Amazon Ads announced on May 18, 2026, that benchmarks reporting is now generally available across all supported marketplaces. The list covers 18 markets: United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Japan, India, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Turkey, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Egypt.

The product had been in beta, and limited to the US market. According to Amazon's Advanced Tools Center release notes, the reports provide "standardized performance comparisons against category peer brands, allowing advertisers to contextualize performance, evaluate optimization opportunities, and confidently invest with Amazon Ads."

Eight metrics are available through the benchmarks reports. Four are new-to-brand metrics: percent of purchases new to brand, purchase rate for new-to-brand customers, and cost per purchase for new-to-brand customers. The remaining four are campaign efficiency metrics: click-through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC), completion rate for video creatives, cost per completed view, and cost per impressions (CPM).

The data surfaces through two report types in the Reporting API. The crossProgramBenchmarks report covers Sponsored Ads, while dspBenchmarks covers Amazon DSP. Both integrate into the existing API framework - advertisers and their technology partners generate reports by passing benchmark-specific parameters into the same endpoints they already use for campaign reporting.

The expansion from a single market to 18 markets in one release is notable. Benchmark data requires a minimum critical mass of advertisers in each category to generate peer comparisons that are statistically meaningful. Rolling the feature out globally suggests Amazon has reached sufficient advertiser density across these markets to support reliable category-level comparisons. For advertisers operating in multiple markets - a common profile among larger brands and agencies - the global availability means consistent methodology across their entire account structure for the first time.

The November 2025 beta introduced the two report types for DSP and Sponsored Ads, framing them as self-service competitive insights built on sophisticated peer brand matching. The May 2026 global launch completes that rollout.

MMM API exits beta with new capabilities

On May 1, 2026, the Marketing Mix Modeling API moved from beta to general availability. According to Amazon's release notes, the API enables programmatic access to Amazon's MMM data feed across 14 countries: US, CA, IT, ES, FR, DE, UK, MX, BR, JP, AU, UAE, IN, and KSA.

The beta period produced several additions that are now part of the GA release. Amazon added six operations beyond the original three endpoints available at beta launch:

  • POST /mmm/v1/brandGroupOverrides - create overrides for brand groups
  • POST /mmm/v1/brandGroupOverrides/delete - delete overrides for brand groups
  • POST /mmm/v1/brandGroupOverrides/list - list overrides for brand groups
  • GET /mmm/v1/brandGroups/{brandGroupId}/products - retrieve the list of products in a brand group
  • GET /mmm/v1/brandGroups/{brandGroupId}/campaigns - retrieve the list of campaigns associated with products in a brand group
  • POST /mmm/v1/reports/list - list reports and their generation status

The brand group override operations are particularly significant for MMM practitioners. Marketing Mix Modeling builds econometric models that estimate channel-level contribution to business outcomes. The quality of those models depends heavily on correctly attributing media spend to the right brand entity. Brand groups in Amazon's MMM framework aggregate campaigns and products under a single brand identifier. Overrides give advertisers programmatic control over how Amazon structures those groupings - for instance, reassigning a campaign that Amazon automatically associated with the wrong brand group, or separating sub-brands that share a parent account.

The original three endpoints available at beta launch remain: POST /mmm/v1/brandGroups/list to request the list of brands available for data extraction, POST /mmm/v1/reports to request the MMM feed for a given brand, and GET /mmm/v1/reports/{reportId} to check report status.

The GA release arrives in a measurement environment where only 15% of marketing teams have implemented MMM, despite 46.9% of marketers planning to increase MMM investment over the following 12 months. One persistent obstacle for practitioners is data sourcing - assembling consistent, high-quality signals from multiple advertising platforms. Amazon's MMM API addresses that challenge by providing aggregated advertising and retail signals in a structured, programmatic format rather than requiring manual data extraction.

