Check whether your AMC retargeting audiences are still refreshing. Before Q4 tra
By Andrew Bailiff · October 27, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Check whether your AMC retargeting audiences are still refreshing. Before Q4 traffic hits them.
We build a lot of AMC audiences. Two things I learned the hard way:
1. An audience built from custom SQL can be pinned to the dates you built it on. Every refresh re-runs the same old window, so the pool goes quietly staler every week. In AdLabs, library templates roll forward by default. Custom SQL doesn't unless you tell it to.
2. Refreshes aren't guaranteed. Amazon slows refreshes on audiences that aren't attached to a DSP line, and eventually stops them. We've seen audiences stop refreshing a few days after they were built.
The check:
→ For every custom SQL audience, confirm the window is rolling, not fixed
→ Read the last refreshed time in the AMC console itself.
→ If an audience isn't on a DSP line, expect it to go stale
→ To fix a frozen one, build the corrected copy first and clean up the old one later.
Fixed ranges are right for one thing: a past-event pool, like last year's holiday purchasers. Rolling that forward ruins it.
Everything else should roll.