For as long as Sponsored Products has existed, targeting meant one of two things: a keyword, or a competing/complementary ASIN. Amazon has now opened a third lane — audience targeting inside Sponsored Products campaigns, letting you reach defined shopper segments based on their behaviour and interests rather than what they typed into the search bar. This used to be exclusive to Sponsored Display and DSP. It is now available directly inside the Sponsored Products console for many accounts.
For private label sellers, this closes a real gap. Keyword and product targeting only catch shoppers at the exact moment they search or browse a competing listing. Audience targeting lets you reach people Amazon already knows are in-market for your category, or who have already engaged with your brand, before and after that search moment. Here is how it actually works, which segments are worth your budget, and how to structure campaigns around it without cannibalising what is already working.
This sits alongside keyword and product targeting, not instead of it. Audience targeting in Sponsored Products is a separate targeting type within the same campaign structure — it does not replace your existing exact-match or ASIN campaigns, and Amazon will not let you mix audience targeting with keyword or product targeting in the same ad group.
What Sponsored Products Audience Targeting Actually Is
When you create a Sponsored Products campaign, you now choose a targeting type at ad group level: Keyword targeting, Product targeting, or Audience targeting. Selecting audience targeting replaces search terms and ASINs with a list of Amazon-defined shopper segments — groups of people Amazon has grouped together based on real shopping and browsing signals across its own platform.
Unlike keyword targeting, you are not bidding on an intent signal captured in the moment. You are bidding to show your ad to a defined pool of shoppers whenever they are served ads on Amazon, regardless of what they are currently searching for. The ad still appears in familiar Sponsored Products placements — search results and product pages — but delivery is governed by who the shopper is, not what they typed.
The Audience Segments Available
Segment availability varies by category and marketplace, but the core types you will see are:
In-Market
Shoppers Amazon has identified as actively researching and likely to purchase within a specific product category in the near term, based on recent browsing and search behaviour.
Lifestyle
Broader, longer-term interest segments — shoppers who consistently engage with a category over months, not just the current purchase cycle. Larger reach, lower immediate intent.
Remarketing: Viewed, Not Purchased
Shoppers who viewed your product detail page (or a similar one) in the last 30–90 days but did not buy. The highest-converting segment for most private label sellers.
Remarketing: Purchased
Past purchasers of your product or complementary products — used for repeat-purchase categories, replenishables, and cross-sell into your wider catalogue.
Not every segment is available for every ASIN or category — Amazon surfaces the segments it has sufficient signal for in your specific niche, so the exact list you see when building a campaign will differ from another seller's.
How This Is Different From Sponsored Display Audiences
If you already run Sponsored Display audience campaigns, the segment names will feel familiar — that is because they draw from the same underlying Amazon audience data. The difference is where and how the ad shows up:
In practice, Sponsored Products audience targeting is the easier on-ramp for sellers who already understand Sponsored Products reporting and do not want to learn a second console's attribution logic just to test audience-based delivery.
Why This Matters for Your Account
Three practical reasons to test this rather than treat it as a novelty:
- It recovers abandoned consideration. A shopper who viewed your listing and left is one of the highest-intent audiences you can buy — higher than a broad, top-of-funnel keyword — and until now you could only reach them through Sponsored Display or DSP.
- It extends reach without bidding up your own keywords. Audience campaigns run on a separate auction from your keyword campaigns, so testing them does not inflate CPCs on your core exact-match terms.
- It gives you a lever during low-search-volume periods. In-market and lifestyle segments are not dependent on search volume the way keyword campaigns are, which makes them useful for sustaining visibility in slower months without chasing increasingly expensive head terms.
Setting Up Your First Audience Campaign
Create a Dedicated Campaign
Build a new Sponsored Products campaign specifically for audience targeting — do not try to add it to an existing keyword or product-targeting ad group, since Amazon keeps these targeting types separate at ad group level.
