For high-volume Amazon sellers, the Q4 landscape is too competitive for a standard advertising playbook. While Sponsored Ads are essential, they often aren’t enough to capture every potential sale. This is where Amazon DSP (Demand-Side Platform) retargeting becomes a strategic necessity, allowing brands to re-engage high-intent customers across the web and guide them back to complete their purchase.

These shoppers—who have already shown interest in your products—are your most valuable prospects. Adding a sophisticated DSP advertising strategy is key to converting them during the busiest shopping season of the year.

The Strategic Necessity of Full-Funnel Advertising

To stay ahead this Q4, sellers must move beyond a sole reliance on Sponsored Ads. As competition for placements intensifies, depending on one channel leads to higher Advertising Cost of Sales (ACoS) and missed opportunities. By integrating Amazon DSP retargeting, you can re-engage high-intent shoppers, reduce cart abandonment, and maximize ROI.

Key advantages of Amazon DSP include:

• Advanced Audience Targeting: Leverage Amazon’s first-party customer data to build precise audience segments based on shopping behaviors.
• Powerful Retargeting Capabilities: Re-engage customers who viewed your product, added it to their cart, or browsed similar items but did not purchase.
• Omnichannel Reach: Display ads across Amazon-owned sites (like IMDb and Twitch), thousands of third-party websites, and mobile apps.

How Amazon DSP Retargets High-Intent Shoppers

During the competitive Q4 season, guiding an interested shopper back to your product detail page is paramount. Unlike Sponsored Ads, which primarily target customers on Amazon, DSP follows your audience across the web. It uses two powerful methods to reconnect with potential buyers.

1. Views Remarketing: Re-engaging Window Shoppers

This strategy targets customers who have viewed specific product detail pages but haven’t made a purchase. It keeps your product top-of-mind as they browse other sites. With Views Remarketing, you can build audiences of shoppers who have viewed:

• Your Advertised Products: Directly retarget anyone who landed on your product page.
• Similar Products: Use Amazon’s machine learning to find shoppers viewing products highly similar to yours, capturing competitor interest.
• Products in a Specific Category: Reach a broader audience browsing a general category (e.g., “running shoes”), with the option to refine by brand, price, and star rating.

These campaigns can use a lookback window of up to 90 days, ensuring you can reconnect with customers who started their holiday research early.

2. Purchases Remarketing: Driving Repeat Sales and Cross-Selling

This strategy focuses on customers based on their historical purchase behavior, making it ideal for building loyalty and increasing lifetime value. With Purchases Remarketing, you can target audiences who have purchased:

• Your Advertised Products: Encourage repeat buys for consumable goods or promote accessories.
• Complementary Products: Cross-sell related items to existing customers (e.g., show ads for coffee filters to customers who bought your coffee machine).
• Products from a Specific Category: Introduce new products to customers who have previously purchased from that category on Amazon.

Purchases remarketing offers a lookback window of up to 365 days, making it a powerful tool for building long-term brand loyalty.

Why a Full-Funnel Approach is Critical in Q4

The Amazon DSP retargeting strategy has evolved from a “nice-to-have” to a mission-critical component for maximizing revenue and improving RoAS during the peak sales season.

• Unmatched First-Party Data: With data from over 300 million active customers, Amazon DSP offers targeting precision that is impossible to replicate elsewhere. This allows you to effectively reach high-intent shoppers and dramatically increase the likelihood of conversion.
• Measurable RoAS Gains: Brands that integrate DSP with their Sponsored Products campaigns report significantly higher RoAS compared to running standard display ads alone. Some sellers have seen incremental sales lifts of 40–60% when DSP is properly layered into their Amazon Advertising Strategy.
• Maintaining Brand Presence: Q4 is saturated with ad spend. DSP’s ability to serve ads on and off Amazon ensures your brand stays visible across every digital touchpoint, from websites to streaming services like Fire TV.

The Challenge of Strategic DSP Management

While powerful, Amazon DSP is not a “set-it-and-forget-it” platform. Maximizing its potential requires deep expertise due to its complexity.

Sellers often face challenges with:

• Audience Segmentation: Knowing which audience segments to prioritize and how to layer them effectively requires significant platform knowledge.
• Attribution Analysis: Interpreting performance can be tricky. DSP uses a “last touch” attribution model that prioritizes clicks over views, and a sale can be attributed to either the direct product ad or another product within your brand’s “halo.” Understanding this is key to accurate analysis.
• Campaign Optimization: DSP campaigns require constant tuning—including bid adjustments, frequency capping, audience exclusions, and creative refreshes—to prevent wasted ad spend and maintain a healthy RoAS.
• Creative Compliance: All ad creatives must meet Amazon’s strict guidelines to be approved for the network.

Navigating these complexities often requires a dedicated team or a strategic partner.