EP12: What Is Amazon Attribution? With PixelMe CEO Tom Benattar

Did you know that 50% of shoppers begin their shopping journey on Amazon? The rest, using other channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Google Ads. Have you ever wondered where your Amazon sales comes from if not directly through Amazon advertising? If yes, well you can, and it’s called Amazon Attribution.

Raphael: 50% of shoppers already begin their shopping journey on Amazon, the rest via other channels such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google, you name it. Have you ever wondered where your Amazon sales come from outside of Amazon advertising? Have you ever found yourself wondering if you are spending your off-Amazon advertising budget the right way and how to track it? While at DataHawk, we firmly believe that what you cannot measure, you cannot manage. Can you measure and manage your Amazon advertising and improve it to generate more sales for your Amazon business? The answer is yes, people. It’s called Amazon Attribution. But few sellers know the existence of it because it’s in Beta. So, we thought we’ll make a podcast about it. Amazon Attribution is the topic. What is it for, how to leverage it, and why you should start using it? Welcome to episode twelve of the DataHawk eCommerce podcast. 

Let’s discuss it with my friend Pat, an Amazon expert at DataHawk. What’s up, Pat? 

Prateek: Thank you for being here. Hey, how’s it going, Raphael? Thank you for having me. It’s always a pleasure. 

Raphael: Always, man. We’ll be joined today by a very special guest, Tom Benattar, senior and co-founder of PixelMe, a startup that enables you to retarget your visitors from any third-party website, including, of course, Amazon. Tom, how’s it going? 

Tom: I’m great. Thank you so much, guys. 

Raphael: Thanks so much for joining. I’m really excited to have you on the show today. All right, I’m going to start with you, Pat, and first question is, could you please define Amazon Attribution? 

Prateek: Yeah, absolutely. So, Raphael, it’s now possible to track sales you get on Amazon from external traffic. That’s traffic from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google Ads, and so on, right? You can also track sales coming from your own website and email marketing efforts. That’s just huge, right? I mean, look, in simple terms, Amazon Attribution allows you to understand how your off-Amazon ads spent is impacting your Amazon sales. 

Raphael: I see. But why is off Amazon advertising even relevant? I mean, Amazon is so big today, right? Can‘t you stick it to advertising on Amazon? 

Prateek: You could, but you’d be leaving money on the table. 

Raphael: Wait, and then?

Prateek: Look, I mean, 50% of shoppers already begin their shopping journey on Amazon, right. And the rest via other channels like the ones you mentioned.

Raphael: You mean like Facebook, Google, Instagram? 

Prateek: Exactly. So, if you’re not advertising on those channels, you’re essentially losing out on sales you could have made. Right? That is why Amazon advertising is relevant. Sorry. I mean, that is why off Amazon advertising is relevant. 

Raphael: That makes sense. So, can anyone participate in Amazon Attribution? Is it open to anyone and everyone? 

Prateek: It’s open to vendors and sellers who are brand owners only. Yeah, exactly. You must be enrolled in Amazon’s brand registry to sign up for Amazon Attribution, meaning you should own the trademark for the brand, the products of which you sell. It’s currently in beta like you mentioned, and it’s available in the US, Canada, and the EU five. 

Raphael: EU five, meaning France, Germany,

Prateek: France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, although UK is no longer only part of the EU. 

Raphael: Okay, so you did explain why Amazon advertising is relevant. We get it. But how does Amazon Attribution help with off Amazon advertising? Or, in other words, why should our listeners really care about it? 

Prateek: You’re French, right Raphael? You love your wine, right? 

Raphael: I am.

Prateek: But not knowing which social channel is driving most of your Amazon sales is like drinking wine blindfolded. Wouldn’t you want to know the name of the wine you like the most? The same way, wouldn’t you want to know which channel is working and which not? 

Raphael: Thanks for the wine analogy. Thanks for speaking my language. I get it now. Okay, let’s dive a little deeper into the benefits of Amazon Attribution, please. 

Prateek: Yeah, absolutely. A couple of minutes ago, I mentioned that 50% of shoppers begin their shopping journey of Amazon, right? With Amazon Attribution, sellers are now able to take a data driven approach to targeting that 50% of shoppers you’ve been advertising on Facebook, Google, YouTube, Instagram. How do you know which one is working? You can get super granular with Amazon Attribution. In fact, not only can you track sales at a channel level, but even at an ad level, right? Meaning you will know which Facebook ad generated how much in sales for you. I think that’s extremely powerful, right? Imagine you’re using Facebook look alike to target a specific audience for your products, right? At the same time, you’re also advertising on YouTube and Instagram. Without Amazon Attribution, you’d have no idea as to which platform is working for you and which not. Your ACoS might be really high for your Instagram ads. While your robots may be really good for the Facebook lookalike campaigns, once you know this for sure, you can make concerted efforts to optimize your campaigns, right? For example, maybe increase your ad spend on Facebook and lower it for Instagram. You get the idea, right? You might launch, let’s say, a specific campaign on a specific channel solely with the objective of creating more awareness, right? In which case you want to track the page views, not necessarily conversions, right?

