The 4 Most Helpful Reports You Can Run Using Amazon Ad Data Amazon collects data on almost everything happening on their site. Discover the data that will help you improve your ad results.
By Timothy P. Seward •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
The following excerpt is from Timothy P. Seward's book Ultimate Guide to Amazon Advertising. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Apple Books
To make optimizations in your Amazon Advertising account, you must first pull together the data you'll need. The data in the Amazon interface is fragmented, so you'll need to grab data from multiple reporting menus and compile it in a meaningful way before you can analyze it.
Most reports available on Amazon tie back to Sponsored Products ads because they're Amazon's oldest and most established ad format. In addition, because Sponsored Products ads take shoppers to a single product detail page, reporting on product performance is much easier.
There are fewer data insights available through reports for Sponsored Brands and Product Display ads. In the case of Sponsored Brands, these ads still have relevant reporting on keyword performance and ad placement analysis, but they don't include any reports that touch on the performance of individual products since these ads can direct consumers to a product list page or Amazon Store page containing multiple products to convert on.
Finally, Product Display ads can also target multiple products, so Amazon doesn't release any granular reporting on which product eventually drove a conversion. As time passes, it's likely that more reports will be released for each of these ad formats.
Related: Using Amazon's Sponsored Brand Advertising to Get Customers Interested in Your Brand
With that said, you can carry over some of the insights you find in Sponsored Products data to your Sponsored Brands campaigns. For example, there's currently no search query data available for Sponsored Brands, so new keyword opportunities from Sponsored Products can be helpful starting places. Although you can test out new keywords in Sponsored Brands campaigns based on data from Sponsored Products, it's important to keep in mind that keywords and products will not always perform the same across ad types. Let's look at how to find the most helpful reports for Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands ads.
All the reports you'll need can be accessed either through Seller Central (for sellers) or Vendor Central (for vendors). Look at a combination of advertising reports (e.g., search term reports, targeting reports, advertised product reports, etc.) and account-level reports (e.g., business reports).
Seller central performance data
In Seller Central, you can find the advertising and business reports under the "Reports" link.
Vendor central performance data
Vendors can find advertising reports by clicking on the "Advertising" link at the top of the page. Often in Vendor Central, you have to request business reports from your Amazon representative. If you're a vendor and don't have access to a business report, you can analyze performance data and make optimizations based on advertising performance reports alone. Most optimizations will come from the advertising reports, but if you do have access to account-level reports, I recommend using this data as well to see the full impact of advertising.
Related: How an Amazon Store Can Increase Shopper Engagement
Attribution sales against ad clicks
An attribution model is a rule, or set of rules that determine how credit for conversions (i.e., sales) is assigned to touch points along the conversion path. Amazon uses something called last touch attribution to track a shopper's activity after they click on an ad in case they purchase the product later. In last touch attribution, credit is given to the final touch point (or click) that immediately preceded the sale. That is how sales can be attributed to a click even if the purchase occurred days after the initial click. Attribution in Seller Central and Vendor Central varies, so it is also important to keep the attribution window in mind when making optimizations.
In Seller Central, the standard attribution window is seven days for Sponsored Products and 14 days for Sponsored Brands, while in Vendor Central, the attribution window is 14 days for Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Product Display campaigns.
Attribution example for a sponsored brands campaign
Let's look at an example of attribution for a Sponsored Brands campaign. Let's say that your brand sells high-end kitchen appliances. Because your products have a high price point, it's not unusual for shoppers to do some research on Amazon before purchasing. If a shopper clicked on your Sponsored Brands campaign on August 1 but didn't purchase until August 8, this would be captured by the 14-day attribution window in both Seller Central and Vendor Central.
Related: The 5 Biggest Mistakes You Don't Want to Make in Amazon Product Listings and How to Fix Them
Additionally, sales data has a 48-hour lag, so recent data can sometimes seem misleading if looked at on its own. In the example above, if you looked at month-to-date performance data on August 4, the data wouldn't represent actual performance since it would show four days' worth of spend but only two days of sales. In this case, it would be more helpful to look at the past week's performance rather than the month-to-date performance.
At the time of this writing, there are no Product Display reports available under the "Advertising Reports" link in Vendor Central. However, you can download a report of daily campaign performance metrics from the "Reports" link after clicking on an individual Product Display campaign.
If you have a connection to Amazon's application programming interface (API), a system of resources that allows developers to create data connections for building software, the data you see through the API might vary from what you see in the interface or in Amazon's reports. This API connection could be through a tool that helps manage your Amazon Advertising account, or it could be through an agency or similar resource. Just remember that the numbers you see in each of these may not always match exactly, and that's to be expected.
