Amazon Marketing Stream: Key Hourly Metrics
Does the time of day your ad is shown have an impact on performance?
YES.
published march 4, 2024
We pulled Amazon Marketing Stream data (10 billion impressions) to review Amazon hourly metrics.
While there are several ways to measure ad performance, we analyzed conversion rate – which is the likelihood of someone purchasing your product after clicking on an ad.
When you take a step back and look at the metrics as a whole, there are some general trends to keep in mind. All times are shown in Pacific Standard.
OVERVIEW OF KEY METRICS
- Conversion Rates (CVR): Conversion rate measures the transition of passive browsing to purchasing on platform.
- Cost Per Click (CPC): The average amount that you’ve paid for an ad click. It’s calculated by dividing the total spend by the total number of clicks.
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): The total product sales divided by the total advertising spend
- Impressions: An impression occurs whenever an ad is displayed. The impressions metric is the total number of times your ad has been served to a user.
Download the full document below or read on for additional analysis:
Stream: intraday metrics – aggregate data
Understanding when customers are most likely to buy is key. By driving more impressions during periods of peak intent and/or cost efficiency, advertisers can generate more sales at higher levels of efficiency. Consistent patterns in traffic, conversion rates, and CPC allow us to time ad investments via continuous bid management, placement optimization, and dayparting – providing a competitive edge in a market where many don’t optimize based on intraday metrics.
Most advantageous hours by metric:
- Orders: 5am – 7pm (PST)
- Impressions: 6am – 9pm (PST)
- CVR: 3am – 3pm (PST)
- CPC: After 11am (PST)
- ROAS: 5am – 6pm (PST)
conversion rates by hour and day
For several years now, we’ve tracked Day of Week performance. With the introduction of Amazon Marketing Stream in June 2022, we were given another layer of granularity – allowing us to now identify trends both by the day and by the hour.
Daily CVR Trends:
- Conversion rate generally begins to pick up at 3am (PST)
- Conversion rate typically peaks 5am-8am (PST)
- Conversion rate tends to remain above average until 3-4pm (PST) when it begins to dip
- Conversion rate hits a trough around 9pm-1am (PST)
conversion rate over average by category
These aggregate trends are helpful in guiding advertising strategy, but there are also a lot of nuances depending on your category.
Our intuition tells us those shopping for automotive parts have different shopping habits from those shopping for skincare products.
The intraday metrics back that assertion up.
Each Amazon category exhibits unique intraday trends in CVR, CPC, and ROAS, influenced by consumer lifestyles and shopping habits. By driving more impressions during periods of peak intent and/or cost efficiency, advertisers can generate more sales at higher levels of efficiency.
We broke out the metrics for 14 major Amazon categories. Here are our insights:
home & kitchen
health & household
beauty & personal care
sports & outdoors
clothing, shoes & jewelry
toys & games
grocery & gourmet food
baby
lawn, garden & outdoors
industrial & scientific
pet supplies
tools & home improvement
cell phones & accessories
automotive
This breakdown offers a glimpse into the complex and varied nature of consumer behavior across different Amazon categories. It highlights the importance of understanding Amazon hourly metrics and trends, tailoring marketing strategies accordingly for each category.
streamline 2.0
Streamline is our proprietary multi-model machine learning system leveraging AI to produce highly accurate predictions of key advertising metrics. It is the industry’s most advanced application of hourly Amazon Marketing Stream data.
Streamline optimizes impression timing, volume and exposure via:
- Intraday bid adjustments. Maximizes exposure during peak ROAS hours of day.
- Selective keyword level dayparting. Pauses lower performing targets during lowest ROI hours.
- Intraday placement optimization. Takes advantage of placement-level opportunities throughout the day.
- Day of week adjustments. Bid optimization based on weekday performance disparities.
Because the market majority does not access – much less action – weekday or intraday performance metrics, Streamline gives advertisers a considerable competitive advantage at auction. The net result? Increased sales at improved ROAS.