Unlocking Amazon’s New Audience Targeting for KDP Authors

In the ever-competitive landscape of self-publishing, visibility is everything. Amazon Ads has long offered KDP authors tools like Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display, relying mostly on keywords and product targeting. But increasingly, Amazon is layering in more sophisticated audience targeting. It gives authors a chance to reach readers based on interest, behaviour, and shopping signals, rather than just keywords or related products. Keywords such as Amazon ads for KDP audience targeting and Amazon audience targeting for authors are becoming essential for visibility in this new landscape.

Here’s what the new audience targeting features bring, and how you, as a KDP author, can use them to amplify reach, optimise ad spend, and connect with new readers.

What Is “Audience Targeting” on Amazon Ads?

Audience targeting, as defined, refers to the different shoppers with that certain aspect who are actually shown ads. The aspect may be common interests, behaviours, or characteristics. Keyword targeting has little to do with matching the keywords of your book. It accesses shopping history and profiles to find people likely to be interested in your genre or topic.

Amazon defines its audience tools as allowing advertisers to:

• Discover and reach relevant audiences through proprietary signals and insights.
• Use pre-built audience segments (e.g. “in-market,” “lifestyle,” “interests”) to align ad delivery with people likelier to engage.
• Onboard your own audiences (for instance, via email lists or existing reader bases) into DSP or via the Amazon Marketing Cloud.

So that they can actually be available for authors on KDP in Amazon’s ad console. They are once more available as additional targeting options under Sponsored Display. Such features could also be extended into Sponsored Brands or Sponsored Products. Now you will be able to create campaigns not just through keywords or competitor titles but on an audience level instead. This makes Amazon audience targeting for authors a powerful tool alongside traditional keyword targeting.

One earlier example: In April 2021, Amazon introduced “Amazon Audiences” to Sponsored Display, a targeting option beyond the usual view remarketing. It allows advertisers to reach new potential customers (not just those who had viewed your product) using interest or demographic segments. 

Why This Matters for KDP Authors

1. Reach new readers you couldn’t reach with keywords alone
   Keywords are great, but they limit you to shoppers who type something related. Audience targeting expands your reach to people who display behavioural signals (e.g. previous browsing patterns, interests) but may never use your exact keywords.
2. Better scale and experimentation
   Once your keyword/product campaigns are stable, audience-based campaigns let you test broader pools of people. It potentially discovers untapped reader segments.
3. Complement and support keyword campaigns
   Use audience campaigns to feed into your more targeted efforts. If an audience segment drives clicks or conversions, you can probe deeper with keyword or product campaigns derived from that group’s behaviours.
4. Prepare for mature ad ecosystems
   As Amazon continues investing in attribution, machine learning, and audience modelling arXiv, being early with audience targeting sets you ahead of the competition. Using Amazon ads for KDP audience targeting at this stage gives you an edge before the space becomes crowded.

How to Use Audience Targeting in Your KDP Ad Strategy

Here’s a step-by-step plan you can follow (or adapt) to integrate audience targeting into your ad mix.

1. Get your Base Campaigns Optimised First

Before diving into audience campaigns:

• Ensure your Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands (if available) campaigns have solid keyword targeting, bids, and negative keywords.
• Use automatic targeting to find new relevant terms, and migrate the good ones into manual campaigns. 
• You have to optimise your book detail page. It should have a strong title, description, cover image, reviews, and A+ content if available. If your landing page doesn’t convert visitors, no amount of targeting will fix it.

2. Launch a Sponsored Display Audience Campaign

Use the “Audiences” targeting option in Sponsored Display (if available in your marketplace). Choose relevant pre-built segments, for example:

• Interest/lifestyle audiences that align with your book’s themes (e.g. readers interested in self-help, mysteries, young adult, wellness).
• In-market audiences are shoppers who have recently shown intent in categories or genres near yours.
• Exclude audiences that are obviously irrelevant.
• Start with modest bids and budgets to test performance (these audience campaigns often have higher ACOS initially). 

3. Monitor, Analyse, and Harvest Insights

Track performance carefully:

• Keep an eye on metrics like impressions, click-through rate (CTR), and ACOS (advertising cost of sales).
• Use your search term, conversion, and audience reports to see which segments performed well.
• If an audience segment does well, consider building a narrower campaign targeting its top-performing keywords, or using it as a seed for lookalike or “similar audiences” experiments.

4. Iterate and Refine

• Pause or lower bids on audience segments that underperform.
• Refine targeting split audiences by demographic or interest subsets, test combinations.
• Use negative audiences if Amazon allows (i.e. exclude audiences you don’t want).
• As you gather data, shift more budget toward high-performing audience segments or fold them into your other campaign layers.

5. Combine with Other Targeting Types Strategically

You don’t need to replace keyword or product targeting; instead, layer your strategy:

• Use audience campaigns for exploration, reaching broad groups.
• Use keyword and product campaigns for precision and conversion, where you target people already showing search intent or interested in similar ASINs.
• Use retargeting/view remarketing to re-engage people who viewed your book but didn’t purchase.

Marketing experts at A2Z Publishing can manage this process for you, ensuring your  strategy stays data-driven, cost-effective, and aligned with your author goals.

Challenges & Best Practices (for Authors)

• Higher initial ACOS: Audience campaigns tend to have lower conversion rates initially. So expect a higher cost per sale as you test and optimise. 
• Patience is required: These campaigns may take time to “learn.” Don’t rush to kill them prematurely.
• Don’t mix too broadly: Avoid combining completely unrelated audiences in one ad group, and keep coherence in targeting.
• Budget allocation balance: Don’t starve your core keyword/product campaigns. The audience campaigns should augment, not cannibalise, your existing performance.
• Data privacy, limits, and rollout: Audience features may not be available yet in all geographies or for all ad types. Also, Amazon’s data policies may limit how granular you can build or onboard audiences.
• Attribution complexity: As Amazon evolves toward multi-touch attribution, credit for a sale may be split across several ad touchpoints. It complicates straightforward “this campaign made that sale” analysis. 
• Test small, scale fast: Begin with small budgets and a few audience segments, then scale the winners.

Example Scenario: A Mystery Author’s Audience Campaign

Suppose you’ve published a mystery/thriller novel. Your existing keyword campaigns target terms like “detective novel,” “whodunit thriller,” and “mystery fiction”. Now you launch an audience campaign:

• In Sponsored Display → Target “Amazon Audiences”
• Choose segments like “Readers of mystery & thriller genres,” “Crime & detective fiction interest,” “Fans of suspense TV shows/movies”
• Begin with a small budget and CPC bid
• After 2 weeks, you see Segment A and Segment B (e.g. “mystery readers” and “suspense movie fans”) have the highest CTR and some conversions
• Use the search term/conversion data to derive new keyword ideas from those audiences
• Increase the budget on those segments, reduce spending on poorly performing ones
• If possible, replicate on similar titles or upcoming releases

Over time, you may find that some audiences that never searched “mystery novel” still convert. It gives you a hidden pool of readers you would never reach via keywords alone. This shows how Amazon audience targeting for authors can unlock entirely new reader groups.

Outlook: Where This Is Heading

Amazon is clearly doubling down on blending search and audience signals, competing more directly with platforms like Facebook and Google in ad sophistication. As features like multi-touch attribution roll out on arXiv, authors who are early adopters of audience targeting will have an edge.

For KDP authors, this means:

• Having the flexibility to reach beyond the keyword silo
• Being able to scale experimentation with new reader segments
• Tighter integration of ad spend + creative + audience data over time

As audience capabilities expand, staying agile and data-driven will be your best advantage.