Amazon Attribution Update Makes for a More Effective Sales Tool

Great news for sellers using Amazon Attribution to drive external traffic to Amazon! 🥳

The tech giant has reportedly rolled out a new Amazon Attribution feature that will replace the previously featured competitor ads placed at the top of your listing with other popular products from your own store. 🔥 This means an increase in brand awareness and new cross-selling opportunities within your catalog, which may help boost conversion and minimize Advertising Cost of Sales (ACOS) for off-Amazon traffic.

Currently in beta, the new feature is available to sellers utilizing Amazon Attribution with Google Ads through January 2023.

What Prompted This Update From Amazon?

Brand-registered sellers use Amazon Attribution (AA), a free advertising tool, to track and measure the performance of their off-Amazon efforts, giving them insights into which channels are best for their business. They also utilize the Brand Referral Bonus (BRB) program in conjunction with AA to earn, on average, a 10% discount on referral fees associated with the sales generated from off-Amazon ads.

🤔 It makes sense for Amazon to incentivize sellers willing to drive external traffic using AA because they are more likely to continue driving that traffic if they can see that it is working for them. Without that visibility to measure against, they might abandon external traffic campaigns that are actually working for them. Attribution helps to prevent this from happening.

⚠️ However, there was a major flaw in the program.

Prior to the update, when a customer is directed to a listing from Google Ads, the first thing they see at the top of the screen are ads from competitors. This essentially resulted in sellers paying for Google ads that simply drove traffic to their competitors. 🤦

To prevent this from happening, some sellers started sending traffic to their brand Storefront instead of driving it to a specific product page. However, the former doesn’t convert nearly as well as the latter, as the shoppable content customers see may not be related to what is being advertised on Google. Some may get confused and leave the store, while, less often, others may end up browsing through and buying more than one of the seller’s products.

💪 The bottom line is sellers did not want to be twice-burned by wasting ad dollars and sending their potential customers into the arms of their competitors.

Amazon Has Finally Listened

“Now in beta, when brands use Amazon Attribution to direct their non-Amazon marketing to their product detail page via Google Ads, customers will see a new section at the top of the page labeled ‘Other popular products from this brand.’ This new feature is meant to help increase brand awareness and promote new selling opportunities by showcasing three additional products from the brand.” Amazon said in an email sent out to its brand partners on August 9.

Making this change also shows Amazon’s desire to strengthen its partnership with sellers conducting off-Amazon marketing campaigns. Now, they can bring more customers to their target listing when utilizing Amazon Attribution with zero competitors at the top section of the page, which should help increase sales through conversions and cross-sells while decreasing Amazon fees. 💰

However, note that your BRB rate may vary by product category and marketplace. As of August 2022, Amazon US is the only marketplace that rewards sellers with a 10% bonus, whereas Canada, Mexico, EU, among others simply have the tracking capability.

It’s possible that Amazon would lower the BRB rate for the US marketplace from 10% to 5%, or to 0% eventually. But the opposite scenario could occur too, in which Amazon offers BRB to sellers from other marketplaces in the future.

Overall, Amazon Attribution can be beneficial to your business. Not only does it help increase conversion and potentially lower referral fees through BRB, it also improves your on-Amazon organic ranking, leading to more sales.

So, sellers who adopt this program early could gain a huge competitive advantage over those who don’t. And the good news is that Amazon Attribution has only just begun and as the eCommerce landscape continues to change, sellers and SaaS companies alike, in conjunction with Amazon Attribution, will continue to find new ways to make external traffic more measurable and impactful within the Amazon seller toolbelt. 🚀

Related: Amazon Budgeting & Advertising Tips with the Customer Journey Principle