This article describes the AMC Tentpole Phase Overlap query, designed to help you analyze how shopper behavior evolves across the different stages of major sales events like Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday.
Tentpole events are critical windows for brand growth, but looking at "day-of" sales only tells part of the story. To understand the true impact of your event strategy, you need to see how your Lead-Up (pre-event) and Lead-Out (post-event) phases contributed to the final result.
The Tentpole Phase Overlap query in Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) categorizes shoppers into unique paths based on when they were exposed to your ads. This allows you to identify which combination of phases, such as being reached during both the Lead-Up and the Event, drove the highest conversion and New-to-Brand (NTB) growth.
How the Query Works
Amazon defines these events in three distinct windows:
Phase 1 (Lead-Up): The period before the event; used to build anticipation.
Phase 2 (Event): The peak shopping days (e.g., Prime Day itself).
Phase 3 (Lead-Out): The period following the event.
The query identifies shoppers who interacted with your ads in one, two, or all three phases, allowing you to see which paths are most effective at moving customers through the funnel.
Understanding Path Logic
Each "path" represents when a shopper saw your ads, regardless of if or when the final purchase happened. If a phase is missing from the path, it means there were no recorded impressions for that user during that specific window.
Example Path: [Lead-Up; Lead-Out]
Interpretation: The customer saw your ads during the building phase (Lead-Up) and again after the Event (Lead-Out). They had no impressions during the actual Event days.
A path like [Lead-Up; Lead-Out] does not mean the customer didn't shop during the Event; it just means they weren't shown your ad during the Event. This could happen, for example, if your bids were too low or your budget ran out during the peak of the sale.
Interpreting the Results
The output shows the different "Tentpole Paths" (combinations of phases). Common insights include:
Maximizing Full-Funnel Engagement: Frequently, the highest purchase rates come from shoppers exposed during both the Lead-Up and the Event. This confirms that building brand awareness before the sale starts improves event-day performance.
NTB Acquisition: You may find that the Lead-Up phase is your primary driver of New-to-Brand customers, while the Event phase captures the final conversion.
Remarketing Value: If the Event + Lead-Out overlap shows high efficiency, it suggests that shoppers who didn't buy immediately were successfully "nudged" to purchase shortly after the event ended.
Requirements
To run this query, ensure:
Date Range: Kapoq automatically populates common tentpole event days, but you have the ability to customize your configuration to analyze other event days too!
Campaign Activity: You must have had active Amazon DSP or Sponsored Ads campaigns running across these specific periods.
FAQ: Is AMC data consistent with other data sources (e.g., Amazon Ads API)?
Typically, the results from the two data sources should be fairly close. However, here are some known reasons for potential differences:
Timing differences: If the data is pulled from each source at different times.
Time zone consistency: The default time zone for AMC is UTC, whereas Kapoq’s advertising module uses the marketplace's local time zone.
Logic within each query: For example, many AMC queries filter out data associated with null user IDs. This could result in a small amount of data being excluded.