Say Halo To Halo Sales – Identifying And Reporting On Amazon PPC Halo Sales

Nov 2, 2021

As PPC advertisers, we like things to be simple. A customer types in a search term, we display an advert targeting that phrase, they click on the advert, and then we get the sale. If all PPC sales happened like that, then all would be good in PPC land.   

The problem with PPC advertising is that buyers don’t always shop like that. Much like my children, buyers get distracted. Having clicked on the Red Widget advert, some shoppers see another of your shiny new Black Widgets on the page and buy that instead. Welcome to Halo sales.  

 

What Are Halo Sales 

While Amazon’s PPC Campaign Manager tells you the sales, it does not give you the whole picture. Halo sales are attributed to a campaign for purchased products, but they aren’t for the advertised product that the customers initially clicked on. They have to be your products to qualify as Halo sales. Unfortunately, we cannot see what products were purchased if they bought another brand (a wasted click).  

We do get a little number obsessed in the rest of the article, so bear with me. It will be worth all the furrowed brows and confused expressions as you read through it. The scope here isn’t to provide an in-depth guide to all things Halo. It’s much too complex to cover in one blog post. I aim to introduce you to the subject and take you on a short journey of the basics of this often ignored area of Amazon PPC attribution.  

Advertisement

Subscribe to our newsletter

 

Let’s See an Example 

You probably run Search Term reports regularly (if you don’t, shame on you). If you run a regular Sponsored Products Search Term report for any period and download it, look at the last four columns in the report. Below is an example: 

 

 

I have highlighted the columns in orange to make the picture look pretty. You will be looking at the dull, uncolored-in version. The first row shows for that Campaign/Ad group combination that we have made 2 unit sales ($39.98) for the product we adverted but ….wait for it…. 14 sales of another of our products we did not advertise. We can learn a lot from this.      

 

How Do You Attribute Halo Sales 

We will cover Sponsored Brands, Video, and Display later, but let’s stick to Sponsored Products for now. We have two valuable reports, Advertised Product report and Purchased Product report. The format and numbers will be different from the Search Term report. I showed you that as an example from a report that most sellers run.    

Run an Advertised Product report from the reports section of Sponsored Products in the Campaign Manager. Then run a Purchased Product report for the same period. That bit is significant, or the numbers will not reconcile, and you will need to lie down in a dark room after spending hours trying to make things add up. 

   

Let’s Take ASIN 1 as an Example:  

Below is the Advertised Product report. When we advertised ASIN 1 (SKU 1), nine people bought it, but those same adverts resulted in 78 other purchased products (not ASIN 1). If I were this campaign, I would be very ashamed of myself for letting 78 units get away from me.     

Advertised Product Report 

 

Below is the Purchased Product report, and I had filtered it out when people bought ASIN 1. We can see that ASIN was purchased 15 times when it wasn’t advertised, resulting in $139.86 sales from these orders. Column 2 shows you the actual advertised ASIN. Note it showed when ASIN 1 was also the advertised product, but as this is a Purchased Product report, the 7 DAY OTHER SKU UNITS, ORDERS, and SALES are 0.   

Purchased Product Report 

Halo sales

 

We can see from these two reports that for this period, ASIN 1 had $89.91 + $139.86 sales = $229.71 (highlighted in green). However, the Campaign Manager would show $89.91 + $775.22 = $865.13 sales attributed to ASIN 1 (we could only see this if we had single ASIN campaigns, of course). 

 

How Do We Work Out ALL Halo Sales on Our Account 

Here I need to put my big boy pants on and use pivot tables. I will use a simple example with a seller account with 2 ASINS, ASIN A the ‘Black Widget’ and ASIN B the ‘White Widget.’ Below is a cut-down Purchase Product report. Select it whole, insert a pivot table, and select just PURCHASED ASIN in ‘rows’ and 7 DAY OTHER SKU SALES in ‘Values.’ I have colored it to show the results. 

 

Purchased Product Report 

  

Below is a cut-down Advertised Product report. Select it whole, insert a pivot table, and select just ADVERTISED ASIN in ‘rows’ and 7 DAY ADVERTISED SKU SALES in ‘Values.’ Below is the result, and again I have colored it to show the results.  

 

Advertised Product Report 

 

We see this if we look at the Campaign Manager for the two campaigns for these products. The total is $719.60 if we add up the sales for the two campaigns.  

 

Campaign Manager 

 

Adding it All Up 

Halo sales 

The total is $719.60, the same as the Campaign Manager above, and just the attribution is different. 

So to summarize, if this was my account, when I advertise the black one, customers almost always buy the black one. When I advertise the white one, customers almost always buy the black one. I might now think about changing my adverts but at the very least, now know accurately what products customers are buying when I advertise.   

 

How Do We Work Out Halo Sales on Sponsored Brands 

We don’t. Well, we don’t in the Campaign Manager advertising reports yet. We have 14-day attribution, and Halo sales do happen, but they work in a slightly different way. The advertiser does not need to be the seller of the product to count. There are no reports yet that split out the Halo for Sponsored Brands and Video adverts. Hopefully, that will be available in the future.  

 

How Do We Work Out Halo Sales on Sponsored Display 

We have 14-day attribution, and Halo sales do happen, but they work differently.  The advertiser doesn’t have to be the seller of the product to count. We can use the reports in the same way.  

The Advertised Product report below shows you the sales and orders you would expect. However, when you look at the Purchased Product report, we see a lonely Halo sale for ASIN 6 in this example. 

 

Advertised Product Report 

 

Purchased Product Report 

Halo sales

 

It’s a Bit More Complex Than That

Amazon attribution for the various Amazon advertising types is quite complex, and there are differences between the way Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands work in this respect. I have greatly simplified it to help you understand how people buy your products via your adverts. But, I haven’t included AMS or DPS in this article as it would get too long and complex.   

I have used Halo to mean sales of products not advertised in this article, but Halo can mean other sales types. Perhaps sales that fall outside the attribution window; add to cart but not checked out sales, or items added to a wish-list. I am ignoring those as we don’t get data for those! They can also include other sellers’ sales of your products with Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display (but not with Sponsored Products). Sponsored Products have a 7-day attribution window, and Sponsored Brands have a 14-day window. 

 

Conclusion 

What can we conclude from a high number of Halo sales

I believe it means customers do not like our advertising offering. Remember, the reports only show what was purchased. Ask yourself, if so many customers are buying a different product to the one I am advertising, then how many potential customers are not buying? The reports only show what happened after the advert click regarding a purchase within 7 or 14 days. It tells us very little about the other products buyers may have looked at or other adverts they may have clicked on.   

The reporting system is regularly updated. It was not long ago we did not even have Advertised and Purchased Product reports. I enjoy opening the hood of a nice, shiny new advertising report, but that is the inner data geek in me. Appropriate and accurate reports are crucial for making good decisions. Whether you are running PPC services for others or in the PPC weeds yourself, it’s essential to understand what consumers are really buying. 

No PPC adverts were hurt in the making of this article. I don’t click on other sellers’ ads. Run a Purchased Product report. You can thank me later. 

 

About the author

Mark Greening 

Mark Greening is the Founder of Orange Rocket, a PPC agency helping brands maximize their advertising on and off Amazon. He has many years of experience in the Amazon marketplace, having scaled and sold a brand himself and working with many leading brands to scale their advertising with Orange Rocket. Mark is also the Co-founder of Profitizer.app, a software tool helping eCommerce sellers better understand their profit and loss across multiple platforms and marketplaces. 

Produced by Sellers Alley

sellersalley.com

Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

@2021 Wild PPC Bunch. All Rights Reserved