Start With Remarketing: Viewed, Not Purchased
This segment has the clearest purchase intent of the group and gives you a fast read on whether audience targeting converts for your product before you commit budget to broader, colder segments.
Set a Conservative Starting Bid
Audience auctions behave differently from keyword auctions — there is no search term to benchmark against. Start near your average Sponsored Products CPC for the category and adjust based on the first one to two weeks of data.
Separate Budget From Your Core Campaigns
Give the audience campaign its own daily budget rather than folding it into an existing one. This keeps your reporting clean and stops a high-spending audience test from starving your proven keyword campaigns.
Let It Run 2–3 Weeks Before Judging It
Audience segments refresh and stabilise over time as Amazon gathers more signal on who qualifies. Early days of a new audience campaign are typically noisier than an equivalent keyword campaign.
Measuring Performance the Right Way
Judge audience campaigns on different terms than keyword campaigns. A higher ACOS on a remarketing or in-market audience campaign than your branded keyword campaigns is normal and expected — you are reaching shoppers earlier in, or re-entering, their decision process, not capturing a shopper who already searched your exact product. The more useful comparisons are:
- New-to-brand sales rate, available in Brand Registry-enabled reporting, to see if the campaign is bringing in customers you would not otherwise have reached
- Total account ACOS and TACOS before and after adding the campaign, rather than the audience campaign's ACOS in isolation
- Whether the "Viewed, Not Purchased" segment's conversion rate beats your account's overall Sponsored Products conversion rate — if it does not, the segment size or creative may need adjusting before you scale spend
Do not pull budget from working keyword campaigns to fund this test. Treat audience targeting as incremental testing budget first. Only reallocate meaningfully once you have two to three weeks of data showing it outperforms on new-to-brand sales or total account ACOS.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Launching with lifestyle segments first. These are the broadest, lowest-intent option and will usually post the weakest early numbers, which can make the whole targeting type look like it does not work when the issue is segment choice.
- Judging it on ACOS alone within the first week. Audience campaigns take longer to stabilise than keyword campaigns, and judging too early leads to pausing a campaign before it has had a fair test.
- Using the same creative and listing images as your keyword campaigns without reviewing them for a colder audience. A shopper being remarketed to has already seen your main image once — make sure your secondary images and A+ content give them a reason to come back, not just a repeat of what they already passed on.
- Ignoring segment overlap with your Sponsored Display remarketing. If you run both, check your account-level reporting for duplicated reach so you are not bidding against yourself for the same shopper across two campaign types.
Not sure if audience targeting is a fit for your catalogue?
We build and manage Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display campaigns for Amazon UK and global private label sellers — including testing new targeting types like this one without risking your core account performance. Get in touch today.
Get Free Amazon PPC Audit →Common Questions About Sponsored Products Audience Targeting
Can I use audience targeting and keyword targeting in the same campaign?
Not in the same ad group. Amazon requires you to choose one targeting type — keyword, product, or audience — per ad group. You can run separate ad groups of each type under the same campaign umbrella if you want unified budget and reporting, but the targeting logic itself stays separate.
Is audience targeting available on every account?
Rollout and segment availability vary by marketplace and category, and Amazon continues to expand access. If you do not see audience targeting as an option when creating a Sponsored Products campaign yet, check back periodically or review your account's campaign creation options directly in Seller Central.
Does audience targeting affect my organic ranking the way keyword-indexed Sponsored Products campaigns can?
No. Audience targeting does not run against search terms, so it does not contribute keyword-indexed sales data the way a keyword campaign conversion can. Its value is incremental sales and brand exposure to defined shopper segments, not a ranking lever for specific search terms.
Should I move my remarketing budget from Sponsored Display to Sponsored Products audience targeting?
Not automatically. Test both and compare on new-to-brand sales and overall ACOS impact. Sponsored Display still offers richer creative formats and off-Amazon placements that Sponsored Products cannot match, so for many accounts the right answer is running both with a clear view of segment overlap, not replacing one with the other.