- What changed
- Attain purchase audiences, by retailer, category and online or in-store channel, now activate natively in Amazon Ads DVA+
- When
- Announced and live November 4, 2026; DVA+ itself is in US beta with general availability targeted for Q1 2027
- Who it affects
- Attain (permissioned purchase data from over 14 million consumers) and Amazon Ads; for sellers, vendors and off-Amazon brands using DVA+
- What to do
- Brands sold at Walmart, Target or grocery should test one competitor-shopper audience against a standard DVA+ campaign before Q1 budgets
Key takeaways
- Since November 4, 2026, Attain purchase audiences built from shopping at Walmart, Kroger and other retailers are live inside Amazon Ads DVA+.
- It is display and video only, DVA+ is still in US beta, and neither company disclosed the data's price.
- Test one competitor-shopper audience against a standard DVA+ campaign and judge it on cost per new-to-brand customer and payback.
From measurement partner to targeting
Attain becomes an offline sales lift partner for Amazon DSP
Amazon announces DVA+ at unBoxed
DVA+ open beta expected in the US
Attain purchase audiences go live in DVA+
DVA+ general availability targeted in 35 markets
What changed on November 4
Attain, which collects permissioned spending data through its own budgeting and shopping rewards apps, said its audiences can now be built and activated natively inside DVA+, Amazon's simplified buying flow for display, video and audio campaigns. Advertisers can segment people by a retailer or combination of retailers, by purchase category and by whether they shopped online or in store. Attain says the signals refresh daily and come from spending across tens of thousands of merchants and brands.
Adweek reports the ads can run across Amazon inventory including Prime Video and third-party sites in Amazon's network, and that Attain plugs straight into the Amazon Ads APIs rather than going through an identity partner such as LiveRamp. This is display and video only; nothing in the announcement touches Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands, where most sellers spend. Attain was already a 2025 offline sales lift measurement partner for what was then Amazon DSP, so the new step moves its data from reporting into targeting.
Why this matters more than a data partnership
Amazon has always known what people buy on Amazon. It has not known what the same household buys at Walmart, Target or the local grocer, and that blind spot is exactly where an omnichannel brand loses or wins share. A coffee brand could previously target Amazon coffee buyers; now it can, in principle, target Amazon users who buy a rival coffee at Kroger and never on Amazon. Attain's own release pitches this as targeting by shopping habits, competitor dynamics and customer loyalty.
The second reason is budget gravity. If an advertiser can reach Walmart and Kroger shoppers from inside Amazon's console, some money that would have gone to Walmart Connect or a grocery retail media network may stay on Amazon. That is our inference, not a claim in the release, but it explains why Amazon is opening its walls to outside purchase data at all. For the bigger picture of where ad money is moving, see the retail media news channel.
| Amazon signals | Attain audiences | |
|---|---|---|
| Purchases on Amazon | ||
| Purchases at Walmart, Kroger and others | ||
| In-store versus online split | ||
| Prime Video streaming signals | ||
| Works in Sponsored Products |
Attain audiences run in DVA+ display and video only
Our team and SpiderOS adapt bids and campaigns to new Amazon Ads features the week they launch.
What DVA+ is and who can buy it
Amazon announced DVA+ on September 29, 2026 at unBoxed. Its page says the product lets an advertiser pick a goal, add products or a brand URL, review AI-generated creative, set a budget and launch across streaming TV, online video, display and audio. AI handles audiences, bids and inventory by default, with advanced settings for manual targeting, retargeting and bid control. Our unBoxed 2026 recap covers the rest of that launch.
Access is still limited. Amazon says DVA+ is in extended closed beta in the US, with open beta expected from late October 2026, international expansion through Q4 2026 and general availability across 35 markets targeted for Q1 2027. Payment is invoice-only in beta, with credit cards planned for Q1 2027. Sellers and vendors who only run Sponsored ads get the simple DVA+ flow and must ask an account manager for advanced settings. Neither Attain nor Amazon disclosed what the Attain audiences cost.
So what: the math on a competitor-shopper audience
The value of an outside audience is new customers you could not reach before, so judge it on new-to-brand sales, not blended ROAS. Here is an illustrative example, with invented numbers. A snack brand sells a $6 item at Walmart and on Amazon, with a $1.80 contribution margin after Amazon fees. It spends $5,000 on a DVA+ test aimed at Amazon users who bought the category at Walmart in the last 30 days.
If that test drives 700 attributed units, of which 60% are new to brand, the $5,000 bought 420 new customers at about $11.90 each. If each new customer buys four times a year, that is $7.20 of margin a year per customer, so the test pays back in about 20 months on margin alone, which is too slow. If repeat is eight a year, payback falls to about 10 months. The audience is worth buying only when your repeat rate and margin make that number work, and the same test against a plain DVA+ audience tells you whether Attain added anything.
Is an outside audience worth it?
- 1Cost
Test spend divided by new-to-brand customers
- 2Margin
Contribution margin per order after fees
- 3Repeat
Orders per customer per year
- 4Payback
Cost per customer over yearly margin
What sellers and brands should do
- Brand owner: list the two or three retailers where your category leaks share away from Amazon, using your own retail sales data or syndicated data. Metric: a named target audience per retailer before you spend.
- Ads lead: in DVA+ through Amazon Ads Agent, build one Attain audience (for example category buyers at Walmart, in store) and one standard AI-managed campaign with the same budget and creative. Metric: new-to-brand order share and cost per new-to-brand customer for each.
- Ads lead: keep each test to a fixed budget of 5% to 10% of monthly display and video spend for four weeks. Metric: detail page view rate and new-to-brand purchase rate versus the control.
- Analyst: use Amazon Marketing Cloud or Amazon's lift studies to check whether exposed shoppers bought more than unexposed ones. Metric: incremental sales lift, not last-touch ROAS.
- Owner: decide on Q1 budgets only after the test, and ask the free Amazon audit team or an DSP agency for Amazon sellers to review the setup if you have never run upper-funnel ads. Metric: payback months on new customers, target under 12.
When this does not apply
If you sell only on Amazon and your product is not in big-box or grocery stores, a Walmart-shopper audience is a loose proxy at best; Amazon's own signals will usually be cheaper and closer to intent. If your Sponsored Products campaigns are not profitable yet, fix those first, because DVA+ is an awareness and consideration tool and the DSP versus Sponsored ads trade-off still applies. Also keep the panel size in mind: Attain says it connects with over 14 million consumers (Adweek reported 15 million), against Amazon's 300 million authenticated users, so niche segments may be too small to buy well.
Sources
- Attain via GlobeNewswire: Attain enhances the power of purchase data across Amazon Ads DVA+ with direct audience integration (https://www.manilatimes.net/2026/11/04/tmt-newswire/globenewswire/attain-enhances-the-power-of-purchase-data-across-amazon-ads-dva-with-direct-audience-integration/2461919)
- Adweek: Amazon Advertisers Can Now Target Shoppers That Buy Elsewhere (https://www.adweek.com/commerce/amazon-advertisers-can-now-target-shoppers-that-buy-elsewhere/)
- Amazon Ads: Reach new audiences using DVA+ (https://advertising.amazon.com/resources/whats-new/dva-plus-display-video-audio-campaigns)
We run these playbooks on client accounts every day. Start with a free audit.
Get a free audit