Amazon Attribution is a free Amazon Ads measurement tool that gives brand owners tracking links, called tags, for traffic they send to Amazon from outside it: Google, Meta, email, creators, publishers. It reports the clicks, detail page views, add to carts and purchases each tag drives. The Brand Referral Bonus is a Brand Registry program that pays sellers a credit on eligible sales driven by that tagged external traffic, applied against selling fees.
We use both on our own Amazon Professional Seller accounts with Brand Registry, and we sit on the other side of the link too as an Amazon Associates and Creator Connections publisher. This guide covers how Attribution tags work for each channel, what is and is not measured, how Brand Referral Bonus enrollment and credit work, and how to build an external traffic program with creators and publishers around them.
What Amazon Attribution Is and Who Can Use It.
Amazon Attribution is available to professional sellers enrolled in Brand Registry, to vendors, and to agencies working on their behalf, in the marketplaces where Amazon offers it. You reach it through the Amazon Ads console. Once set up, you create a campaign for each channel, add the products you are promoting, and Amazon generates a tag: a URL to your detail page or Brand Store with tracking parameters attached. When a shopper clicks that URL and then acts on Amazon, the activity is tied back to the tag.
The point is simple. Without Attribution, a Google or Meta campaign that sends shoppers to Amazon is a black box: you see clicks leave your ad platform and a blended lift in Amazon sales, with no link between them. With it, each tag shows its own funnel from click to purchase.
How Tags Work for Google, Meta, Email and Affiliates.
Google Ads and Meta. Attribution supports integrations with Google Ads and Meta ads that let you import campaigns and generate tags at the campaign or ad level, so the structure in Attribution mirrors the structure in the ad platform. You can also create tags manually and paste them as the final URL. Either way, the unit you want to judge (usually the campaign or ad set) needs its own tag, or its results blend into its neighbors.
Email and SMS. Create a manual campaign for the email platform and a tag for each send or each automated flow you want to judge. A single tag reused for every email tells you email works; it will not tell you which email works.
Creators and publishers. Give each partner a unique tag, one per partner and ideally one per placement. This is how you pay commissions fairly and how the Brand Referral Bonus gets attributed. A partner who shares a generic Amazon link, or their own Associates link, without your Attribution tag is invisible to your reports and to the bonus.
What Attribution Measures, and What It Does Not.
Attribution reports click-throughs, detail page views, add to carts and purchases, along with units and sales, on a 14-day window after the click. It can also report on brand halo sales: purchases of other products from your brand after a click on a tag for one product. You can see results by campaign, ad group and tag, and download reports for your own analysis.
It does not measure the value of impressions without a click, it does not deduplicate against your Amazon Ads reports, and it cannot see shoppers who clicked your ad, left, and later came back to Amazon by searching. That last group is often large, which means Attribution tends to understate the true effect of external traffic, especially for awareness campaigns. Read it as a floor, not a full count.
| Channel | How to tag it | What to judge it on | Common trap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | Integration import or manual tag per campaign | Purchases and cost per purchase at campaign level | Sending brand search clicks that would have reached Amazon anyway |
| Meta ads | Integration import or manual tag per ad set | Add to carts, purchases, new-to-brand where shown | Judging prospecting on 14-day clicks alone |
| Email and SMS | Manual tag per send or per flow | Purchases per send and brand halo | One tag reused for every email |
| Creators | Unique tag per creator and placement | Purchases, conversion rate from detail page view | Creator posts a plain Amazon link instead of the tag |
| Publishers | Unique tag per publisher and article | Purchases and commission cost versus bonus | Tag buried behind a redirect that drops parameters |
How the Brand Referral Bonus Works.
The Brand Referral Bonus is a Brand Registry program for professional sellers. You enroll in Seller Central under the Brands menu, and once enrolled, eligible sales that come from non-Amazon marketing traffic, measured through your Attribution tags, earn a credit. Amazon describes the bonus as averaging about 10 percent of the product sales it applies to, with the exact rate varying by category, and the credit is applied against the selling fees on those orders. Check the current program terms for your categories before you build a budget around it.
