment insights and DSP audiences on your own account without writing SQL? Book a demo with our team and we'll run the first analysis with you.