Getting new-to-brand customers on Amazon is getting harder because shoppers rarely buy on the first click. But with the right Amazon Marketing Cloud audience strategy, you can shift from guessing who might buy to targeting shoppers already in discovery mode.
Winning on Amazon depends on consistently bringing in new customers, not just retargeting past buyers. Most ad strategies still rely on broad targeting, which leads to wasted spend and weak acquisition performance.
Amazon Marketing Cloud helps change that by showing real shopper behavior across the buying journey. Sellers can use it to identify competitor traffic, repeat browsers, and high-intent audiences that are more likely to convert.
In this guide, our Amazon agency breaks down how an Amazon Marketing Cloud audience strategy works and why it directly impacts NTB growth. You’ll also learn how to build AMC audiences and apply them inside your Amazon ad campaigns for better efficiency and scale.
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What Are New-to-Brand Buyers?
New-to-brand (NTB) buyers are customers purchasing from your brand for the first time within a set period, usually the last 12 months. On Amazon, these shoppers are one of the clearest indicators of whether your advertising is actually bringing in new business instead of relying on repeat customers.
For Amazon sellers, NTB buyers represent real brand growth because they expand your customer base and create future retargeting opportunities. That matters even more today since roughly 75% of shoppers use Amazon to discover new products and brands, making customer acquisition a major part of long-term marketplace success.
- 00:00 - Why new to brand buyers matter
- 00:30 - Using AMC for audience building
- 01:03 - Creating a custom AMC audience
- 02:01 - Choosing competitor ASINs to target
- 03:47 - Audience structure and filters
- 05:13 - Adding 180 day repeat browser filter
- 06:04 - Using brand names and merchant IDs
- 07:29 - Running competitor targeting ads
- 08:00 - Category and keyword targeting
How AMC Can Increase NTB Buyers
There are many ways to increase new-to-brand buyers on Amazon, but one of the most effective methods is using an Amazon Marketing Cloud audience strategy. Instead of relying on broad targeting, AMC helps sellers reach shoppers based on real browsing and purchase behavior.
- Identify shoppers actively viewing competitor products
- Build audiences from repeat category browsers
- Retarget high-intent shoppers who did not convert
- Reach customers who have never purchased from your brand
- Create lookalike audiences based on existing buyers
- Use AMC Ads Agent to simplify audience creation
- Combine Sponsored Ads and DSP for stronger acquisition campaigns
- Analyze which campaigns drive the most NTB sales
- Use longer lookback windows to capture active shoppers
- Improve ad efficiency with behavior-based targeting
How to Build a New-to-Brand Audience Using AMC
Building a new-to-brand audience in Amazon Marketing Cloud is a two-stage process that moves from data collection to active advertising. You first use competitor signals to create a list of potential buyers and then apply that list to your campaigns to increase your reach.
Stage 1: Audience Creation
In this stage, you use AMC to isolate shoppers who are currently browsing your competitors but haven’t purchased from you. This allows you to stop guessing who your customers are and start targeting shoppers with proven intent.
Step 1: Identify Competitor Targets
Gather the specific ASINs of your top-performing competitors or use their Merchant ID to capture their entire product catalog. This ensures your “seed” data is based on the exact shoppers you want to win over from the competition.
Step 2: Access the AI Ads Agent
Navigate to the “Create Audience” tab in AMC and use the natural language Ads Agent to build your query without needing to write code. This tool translates your business goals into technical SQL instructions automatically, making advanced targeting accessible to beginners.
Step 3: Define Repeat Browsers
Instruct the agent to filter for “repeat browsing behavior” among shoppers who are new to your brand. Targeting people who visit competitor pages multiple times ensures you are spending your budget on “warm” leads who are deep in the consideration phase.
Step 4: Set a 180-Day Window
Apply a 6-month (180-day) lookback period to keep your audience focused on shoppers who are active in the market right now. This timeframe is long enough to gather a significant number of users while ensuring the data hasn’t gone “cold” or irrelevant.
Step 5: Verify Minimum Size
Check that your final audience contains at least 2,000 unique User IDs before saving and running the query. Amazon requires this minimum size to protect user privacy and to ensure there is enough traffic for your ads to actually deliver.
Stage 2: Audience Activation
Once your audience is created, it will automatically appear as a targeting option in your Amazon Advertising console. This stage is where you apply that data to your live campaigns to intercept competitor traffic.
