What are Amazon Halo sales and how are they created?

The Amazon advertising jungle often poses challenges to marketers which is understandable as there are numerous tools and extensions at your disposal. Such as Halo sales, what are they and how can you identify them?

What are Halo sales?

When looking at your total sales from your 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 sponsored ad 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 campaign 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.

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:

Recap

The challenge for advertisers: to figure out which product to advertise in order to increase their overall brand sales. Since, the turnover generated does not necessarily result from the sale of the advertised products, but also from the sales of other articles of the brand.

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 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 Return on Investment as Amazon will attribute more sales to your advertising campaign.