What is Amazon Attribution?

Amazon Attribution is a powerful measurement tool created by Amazon and made available to its sellers, allowing them to assess the impact of their non-Amazon marketing and advertising efforts on customer behaviour and sales. This tool is especially helpful to sellers who utilise search engines, social media, email, and other websites to draw traffic to their Amazon PDP’s.

In today’s fragmented digital world, a consumer can encounter products through several means or stages before deciding to purchase, so understanding the customer journey is essential. Amazon Attribution bridges the gap by providing details linking conversion events on Amazon with preceding digital touchpoints that customers have used. This data plays a key role because it enables brands to analyse the efficiency of certain ad campaigns, keywords, or channels in real-time, offering a clear picture of how each marketing activity contributes to conversion rates.

Amazon Attribution is significant for ads teams because of its ability to provide precise and actionable results. Advertisers are often left to guess which aspects of their marketing strategies are working successfully, but with Amazon Attribution, you can identify high-performing campaigns and optimise ad spend accordingly. This optimisation can result in greater returns on investment (ROI), as advertisers can up the ante on successful strategies and amend or discontinue those that aren’t producing the desired results.

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So, who can use this feature?

Sellers enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry, vendors, and agencies with clients selling products on Amazon are currently eligible for Amazon Attribution. This exclusivity ensures that only those with established brands and a thorough understanding of Amazon’s ecosystem make use of the tool’s advanced capabilities. It also emphasises the importance Amazon places on brand ownership.

To access Amazon Attribution, log in to your Seller Central account. From the central portal, navigate to the top left corner of the hub and tap the menu, visualised as three horizontal lines. From here, find your way to ‘Advertising’ and then over to ‘Campaign Manager.’ Give it a click.

Once inside Campaign Manager, you will be presented with the Ads’ Manager hub. Along the left-hand side toolbar, locate ‘Measurement and Reporting,’ which is found towards the bottom of the options.

Once you’ve clicked on the measurements and reporting icon, you will see ‘Amazon Attribution’ appear in the pop-out window. Give that a final click to be taken to the Attribution Campaigns screen.

This is the central hub where you can create and view your attribution tags

Setting up Amazon Attribution involves generating tags for each ad, which are then used across other platforms external to Amazon. Amazon Attribution collects data on several performance measures, such as click-through rates (CTR), detailed page views, add-to-cart rates, and buy rates (conversions), once the ads are live. This level of detail provides sellers with insight into more than just the final purchase but also how customers engage with their product listings at various phases of the buying process.

How to use Amazon Attribution

To begin tracking the performance of your campaigns, you need to create the appropriate tags. Attribution requires you to specify the advertising channel, such as a blog, search engine, or social media channel, as well as the ad type. This specificity ensures that the data collected is tailored to your advertising medium, increasing the relevancy of the insights gathered. For comparison, the concept is similar to Meta’s Facebook Pixel.

Click ‘Create Campaign’ to start developing your tags. For this example, we’re going to create our tag manually. On the following page, select the create manually option. Give your campaign a name. We are creating a tag to use on Google, so we have labelled it accordingly.

Then, you will need to select the product or products you want to associate with this campaign. Choose one, a few, or all of your list of products.

The next step requires you to copy the URL from the page you want your customers to land on when they click on your ad. In the example below, we have highlighted which part of the URL you need, but to clarify, it is after your product ASIN. Think of the forward slash as the cut-off point.

Paste the URL into the ‘Click-Through URL’ field, as well as fill in the other required sections. To keep track of your tags, giving them relevant names makes it easier to find them later on. The format we have used in the example is [product] – [platform] – [date], but you’re free to use whichever labelling works best for you.

Once you have completed this process, either hit ‘Create’ at the top of the page to create your tag, or click the three dots to duplicate the ad group. This is helpful when creating tags for ads that are going to be A/B tested as it saves you having to repeat the process each time. Thanks Amazon! Just remember to update your ad group name.

Tip: each ad group produces 1 tag

And there you have it – your very own attribution tag! Notice how Attribution has modified the original click-through URL which is shown in the rightmost column. Place the Attribution tag’s unique URL in all of your marketing materials, including social media posts, blog articles, influencer shout-outs, and email blasts, to track various types of data, from initial ad views all the way through to completed sales. Each campaign has its own distinct link, which helps to ensure that the data collected is precise and that information is not mixed up between differing campaigns. This way, you can be confident that the data you’re looking at is accurate and directly related to the campaign you’re analysing.

