Get Started with Amazon Attribution
Published: August 11, 2020
Author: Linda Miller
In my last post, I covered the significance of Amazon Attribution for helping marketers track a significant volume of conversions. In this post, I’ll explain how to get started.
Setting up your Amazon Attribution account is quick and simple. Currently, Amazon Attribution is available for Vendors and Brand owners with a Seller Central login. Amazon Attribution is an advertiser-first product, but Sellers and Vendors can invite their agencies and partners to help with campaign setup and execution.
Step 1: Register
If you have a Seller Central login on Amazon, just login as you normally would and click here to register. Otherwise, click here to register through the Vendor sign-up form.
Step 2: Build a New Order and Generate Amazon Attribution Tags
Once you’re logged in, click on the Advertiser name. Select the respective publisher where the Amazon Attribution tag will be going. Click New Order to begin the process of building your order.
Think of an Order as an overall campaign. If you’re hoping to measure Google search campaigns, select the Upload file option under Creation Method to streamline campaign creation using bulk operations; this lets you bulk-upload up to 100,000 attribution tags. For any other campaigns, use the manual creation method. Be sure to add any products that you’re aiming to drive sales for through this campaign.
We recommend selecting the products that are featured in the creative and any closely related product variations (can use the “add variations” button to do this automatically). All other products under the same brand name will be captured in “total” metrics. You’ll then follow the steps to create line items by adding the respective publisher(s) for your campaign to generate the Amazon Attribution tag(s). You can create multiple line items within a single order.
Step 3: Implement Pixel Tracking
For example, with Facebook: Paste the Amazon Attribution tag into the URL Parameter section within the Facebook UI.
Step 4: Analyze & Learn
Once Amazon Attribution tracking tags are placed and campaigns are live, you can analyze the impact your ads are having on Amazon sales and shopping activity. If you want to get even more granular, you can create tags to track keyword performance!
Click into the report center to generate a report by performance, keyword or creative. You also have the ability to schedule reporting.
With the ability to connect Amazon conversion metrics – including clicks, detail page views, add to carts, and purchases – to your cross-channel strategies, you now have insight into the entire customer journey that ultimately resulted in a purchase on Amazon, providing you with impact analysis for Search, Social, e-mail, Display and Video.
Best Practices
1. Combine scheduled reporting with UI data
As a best practice, we recommend scheduling and reviewing reporting on a bi-weekly basis to account for the 14-day attribution window. In addition, we recommend combining those metrics with the data you have pulled from the UIs you’re advertising in, to continuously monitor the split between purchases on Amazon.com vs. your brand’s site.
2. Factor in 24-hour latency with reporting
While reporting is available on-demand, we recommend allowing a 24-hour period to ensure all conversions are accounted for.
3. Performance metrics – use “Total Units Sold”
When choosing your performance metrics, we recommend using Total Units Sold, as the metric encompasses more than “Units Sold” does. Units Sold refers to the specific products you selected during campaign setup, while Total Units Sold represents all of your products listed on Amazon. Since customers can discover additional products from your detail pages, we recommend looking at Total Units Sold to understand the total impact of your campaign across your business.
As always, we recommend you keep an eye out on this blog and on Amazon’s resources to keep up with updates as they roll out. Good luck!
