5 answers to the new Amazon Attribution Beta

Q1: Amazon describes the new product as follows: “For the first time, you can measure the impact of display, search, and video media channels based on how consumers discover, research, and buy your products on Amazon.“ How did merchants measure the effectiveness of external traffic sources before?

So far, we do not know any tool that allows a similar evaluation. Unfortunately, there is no possibility to integrate a tracking pixel to assign traffic and sales to specific ads and campaigns on Amazon. This is only possible on websites. For this reason, sellers and agencies have used coupon codes in external campaigns, which can then be assigned to individual sales. However, this only works with a time delay and it is relatively complicated to gather insights about views and conversion from the various data sources.

Q2: Why is external traffic so important?

In the past, it was often sufficient to optimize a product to be successful on Amazon. However, the competition for organic rankings and paid ads on Amazon is getting tougher. This is why external traffic is becoming more important in order to gain a competitive advantage. The problem so far has been the lack of measurability of the campaigns.

There are 3 main reasons for setting up external campaigns:

1. Developing new customer groups
2. Avoiding competition on Amazon
3. The positive impact on keyword rankings

Q3: What are the consequences for the Amazon ecosystem?

Time will tell. Amazon Attribution is a beta version and we do not know if the data quality is reliable or the features really deliver what Amazon promises. However, should the announcements prove true, the impact of social media, search, display or video campaigns can now be analyzed and validated. This would keep the whole topic moving.

Q4: In a case study, Amazon advertises almost 100% more sales from quarter to quarter. Is that realistic for the average merchant?

At a first glance, this looks like an exceptional case. For the average merchant, the impact of Amazon Attribution as an analytics tool is hard to predict because this depends on the budget for external campaigns and the level of sales that is already in place. In addition, we took a closer look at the brand from the case study and discovered very good sales ranks among the topsellers in Q4 2017 before the test pilot. It would be interesting to know which products are responsible for the growth.

Q5: What is the general conclusion about Amazon Attribution?

For a conclusion it is still too early. First of all, it is a beta version that is currently only available for sellers on Amazon.com. We are curious when Amazon Attribution will also launch in Germany and other European marketplaces. However, we hope that the development will go fast because free traffic and customer acquisition would be desirable. As an agency, we often talk to Amazon about data transparency, and we’re excited about this initiative. It can really help us analyzing and optimizing external campaigns.