Getting access
You apply for Ads API access, register an application and connect advertiser accounts through Login with Amazon. Each advertiser account in each marketplace is a profile; almost every call names the profile it acts on. Agencies typically manage many profiles from one application.
Managing campaigns
The API covers campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, product targets, negative targets and budgets. Typical automation includes:
- Bid rules driven by your own margin and stock data, not only by ACOS.
- Pausing ads for products that are out of stock or about to run out.
- Bulk creation of campaigns for new launches from a template.
- Budget pacing across many accounts for agencies.
Write changes in batches and keep an audit log of what changed and why. Advertisers will ask.
Reporting
Reports are asynchronous: you create a report request for a date range and set of metrics, poll until it is complete, then download a compressed file. Metrics for recent days can still change as attribution settles, so re-pull the last several days rather than only yesterday.
Most teams land reports in a data warehouse and join them to SP-API sales, fees and inventory, which is where true profitability per product becomes visible.
Marketing Stream and Amazon Marketing Cloud
Amazon Marketing Stream pushes hourly traffic and conversion data, plus campaign change messages, to an AWS destination you own. It suits dayparting and fast budget decisions.
Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) is a clean-room environment where you run SQL over event-level, privacy-protected advertising data. It answers questions such as path to purchase and overlap between campaigns, but results are aggregated and access has its own requirements.
Limits and good practice
The Ads API is rate limited and returns 429 when you call too fast. Use the same queue-and-back-off pattern as for SP-API, cache entities you read often, and prefer bulk operations over one call per keyword.