Problem
Ad performance on Amazon is not uniform throughout the day. Shopper intent, competition, and inventory availability fluctuate hourly, directly impacting impressions, clicks, and conversions.
However, advertisers often face these challenges:
Limited visibility into hourly performance, especially for Amazon DSP campaigns.
Difficulty identifying high-waste hours where spend does not translate into meaningful outcomes.
Inability to confidently apply dayparting strategies without data-backed insights.
While Sponsored Ads advertisers may already access hourly data via Amazon Marketing Stream, DSP advertisers do not get hourly performance insights in the Amazon DSP console.
Solution
The Hourly Ads Performance Report in Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) provides a detailed, hour-by-hour view of ad performance across both Sponsored Ads and DSP campaigns.
This report enables advertisers—especially DSP users—to uncover when ads perform best (and worst) during the day and make informed decisions on budget allocation and dayparting.
What You Get in This Report?
1. Hourly Performance – Graph View
A line chart showing how a selected metric (e.g. Impressions, Clicks, Spend, Sales) changes across each hour of the day (00:00–23:00).
Key Insights You Can Derive:
Peak activity hours when shopper engagement is highest
Low-volume or inefficient hours with declining performance
Clear visibility into daily demand curves
2. Hourly Performance – Heatmap View
A day-wise and hour-wise heatmap that highlights performance intensity using color gradients.
What This Shows:
Hourly performance split by day of the week
Consistent high-performing time blocks (e.g. weekday mornings, weekend evenings)
Underperforming hours that may be candidates for reduced spend or pause
This view is especially useful for identifying patterns, not just one-off spikes.
Sponsored Ads vs DSP Usage
Sponsored Ads
Sponsored Ads users may already access hourly performance data via Amazon Marketing Stream in the Sponsored Ads dashboard.
For them, this AMC report is directional or supplementary rather than essential.
Amazon DSP
DSP advertisers currently have no native way to view hourly performance in the DSP console.
Amazon only exposes hourly insights through Amazon Marketing Cloud.
This makes the Hourly Ads Performance Report highly valuable and often critical for DSP optimization.
Actions to Take Based on the Report
1. Apply Dayparting for DSP Line Items
In the Amazon DSP console, advertisers can daypart line items by turning ads on or off during specific hours.
Use this report to:
Pause DSP ads during low-impression or low-efficiency hours
Increase exposure during high-performing time windows
Align budgets with actual shopper activity instead of spreading spend evenly
2. Reduce Wasted Spend
If certain late-night or early-morning hours consistently show:
High impressions but low conversions
Spend without sales impact
Those hours can be deprioritized or excluded to improve overall efficiency.