A separate PPC Land article analyzed the broader measurement landscape, noting that research published in February 2026 found commerce media is one of the most underrepresented channels in marketing mix models, with 50% of MMM practitioners failing to account for it adequately. The MMM API GA directly addresses that gap for advertisers running campaigns on Amazon's platform.

NationalAsinEngagement file arrives in MMM data feed

On May 7, 2026, Amazon added a new file to the MMM data feed: NationalAsinEngagement.tsv.zip. The file provides daily or weekly national engagement events per ASIN by country, with three data points: ASIN identifier, country code, and add-to-cart count. It is available at country-level geographic granularity.

The addition gives MMM modelers access to product-level engagement signals that sit above the purchase funnel. Add-to-cart activity reflects shopper consideration - a shopper has expressed enough interest to place an item in their cart, even if the purchase has not completed. For brands building media mix models that attempt to capture full-funnel effects, this engagement signal creates an intermediate variable between advertising exposure and conversion.

The file is available at national geographic granularity, meaning it aggregates engagement across all regions within each country rather than providing sub-national breakdowns. That scope aligns with how most MMM frameworks operate, which model national or market-level effects rather than regional performance.

Geographic Insights and Activation API reaches general availability

The Geographic Insights and Activation (GIA) API for Amazon DSP moved from open beta to general availability on May 4, 2026. According to Amazon, the GA release introduces a simplified workflow and updated endpoints.

The most significant technical change affects how location indexes handle postal code data. Under the previous open-beta structure, creating a location index required a separate step to create a location index version containing the postal code data. In the GA release, location indexes accept inline postal code data at creation time. The /create/locationIndexVersionsendpoint and the separate version creation step are deprecated.

Smart locations - the geotargeting objects that attach to ad groups and apply bid adjustments at the postal code level - now use a new creation endpoint: POST /adsApi/v1/create/geoLocations. Smart locations then attach to ad groups via the Campaign Management Targets API. The previous beta endpoints for smart location creation (/create/smartLocations, /update/smartLocations) are deprecated alongside the version-specific location index endpoints.

The five GA endpoints are:

  • POST /adsApi/v1/create/locationIndexes - create a location index with inline postal code data
  • POST /adsApi/v1/update/locationIndexes - update location index data
  • POST /adsApi/v1/retrieve/locationIndexes - retrieve location index by ID
  • GET /adsApi/v1/locationIndexes - list location indexes
  • POST /adsApi/v1/create/geoLocations - create a geo location (smart location)

The GIA feature lets advertisers discover regional growth opportunities using Amazon's first-party retail insights combined with their own geographic data. Amazon describes the capability as combining "Amazon's robust retail insights with advertisers' own geographic signals," enabling brands to reach new-to-brand customers in regions with low brand penetration. The postal code-level bid adjustment mechanism means advertisers can increase bids automatically in geographic areas where their retail data shows opportunity.

Amazon released the Geographic Insights and Activation API in beta in October 2025, following the launch of the GIA feature for DSP in June 2025. The GA release resolves two issues that had complicated adoption during beta: the multi-step location index creation workflow, and the endpoint fragmentation between smart location management and location index versioning.

What the May 2026 releases represent for the API ecosystem

The four releases published between May 1 and May 18, 2026, share a pattern that has been visible across Amazon Ads API development throughout 2024 and 2025: beta capabilities reaching production status with simplified workflows and expanded geographic coverage.

The unified Campaign Management API reached general availability in December 2025, reducing what had been nearly 200 separate CRUD endpoint variations to 16 standardized operations. The Amazon Ads MCP Server launched in open beta in February 2026, connecting AI platforms including Claude and ChatGPT to advertising workflows through natural language. The Inventory Management Unified APIs entered open beta in March 2026, consolidating programmatic deal management under a single framework.

Benchmarks, MMM, and GIA follow the same trajectory. Each started as beta capabilities, each has undergone workflow refinements based on developer feedback, and each now carries the production-readiness designation that matters for technology partners building commercial integrations on top of the Amazon Ads API.

