Here’s the scenario; you are looking to drive more traffic to your Amazon Store. You go about your usual and set up a campaign on Amazon with Sponsored Display and Product ads. This time, you also want to try a different tactic and create ads outside of Amazon and use social media and Google.

You click send and your ads are running, great! But then you realise, how do you measure how your ads are performing off Amazon?

Solution: the Amazon Attribution tool.

What is Amazon Attribution?

Amazon Attribution is an advertising tool created by Amazon that allows brand-registered sellers and vendors to measure the performance of their external ads. It’s an important method of measuring the impact and ROI which can play a pivotal role in brands planning their digital strategy – especially when using Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok.

It’s free to use and is available in the US, Canada, Germany, Spain, France, Italy and UK. Brands are able to see detailed analytics and insights, which can be reviewed in downloadable reports, to better understand which non-Amazon marketing channels work best for their business and even more granular information for season campaigns and new launches.

This is across various media including display, search, social, video media, and email marketing. Brands learn what the “non-Amazon touchpoints” are that help customers interact with products on Amazon.

What are the benefits of using Amazon Attribution?

There are a few benefits of this tool:

1. You can better understand your performance on and off Amazon and know which strategies support your objectives and which don’t.
2. Increase sales and grow ROI.

Although not a direct impact of using Amazon Attribution, it’s important to remember that driving external traffic to Amazon can benefit and improve your organic rankings on Amazon. Amazon seems to favour listings that drive external traffic to product detail pages, so expect to enjoy a boost to your organic keyword rankings too.

How can you start?

Currently, you need to be a brand-registered, professional third-party seller or vendor in order to use the Amazon Attribution tool. You then need to set up an attribution account by filling out a sign-up form or registering through Seller Central.

Once this is set up, simply start adding the products to the campaigns you would like to track and create attribution tags. If you have used Facebook tracking pixels before, they work a little like that.

Essentially, the attribution tag is a tracking URL that sticks to the customer journey from when they click on your advert, so you can track more concisely where they have come to view your listing.

Then all you need to do once you have the tracking URL is paste it into the advert you have created off Amazon.

STEPS:

1. Log into your Amazon Advertising console account. Expand the global navigation and clock on Measurement & Reporting to find Amazon Attribution

2. Go to campaign manager and select ‘create campaign’.

3. For new campaigns, there are two options under ‘Creation Method’:

a. Select create manually to provide campaign details and generate tags
b. Use the bulk upload method to create multiple tags at once for specific publishers

4. Name your campaign and scroll down to see the products you sell on Amazon. Select the products you want to add to the new campaign.

a. Products that are not in stock, or don’t have a product or price are not eligible
b. “Variation parents” will never appear in Amazon Attribution’s product selector, but their children should be available.

5. Scroll down to create ad groups. Create one ad group per strategy, tactic or creative. Each ad group receives a unique attribution tag and will allow you to measure Amazon conversions for the products selected during the order creation. To create an ad group:

a. Ad group name: Create an ad group name based on where and how this specific tag will be implemented.

b. Publisher: Select the publisher that corresponds to your ad or post. If you don’t see the publisher listed, select New and enter the publisher’s name.

c. Channel: Select the channel that corresponds to the campaign you’re measuring.

d. Click-through URL: For the click-through URL, enter the Amazon destination that customers will be driven to once they click your ad, either a product detail page or a store page

6. To add additional ad groups under the same campaign, click add new ad group.

7. Once you’ve created all your ad groups select “Create”

8. The campaign has been successfully created!

• You can download all tags using a CSV file or copy each tag individually.

9. To complete the measurement setup, apply the tags to the corresponding non-Amazon campaign.

• Each tag should be applied in one individual ad unit.

Our perspective

A customer’s buying journey never starts and ends in a single place. With Amazon Attribution, you can begin to understand the effects of your cross-channel marketing on your amazon sales. For CMOs and Marketers, this is essential to know where to spend your budgets and resources to maximise your ROI.