Amazon extends Marketing Cloud lookback window from 13 to 25 months

Amazon Ads announced on November 11, 2025, at its annual unBoxed conference, an expansion to Amazon Marketing Cloud's ad traffic lookback window from 13 months to 25 months. The extension enables AMC customers to analyze advertising performance across a significantly longer time horizon, according to the launch documentation.

The 25-month lookback window provides advertisers with access to advertising data spanning more than two full calendar years. This extended historical view allows for complete year-over-year performance analyses and incorporates additional data points that were previously unavailable for strategic decision-making. The expansion became available in the United States and Canada on November 11, 2025, with additional regional rollouts scheduled for Q1 2026 covering the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France, Austria, and Turkey, alongside Japan in the Asia-Pacific region.

Amazon Marketing Cloud functions as a secure, privacy-safe, cloud-based clean room solution where advertisers can perform analytics and build audiences across pseudonymized signals. The platform became directly accessible to sponsored ads advertisers on September 16, 2025, eliminating traditional partner coordination requirements through enhanced interface capabilities including no-code templates and AI-powered assistance.

The measurement enhancement matters particularly for advertisers seeking comprehensive seasonal pattern analysis. Marketing campaigns frequently operate on annual cycles, with major retail events, product launches, and promotional periods recurring at predictable intervals. A 13-month lookback window provided limited capacity for comparing current performance against prior year benchmarks, especially when accounting for timing variations in holiday shopping seasons or industry-specific cyclical behaviors.

With 25 months of historical data availability, advertisers can now examine performance across two complete holiday seasons, two complete quarters for any given period, and two full cycles of annual promotional calendars. This extended view enables identification of year-over-year growth trends, seasonal fluctuation patterns, and long-term campaign effectiveness measurements that previously required manual data archival outside Amazon's native infrastructure.

The technical implementation requires no changes to existing Amazon Marketing Cloud endpoints. According to the documentation, the expanded lookback window operates through current AMC endpoints with no modifications to endpoint functionality required. Advertisers already using AMC SQL Editor can access the extended historical data through their existing query structures, with ad traffic signals automatically incorporating the longer time horizon.

Attribution modeling benefits substantially from extended lookback windows. Marketing measurement methodologies traditionally grapple with balancing recency against comprehensive historical context. Shorter windows emphasize recent touchpoints but may miss broader patterns in customer journey progression. Longer windows capture more complete customer pathways but risk attributing conversions to interactions that had minimal actual influence.

The 25-month extension positions Amazon Marketing Cloud between short-term tactical optimization windows and multi-year strategic planning horizons. For consumer packaged goods advertisers, this timeframe accommodates purchase cycle analysis across seasonal consumption patterns. For durable goods marketers, the window captures consideration periods that frequently span multiple quarters before conversion events occur.

Amazon launched Amazon Marketing Cloud in beta on January 5, 2021, for eligible agencies, advertisers, and tool providers across North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia. The platform has systematically expanded measurement capabilities throughout its operational history. Live shopping signals integration arrived on June 16, 2025, enabling comprehensive measurement of live shopping campaigns through impressions, views, and clicks data.

The lookback window expansion arrives alongside Amazon's introduction of Ads Agent, announced at the same unBoxed 2025 conference. Ads Agent automates campaign management tasks across Amazon Marketing Cloud and Multimedia Solutions with Amazon DSP using natural language processing. The artificial intelligence agent translates business questions into SQL queries using natural language, accelerating analytics workflows without requiring specialized database knowledge.

Regional availability for the expanded lookback window follows a phased approach. The feature launched in open beta for the United States and Canada on November 11, 2025. European markets including the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France, Austria, and Turkey receive access during Q1 2026. Japan's availability timeline also falls within the Q1 2026 window, according to the announcement documentation.

Access requirements remain consistent with existing Amazon Marketing Cloud eligibility criteria. Any advertisers located in supported marketplaces with AMC access can utilize the expanded lookback window. This includes managed service advertisers working with Amazon representatives, self-service advertisers operating Amazon Marketing Cloud independently, and agencies managing campaigns on behalf of clients.

The measurement enhancement operates at the data layer rather than the interface layer. Ad traffic signals in AMC SQL Editor automatically incorporate the extended historical period without requiring advertisers to modify query syntax or adjust data selection parameters. This seamless integration contrasts with feature rollouts that demand technical reconfiguration or manual setting adjustments.

Competitive measurement platforms have implemented varying approaches to historical data retention. Meta restricts attribution windows and data retention in its Ads Insights API, with changes effective January 12, 2026, eliminating view-through attribution windows and imposing strict historical data limitations. The first Meta limitation affects all breakdowns for unique-count fields, restricting them to 13 months of historical data.

Amazon's 25-month window provides nearly double Meta's 13-month restriction for certain data types. This extended retention enables advertisers using multiple platforms to maintain more consistent analytical capabilities across their advertising technology stack. Cross-platform performance comparison becomes more feasible when historical data availability spans comparable timeframes.