For advertising technology platforms, the GA designations remove a meaningful adoption barrier. Beta software carries the risk that API contracts will change - a significant concern for partners who have invested engineering resources building against specific endpoint structures. Once Amazon designates a capability as generally available, partners can build with confidence that the contract is stable.

For agencies and enterprise advertisers operating at scale, the combination of benchmarks across 18 markets, MMM data access across 14 countries, and postal-code-level geographic optimization creates an integrated measurement and targeting infrastructure that was not accessible programmatically before 2025.

Timeline

  • November 11, 2025 - Amazon launches new reporting API in open beta, including multi-dimensional and cross-account reporting under API v1
  • November 18, 2025 - Amazon introduces benchmarks for Sponsored Ads and DSP in the Offline Reporting API, limited to the US market in beta
  • December 1, 2025 - Amazon announces Campaign Management API general availability for Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Amazon DSP
  • February 2, 2026 - Amazon opens its Ads MCP Server in open beta at IAB ALM, connecting AI platforms to advertising workflows through natural language
  • February 18, 2026 - Amazon opens custom cross-campaign reach and frequency measurement in reporting API in open beta; Amazon Ads MCP Server enters open beta
  • March 15, 2026 - Amazon launches Inventory Management Unified APIs in open beta
  • March 27, 2026 - Amazon deprecates Catch-Up Boost pacing feature in Amazon DSP UI and API; Dynamic Catchup replaces it
  • April 2, 2026 - Amazon launches cross-account reach and frequency measurement in reporting API in open beta across 18 marketplaces
  • April 30, 2026 - Amazon publishes updated Inventory Management Unified APIs with additional deal performance and supplier proposal endpoints
  • May 1, 2026 - Amazon moves MMM API to general availability across 14 countries, adds six new brand group management endpoints
  • May 4, 2026 - Geographic Insights and Activation API for Amazon DSP reaches general availability with simplified workflow; prior open-beta endpoints deprecated
  • May 7, 2026 - Amazon adds NationalAsinEngagement.tsv.zip to MMM data feed, providing daily or weekly national add-to-cart engagement per ASIN by country
  • May 18, 2026 - Benchmarks reporting reaches general availability across 18 markets; coverage expands from US-only beta to worldwide

Summary

Who: Amazon Ads, addressing advertisers, agencies, and technology partners using the Amazon Ads API across supported markets.

What: Four measurement and targeting API releases published between May 1 and May 18, 2026: the Marketing Mix Modeling API moved to general availability across 14 countries with six new brand group management endpoints; the Geographic Insights and Activation API for Amazon DSP reached GA with a simplified location index workflow; a NationalAsinEngagement file was added to the MMM data feed providing ASIN-level add-to-cart signals; and benchmarks reporting reached global general availability across 18 marketplaces, expanding from a US-only beta, with eight performance metrics available through the crossProgramBenchmarks and dspBenchmarks report types in the Reporting API.

When: Releases published May 1 (MMM API GA), May 4 (GIA API GA), May 7 (NationalAsinEngagement file), and May 18, 2026 (benchmarks worldwide GA).

Where: The MMM API covers 14 countries: US, CA, IT, ES, FR, DE, UK, MX, BR, JP, AU, UAE, IN, and KSA. The benchmarks rollout reaches 18 marketplaces: US, CA, MX, BR, AU, JP, IN, DE, FR, IT, ES, UK, NL, TR, SE, SA, UAE, and EG. GIA is available to Amazon DSP advertisers globally.

Why: The releases complete beta-to-GA transitions that Amazon has been executing across its advertising API infrastructure throughout 2024 and 2025. GA designations allow technology partners to build commercial-grade integrations on stable API contracts. The combination gives performance advertisers and MMM practitioners programmatic access to competitive benchmarks, geographic intelligence at postal code granularity, and retail attribution signals - three capabilities that previously required manual workarounds or were unavailable through the API entirely.

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