Independent Amazon DSP Consulting

Stop optimizing for the wrong signal.

I spent eleven years inside Amazon Ads, now independent. I work with a small number of brands to cut DSP waste, reach truly-new customers, and measure what is actually working with AMC. These strategies have been influenced by and pressure-tested in my work with some of the most sophisticated advertisers in the Amazon ecosystem and beyond.

11 years inside Amazon Ads AMC certified No agency, no kickbacks
Selective by design

A deliberately small roster of category-leading brands. A handful of clients at a time, so every account gets senior attention from start to finish.

Consumer electronics Health & wellness CPG Personal care

An independent practitioner, start to finish.

I spent eleven years inside Amazon Ads working on DSP and AMC before going independent at the start of the year. That means the person auditing your account, executing the AMC queries, and sitting on your calls is the same person, every time.

I take on a small number of brands so each one gets real attention and deep analysis rather than a junior team and a dashboard.

My focus is straightforward: find the waste, reach customers you are not already reaching, and use AMC to prove which part of the program is actually doing the work. No execution agency in the middle, no media kickbacks, no incentive to spend more for its own sake.

Between engagements I am constantly developing bespoke analysis tools for inventory quality scoring, frequency analysis, and anything else that fills the gap in Amazon's default measurement and campaign recommendation suite.

FounderJustin Dellinger
Experience11 years, Amazon Ads
SpecialtyDSP & AMC
CertificationAmazon Marketing Cloud
Engagement modelSmall, direct roster
Based in Seattle, WA
Working with a small number of brands at a time, remote-first and nationwide, as a genuine resource rather than a vendor relationship.

The True Demand Stack

My framework built around a simple idea: before adding more spend, it is worth understanding where the current spend is going and who it is actually reaching.

01
Inventory quality and waste reduction
A lot of DSP programs are quietly serving ads on inventory that would not pass a manual review. I run a domain-level audit of where impressions are going, looking for bad actors like mobile apps/content farms focused on capturing delivery over performance, attribution capture over real demand. From there, blocklists get built, supply deals get cleaned up, and the program starts from a better foundation.
Domain-level auditingBlocklist developmentComscore & PMP deals
02
Frequency management
Overexposure is one of the more common and underdiagnosed problems in DSP. An average frequency or daily frequency cap that looks fine can hide a large share of users seen 25+ times, sometimes wasting up to 30-40% of impressions. I use AMC to find the saturation point for each campaign, then set weekly caps that hold exposure where it actually drives behavior.
Frequency bucketingOptimal frequency analysisWeekly cap controls
03
AMC audience building and measurement
I build audiences and measurement in AMC, from new-to-brand and path-to-purchase analysis to frequency and overlap reads, so decisions are based on real downstream behavior rather than the attribution window. Newly free "paid" data sets like FSI and Amazon Retail Purchases give me the power to inform campaign measurement and build audiences based on retail data and 5-year lookbacks that drives true business outcomes and CMO-level insights for the business at large.
NTB & path-to-purchaseAudience buildingRetail purchase signals
A note on ROAS
ROAS is a useful number, but it is an easy one to flatter. A program can post a strong ROAS while paying to reach people who were going to buy anyway. I would rather spend the budget finding the customers who would not have. Don't high-five people at checkout, drive them to the store.

Curious where your DSP budget is actually going?

A short conversation is usually enough to spot whether there is meaningful waste worth recovering.

Start a conversation

How I can help.

Amazon DSP strategy and management

Full program design and hands-on management, from account structure and inventory strategy to frequency controls and creative rotation. Built for real growth rather than attribution theater.

AMC analytics and measurement

Tailored AMC analysis: frequency bucketing, path-to-purchase, and new-to-brand reporting, plus audience building across AMC and its newly free paid data sets. The measurement layer that tells you which part of the program is genuinely working.

DSP account audits

A detailed, placement-level review of an existing program: inventory quality, frequency, audience structure, and AMC opportunities, delivered as a prioritized action list you can act on right away.

