Grow Amazon Sales by Understanding Cross-Channel Amazon Attribution

Amazon Attribution Beta:

The launch of the Amazon Attribution beta is a huge milestone in cross-channel tracking. With the functionality to track SEM, social, video, and display using click and view-through attribution technology, advertisers now have the ability to launch full-funnel paid media programs to drive Amazon growth. Every Amazon business should consider advertising growth initiatives outside of direct Amazon Ads results, and digital marketers should be testing these opportunities.

Read on to learn more about how you can leverage the Amazon Attribution tool across channels to help grow your business.

Track The Indirect Impact Of Search Engine Marketing

Although Google text and shopping ads drive users to your website, your customers can still find their way to Amazon after that click. The Amazon Attribution beta allows you to track sales on Amazon after a customer clicks on your Google ad, which could mean your Google Ads spend is performing at a much higher ROI than reported in-channel. We have seen up to 25% of paid search clicks that lead to an Amazon detail page-view, demonstrating the volume of cross-channel customer behavior and product discovery on Google search. If this holds true to your business, up to 25% of paid media clicks are likely underreported and undervalued due to customers purchasing on Amazon.

With the ability to set up tracking at the campaign, adgroup, keyword, or ad level, you can better understand what is driving Google-to-Amazon activity, which in turn could help you decide to spend more or less on a specific area of your Google Ads account. In terms of setup, we recommend setting up separate tracking for brand, non-brand, and shopping to understand first how much traffic is ending up on Amazon. From there, granularize your tracking down to the keyword or ad level for actionable insight.

Track Direct-to-Amazon Social Advertisement

Although viewthrough tracking is not currently part of the attribution functionality, the ability to track Facebook and Instagram ads that send directly to Amazon provides a unique opportunity to improve your conversion rate and engagement. While prospecting audiences may not be familiar with your brand, they are certainly familiar with the Amazon brand, and they are more willing to purchase from an unfamiliar brand on Amazon than anywhere else. Call out Amazon Prime and 2-day free shipping in your Facebook creative and ad copy and send traffic to Amazon landing pages. This taps into the willingness of customers to purchase from an unfamiliar brand if they are directed to Amazon. For one account, we saw up to a +96% improvement in clickthrough rate with Amazon Prime and 2-day free shipping callouts leading to Amazon.com compared to the non-Amazon ads leading to the website.

Viewthrough Tracking For Display & Video

Evaluating the effectiveness of upper-funnel advertising such as video and display is no easy task, especially when you’re looking to drive engagement and prove down-funnel impact. With display and video ads, you can leverage the attention-grabbing brand recognition of Amazon to drive better awareness of your top of funnel advertisements. Through the Amazon Attribution beta, Amazon marketers can now understand the impact those ads have on your Amazon business. Through the available metrics in the attribution UI such as cumulative reach, average impression frequency, and detail page views, you can now measure top-of-funnel advertisements focused on driving Amazon activity.

Conclusion

For businesses looking to grow their Amazon sales, the Amazon Attribution tool poses the opportunity to drive more business without relying solely on your Amazon Advertising efforts. The true path to business incrementality revolves around creating synergy across your advertising channels, and creating synergy relies on understanding cross-channel customer behavior.

Tracking and understanding the impact of social, SEM, display and video on your Amazon business is critical to planning your marketing strategy and media mix investment.

If you’re interested in learning how Metric Theory can help you grow your Amazon business with a unique paid media strategy, contact us here.

Note: Although the tool is only available to 1st party vendors (AMS) to start, Amazon has opened up whitelisting to all Amazon sellers. Attribution is credited to 14-day last touch clicks on social channels, including but not limited to: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and SEM channels: Google Ads and Bing Ads. Currently, viewthrough tracking is not part of the functionality for social channels. Attribution is credited using 14-day viewthrough window for display and video ads. Display tracking is available through most major publications and DSPs including DoubleClick, Google Display Network, and TradeDesk among others. Video tracking is available for Vimeo, Twitch, and Hulu among many other video ad channels.