How To Use Amazon Attribution & Brand Referral Bonus Programs

You may have heard about Amazon Attribution and Amazon Brand Referral Bonus programs and are wondering how they can help build your business.

With Amazon’s CPC on the rise, and the platform taking a stronger stance against black hat ranking tactics, more sellers are looking for ways to drive external traffic to their Amazon product detail page.

In addition, some brands—particularly those without a direct-to-consumer (DTC) website or those who want to use sales from external traffic sources to help rank organically on the e-commerce giant—will turn to advertising on Amazon to help out. Pay the transfers required to get those ratings.

In the past, the disadvantage of sending external traffic to Amazon was that there was no way to track traffic results and conversion rates.

Amazon does not allow pixels to be added to its product detail pages, so it was difficult to determine the effectiveness of external campaigns directed at Amazon.

On top of the lack of transparency on how your external traffic is performing, you also had to factor in the cost of Amazon fees as well as the cost of ads in your profitability calculations.

To address this issue, Amazon has introduced two programs that work together to help you see how your outbound traffic is doing and get credit back on charges for products you’ve sent to Amazon.

These programs are Amazon Attribution and Amazon Brand Referral Bonus.

Why drive external traffic to Amazon?

In general, it is better to direct traffic to your product detail page from within the Amazon advertising platform due to the higher visibility of campaign performance and lower cost for many products.

However, there are times when it makes sense to direct external traffic to Amazon.

Amazon Top of Funnel advertising products are still in their infancy, and some of the targeting isn’t as advanced as what you can find on other platforms.

There are instances where there are more opportunities to effectively advertise to specific demographics or targeting groups outside of Amazon, such as Facebook, Google, or Instagram.

Additionally, most Amazon advertising products severely limit the amount of creative you can include in your ads.

For many types of Amazon ads, the basic creatives are from the same list. Therefore, it can be challenging to craft ads tailored to different audiences or to provide education or brand awareness for products.

Amazon-generated ads generally allow more freedom in creative images and text.

In general, sending external traffic to Amazon can be more expensive because in addition to paying external costs for ads, you also pay Amazon fees.

This additional cost means that you will need a higher return on ad spend in order to be profitable.

This will not be an option for every seller or every type of product. But if your margin allows, we’ve seen an increase in gross sales and profitability when you do it right.

Refer Amazon with Brand Referral Reward Program

For cases where it makes sense to send traffic from outside of Amazon, there are a couple of programs that can help you increase the visibility of your campaigns and reduce your overall cost.

the Amazon Referral Program It was available 2 years ago. It enables you to direct external traffic and see specific data about the results of the traffic that you send to Amazon.

In July 2021, Amazon introduced Brand Referral Reward Program.

With this program, when you pay for external traffic, Amazon will deduct the referral fee you pay for the products you sell with the traffic you sent to your Amazon product detail page.

Remember that to use the Brand Referral Reward Program, you must first participate in the Amazon Referral Program and Brand Registry.

Below are the details of both programs.

Amazon Referral Program

This software allows you to track specific metrics of traffic sent using your Amazon referral link.

As part of the program, Amazon creates a custom link that tracks specific metrics generated because of the traffic you’ve sent to the product detail page.

Amazon countries which – which:

“Referral reporting includes clicks, as well as Amazon conversion metrics such as detailed page views, add-to-cart, and purchases. Reporting is available via downloadable reports and within the console.”

To participate in this program, you must enroll in the Amazon Trademark Registration Program. If you do not have a direct brand, you can participate in the Amazon IP Accelerator Program.

The way Amazon Attribution works is that you are assigned a custom link and given a cross-device referral form for 14 days last touch.

Amazon Brand Referral Reward Program

The Amazon Brand Referral Bonus is actually a subset of Amazon Attribution. Amazon states that, on average, brands earn 10% on their qualified sales.

The way the program works is when you send external traffic through this program in conjunction with an Amazon referral, you will receive a credit on the referral fees that you may incur when you sell your products on the Amazon platform.

The amount of referral fee credit you receive will depend on your product category, in the same way that the referral fee itself is calculated on the platform.

There is a referral period of up to 14 days depending on the type of ad.

Keep in mind that after a sale occurs on Amazon, there is a two-month waiting period before the bonus is allocated to your account.

For example, if the sale occurred in December, you won’t receive compensation in your Seller Central Payments until February.

This allows customers to return and cancel.

How to sign up for Amazon Attribution

The first step to getting into these two programs is to make sure you are enrolled in the Trademark Registry or IP Accelerator Program, depending on your specific situation.

You will need a direct brand to participate in Amazon IP Accelerator to accelerate branding of your brand or product.

Next, you must have an active Amazon account and register with Amazon Attribution. Once you have completed these steps, you can enroll in the Brand Referral Reward Program.

If you are looking for more detailed instructions on how Amazon Attribution works and its metrics, you can take the free course located at Amazon Attribution Amazon Learning Console.

This will guide you through the program, data preparation and interpretation.

Working with Amazon internal advertising, outdoor advertising can be a powerful strategy for products in competitive categories or new products in a category to increase overall sales and/or product adoption.

More resources:

• Amazon SEO Keyword Research: 3 Proven Methods
• A guide to Amazon indexing and how to check your keyword indexing
• Ecommerce Marketing: The Ultimate Guide

Featured image: DavigGyung/Shutterstock