How to Track Your Advertising Sales with Amazon Attribution

Amazon Attribution enables on-demand access to conversion reporting. This amazing tool makes advertisers’ job fairly simple – at no cost.

Time drives change. Gone are the days when selling on Amazon was limited to listing products and hoping for the best.

The retail giant never loses the opportunity to be at the forefront of cutting-edge technology to optimize customer and seller experiences.

That’s how Amazon Attribution came to be.

Launched as Amazon Attribution Beta in August 2018, the program enables on-demand access to conversion reporting and provides advertisers with the best cross-channel marketing data.

But how is this possible? Read on to find out!

What is Amazon Attribution?

A proper Amazon marketing campaign attracts customers inside and outside the marketplace. But effective campaigns also detect the “touch points” where customers shop for products.

This is the key to the Amazon Attribution program. It tracks social paid traffic and parameters on ads that can later convert customers.

Amazon Attribution also allows advertisers to have a greater insight into how customers behave on and off-Amazon advertising media. This includes search ads, social ads, display ads, and email marketing.

Source: Advertising Amazon

Amazon Attribution is great for:

Measuring the effectiveness of a particular off-site advertising channel on Amazon sales.
Using on-demand attribution reporting to base in-flight optimization.
Reviewing Amazon audience insights and offsite channel performance to further plan marketing strategies.
Using metrics on detail page views, add to carts, sales, and purchase rates to tweak strategies.

In short, this tool offers unique insights into sales triggers and conversion metrics, through a comprehensive view of different marketing strategies and how they perform.

This way, there can be no doubt about which channels are really bringing in solid numbers.

Why Should You Use It?

You may be wondering “Why would I send off-platform traffic to Amazon and not to my own site? Simple, Amazon boasts a higher conversion rate due to its outstanding and loyal customer base.

Before Amazon Attribution was released, it wasn’t easy to quantify a shopper’s journey through the web.

But now, the Attribution pixel allows you to gauge the impact of search, display, and video channels.

To do so, the Amazon attribution tool collects real-time data on shoppers’ search and purchase behavior.

So, the program reviews how users search for and find products, and what they end up buying.

With this data, you can better see how your sales are affected by offsite channels and optimize your campaigns appropriately.

How to Access Amazon Attribution

This tool is available to vendors, marketing agencies, and Amazon Brand Registry sellers. The program is free and quite easy to enroll in.

How to Register Your Advertisers’ Amazon Attribution Console

Log into your Seller Central account.
Visit sellercentral.amazon.com/attribution.
Click “Register”. This will trigger an email invitation to your account.
You will receive an email from DSP Support. If you don’t receive the email, check your Spam folder or resend your invitation.
Click “Accept invite & sign in” to log into the Amazon Attribution console.
If you’d like to invite additional brand and agency partners, go to the “User management” page under “Manage” in the top navigation bar.

Now, let’s see how advertisers can use Amazon Attribution.

How to Use Amazon Attribution

Creating Amazon Attribution Tags

An Amazon attribution tag is a URL that follows the customer’s sales journey. Think of it as a Google tracking pixel for Amazon sellers.

The tag begins tracking when someone clicks on an external ad and goes into your Amazon listing.

You can attach these tags to several ads.

For example, you can use it to track customers coming in from a Facebook campaign.

Setting Up Amazon Attribution

Let’s see how to set up an Amazon Attribution campaign. Sign in to Seller Central and follow these steps:

Sign in to Amazon Attribution and click on “Create Campaign”.
Add the products that you want to use to measure conversions.
Generate tags for each of your marketing strategies.
Create an ad group stating the publisher (like Facebook) and channel (social media) for the campaign.
Implement tags across your search ads, social ads, display ads, video ads, and email marketing.

For video and display tracking, add the 1×1 image Attribution pixel to your ad’s impressions events.

For search tracking, use the generated tracking template to get the pixels that correspond to each search publisher.

Attribution will then begin tracking from origin to Amazon checkout.

And that’s it for your Amazon Attribution setup!

Amazon Attribution Reporting

Once data has been gathered, you can then access Amazon Attribution reports via the advertising console.

(Advertisers can also access Amazon Advertising media reports through the Amazon demand-side platform.)

It’s a UI-based program with no API in Beta, but this may follow once it’s officially launched.

When you get to your sales reports, you can see your overall sales numbers and the specifics of sales made on Amazon.

This includes conversions per ASIN based on your selection (Promoted) as well as other related ASINs (Total).

Conversion Metrics Analyzed by Amazon Attribution

These metrics, available on Amazon Attribution Beta Help Center, will give you insight into:

Add to cart (ATC). The number of times a promoted product is added to a customer’s cart after a click of an associated ad.
Add to cart views (ATC views). The number of times a promoted product is added to a customer’s cart after a view of an associated ad.
Click redirect. The redirect URL that customers implement on their ads to measure click-throughs and attribute conversions and sales of their products on Amazon.
Click-through destination. Determines where the creative links to on a click-through.
Click-through rate. The number of click-throughs relative to the number of impressions.
Cumulative reach. The number of unique users exposed to an ad from the campaign start.
Detail page views – clicks. The number of views of the promoted product’s detail pages on Amazon after a click of an associated ad.
Detail page view – rate. The number of detail page views relative to the number of impressions.
Detail page views – views. The number of views of the promoted product’s detail pages on Amazon after a view of an associated ad.
Impression pixel. The 1×1 image code customers can implement on their ads to measure impressions and attribute conversions and sales of their products on Amazon.
(Campaign) Impressions. The number of times an advertisement was displayed.
Line item. The ad format, media, budget, flight, targeting, and fee settings used to distribute advertising.
Total sales. The total sales (in local currency) of promoted ASINs and ASINs from the same brands as promoted ASINs purchased by customers on Amazon after a click of an associated ad.
Purchase rate. The number of purchases relative to the number of impressions.
Purchase clicks. The number of times any amount of a promoted product or products are included in a purchase event after a click of an associated ad.
Purchases views. The number of purchases attributed to ad impressions.
Total purchase rate clicks. The number of purchases for promoted and brand halo products after clicking an associated ad, per every measured click.
Total Add to Cart rate. The number of Add to Carts for promoted and brand halo products, relative to the number of impressions after a view or click of an associated ad.
Total Add to Cart rate clicks. The number of Add to Carts for promoted and brand halo products after clicking an associated ad, per every measured click.

Benefits of Amazon Attribution

The best thing about getting Amazon Attribution support is the ability to compare the performance of an Amazon listing versus a product page on their independent store. With this data, there can be no more doubt about which generates more sales, converts better, and has a better ROI.

The key here is proper attribution – which channel exactly is responsible for which sale.

Advertising channels are always trying to claim credit for conversions to boast that they are the best, and now sellers have a tool that can show them what Amazon is actually doing for them – just like Google has with their highly developed Analytics platform.

Amazon Attribution uses the standard image impression pixels to track clicks and redirects to trace the path from offsite ad to Amazon checkout.

This gives you a count of all the sales made which originated from and have gone through different media channels and campaigns. The point of the tool is to be able to track advertising that originates outside of Amazon but that ends up in a sale made on Amazon.

Amazon Attribution Case Studies

An early case study shows a stunning 322% year-over-year growth for one brand that tested the tool in late 2017.

Advertiser Exverus Media, which managed the brand study, commented that they were interested in testing Amazon Attribution because of Amazon’s standing as an eCommerce marketplace.

The “opportunity to help drive efficiency” certainly panned out in this case:

“We were interested in Amazon Attribution due to the importance of Amazon as an e-commerce channel. Premier Protein has dedicated resources to growing its business on Amazon.

The ability to receive ROI metrics for Premier Protein’s digital media campaigns felt like a great opportunity to help drive efficiency.

We are excited to gain more insights from Amazon Attribution, which we’ll use to help decide where to invest our media budgets.

We are able to justify media investments like never before – we want to start using Amazon Attribution across all media plans for brands that sell their products on Amazon!”

– Jeremy Lopez, Media Supervisor at Exverus Media

Amazon Attribution Updates

Expanded Availability

In 2019, Amazon Attribution was unveiled – in limited availability – to vendors in the UK. Now, both US and UK vendors can now sign up for access by filling out this sign-up form.

And as of July 2022, Amazon Attribution is available for sellers in the Netherlands and Mexico. This is a great opportunity for local sellers to boost their marketing efforts to drive customers into Amazon.

Source: Advertising Amazon

Social Ad Measurement

This is a click-based solution that enables brands to:

Measure the impact of their social media ad campaigns based on how consumers discover, research, and buy products on Amazon.
Provide shopping impact analysis across search, social, email, display, and video media.

Bulk Operations for Google Ads

This feature lets brands automatically generate up to 100,000 attribution tags. To do so, upload a single file with campaign information. Then, download a file containing all of their attribution tags for easy implementation.

This process limits the time required to set up Google Ads campaigns.

Amazon Attribution Bulk Line Item Creator

According to Tinuiti.com, this feature enables advertisers to track Amazon Attribution data down to the keyword level.

Final Thoughts

The details that Amazon Attribution can provide are a big factor in determining the best marketing channels and strategies for a particular brand.

In broad terms, Amazon Attribution will help you to increase your sales rapidly by reaching customers off-Amazon.

By doing so, you can redirect them to your product listings or your Amazon storefront.

On top of that, you will be able to quantify your conversion rate accurately by knowing from which external channels your customers are coming to your Amazon page. This is great for planning new and more effective advertising campaigns.

Targeting potential customers and measuring their behavior across channels is a luxury that you cannot afford to miss out on.

And although it has not yet been confirmed, driving external traffic to Amazon may lead to gaining a privileged position. This translates into more visibility and, at best, winning the much-coveted Buy Box.

Optimization is the key to conversion. And access to detailed trends is the only way to truly optimize any advertising campaign.

Authors

Julia Valdez is a professional teacher and long-time lover of the art of words on paper and the stage. She has an entrepreneurial heart and spends most of her time doing marketing and management, freelance content writing, volunteer work, and sharing lots of laughs over little crazy things.

Esteban Muñoz is a content writer at AMZ Advisers, with several years’ experience in digital marketing and e-commerce. Esteban and the AMZ Advisers team have been able to achieve incredible growth on Amazon for their clients by optimizing and managing their accounts, and creating in-depth content marketing strategies.

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