Raphael: True.

Prateek: Whereas you may create another campaign on the same channel focused solely on conversions. With Amazon Attribution, you’re not flying blind, right? You know whether or not campaigns are hitting their desired targets. Essentially, it helps advertisers maximize their return on investment. All of this helps you better understand your customers journey and take a data-driven approach to planning your future campaigns, right? And also, if you think about it better, attribution helps get the flywheel spinning. 

Raphael: How? 

Prateek: Well, what’s the flywheel? It’s visibility leading to more page visits and more page visits, leading to more sales and more sales, improving your visibility and improved page visits, and on and on, right? So, with advertising, you generate paid traffic. Amazon’s algorithm takes into account this increased traffic and boosts your organic visibility. And that gets the flywheel spinning. Here’s the thing. When your organic visibility improves, you can reduce your ad spend. Right? Essentially, run off Amazon ads, track their performance with the help of Amazon Attribution. Keep the ones which are performing well running, shut off the ones which aren’t performing, right? And eventually your organic visibility will improve. At that point, maybe you can turn off all ads for a while, right? That will help you reduce your ad spend. And if you remember from our A10 episode Raphael, Amazon now rewards you for bringing in off-Amazon traffic. 

Raphael: Right. 

Prateek: And that makes off Amazon advertising even more compelling. 

Raphael: Yeah, man. The A10 episode is our most successful one. The only episode where it’s not only Pat, my mom and I generating listens. 

Prateek: You can also get more virtuale state on search engine results pages. 

Raphael: Explain that one, please. 

Prateek: You can show, let’s say, one Google Ad, which leads to the product on your website, and one Google Ad, which directs shoppers to the product detail page on Amazon. 

Raphael: I see. But why would anyone do that? I mean, their own store is most likely more profitable than their Amazon store, right? So, why would you advertise both? 

Prateek: Yeah, good question, Raphael. In reality, the shopper doesn’t care about you or your margins, right? Some shoppers would rather purchase on Amazon than from your store, right? It might just be more convenient for them, for example. They most likely already have their delivery address and credit card details saved on Amazon, right? One click, retail, buddy. Remember, they pioneered it. Finally, because you will have more data, you can retarget visitors via Amazon DSP. Right. 

Raphael: Okay. 

Prateek: This might be most useful if you’re selling high value products, which shoppers generally take a while to purchase. Yeah. I mean, you convince me. 

Raphael: Can we just talk about the setup? How do you set up this? 

Prateek: Absolutely. You can decide how granular you want to get, right? And the more granular you want to get, the more tags you’re going to use. For a channel, say, Facebook ads, you can have a single tag if all you want is to track the total sales coming from Facebook ads. Or you can set up multiple tags, for example, a unique tag for each Facebook ad, letting you know which ad is bringing in how much revenue, right? Though navigating the nomenclature is a little bit tricky, right? For example, a campaign is referred to as an order. 

Raphael: Okay. 

Prateek: You can create a separate order for each product you’re advertising, or create an order for a specific ad campaign. For example, you may launch a campaign for a specific event like Prime Day, to help you track how your Prime Day campaigns. 

Prateek: Okay. 

Prateek: Right? And you can either have shoppers land on a product page or direct them to your brand store.

Raphael: Okay. 

Prateek: It’s pretty straightforward, but of course, you can choose to make it really complex, if that’s what you want. 

Raphael: Thanks a lot. 

Prateek: Absolutely. 

Raphael: Super clear. I think it’s time to welcome Tom from PixelMe. Thanks for being here again. 

Tom: Thanks a lot, guys,

Raphael: I personally love what you’ve been doing with PixelMe for and I’ve been following your project for a while. But for people that don’t know PixelMe, could you explain to us what it is and what it does? Yeah, sure. Thank you so much. Again, guys, I’m really happy to be here today. And yeah, Pixel is a newer short owner, but we had re-targeting Pixel into our short links. That mean you are able to create retargeting audience for all the people who clicked on your link. For example, if you are driving traffic from Facebook ads to Amazon, with PixelMe, you are able to retarget all the people who click on your link. So, this is really powerful for Amazon seller. And actually, we are working to integrate Amazon Attribution into PixelMe. So, in a few weeks, you won’t only be able to retarget people who click on your links, but you will be able to track the number of conversions from your ads directly into Pixel. So, it can be really urge for us for Amazon seller. 

Raphael: Good timing we’re talking now. Yeah, two weeks. That’s awesome. Why is retargeting shoppers so important? 

