Amazon Marketing Cloud vs illumin
Amazon Marketing Cloud
advertising.amazon.comillumin
illumin.comSide by side
| Figure | Amazon Marketing Cloud | illumin |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 0 |
| Spec score · Demand Side Platform | 8.6 (#1) | 7.5 (#6) |
| Founded | 2019 | 2009 |
| Licence | AMC is supplied under a proprietary service agreement that prohibits copying, modification, reverse engineering, and circumvention of security controls. | The API documentation states that illumin materials are copyrighted and all rights are reserved, indicating proprietary software rather than open source. |
| Privacy controls | AMC accepts pseudonymized inputs, exposes only aggregated anonymous outputs, and keeps advertiser-uploaded signals inside the dedicated instance. | The privacy policy describes access, deletion, correction and opt-out rights, including Global Privacy Control handling. |
| What it does | Amazon Marketing Cloud is a cloud clean room for analyzing pseudonymized Amazon Ads and advertiser signals and building audiences. | illumin is a journey advertising platform for planning, buying, optimizing and measuring digital campaigns across video, mobile, out-of-home, social, connected TV and display. |
Plans
Amazon Marketing Cloud
- Amazon Marketing CloudFree
- Amazon Marketing Cloud accessFree
- Paid Features (beta)Priced on request
In their own words
Amazon Marketing Cloud
Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) is a cloud-based clean room for analytics and audience building across pseudonymized Amazon Ads signals and advertiser inputs. Built on AWS Clean Rooms, it brings together signals from Amazon properties, advertisers, and onboarded third-party providers for flexible querying. Advertisers can form audiences from engagement records, conversion events, and segments, then activate them for sponsored, video, and display ads. AMC can also measure customer journeys across Amazon Ads media and channels, including advertising impact at Amazon stores and advertiser-owned sites. Users can generate insights and visualizations without SQL using curated templates and Ads Agent assistance; SQL analysis is also supported. Ads Data Manager and related tools connect signals, while APIs support reporting, audience management, and first-party signal onboarding. Outputs are aggregated and anonymous, and advertiser-uploaded signals remain in a dedicated instance that Amazon cannot access or export. AMC provides 25 months of ad traffic signals and hundreds of campaign fields. It is available at no cost to eligible advertisers through web and API access.
illumin
illumin is a web-based advertising platform for buying campaigns across multiple inventory sources. It offers both buying models and supports native, display, video, connected TV, audio, digital out-of-home, and social advertising, plus email integration. Targeting options span geography, language, technology, inventory and its quality, deals, brand safety, content and keywords, connections, viewability, demographics, source, and audiences. Attribution reporting is included. The listed supported regions are North America, LATAM, and EMEA. illumin was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. It is paid software, with pricing available on request rather than a listed fixed plan price. For buyers comparing advertising tools, the range of channels, inventory choices, targeting options, and supported regions describes the available scope; the listed facts do not specify a price amount or billing term.