DSP Is No More An Enterprise-Only Tool

Hey there,

For years, Amazon DSP felt like a club you needed a million-dollar budget to join. 

Big brands, big agencies, long buying cycles, and minimum spends have made most mid-market advertisers look elsewhere.

That version of DSP is gone.

Over the past 18 months… 

What emerged is a tool that mid-market brands can actually use without enterprise resources.

And in specific situations, DSP decisively outperforms Sponsored Ads for reach, targeting precision, and long-term brand building.

But DSP demands different thinking, longer runways, and honest assessment of whether you're actually ready for it.

Sponsored Ads live and die by keyword intent. Someone types "protein powder," your ad shows up, they click or they don't. It's powerful for capturing demand that already exists.

DSP breaks past that ceiling entirely.

You can reach browse-based shoppers who never typed a keyword. TV viewers across specific demographics or households who aren't actively on Amazon. Audiences built on signals like price sensitivity, purchase frequency, or lifestyle indicators that have nothing to do with search behavior.

For brands in saturated categories where keyword costs have gotten absurd, this unlocks an entirely new pool of potential customers. You're finding them before competitors sweep them up with search bids, and you're doing it without the price spikes that hit during Prime Day or Q4.

Creating that demand requires different creative, different messaging, and different patience than performance-focused PPC campaigns.

Sponsored Ads retargeting exists but it's limited. You can target people who viewed your products or similar products. That's useful but incomplete.

DSP retargeting goes deeper:

For brands seeing substantial traffic but weak conversion rates, DSP retargeting is one of the fastest levers to improve blended ROAS. 

You're essentially converting traffic you already paid for.

Sponsored Ads costs fluctuate wildly during peak periods. Prime Day hits and your CPCs double overnight. Q4 arrives and every competitor floods the zone with budget. Category sales spikes turn profitable keywords into money pits.

DSP operates on an impression-based pricing model, not per click, and targets audiences rather than keywords, resulting in steadier costs, smoother delivery, and fewer budget surprises.

We've seen this play out repeatedly with clients. Their Sponsored Products costs spike 40% during Prime Day while DSP costs move 10-15%. That stability lets you maintain presence without blowing up your budget or going dark when costs get irrational.

The strategic advantage is predictability in planning and the ability to maintain consistent reach when competitors are getting priced out of auctions.

Sponsored Ads live on Amazon. Your visibility ends at the search results page, product detail pages, and shopping-related placements.

DSP brings your brand into premium placements that redefine what's possible:

Amazon homepage takeovers that reach millions of shoppers before they even search. IMDb placements alongside entertainment content. Twitch integrations with gaming and creator audiences. Fire TV inventory reaching viewers in their living rooms. And now, Netflix campaigns through the DSP integration we covered last month.

Plus, the entire open exchange of third-party sites and apps, where your potential customers spend time outside of Amazon.

That top-of-funnel reach helps brands establish a real presence even if you're not a household name. You're building awareness in environments where attention quality is high, and competition is lower than search-based placements.

You're now putting your brand in front of people who didn't know they needed your product yet. That's expensive in the short term. But it compounds in the long term.

Sponsored Ads capture moments of intent. You show up when someone searches, they convert or they don't, and the interaction ends.

DSP builds durable audience pools that grow over time.

With proper setup, you create segments based on actual shopping behavior, engagement patterns, and purchase signals. Those audiences get refined as you learn which segments respond to which messages and which placements drive real results.

Mid-market brands see outsized gains here because DSP lets you act like enterprise advertisers without enterprise budgets or massive teams. You're building data assets that compound over time instead of just buying traffic that disappears when you stop spending.

Your advertising gets more efficient the longer you run it. That's the opposite of what happens with pure PPC approaches, where costs trend up as competition increases.

PPC shows what converted.

DSP reveals who converted and how they moved through the funnel (though spend-to-sale impact isn’t exact).

Add AMC, and the full customer journey comes into focus

The questions you can actually answer now:

Is this customer truly new to the brand or did they engage with us three times before converting? How many touchpoints does it take for different audience segments to make purchase decisions? Which creative messages resonate at different funnel stages? Where are we overspending on frequency and where should we scale reach?

AMC gives you privacy-safe visibility into what's working and what's burning budget. You can put money into channels and audiences that actually move metrics instead of guessing based on last-click attribution.

This level of insight helps brands avoid wasted spend and make informed decisions about where to invest next. It transforms DSP from "we're running awareness campaigns" into "we know exactly which awareness campaigns drive downstream conversion and at what cost."

DSP has become far more accessible. When it's used in the right situations, it gives brands reach, targeting sophistication, and audience insight that Sponsored Ads simply can't offer.

But it's not built for every brand or every moment.

DSP makes sense when:

DSP becomes noise when:

You don't get immediate attribution or daily optimization signals. You're building awareness and audiences that pay off over weeks and months, not hours and days.

This is where having a seasoned partner matters more than the tool itself.

A good agency evaluates whether DSP actually fits your stage, goals, and category before you spend anything. They help you size budgets realistically, choose audience strategies that align with your customer journey, monitor pacing and frequency to avoid waste, and integrate AMC so you're learning from campaigns instead of just running them.

We've turned down DSP opportunities when clients weren't ready. Sometimes the honest answer is "fix your Sponsored Products profitability first, then we'll talk about DSP." Sometimes it's "your category doesn't support the longer attribution windows DSP requires."

For the right brand at the right stage, DSP becomes a force multiplier alongside PPC. It unlocks reach you couldn't access before, builds audiences that compound over time, and gives you visibility into the full customer journey.

For the wrong brand at the wrong stage, it's an expensive distraction that burns budget without clear returns.

Our current DSP focus with clients centers on a handful proven approaches:

What we're avoiding: 

DSP works when it's part of a coherent strategy with clear goals and realistic expectations about timelines.

It falls apart when it's treated as a magic solution to PPC challenges that actually require better fundamentals. 

Jess
CEO, AO2

P.S. Tell me where you're at with inventory, margins, and current PPC performance. It helps me understand what guidance would be most useful for the next issue.

P.P.S. Missed the unBoxed 2025 recap? Read last week's issue on how AI agents and unified platforms are changing campaign management for every brand size.