Ad attributed sales on Amazon are measured at Brand Halo level. Here’s what that means and why it matters…
It seems a simple enough equation – you spend £x advertising your big red product on Amazon and you get £y back in sales. It feels good. Your top seller, the small blue product, is great. But it’s important to make sure that you’re getting growth across the range. Your advertising has brought in £y in sales of the big red one. Although some of those customers might have bought anyway, your advertising likely increased overall sales for that product.
Or did it.
How ad sales are attributed
The truth is that the £y is the total of all sales for any product under your brand that are attributed to a click on your ad. The ad was for Big Red, but the shopper may have clicked on that ad and then clicked through your variation group to another product. Or clicked the link to your brand store and shopped from there. They may even have looked at Big Red, decided that wasn’t what they wanted, and then typed in a more specific search in order to find Small Blue. Purchases of Small Blue in that context will form a part of your £y. If there are 3rd party sellers of your products, then even sales of either Big Red or Small Blue recorded through their account rather than yours will qualify as a sale for these ads.
This is true for all the Sponsored Ad types.
This isn’t necessarily a disaster – the person clicked on your ad so they have seen your big red product and you’ve raised awareness of the breadth of your range. But you didn’t necessarily make a difference to your big red sales line straight away.
We have been reminded of the impact of the brand halo measurement on some recent campaigns. Some clients have experienced disruption in supply leading to out-of-stocks on top-selling products. When this happens the ad sales on other ads sometimes collapse (even though these ranges were in stock), demonstrating that the sales were previously artificially boosted because of the brand halo purchases of top selling products.
Ad Attributed Sales Reporting
For all three ad types, there is a report that shows which products were actually purchased and attributed to each ad during the specified time period. If you go to the left hand navigation bar, and look in the reports section, then you will be able to find them.
These reports give you the true purchase impact of the advertising during that period. They are helpful for understanding the shopper journey. The data isn’t pretty when it comes off, but if you pivot the data in Excel then it becomes more manageable.
Viewing these reports will help you to answer questions such as:
- Are the ads delivering sales for the desired products/ranges?
- Which products are most responsive to advertising (even if they are not featured in the ads)?
- Are 3P sellers providing product formats that are more appealing to the shopper than our own?
Conclusion
- An awareness of the way that ad attributed sales are measured is helpful in evaluating your advertising campaigns.
- The ‘attributed purchases’ reporting will tell you what shoppers actually purchased after clicking on your ad.
- Bear in mind that clicks on an ad are part of the shopper journey and have value even if the final product purchased is for a different product in your range.