Overview

Amazon rolled out hourly analytics for its Ads API in early 2024, letting advertisers pull performance metrics in one‑hour slices instead of the traditional daily totals. The feature is live for any seller using the Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands or Sponsored Display APIs, as well as for those working with an authorized Ads partner. Access to hour‑level data lets sellers fine‑tune budgets, catch issues minutes after they arise, and match ad spend to the ebb and flow of shopper traffic throughout the day.

Key Points

• Data granularity — Spend, impressions, clicks, ACOS and other core metrics are now returned for each of the 24 hours in a day, replacing the single‑day aggregation that previously masked intra‑day variation.
• Immediate availability — The hourly view is built into the existing Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display endpoints; no extra subscription, fee or separate API version is required to enable it.
• Backward compatibility — All legacy 24‑hour reports continue to function unchanged, and sellers can switch to the hourly format simply by adding a query parameter to their request.
• Real‑time troubleshooting — Because the API surfaces data as soon as the hour closes, a sudden dip in spend at 02:00 UTC can be identified within minutes, giving advertisers the chance to adjust bids or budgets before the problem cascades into the next day.
• Automation‑ready — Scripts that rebalance budgets or modify bids can now run on an hourly cadence, allowing campaigns that experience uneven performance across the day to be optimized in near‑real time.

How Hourly Analytics Works

1. Enable the hourly flag — Append metrics=hourly to any standard list request (for example, GET /v2/sp/campaigns?metrics=hourly&startDate=2024-02-01&endDate=2024-02-01). The API then knows to return a separate record for each hour of the requested date range.
2. Receive hour‑level rows — The response array contains up to 24 objects for a full‑day query. Each object includes fields such as , , , and . A seller with a $300 daily budget might see a $12.50 spend entry for the 14:00 UTC hour, highlighting a peak‑performance window.