By analysing the data these tags provide, brands can see which marketing channels are performing best. This insight allows for informed decisions on the fly, such as tweaking underperforming ads or doubling down on those that are hitting the mark. The careful application of Amazon Attribution tags is a testament to a marketer’s ability to adapt to, and capitalise on, the fluidity of consumer behaviour.

However, this feature is more than just tracking sales, oh yes. It is about piecing together the entire story of how a customer moves from discovering your product to purchasing it.

When you’ve configured your Amazon Attribution tags in your live campaigns, it’s time to dig into the data. The Amazon Attribution dashboard is where the action happens, providing a detailed view of each campaign’s performance as it unfolds. It’s not just about how many people clicked on your ad; it’s also about what they do once they’re on Amazon. You can see everything from how many people viewed your ad (impressions) to how many clicked on it (click-through rates), how many took a closer look at your product (detailed page views), and how many decided to add your product to their cart (add-to-cart rates).

But the crème de la crème is in the purchase rates – the ultimate confirmation that your ad didn’t just draw attention; it also got results! The proof is in the pudding, as they say.

Tip: Amazon Attribution utilises a last-click attribution model, meaning if an ad is clicked on TikTok, then an ad is clicked on Facebook afterward, then the Facebook ad gets the credit.

By examining these numbers, you can identify which ads are worth their weight in gold and which are just taking up space. It’s like a game of chess. You can improve your game plan, tweak your ads, where you place them, and who you target in order to connect better with potential customers.

Furthermore, the data from Amazon Attribution can also be used to refine broader marketing strategies. Brands can create more focused and appealing marketing campaigns by knowing which creative messaging, platforms, and audience segments are generating engagement and conversion. This strategic refinement can contribute to long-term brand growth, customer loyalty, and repeat sales. Bingo!

Tip: Amazon Attribution has a 14-day lookback window, so if a buyer clicks on an ad, leaves, and then comes back later to purchase within the given timeframe, that ad click is still counted.

How advertisers can use Amazon Attribution

Amazon Attribution is an invaluable resource for advertisers looking to fine-tune their non-Amazon marketing campaigns. It provides a detailed breakdown of how various marketing tactics contribute to customer engagement and platform sales. Advertisers can use this tool to optimise their strategies, ensuring that every penny is spent where it will have the greatest impact.

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Optimising marketing campaigns with Attribution involves diving into data to determine which ads motivate customers to act. By understanding this, advertisers can adapt their strategies, focusing on developing the most engaging message for the audience they are targeting and positioning it in the most likely places for them to see it. Fine-tuning the minor details, from the creative aspects to the ad timing, with the goal of boosting engagement and conversions, is crucial.

With the ability to measure cross-channel impact, advertisers can see how their efforts across multiple platforms and channels, from social media to email marketing, are affecting Amazon sales. This wide-angle perspective allows advertisers to determine which platforms are most beneficial to the brand, allowing them to spend resources more effectively and establish a coherent marketing message.

At the end of the day, improving ROI is the endgame for advertisers using Amazon Attribution. By analysing which ads lead to sales and at what cost, advertisers can make informed decisions, boosting their marketing ROI. In a nutshell, Amazon Attribution is a fundamental tool for advertisers navigating Amazon’s competitive landscape, ensuring that every marketing action has been well-calculated and every investment produces concrete results.

Our Thoughts

For brands looking to grow their business and get the most bang for their buck, mastering Amazon Attribution is a must. It’s not just about making sales; it’s about making smart, informed decisions that will help you understand your customers better, craft more compelling marketing messages, and ultimately boost your bottom line.

Overall, Amazon Attribution is an indispensable tool for any brand that wants to optimise its online advertising. It provides a comprehensive understanding of how off-Amazon marketing efforts translate into on-Amazon performance, enabling data-driven decisions that can significantly enhance your advertising efficiency and effectiveness. As competition within Amazon’s marketplace continues to grow, the ability to leverage such analytics will become paramount for brands aiming to achieve and maintain a competitive edge.

You may also like our Complete Amazon Advertising Guide.

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