Turn Black Friday wins into long-term growth with AMC

Introduction

Kenton Snyder:
Welcome, everyone. Today we’re diving into how brands can use Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) to turn the massive influx of Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) shoppers into long-term growth. Every year we see huge spikes not just in purchases, but also in traffic—product page views, ad impressions, and overall shopper engagement. Our focus today is how to measure this activity through AMC and how to maximize the value of users who browsed or engaged with your brand but didn’t convert during the event.

Sreenath Reddy:
I’m one of the founders of Intentwise, and we’ve been deeply engaged with AMC since its early days. We’ve also been exploring the new AMC datasets Amazon recently introduced, including the extended look-back windows and multi-year purchase data.

What We Saw This BFCM: Key Trends Across 250+ Accounts

Kenton:
Across more than 250 Intentwise accounts, we saw overall ad spend rise about 15% during the core BFCM period, but conversion rates dipped. A combination of earlier deals, higher pricing in some categories, and shoppers not being in the same purchase mindset contributed to this. The big takeaway is that while purchases didn’t spike as strongly as last year, exposure absolutely did.

Sreenath:
There was also a noticeable shift with many referring to “Turkey 12” instead of the usual “Turkey 5.” Deals started earlier, shoppers browsed earlier, and the conversion pattern was more spread out. We’re digging deeper into extended windows to understand the full impact.

Kenton:
The point isn’t that BFCM underperformed. Instead, the dip in conversion rate creates opportunity. More shoppers than ever saw your ads and PDPs—but many did not buy yet. That presents a valuable retargeting window for the rest of the holiday season.

Analyzing BFCM Performance Through AMC

1. Tentpole Phase Overlap

Kenton:
Tentpole Phase Overlap helps you understand how exposure during the lead-in, event, and lead-out phases impacts overall performance. For example, if someone only saw ads during the event period versus someone exposed across multiple phases, AMC lets us quantify how that difference affects conversion rate, ROAS, and purchase behavior.

Sreenath:
Inside the Intentwise platform, you can customize your date windows for lead-in, event, and lead-out and run multiple versions of the query. This should be one of the first analyses you run post-BFCM.

Kenton:
A major unlock this year is AMC’s upgraded 25-month traffic look-back, announced at Amazon unBoxed. It allows you to compare your tentpole results to both 2023 and 2024, which wasn’t possible before.

Sreenath:
It’s important to note: the 25-month window currently applies to traffic data. Conversion data still has a shorter default window, unless you’re using the 5-year retail purchase dataset, which Amazon now offers as a paid dataset.

2. New-to-Brand Analysis at the Campaign Level

Kenton:
During events like BFCM, most brands focus on new customer acquisition. AMC’s new-to-brand queries help you evaluate which campaigns truly drove incremental shoppers.

You can measure:

• Total new-to-brand sales per campaign
• Percentage of sales that were new-to-brand
• Comparison across sponsored ads and DSP

If you have the 5-year dataset, you can even extend this window beyond the usual 12 months.

Kenton:
When planning for future events, this helps you decide where incremental budget should go. Sometimes a campaign with a lower ROAS may still be more valuable if it’s driving higher new-to-brand performance.

3. First Touch Attribution (vs. Amazon’s Last Touch Model)

Kenton:
Another important area is measuring upper-funnel impact. Amazon’s default attribution is last-touch—everything is credited to the last ad a shopper interacted with. With AMC, you can flip that and measure first touch attribution, which tells you which campaigns introduced the shopper to your brand.

This is especially helpful for:

• Streaming TV
• Online video (OLV)
• Sponsored Display
• Non-branded Sponsored Products

Sreenath:
Looking at first-touch and last-touch side by side is a powerful unlock. If your DSP campaigns look weak in Amazon’s console but strong in first-touch attribution, you’re seeing the real influence those campaigns have early in the funnel.

4. Lifetime Value (LTV) of BFCM Customers

Kenton:
This is one of the most important long-term analyses. Many brands expect deal-acquired customers to have lower lifetime value. With AMC and the 5-year look-back, you can actually measure it.

Key questions to answer:

• Do BFCM buyers repurchase at similar rates as non-deal customers?
• Which ASINs lead to stronger long-term loyalty?
• Should you promote those same ASINs next year—or switch?

Sreenath:
If you have a clean list of last year’s BFCM deal ASINs, AMC can evaluate what those customers did over the following year. This has become one of the most valuable analyses for 1P brands.

Using AMC Audiences to Drive Post-BFCM Growth

High-Intent Shopper Retargeting

Kenton:
One of the biggest immediate opportunities is retargeting shoppers who browsed or engaged during BFCM but did not purchase. AMC can build audiences such as:

• Viewed product detail page (PDP)
• Added to cart
• Added to list
• Viewed ads but didn’t click

These audiences can be activated via DSP or Sponsored Display.

Sreenath:
“High intent” varies by brand. For some, page views are enough; for others, searches for highly relevant keywords may be a stronger signal. AMC gives you the flexibility to define that intent.

Lookalike Audiences

Sreenath:
Lookalikes can be powerful, but you need enough users in your seed audience. AMC requires only 2,000 users to build a lookalike—but that’s too small in practice. We recommend at least 10,000+ for meaningful performance.

Use lookalikes when:

• Your base audience is too small
• You want to expand reach beyond your core
• You want more targeted prospecting than generic category audiences

Kenton:
Just remember: lookalikes are prospecting, not retargeting. They won’t behave as strongly as users who already interacted with your brand.

Turning Deal Buyers Into Repeat Customers

Kenton:
As we get into Q1 and Q2, another AMC audience becomes important: customers who purchased during BFCM. Retargeting them at the right reorder window—30 days, 60 days, 90 days—can turn one-time deal shoppers into loyal, high-value customers.

Sreenath:
With the 5-year dataset, you can identify the exact timeline between first and second purchases for your hero ASINs. That lets you retarget at the optimal moment.

Closing

Kenton:
Every query and audience we covered today—tentpole overlap, new-to-brand, first-touch attribution, lifetime value, and retargeting audiences—is available inside Intentwise Explorer. You can run all of them without writing SQL. If you’d like help getting started, let our team know.

Sreenath:
We’ll send the recording afterward. Feel free to reach out with questions, and we encourage you to join the Intentwise Community to stay updated on AMC releases, best practices, and training.