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Amazon Attribution: How to Measure the Traffic You Send to Amazon from Google, Meta, Email and Influencers

Short answer: Amazon Attribution is Amazon Ads’ free tool for measuring what happens on Amazon after someone clicks your marketing somewhere else, such as a Google search ad, a Meta ad, an email, an influencer post or an affiliate link. You create a tagged link for each tactic and use it in place of the plain Amazon URL. Amazon then reports clicks, detail page views, add-to-carts, purchases, units and sales credited to that tag, using a 14-day, last-touch model (Amazon Ads; Amazon Ads guide). For US brand owners selling as third-party sellers, the same tags also qualify sales for Amazon’s Brand Referral Bonus.

Without it, money spent off Amazon to send shoppers to an Amazon listing is hard to judge. The ad platform sees the click. Amazon sees the order. Neither connects the two for you.

What does Amazon Attribution measure?

Amazon describes Attribution as a measurement tool for non-Amazon channels, including search, social, display, video, email and affiliate or influencer campaigns. Campaigns can be paid or organic (Amazon Ads guide). It does not measure Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands or other Amazon Ads media. Those report in the ads console, and the trade-offs in those numbers are covered in ACoS vs TACoS.

The reports follow the shopper through the funnel (Amazon Ads):

  • Engagement: clicks, detail page views (DPV) and detail page view rate.
  • Conversion: add-to-cart and add-to-cart rate, purchases and purchase rate, units sold, product sales and new-to-brand.

Each conversion metric comes in two versions. Promoted metrics count the products you assigned to the campaign. Brand halo metrics count other products from the same brand that the shopper bought instead or as well. Total is the sum of the two (Amazon Ads guide). New-to-brand uses a one-year lookback, so it counts shoppers who had not bought from the brand in the past 12 months.

You can slice results by channel, publisher, campaign, ad group, keyword, creative and product ASIN.

Who is eligible for Amazon Attribution?

Amazon lists professional sellers enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry, vendors, KDP authors and agencies with clients who sell on Amazon. It is available in the US, Canada and Mexico, and in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. Advertisers based elsewhere can use it if they sell in one of those Amazon stores (Amazon Ads). Amazon’s guide adds that sellers need brand representative status in Brand Registry (Amazon Ads guide).

So the brand owner has to be set up properly first. If the trademark or Brand Registry enrollment is not in place, start there.

Access is through the Amazon Ads console, which Amazon now calls Amazon Ads Agent, under Measurement and Reporting. You can also get it through tool providers integrated with the Amazon Ads API. Agencies can be added under Manage, then User management (Amazon Ads).

How do you set up Amazon Attribution tags?

Amazon offers two ways to create campaigns (Amazon Ads guide).

Manual campaigns suit email, influencers, social posts, affiliates and smaller paid tests:

  1. In the console, go to Measurement and Reporting, then Amazon Attribution, then Create campaign.
  2. Name the campaign and add the products it promotes, including size and color variations. Only products that are in stock and have images and prices can be measured.
  3. Create one ad group for each tactic, creative or placement. For each one, choose the publisher and channel and enter the click-through URL, either a product detail page or your Brand Store.
  4. Copy each generated tag into the destination URL field of the ad, post, button or email link, in place of the plain Amazon URL.

Bulk upload suits paid search and paid social at scale. You download a template for Google Ads or Facebook/Instagram, fill it with an export from Google Ads or Meta Ads Manager, and upload it. Amazon says one file can cover up to 100,000 Google search keywords or 8,500 Facebook or Instagram ads. Tag creation takes about 10 minutes. You then upload the tagged file back into Google Ads or Meta Ads Manager. Keyword- and creative-level reports exist only for bulk-created campaigns.

API integrations remove most of the manual work. Through the Amazon Ads API, a tool provider can use one macro-enabled tag per publisher for Google, Facebook and Instagram, add ASINs automatically and join Amazon sales to its own campaign data (Amazon Ads guide).

The design choice that matters most is granularity. Amazon recommends one tag per tactic, such as a creative, message or audience group, because reports can only split results the way you tagged them (Amazon Ads). One tag shared by five influencers tells you the five together worked. It does not tell you which one.

What is the Amazon Attribution window?

Amazon Attribution uses a 14-day, last-touch model. A conversion counts only if it happens within 14 days of a tagged click, and the credit goes to the most recent tagged click (Amazon Ads guide).