Data storage implications for the expanded lookback window remain internal to Amazon's infrastructure. The privacy-safe clean room architecture maintains pseudonymized signal processing regardless of historical data depth. Advertisers querying 25 months of historical performance data receive the same privacy protections as those analyzing shorter timeframes.

The enhancement builds upon Amazon's broader advertising technology expansion throughout 2025. AWS became central infrastructure for advertising beyond Amazon's own business, with Amazon Retail Ad Service addressing the shift toward retail media and Amazon Marketing Stream delivering performance data through AWS integration. Each service builds on the same underlying cloud infrastructure that supports Amazon Marketing Cloud.

Measurement sophistication in digital advertising continues increasing as platforms develop more comprehensive data retention and analysis capabilities. LinkedIn enhanced revenue attribution with company-level measurement using "any touch" models tracking leads who engaged with marketing activities within lookback windows of 30, 60, 90, or 180 days. These varying window lengths reflect different business models and purchase cycle characteristics.

Amazon's 25-month lookback window serves retail advertising scenarios where purchase frequency, seasonal variation, and multi-year customer relationship development create analytical requirements extending beyond quarterly business cycles. The measurement capability supports strategic planning initiatives requiring historical context from multiple complete annual periods.

Year-over-year analysis represents a fundamental business intelligence methodology across industries. Retail performance measurement particularly relies on comparing current period results against equivalent prior year periods to account for seasonal effects, calendar variations, and cyclical demand patterns. The 13-month window provided limited year-over-year comparison capability, as it captured only one complete prior year plus one additional month.

The 25-month extension enables advertisers to compare Q4 2025 performance against both Q4 2024 and Q4 2023, revealing multi-year trend trajectories rather than single-period comparisons. This longitudinal view helps distinguish between one-time performance anomalies and sustained directional changes in advertising effectiveness.

Amazon introduced an SQL generator for Marketing Cloud in January 2025 to streamline data analysis through natural language processing. That tool aimed to reduce query development time from hours to minutes by automating SQL code generation. The combination of natural language query generation with expanded historical data availability creates more accessible advanced analytics for advertisers without specialized technical expertise.

The measurement enhancement matters for retail media network growth trajectories. The retail media sector projects growth exceeding $300 billion by 2030, representing approximately 20% of total global advertising revenue according to research firm Omdia. This expansion relies heavily on first-party data and closed-loop measurement capabilities that platforms like Amazon Marketing Cloud provide through comprehensive historical data retention.

Historical data depth influences multiple advertising optimization scenarios. Budget allocation decisions benefit from understanding which campaigns delivered sustained performance across extended periods rather than short-term spikes. Creative effectiveness analysis requires examining performance across seasonal contexts where messaging resonance may vary substantially. Audience segmentation strategies improve when built on behavior patterns observed across longer timeframes rather than limited sampling windows.

The technical architecture supporting the expanded lookback window leverages Amazon Web Services infrastructure. Amazon Marketing Cloud operates as a measurement and analytics solution built on AWS, providing the computational resources necessary for processing queries across 25 months of advertising performance data at scale.

Timeline

• January 5, 2021: Amazon launches Amazon Marketing Cloud beta for eligible agencies, advertisers, and tool providers
• June 7, 2024: Amazon Marketing Cloud unveils code-free high-value audience builder in beta
• October 15, 2024: Amazon Marketing Cloud launches optimal frequency for campaign optimization with data-driven insights
• January 2025: Amazon introduces SQL generator for Marketing Cloud to streamline data analysis through natural language processing
• June 16, 2025: Amazon announces Live signals integration in Marketing Cloud for enhanced measurement capabilities
• September 16, 2025: Amazon makes Marketing Cloud directly accessible to sponsored ads advertisers with no-code templates
• October 23, 2025: AWS announces RTB Fabric offering specialized infrastructure for advertising technology
• November 11, 2025: Amazon announces expanded AMC lookback window from 13 to 25 months at unBoxed 2025 conference
• November 11, 2025: Amazon launches Ads Agent AI automation for campaign management alongside lookback window expansion
• Q1 2026: Expanded lookback window availability scheduled for European and Asian markets

Summary

Who: Amazon Ads announced the feature for any advertisers with Amazon Marketing Cloud access, including managed service advertisers, self-service advertisers, and agencies operating in supported marketplaces.

What: Amazon Marketing Cloud expanded its ad traffic lookback window from 13 months to 25 months, enabling advertisers to analyze advertising performance across a longer time horizon with access to more than two complete calendar years of historical data through the AMC SQL Editor.

When: The announcement occurred on November 11, 2025, at the annual unBoxed conference, with immediate availability in the United States and Canada as an open beta, followed by expansion to additional regions in Q1 2026.

Where: The feature launched first in the United States and Canada, with subsequent rollout scheduled for the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France, Austria, Turkey, and Japan during the first quarter of 2026.

Why: The expanded lookback window helps advertisers gain deeper understanding of long-term advertising performance and seasonal trends, enabling comprehensive year-over-year performance analyses and better strategic decision-making based on extended historical performance insights across multiple complete annual cycles.