Customers are discovering products and interacting with brands across more touchpoints than ever before. If you are selling on Amazon, these touchpoints are not only directly on Amazon, but also on channels like social media or Google. Every touchpoint is important to understand the whole customer journey and to figure out which channels work best for you.
That’s why Amazon introduced Amazon Attribution. Amazon Attribution is a tool for advertising and analytics measurement that gives marketers insights into the impact of their non-Amazon marketing channels on the purchase activity and their sales performance on Amazon.
These channels include search, social, video, display, and email marketing. With these insights, sellers can identify all the touchpoints that helped customers find and consider their product. This way, sellers can find new ways to grow their business on Amazon by creating a suitable strategy for all their channels. They can find out how shoppers interact with their brand - from the point of awareness to consideration to purchase.
Learn more about Amazon Attribution and how to best drive Google traffic to your Amazon listings in our interview with Tyler Gregg of Ampd.
Use Case for Amazon Attribution: You can create a tag in Amazon Attribution and insert it into an external campaign, e.g. a Google search campaign. This way you can see if this campaign really drives conversions. However, at the moment (July 2022), this is still quite complicated because you have a lot of different keywords in Google Ads that cannot all be covered with one tag.
All advantages at a glance
We have summarized the most important advantages of Amazon Attribution for you.
1. Detailed reports
The Amazon Attribution report covers standard traffic metrics such as impressions and clicks, but also Amazon conversion metrics such as detail page views, Add to Carts Clicks and purchases. Reports can be viewed directly in the console and can also be downloaded.
2. Optimize existing campaigns
By identifying which touchpoints are most important for you, you can decide which campaigns you should pay the most attention to and which you should optimize. This way you can make sure that your marketing campaigns add value to your brand on Amazon.
3. Discover new sales opportunities
By learning how exactly shoppers engage with your brand, you can also discover new sales opportunities, since you can see which strategies maximize your return on investment (ROI) and drive sales. With this information you can build new marketing and advertising plans.
Who can use Amazon Attribution?
Amazon Attribution can be used by professional sellers - who are registered in Amazon’s Brand Registry -, vendors and agencies, who manage clients who sell on Amazon.
How much does Amazon Attribution cost?
Currently, participating in Amazon Attribution is free of charge.
Start with Amazon Attribution
After you have logged in, you can add the ASINs of the products for which you want to track conversions in the so-called Order Level. Afterwards, you generate tags for your marketing strategies and implement them in the target URLs of the promotional ads. This is possible for search ads, display ads, social media ads, video ads and email marketing. The principle of Amazon Tracking is comparable to Google Analytics or Facebook Tracking.
When a user visits Amazon through a tagged ad, the corresponding data is stored in the system. However, this is not limited to whether the user ultimately buys your product or not. The further behavior of non-buyers is also recorded. Among other things, the product detail page views and add to cart clicks are recorded. Based on this data, you can specifically optimize your marketing actions.
Amazon Attribution Integration in the Advertising Console
In November 2021 Amazon Attribution was integrated into the Advertising Console, making it even easier to use. For example, you can invite other users, such as agency partners, to your Amazon Attribution Console. This is possible directly within the Console. To do this, select "Manage" in the navigation bar and then "User Management" to add users.
How accurate is the data from Amazon Attribution?
In general it’s important to understand that search/email tactics, where customers are typically in a "ready to buy" state, are more likely to have lower funnel conversions (sales, purchases) than social tactics, where you will get way more metrics for the upper funnel (such as clicks or Detail Page Views).
Also, if you use in-app social campaigns (e.g. on Instagram or Facebook) purchase conversions can only be attributed in your reporting when they occurred in the same browsing session as the initial ad click. This is caused by the fact that in-app mobile environments are browser and cookie-less. Therefore, in order to identify the customer who clicked the ad and converted, the conversion events must happen in the same browsing session, when the ad click occurs in an in-app environment. This means that not all sales are attributed correctly.
Amazon is currently working on the improvement of this issue by automating the deep-link experience.
Are promotional codes or voucher codes an alternative?
Some sellers have been using promotional or voucher codes to measure the effectiveness of their marketing and advertising campaigns. These codes can be generated in Seller Central and distributed through advertising campaigns. If you create separate codes for each promotion, you can use the promotion ID (follow-up identifier) to determine the channel through which a buyer became aware of your product. However, this method is very complex and the results are time-delayed. Moreover, the data you get is not as extensive and detailed as the Amazon Attribution data.
Conclusion
If you sell on the Amazon marketplace, you can use Amazon Attribution to measure the effects of your external marketing activities. This allows you to optimize and adjust your marketing activities based on your goals. Even though attribution is not yet 100% accurate, it gives you a really good starting point for evaluation.
If you also want to optimize your Amazon Ads, try BidX. The BidX tool automates your ads and optimizes keywords and bids rule-based and according to your targets.
