The Amazon Advertising jungle often poses challenges to marketers – as in the case of Halo Sales. In this article, we introduce these sales and explain to what extent they are identifiable.
What are Halo Sales?
When looking at your total sales from your
Sponsored Ads campaigns on Amazon, Halo Sales refer to transactions that your ads have influenced across your brand portfolio and not only the ones that you are promoting.
Halo Sales are a part of the sales attributed to a campaign and will let you know if people are buying items other than the advertised on that they originally clicked on. These sales always refer to the last ad a user clicked on. For
vendors, all transactions made within the following 14 days of clicking on the ad are added to this sales report. For sellers, only the following seven days are included.
Halo Sales only occur when an Amazon user clicks on an ad before making his or her purchase. Depending on the Sponsored Ad campaign, sales are treated differently.
Halo sales for Sponsored Products
Let’s say that you are a manufacturer of digital cameras and are campaigning for compact cameras. An Amazon user clicks on your ad, but in the end, does not buy a compact device, but a digital SLR camera from your portfolio. The purchase is still attributed to your compact camera campaign, as the product sold belongs to your brand.
Note: Keep in mind, for Sponsored Product (SP) campaigns, the advertiser must also be the seller of the product in question. If the item is distributed by another retailer, Amazon does not include it in your campaign.
Halo sales for Sponsored Brands & Product Display Ads
Sponsored Brands (SBs) and Product Display Ads (PDAs) are subject to a similar process, but the advertiser does not necessarily have to be the seller of the item.
For example, you are a manufacturer of cooking pots, pans, etc. and are running a self-service campaign for pressure cookers. If a user clicks on an article in your ad, he/she will be taken directly to the corresponding product detail page. However, if they end up buying a roaster from your company but via another seller, this purchase will still be included in the self-service campaign report.
How can you identify Halo Sales?
Halo sales are only visible in the corresponding report of an advertising campaign. This can be downloaded from the Amazon Advertising Console or Seller Central. The designation is limited to SP campaigns:
| Sponsored Products | Sponsored Brands & Product Display Ads |
| Advertising report | ✓ | ✓ |
| Halo Sales viewable | ✓ | ✗ |
| Designation of Halo Sales | Vendor: Report type "Search terms"
Seller: Report type "Purchased product" | No designation |
| Representation of Halo Sales | Vendor: "14 Day Brand Halo ASIN Sales"
Seller: "7 Day Other SKU Sales" | No seperate presentation, only total sales per campaign visible |
| ASIN-based playout of Halo Sales | ✓ (only for sellers) | ✗ |
Halo Sales at the Amazon Demand Side Platform (DSP)
The Amazon DSP also takes Halo Sales into account. However, they are not assigned based on ad clicks, but on the basis of visual contacts. As with Sponsored Ads, the attributable period is 14 days.
Halo Sales are displayed in the form of Total Sales. This metric shows additional brand sales that were generated after visual contact with an ad via products that were advertised and manually assigned to the DSP campaign. It can happen that a DSP campaign for washing machines is also credited with sales for car accessories - provided that the same manufacturer is indicated as the brand.
Note: You can contact Amazon's Advertising Team to request a list of all ASIN-level sales that have been added to DSP campaigns, identifying "dud bombs".
You can use the Product Sales metric to obtain only the sales of products advertised and manually assigned to the DSP campaign.
Attention: Also the recently introduced
New-To-Brand metrics partially includes Halo Sales.
Recap
The attribution described above poses challenges for advertisers. You place ads for certain products in order to increase their sales. However, the revenue generated does not necessarily result from the sale of the advertised products, but also partly from the sales of other articles by the brand. In some cases, they can be coming from completely different product categories. This makes it more difficult to measure success.
Basically, the fine line between SP and self-service or PDA campaigns must be understood. With the former, Halo sales only occur if the advertiser and seller are the same. The latter includes all sales of the advertised brand and it’s irrelevant which salesperson sells the branded product.
So far, only sellers can find out exactly which “non-campaign” item was sold. For vendors, the report only shows a total value of the Halo Sales but does not assign it to a specific ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number). Regardless, it’s crucial to observe which advertising campaign has generally led to higher sales because this is another way of checking if your ads are doing their job. If Halo sales are included, this can have a positive effect on your ROI (Return on Investment) as Amazon will attribute more sales to your advertising campaign.
