Every holiday season, Amazon sellers spend money outside Amazon to bring shoppers in: social posts, influencer videos, Google ads, and email newsletters. Most of them have no idea which of those efforts actually led to a sale. Many registered brands also leave money on the table, because Amazon will pay them back for that outside traffic.
Two free Amazon tools fix both problems. Amazon Attribution shows you which off-Amazon channels drive detail page views, add-to-carts, and purchases. The Brand Referral Bonus then credits eligible brands an average of 10% of the sales from that tagged traffic, and the credit offsets future referral fees.
In this article, you'll learn how Amazon Attribution works, what the Brand Referral Bonus pays by category, who is eligible, how to enroll and create tags step by step, which traffic qualifies, how to read your reports, when the bonus is paid, and how to use both tools for your 2026 holiday marketing.
Off-Amazon traffic only pays off when it lands on a product worth buying. This free checklist helps Bubba Academy students pick the right product, launch faster, and avoid costly rookie mistakes.
Amazon Attribution is a free, self-service measurement tool that shows how your non-Amazon marketing affects shopping activity on Amazon. You create a unique tracking tag for each ad, post, or link, add it to the Amazon URL you send people to, and Amazon reports what happened after the click.
According to Amazon's Attribution guide, it can measure paid and organic search, social, display, video, email, and affiliate traffic. It reports metrics across the shopping journey, including clicks, detail page views, add-to-carts, purchases, product sales, and new-to-brand purchases.
Amazon Attribution uses a 14-day, last-touch model. A conversion only counts if it happens within 14 days of the click, and the credit goes to the most recent tagged click. If a shopper clicks your Instagram ad on Monday and your email link on Wednesday, then buys on Friday, the email gets the credit.
Amazon's guide lists the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. It's open to sellers enrolled in Brand Registry with brand representative status, vendors, and agencies working for them.
The Brand Referral Bonus (BRB) builds on Attribution. Amazon's Seller Central help page says the program credits brands an average of 10% of sales from traffic they drive to Amazon. The bonus also covers additional purchases from the same brand up to 14 days after the click, not just the product in the ad.
The bonus isn't cash. It's a credit that reduces your future referral fees.
To estimate your bonus, Amazon says to multiply qualifying sales by the minimum bonus rate for the product category. A few examples from the help page's table:
Your actual rate can vary with shipping and gift-wrap charges. Check the full table in Seller Central before planning.
The bonus is for brand owners, not resellers. Amazon's help page says you need the Brand Representative role on a brand registered in Brand Registry that sells in the US store.
Amazon's Brand Referral Bonus article adds that you need a Professional selling plan. If you don't have an active or pending trademark yet, Amazon points to its IP Accelerator program. Our guide to Amazon Brand Registry walks through enrollment.
Resellers can't join the Brand Referral Bonus. Amazon suggests the Amazon Associates program instead, which pays commissions on sales you generate.
Amazon's help page lays out the process:
If you already use Attribution tags, sales from them count toward the bonus from the date you enroll in BRB, not before. Secondary users on your account need the primary user to grant them access.
In the Amazon Ads console, go to Measurement & Reporting, open Amazon Attribution, and click Create campaign. You can build tags manually or with a bulk upload. Amazon's guide uses four terms:
Only in-stock products with photos and prices can be added. Each ad group gets its own tag, and you can download tags as a CSV file.
For Google search and Facebook or Instagram campaigns, the bulk option can tag up to 100,000 Google search keywords or 8,500 Facebook or Instagram ads in a single file.
A Seller Forums moderator warns that the tag must be added to your landing page URL exactly as generated, because even small changes can break measurement. Amazon Attribution only supports ASIN detail pages and Brand Store pages as destinations.
Amazon's article is clear that the bonus isn't available for Amazon advertising, such as Sponsored Products or video ads. It does apply to marketing outside Amazon, including:
The qualifying purchase must be a product your brand owns, bought after a click on an Attribution tag from a non-Amazon effort.
The Brand Referral Bonus rewards sellers who own a registered brand and market it beyond Amazon. Bubba Academy's step-by-step program shows you how to choose products, register your brand, build listings that convert, and grow traffic from every channel.
After you launch, Amazon's guide suggests waiting 1 to 2 days, then checking that clicks are coming in. A 10% to 20% gap between Attribution clicks and your ad platform's numbers is normal, because they count clicks differently. If the gap is larger, check that the tag wasn't changed and the link goes to a supported page.
Compare detail page views, add-to-carts, and purchases by channel. New-to-brand metrics count first-time buyers of your brand over a one-year lookback. If a channel brings lots of clicks but few add-to-carts, your detail page may be the problem. Strong A+ Content can help those visitors buy.
There's a two-month wait so Amazon can account for cancellations and returns. A qualifying sale in July is credited in September, and the credit then reduces your referral fees until it runs out. Amazon says the earned bonus is credited on the 10th of each month.
You'll find it in your transaction details, sometimes shown as a "discount on referral fee," or in the Attribution dashboard. A weekly report is generated every Friday with the estimated bonus up to the previous Friday. No report is created if you've had no qualified sales in the last 90 days, and reports only cover the trailing 365 days.
Here's an example with made-up numbers. Say a creator video sends shoppers to your $35 kitchen gadget, and tagged traffic produces $3,000 in sales in November:
To see what that credit does to your margin, use our guide to calculating your true per-unit cost.
Amazon runs a separate New Seller Incentive with a similar name. In a Seller Forums update, Amazon said that from March 12, 2026, eligible US sellers get Brand Representative Bonus credits within one week instead of a month: 10% on the first $50,000 in eligible branded sales and 5% on the next $950,000, up to $52,500 over one year.
That bonus requires enrolling in Brand Registry before, or within six months after, your first buyable ASIN, and being the brand's first owner. The Brand Referral Bonus is different: it's based only on tagged off-Amazon traffic. New brands may qualify for both.
Amazon's Holiday 2026 announcement says holiday peak fulfillment fees apply from October 15, 2026 to January 14, 2027, averaging $0.32 more per unit. A bonus credit on referral fees can help offset some of those costs.
Create one ad group per post, email, ad, or creator. Untagged traffic earns nothing.
Amazon's guide suggests testing time-bound messaging around deals. If you run a coupon, deal, or Prime Exclusive Discount, mention it in your tagged posts.
Amazon's article suggests using the bonus to boost discoverability for new or slow-moving products.
The key takeaways:
Your next step: Enroll in the Brand Referral Bonus this week, then tag every holiday link before Black Friday.
Bubba Academy trains sellers on product research, Brand Registry, listings, FBA, ads, and off-Amazon marketing, so you can measure what works and build a brand that lasts.
Join Bubba Academy Today →It's an Amazon program that credits brand owners an average of 10% of qualifying sales from traffic they drive to Amazon from non-Amazon marketing. The credit offsets referral fees on future sales.
Yes. Amazon Attribution is a free, self-service tool that measures how search, social, display, video, email, and affiliate traffic leads to detail page views, add-to-carts, and purchases on Amazon.
No. Amazon says the bonus isn't available for Amazon advertising such as sponsored or video ads. It applies to tagged traffic from marketing outside Amazon.
Amazon waits two months to account for cancellations and returns. For example, a qualifying sale in July is credited in September and then reduces your referral fees.
No. The program is only for sellers with the Brand Representative role on a brand in Brand Registry. Amazon suggests resellers look at the Amazon Associates program instead.