Step 6: Implement Bid Boosting
Apply your new AMC audience to your Sponsored Products campaigns and set a “bid multiplier” to increase your bids for these specific shoppers. This strategy ensures your product appears at the top of the search results precisely when these high-intent shoppers are looking to buy.
Step 7: Layer with Category Keywords
Combine your AMC audience with broad category keywords like “door stops” to narrow your reach to the most qualified shoppers. Layering helps you dominate general search terms by only bidding aggressively when the person searching has a documented history of browsing your competitors.
Step 8: Monitor and Iterate
Track your NTB metrics in your ad reports to see how many of these competitor shoppers are converting into first-time buyers for your brand. Regularly updating your competitor ASIN list ensures your “conquesting” strategy stays effective as new rivals enter the market.
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Best Practices for Implementing AMC Audiences in Ad Campaigns
Once sellers finish building an AMC audience, the next step is activating it inside live campaigns so it actually drives new-to-brand sales. This is where AMC shifts from reporting insights into a structured competitor conquest strategy.
1. Focus on Repeat Browsers With NTB Intent
The strongest AMC audiences are built around repeat browsers who have repeatedly engaged with competitor products but have not purchased from your brand. Pairing this behavior with a 180-day lookback ensures you are targeting shoppers still actively in a buying cycle.
2. Apply Audiences Directly to Sponsored Products
AMC audiences should be mapped directly into Sponsored Products campaigns using the same competitor ASINs used during audience creation. This allows you to reach shoppers at the exact point of consideration, where conversion probability is significantly higher.
3. Layer Brand and High-Intent Keyword Targeting
To maximize reach, combine AMC audiences with competitor brand terms and high-intent search keywords. This ensures you are increasing bids and visibility, specifically when in-market shoppers are actively comparing alternatives.
4. Extend Targeting Into Category-Level Campaigns
AMC audiences also perform well when applied to broader category campaigns instead of only product-specific targeting. This keeps your brand visible during early-stage browsing when shoppers are still evaluating options within the category.
5. Treat AMC as a Continuous Acquisition System
The most effective brands continuously refresh AMC audiences across multiple competitors instead of running them as one-off builds. Over time, this creates a steady stream of high-intent NTB shoppers flowing from competitor traffic into your acquisition campaigns.
Common Mistakes Sellers Make With AMC Audience Strategy
Although Amazon Marketing Cloud can be a powerful way to build smarter audience strategies, it often fails when sellers misuse the data or build audiences without a clear plan. This is why understanding the common mistakes is important before scaling AMC campaigns, so you don’t end up wasting budget or missing competitor shoppers who are already in the buying cycle.
1. Over-Segmenting Audiences Too Early
One of the biggest mistakes sellers make is adding too many filters when building AMC audiences. When you combine too many conditions at once, the audience becomes too small to actually run in ads at scale, which also limits your ability to capture competitor demand.
2. Ignoring the 180-Day Freshness Rule
Another common issue is failing to keep audience data fresh, especially when shoppers move quickly through the buying cycle. If you don’t use a proper lookback window, like 180 days, you risk missing active competitor shoppers and targeting users who are no longer in-market.
3. Treating AMC as a Reporting Tool Only
Many sellers use AMC just to look at insights instead of turning those insights into active ad audiences. The real value comes when you operationalize AMC data directly into Sponsored Products or DSP campaigns to actually intercept competitor traffic.
4. Mixing NTB and Repeat Customers
A major mistake is failing to separate new-to-brand shoppers from repeat buyers in your audience strategy. When both groups are treated the same, you lose the ability to target competitor-driven NTB opportunities aggressively, and bidding becomes inefficient.
5. Building Overly Complex Queries Too Fast
Some sellers jump straight into advanced audience logic without first understanding basic shopper behavior patterns. This leads to confusing results and audiences that are hard to interpret or activate, instead of clearly capturing competitor shoppers at the right stage.
FAQs About AMC Audience Strategy
Stop Losing NTB Buyers to Competitors
Winning new-to-brand buyers on Amazon requires more than broad targeting or standard PPC tactics. Sellers who want to maximize growth need an Amazon Marketing Cloud audience strategy built around real shopper behavior.
The strongest AMC approach focuses on competitor traffic, repeat browsers, and fresh 180-day audiences that are ready to buy. When used correctly, it helps turn competitor interest into new customers for your brand.
Do you need help building an Amazon Marketing Cloud audience strategy for your brand? Reach out to our full-service Amazon agency and let our experts turn your data into consistent new-to-brand growth.
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