Tom: Yeah, definitely important. Because you probably know 97% of people will never buy your product for the first time. So, you definitely need to do retargeting again and again because people were clicking on your ads, we never buy your product for the first time. So, you need to send in the same ad again and again. So that’s really important to know that. And the second part is really important is retargeting is less expensive than acquisition on Facebook. So, when you are doing retargeting on Facebook, you will be able to create a better eye for your product. So that’s really cool. 

Raphael: Makes sense. But you dig this? 

Prateek: Yeah, absolutely. I just think that there’s room for optimization when it comes to retargeting, because there was this pair of shoes which Nike had been retargeting me with. I bought the shoes and they’re still targeting me with it. So, they need to turn the ad off. They’re wasting money right now. 

Raphael: Tom, I was wondering, is there any specific product categories or price points maybe, for which retargeting works best? Let’s say, like Nike and sports shoes? 

Tom: Yeah, I think retargeting can work for all the product, all the categories. But of course, if you are selling product, like something like less than $10, I’m not sure you will be able to have a great ARI. So maybe you need to have some project $100, but yes, that works for all the projects. 

Raphael: Okay, I totally agree there. Based on the data you collect, which platform works best for retargeting, in your opinion, as in where does it pays off the most to retarget shoppers? 

Tom: Yeah, definitely Facebook. Okay, Facebook is killing the game into retargeting because Facebook is really cheap and the people on Facebook the target, the market is really urgent. So definitely Facebook. 

Raphael: And the targeting option much more advanced on Facebook as a marketer and Advertiser. I can tell you that Facebook is good on that. 

Prateek: Hey Tom, one question out of curiosity. So, you’re saying that Facebook is the best today, right? In the future, can you sort of see another platform emerging? I don’t know like maybe Tik Tok or Instagram or something which might act as a contender? Or let’s say, an even better platform than Facebook?

Tom: That’s really great question. I think Facebook will still continue to kill the game because they know you better than you. So, I think they will be able to know you every time. Maybe Amazon can kill the game with the advertising. 

Prateek: Hang on, let me just go and buy some Facebook stock right now. 

Raphael: The logical question, the next logical question is which platform does PixelMe currently support retargeting on? 

Tom: Yeah, that’s a good question. We are natively integrating with Facebook, AdWords, linking Twitter or a ticket snapshot. So, I can say every platform can be used on PixelMe because we have a custom script so you can put every script in the world into PixelMe. So basically, all the platforms. 

Raphael: That’s awesome. 

Prateek: Hey Tom, did you mention LinkedIn as well? ‘

Tom: Yes, of course. 

Prateek: Okay, that’s interesting. But I don’t know if I’m browsing LinkedIn and somebody shows me a shampoo or something of that sort. I don’t know if I’m like in a buying. When people are on social media, they’re doing social stuff. But when I’m on LinkedIn, I’m not really thinking about buying. How good is LinkedIn when it comes, like, what’s the ROI there is? 

Tom: Yeah, it’s really good because the LinkedIn target is really clear and you can segment by the behavior and the job, but it’s more for B2B and not really for Amazon sellers. 

Prateek: Got it. Cool. Makes sense. Do you provide campaign metrics too, Tom, for example, like impressions, clicks, conversion, and so on? 

Tom: Yeah, actually we are providing the click, the country of the click, et cetera. 

Raphael: Okay. 

Tom: But as you know, in the few weeks we will be integrated with Amazon Attribution. So, we will provide all the data from Amazon Attribution directly on PixelMe. Like the number of sales, the rate, et cetera. So that will be really cool. 

Raphael: Nice. Super clear. Any advice for a brand or seller with listening to us and with new to the world of retargeting. 

Tom: Yeah, if you would like to start retargeting, it’s a good idea, but you need to start with a really great audience. You can’t start with only ten people into a retiring audience that doesn’t have results, so you will not be happy with that. So, let’s start at 100 people into your system agents and then do retiring again and again. 

Raphael: Okay, super clear. Let’s say that in three weeks, so, you start Amazon Attribution and there are Amazon sellers that are listening to us right now and they’re super excited about it. But just ask you questions. What’s the best way for our listeners to contact you directly? 

Tom: Yeah, sure. You can contact me on LinkedIn or you can contact me on my email is [email protected]. 

Raphael: Nice. Awesome. Tom Benattar from PixelMe, people. In a few weeks, it will be all Amazon integrated so think about it. PixelMe is a tool you should all check it out. Tom, thanks a lot for joining. Very clear. 

Tom: Thank you so much again, guys. 

Prateek: Absolutely. 

Raphael: I will definitely have you again on the show in a few weeks few months to do a follow-up. I think it’s going to be a very hot topic in the eCommerce space very soon. Thanks again. Pat, thank you always for being here. 

Prateek: It’s an absolute pleasure. I got to learn some really cool things about retargeting and this whole thing. So, thank you for having me, and thank you, Tom, for joining us today too. 

Raphael: Good episode. A really good episode. Thanks, everyone. See you next time for episode 13. Bye-bye.

Prateek: Bye-bye.

Tom: Bye-bye.