Amazon has a new feature that has the ad folks all excited. With Amazon Attribution (still in beta at the time of this writing), authors can create links that help track their non-Amazon ad performance across multiple channels.
What does that mean? It means that if you set up your Facebook, Google, or other non-Amazon ad using Amazon Attribution tag instead of the clean link to your book page, you can see if that ad converted to an actual sale.
To keep it simple, let’s assume we’re talking about Facebook Ads. Facebook can give me all kinds of information about who saw my ad and who clicked my ad. But that’s where the information stops. I may get sales, but I can’t tell exactly which ad got me those sales.
But, if I use the Amazon Attribution tag as my destination URL in my Facebook Ad, I can see any sales derived from that ad in my Amazon Ad Dashboard.
How to Set Up the Tag
Two things to note:
- You don’t have to run Amazon Ads to use the Amazon Attribution tags.
- You need to have access to the Amazon Ads dashboard. You can get there either through your KDP account or through your Author page. (I’m assuming you have this access in the steps below.)
Find the Amazon Ads Dashboard:
- To find the Amazon Ads Dashboard from your KDP Account, click on Marketing on the top menu.
- In the box labeled Amazon Ads, choose your marketplace (amazon.com), and click Go to Ads Console.
Go to the Amazon Attribution Dashboard
- Log in to the Amazon Ads Dashboard.
- Click on the Measurement & Reporting icon on the left. (It looks like a bar chart icon.)
- Click on Amazon Attribution from the pop-out menu.
Create an Amazon Attribution Campaign
- Click the Create Campaign button and set up the link for each Ad created above (four).
- Click the Create manually box.
- Name the Campaign using a naming convention that ties it back to your Facebook campaign. (Example: “FB Ads | Nora Roberts”)
- Choose the book(s) you want to advertise:
- Select all the books in the series.
- Select both eBooks and print books.
- Scroll down to Ad Group section
Question: Why did we choose all the books in our series and both ebook and paperback formats?
Answer: Amazon will link any of the selected books purchased within a 14-day window to this ad. That captures those fast readers who speed through your series or someone who bought book 2 and is now going back for book 1.
Set Up the Ad Group
- Give the first Ad Group a name similar to the Facebook Ad you’re going to run so it’s easy to see on your dashboard.
- Select the publisher. (Facebook for our example.)
- Select the channel. (Social for Facebook.)
- Enter the click-through URL. This is the clean URL to your Amazon book page where you want to send readers.
- A clean link looks like this: amazon.com/dp/XXXXXXXXXX/ where XXXXXXXXXX is the unique ASIN number for your book. (Just use your ebook link, if you have multiple formats.)
- If it’s a series, use the link for Book 1 in the series.
Add more Ad Groups (if needed)
- If you have multiple ads in your Facebook As Set, click the + Add new ad group button and repeat the steps above.
- Make sure you name the second Ad Group the same as your second Facebook ad.
- Use the same clean link for the Click-through URL in the second Ad Group. (It will create a new tag for you.)
Create the Attribution Campaign
- Once you’ve set up all of your Ad Groups, click the blue Create button in the upper right corner.
How to Use the Tag
Copy the Attribution Tag for your Facebook Ad
Once you’ve created the Attribution Campaign, click on Attribution tags on the left to see your tags by Campaign and by Ad Group.
The URLs listed in the “Attribution tags” column are the ones you will use in the Website URL field in the Destination section of each Facebook Ad.
Make sure you copy the correct tag for each ad!
Facebook Tip: Once you’ve pasted in the Website URL, you can click the Preview URL link to the right to verify it’s going to the right place.
The Payoff
Once your Facebook Ads show results, you can monitor the demographics on Facebook, plus any sales directly related to those ad clicks in the Amazon Attribution dashboard.
My Facebook Ad Manager screen shows me how much I’ve spent, how many people have seen my ad, and how many have clicked it. And, if I click on the “View charts” link under the ad name (you have to hover there to see it), I can dive into the demographics of those clicks.
But knowing someone clicked on the ad doesn’t mean I know they bought my book.
Now I can flip over to my Amazon Attribution dashboard and look.
The snapshot below shows that I have three (3) purchases from my Facebook Ad targeting Nora Roberts using a 1080px image. I also have zero (0) purchases from the same ad using a 1200px image.
Again, while we’re using Facebook in our example, this can work with Google and other non-Amazon advertising platforms.
Things to Note
While this is very cool for getting us more insight into our sales and where they come from, I want to mention that it isn’t perfect. There are a few things that can throw off the numbers.
- Timing. The clicks in your Facebook Ads dashboard probably won’t match the clicks in your Amazon dashboard. It’s a timing thing.
- 14-day Window. The window for capturing the clicks associated with a tag is 14 days. Which means if your campaign runs longer than fourteen days, clicks outside that window won’t get counted.
- Technology snafus. Sometimes things break. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Even the best laid plans go awry.
Despite these potential pitfalls, you can definitely get a better idea of where your sales are coming from using the Amazon Attributions tags.
So check them out and let me know what you think.
Also, if you want a deeper dive into the Facebook Ads side of it, check out An Overview of Facebook Ads where I dive into how those things work.
Happy Marketing!