Two practical consequences follow. If a shopper clicks your newsletter on Monday and an influencer link on Thursday, then buys, the influencer tag gets the sale. And a long consideration product bought three weeks after the click will not show up at all.

How does Brand Referral Bonus tie in?

Brand Referral Bonus pays US brand owners a credit for sales they drive to Amazon from non-Amazon marketing, measured with Attribution tags. Amazon says the bonus averages 10% of qualifying sales. It is applied as a credit against future referral fees, not paid as cash (Sell on Amazon).

The terms Amazon publishes:

  • Who qualifies: sellers in Amazon’s US store with a Professional selling plan whose brand is enrolled in Brand Registry. Enrollment is in Seller Central, under Brands, and requires a tax form (Sell on Amazon; Amazon BRB guide).
  • What qualifies: the promoted product and other products from the same brand bought up to 14 days after the tagged click. Traffic from Amazon advertising, such as sponsored or video ads, does not qualify (Sell on Amazon).
  • How much: the rate varies by category and price. Amazon’s examples are 11% for clothing, and for furniture 10% on the first $200 of the sale price and 7% above that. The current category table is on the Brand Referral Bonus help page in Seller Central (Sell on Amazon).
  • When: credits post after a two-month wait for cancellations and returns. A weekly bonus report is available in Seller Central (Amazon BRB guide).

Vendors can use Attribution to measure. Amazon’s published eligibility for the bonus covers brand-owner sellers only. For a brand moving from Vendor Central to Seller Central, the bonus is one more line in the comparison.

What are the limitations?

  • Clicks only. Credit starts with a tagged click. A shopper who sees your ad, then searches Amazon for your brand, is not credited to that ad. Watch branded search volume in Amazon Brand Analytics alongside it.
  • Last touch, 14 days. Earlier touches get no credit, and slow purchases fall outside the window.
  • Numbers will not match the ad platform. Amazon says a 10–20% gap between Attribution and publisher click counts can be normal, and that you should wait one to two days before validating reports. Stores insights use a different methodology, so they will not match either (Amazon Ads guide).
  • Tag hygiene decides data quality. A tag reused across creatives or trackers inflates clicks. A campaign with the wrong ASINs shows clicks but no sales.
  • Sales, not profit. Product sales are revenue. They say nothing about margin after referral fees, fulfillment, returns and media cost. Use the same contribution test you use for ACoS.

How is Amazon Attribution different from Amazon Marketing Cloud?

They answer different questions.

Amazon Attribution Amazon Marketing Cloud
Measures Non-Amazon marketing that sends clicks to Amazon Amazon Ads media and signals, plus inputs you bring
How Tagged links, ready-made reports Clean room with templates, SQL and APIs
Output Campaign, channel, keyword and ASIN reports Aggregated, anonymous query results and audiences
Cost Free No cost for eligible advertisers; paid add-on features
Best for Proving which outside channel sells on Amazon Path, frequency and audience questions

Amazon describes AMC as a privacy-safe clean room for analysis and audience building across pseudonymized signals, where you only see aggregated, anonymous outputs (Amazon Ads). Attribution is the simpler tool. If the question is whether a Meta campaign or an influencer drove Amazon sales, start with Attribution. If the question is how shoppers move across your Amazon Ads before buying, that is what Amazon Marketing Cloud is for.

How AEG helps

AEG Accelerator is the brand-building and growth partner for established companies, and for manufacturers and emerging brands ready to join them. We set up Attribution tagging across a brand’s off-Amazon channels, enroll eligible accounts in Brand Referral Bonus, and read the results against contribution margin, not clicks. See our marketplace brand management services.

Book a strategy call to see which channels actually sell on Amazon.

FAQ

Is Amazon Attribution free? Yes. Amazon lists it as a free measurement solution.

What is the Amazon Attribution window? 14 days from the tagged click, credited on a last-touch basis.

Can I use Amazon Attribution for influencer and email links? Yes. Create a separate ad group and tag for each influencer, email or post, and use the tag as the link.

Do Sponsored Products sales earn a Brand Referral Bonus? No. The bonus covers non-Amazon marketing measured with Attribution tags, not Amazon advertising.

Can vendors use Amazon Attribution? Yes. Vendors are eligible for Attribution. Amazon’s published Brand Referral Bonus eligibility covers brand-owner sellers in the US store.

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