Two mechanics matter. First, the credit applies to purchases made within the attribution window after a tagged click, and under the current terms it can also cover other products from your brand bought in that window, not only the promoted item, so confirm the details on the program page. Second, the bonus only exists where Attribution can see the sale, so every tag structure decision above is also a revenue decision. An untagged creator post earns no bonus.
“Every untagged link you send to Amazon is traffic you paid for and a bonus you gave back.”
Setting It Up, Step by Step.
Building an External Traffic Program With Creators and Publishers.
The Brand Referral Bonus changes the math on outside partners. Amazon's own Associates commission rates are set by category and are modest in many of them, and Amazon also runs Creator Connections, where brands offer creators an added commission on top. A brand can also pay partners directly, for example a flat fee or a percentage of Attribution-reported sales, and fund part of it from the bonus it earns on those same sales.
From the publisher side, we can tell you what makes partners pick one brand over another: a unique tag per partner, a clear commission, product that is in stock and converts, and reporting they can trust. From the brand side, the program works when it is run like an affiliate program, with recruiting, terms, tracking and payment on a schedule, rather than a spreadsheet of links sent out once. Our affiliate partnerships work covers how we recruit and manage partners on both sides.
What Usually Goes Wrong.
- Launching external traffic before enrolling in the Brand Referral Bonus, and losing the credit on the first weeks of sales.
- One tag per channel instead of per campaign, send or partner, so no decision can be made from the report.
- Link shorteners or partner redirects that strip the tag parameters, which silently zero out a partner's results.
- Creators posting plain Amazon links or their own Associates links instead of the brand's tag, so the brand pays for traffic it cannot see.
- Treating the 14-day click window as the full story for prospecting campaigns and cutting awareness spend that was working.
- Sending brand search clicks from Google through Attribution and counting sales that would have happened anyway as external wins.
Where the Tool Stops and the Work Begins.
Attribution and the bonus are free, and the setup screens take an afternoon. The work is the tag architecture that makes reports usable, the ad platform structure that sends the right traffic, the partner recruiting and terms, the reconciliation of bonus credits against tagged sales, and the judgment to read Attribution as a floor when deciding what to scale. That full external traffic system, from Google and Meta to creators and publishers, is what we build and run through Amazon DSP and Marketing Cloud management.
Is Amazon Attribution free?
Yes. Amazon Attribution is free for eligible brand owners, including professional sellers enrolled in Brand Registry, vendors, and agencies working on their behalf, in the marketplaces where it is offered. You pay only for the external media you run, such as Google or Meta ads, and any partner commissions you choose to pay.
How much is the Amazon Brand Referral Bonus?
Amazon describes the Brand Referral Bonus as averaging about 10 percent of the product sales it applies to, with the rate varying by category. The credit is applied against selling fees on eligible orders driven by tagged external traffic. Check the current program terms in Seller Central for your categories, because rates and eligibility can change.
What is the attribution window for Amazon Attribution?
Amazon Attribution reports conversions within 14 days of a click on a tag. That includes detail page views, add to carts and purchases of the promoted product, and brand halo purchases of other products from the same brand. Shoppers who return later by searching Amazon directly are not counted, so results understate the full effect.
Can affiliates use Amazon Attribution links?
Yes. Brands can give creators and publishers unique Attribution tags, which is how the brand sees each partner's results and earns the Brand Referral Bonus on those sales. Those tags are separate from Amazon Associates links, so the brand and partner should agree up front which link is used and how the partner is paid.
Do I need Brand Registry for the Brand Referral Bonus?
Yes. The Brand Referral Bonus is available to professional sellers with brands enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry, and you must enroll in the program in Seller Central before eligible sales earn the credit. The bonus relies on Amazon Attribution tags to identify sales driven by traffic from outside Amazon.