How to Combine Amazon’s New “Gift Keyword” Preset with AMC Audiences for Smarter Holiday Targeting

Amazon just rolled out a new “Gift Keyword” preset inside Campaign Manager for Sponsored Products. This addition lets advertisers easily target gift-related search intent without manually loading up hundreds of “gift” terms during the holidays.

What the Gift Keyword Preset Does 🎁

Instead of typing out your own seasonal phrases like: “ornament gifts,” “gifts for dad,” “Christmas snack box,” Amazon’s new preset automatically includes keywords related to gifting behavior.

While Amazon doesn’t disclose the exact keywords included in the preset, you can identify which terms your ads are targeting by reviewing your Search Term Reports.

Level Up: Pair the Gift Keyword Group with AMC Audiences

Here’s where things get really interesting. You can take the “Gift Keyword” preset a step further by combining it with Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) audiences to build smarter, higher-intent targeting layers.

Our team at Ridgeline has been experimenting with a “Relevant Keyword Searches” AMC audience and then pairing that audience with campaigns using the Gift Keyword preset.

Example Strategy: Hunting Apparel Campaign

Let’s say you’re selling a hunting jacket. Here’s how the strategy plays out:

1. Create a new Sponsored Products campaign

   • Product: Hunting Jacket

   • Keyword group: Gift Keywords preset

   • This keeps your campaign tightly focused on gift-related hunting searches.
     

2. Build a custom AMC audience

   • Topic: Relevant Keyword Searches

   • Seed keywords: “hunting,” “hunting jacket,” “hunting shirt,” “hunting gifts,” “gifts for hunters,” “hunting gear,” etc.

   • Time window: Past 45 days.
     

3. Layer your AMC audience onto the campaign

   • Bid higher for shoppers in this audience—people who have recently searched for relevant hunting terms.

   • Essentially, you’re saying: “I want to bid more aggressively on gift-related searches from shoppers who have already shown hunting interest.”

This tactic connects seasonal gifting intent with category-specific interest, helping you win placements that matter most, especially during high-competition windows like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Reverse the Approach for Broader Reach

You can also flip the strategy:

• Build an AMC audience around “hunting gifts” or “gifts for hunters.”

• Run a campaign targeting more general hunting terms (e.g., “hunting jacket,” “hunting pants”) without the gift preset.
  

This approach helps expose non-gift campaigns to gift-intent shoppers you’ve identified via AMC. We’ve already seen early wins from this method, and we expect stronger results as holiday traffic surges.

🧭 Key Takeaway

Amazon’s new “Gift Keyword” preset and AMC audiences are powerful tools on their own, but even stronger when used together. By layering intent-based keyword targeting with audience behavior data, you can reach shoppers who are actively browsing for gifts in your category and bid more intelligently where it matters most.

While this pairing hasn’t yet produced a major lift in sales, we expect performance to pick up as Black Friday and Cyber Monday approach and gift-shopping intent spikes.

The big takeaway? 👉 Keep testing. Experiment with new combinations. Amazon continues to roll out tools that reward advertisers who adapt early and think strategically. Pairing these features gives you a competitive edge and helps you capture those incremental sales that can make the difference in Q4.