Sponsored Display and Retargeting Without Double-Paying

Running Sponsored Display views remarketing at the same time as Amazon DSP retargeting means bidding against yourself in two auctions and then reading two reports that each claim the sale. An Amazon Marketing Cloud overlap query on the accounts I have taken over generally shows 30 to 45 percent of Sponsored Display remarketing conversions were also served DSP inside the attribution window. So this engagement opens by measuring that overlap on your data, then giving each channel one job: one owns the audience layer, the other owns contextual and ASIN placement. Which way round depends on where your reach actually is, not on a preference of mine. Filtering competitor pages before bidding: Contextual targeting onto competitor detail pages is filtered first, on price band, star rating, review count, Prime badge and whether the page carries video. Appearing on an ASIN that reviews better than yours funds someone else's conversion, and the report still shows it as a win because a click happened. Those pages are excluded by name and the list is kept with a reason written next to each entry. Category targeting with refinements is used for discovery only, and everything it surfaces goes through the same filter before it earns its own line item. Lookbacks, audiences and cost type: Views remarketing lookbacks are set by purchase cycle rather than left at default: 7 and 14 days for an app subscription trial where the decision is made in one sitting, 30 to 60 for a durable, 90 only where the tail is visible in the data. Purchases remarketing belongs to refills and second products; on a single-purchase catalogue it is a rebate paid to people who already bought. Cost type is chosen per line item, not per account: vCPM where the objective is reach or page visits and the reporting will be read that way, CPC where a conversion is the point. Mixing both inside one campaign and averaging the outcome is how an account stops making sense to the person paying for it. Defence on your own detail pages: Own-ASIN defensive placement runs only in the months where a competitor is genuinely being served on your page, checked by hand. As a standing line it is a tax you pay to appear next to yourself. What I refuse: No Sponsored Display to an ASIN rated below 3.8 or holding fewer than about fifteen reviews. The click will convert, just not for you, and the page needs work before it deserves paid traffic. No brand halo reported as incremental revenue. No running this alongside a third-party bid tool that also writes to these campaigns, because then neither of us can say what caused what. No percentage of spend. How the retainer runs: Monthly. Each month you get the current overlap figure, the exclusion list with reasons, the lookback changes and a one-page note on what moved and what I decided not to touch. Not a dashboard screenshot with commentary underneath it. I hold a small number of accounts and I answer within the working day. Who this is not for: If DSP is not running and will not be running, the overlap question does not arise and this is a larger piece of work than you need. Tell me and I will scope a Sponsored Display build instead at a lower fee. If your team wants a channel that always grows, this will disappoint you: on about a third of the accounts I audit the correct first action is to cut Sponsored Display spend and give it to search.