Advisory and oversight

An independent second set of expert eyes for in-house teams and agencies. I review structure, inventory, frequency, and measurement and hand back written recommendations, without replacing the team already doing the work.

What an engagement looks like.

Most engagements run on the same simple arc: find the waste, build around real demand, then prove it. Detailed case studies, with real performance data, are on the way as current programs mature.

Most start here
The audit
Low commitment
Find the waste before adding spend.
A placement-level review of where the budget is going, what inventory it is buying, and where frequency is leaking. You walk away with a prioritized list of fixes whether or not we keep working together afterward. It is the lowest-risk way to see what is really happening in an account.
Inventory qualityFrequency diagnosisPrioritized fixes
Hands-on
The build
Ongoing program
Run the program on the True Demand Stack.
For ongoing engagements, my framework becomes the operating system for the account: cleaner inventory, frequency held where it still drives intended outcomes, and AMC audiences built to reach genuinely new customers rather than re-serving the already-converted. The program gets simpler and the spend works harder.
Inventory dealsFrequency controlsAudience building
Always on
The proof
Every engagement
Measure what is actually working in AMC.
From day one, every engagement is wired for measurement: new-to-brand, path-to-purchase, frequency reads, and a read on which sales your advertising actually drove rather than simply got credit for. The point is to see which part of the spend is doing the work, instead of trusting whatever the attribution window happens to report.
NTB & path-to-purchaseFrequency readsReal demand

Field notes.

Working notes from inside live DSP and AMC programs. Plain reads on what is working and where the waste tends to hide.

Amazon Marketing Cloud 2026
Five places to start with AMC's paid data sets

Amazon has made all of AMC's paid data sets free through the end of the year. I have spent the last week pulling reports off them for clients, and it has been a blast. Here is where I would point a brand first.

01
Reach penetration in your target audience ASI report
Use it on in-market segments to see how much room there is to grow, and on remarketing segments to tell when an audience is tapped out and you are only paying to re-serve over-exposed users.
02
High-value customer segments FSI report
Size your high-value audiences, then build one focused on the top fifth percentile for loyalty, along with lookalikes built off that group.
03
New-to-brand, ad-attributed vs non-ad-attributed FSI report
Pull it monthly to track your share of ad-attributed NTB purchases against organic. A healthy trend shows DSP NTB% climbing while total paid plus organic NTB customers keep growing over time.
04
Subscribe & Save repeat purchases FSI report
Average spend by subscriber status. Customers who are not on Subscribe & Save spend about 27% less than subscribers, which makes your loyal subscriber base a clear cross-sell audience to build in AMC.
05
Audience ready to upgrade Amazon Retail Purchases report
For brands with long repurchase cycles, consumer electronics especially, the five-year lookback maps the customer lifecycle and lets you build an upgrade-ready audience for new versions of the product. That is CMO-level insight into the customer journey, well beyond a single campaign lever.

This is scratching the surface. I expect to find more use cases for these reports as the year goes on.

Read more on LinkedIn →

Built for practitioners.

A tool I built for my own work, shared openly. No login, no email wall.

Free tool

DSP Inventory Quality Auditor

Score the placements your program is buying against a practitioner's quality rubric. Built to surface the low-quality supply that inflates reach without driving real behavior.

Open the auditor →
In my own words

I'll be honest: I was never a top salesperson at Amazon. I resisted pitching things I didn't think would work, which is not how you climb a sales leaderboard. Where I stood out was understanding the business and taking client feedback seriously when I built the strategy. I had some of the sharpest minds in digital marketing checking my homework, so I learned to iterate toward a shared goal instead of defending my own idea. That is the skill I have carried into this practice and continue to refine.

Justin Dellinger  ·  Founder

Let's talk.

If your DSP program feels like a black box, or you just want a second opinion on where the budget is going, send a note. I read every message myself.

Based in Seattle, WA. Working nationwide.