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Analytics

Measurement built for Amazon, not adapted to it

We have built our own reporting tooling because the data a brand needs to answer one commercial question is spread across a dozen separate Amazon reports, each with its own format, refresh cycle and definition of the same word.

Amazon Solution Provider category: Brand Analytics

Why we built our own tooling

Amazon exposes a great deal of data. Brand Analytics, the Business Reports, the advertising console, inventory and fulfilment reports, and the Selling Partner API all hold part of the picture, and none of them holds the whole of it. Reconciling them by hand is slow, and the reconciliation is where most of the errors creep in. Two reports will use the same term for different things, or cover different date ranges, and the mismatch is easy to miss.

Our tooling collects from those sources on a schedule, reconciles them onto a common basis, and produces the reporting a brand actually makes decisions from. It is built for our own delivery teams first, which means it is shaped by the questions clients ask rather than by what happened to be easy to chart.

Data is collected under the authorisation the selling partner grants and is used to produce reporting for that selling partner. We do not aggregate one client's data into benchmarks or datasets made available to anyone else.

What we measure

Seven areas, one reconciled dataset

Each area draws on named Amazon data sources. The questions listed under each are the ones the reporting is built to answer.

Brand presence

How discoverable the brand is, how its detail pages convert once found, and how that changes as content and catalogue work lands.

Amazon data sources

  • Brand Analytics: Search Query Performance
  • Brand Analytics: Search Catalog Performance
  • Business Reports: Detail Page Sales and Traffic by Child Item
  • Featured Offer (Buy Box) percentage
  • Brand Metrics, covering awareness, consideration and purchase

Questions it answers

  • Which search queries does the brand appear for, and what is its impression, click, cart-add and purchase share on each?
  • Where does the brand under-index against the category? High impression share with low purchase share usually points to a detail page problem rather than a traffic one
  • How did unit session percentage move on the ASINs where A+ Content or imagery changed, against those where it did not?
  • What proportion of glance views convert, by child ASIN, and which variations drag the family average down?
  • Is the brand holding the Featured Offer, and where it is not, what is displacing it?

Competition

Which products shoppers weigh against the brand's own, what they buy instead, and what they buy alongside.

Amazon data sources

  • Brand Analytics: Item Comparison and Alternate Purchase Behavior
  • Brand Analytics: Market Basket Analysis
  • Search Query Performance, read at category level
  • Sponsored Products and Sponsored Display targeting reports

Questions it answers

  • Which ASINs are viewed alongside the brand's own, and which are bought instead of them?
  • What is bought in the same basket, and does that suggest a bundle, a multipack or a targeting opportunity?
  • On the queries where a competitor takes purchase share, is the gap price, content, review count or Featured Offer position?
  • Which competitor ASINs are worth targeting with Sponsored Display, and which are targeting ours?

Market share

The brand's position within its category, tracked over time rather than sampled, so movement is visible before it shows in revenue.

Amazon data sources

  • Brand Analytics: Search Query Performance, purchase share by query
  • Product Opportunity Explorer
  • Category and subcategory sales rank movement
  • Share of voice from Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products placement data

Questions it answers

  • What share of category purchases does the brand hold on the queries that matter to it, and is that share moving?
  • Is the category itself growing or contracting, and is the brand growing faster or slower than it?
  • Where is share being lost, and to whom? And did it shift after a competitor changed price, content or advertising?
  • Which adjacent search terms is the brand absent from, and what would entering them require?

Advertising performance

Advertising read against total sales rather than in isolation, so efficiency gains that cost more than they save are visible.

Amazon data sources

  • Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display reports
  • Search term and targeting reports
  • Amazon Marketing Cloud, where the account has access
  • Business Reports: Sales and Traffic, for the organic comparison

Questions it answers

  • What are advertising cost of sale and total advertising cost of sale, and are they moving in the same direction?
  • Which search terms and target ASINs carry spend without converting, and how much would removing them save?
  • What proportion of sales are new-to-brand, and what does it cost to acquire them?
  • Where is advertising buying sales the brand would have made organically, and where is it genuinely incremental?
  • How does spend distribute across placements, and is that distribution deliberate?

Catalogue health

Listing completeness, suppression risk and variation integrity, tracked continuously rather than audited occasionally.

Amazon data sources

  • Listings and catalogue data via the Selling Partner API
  • Listing Quality Dashboard
  • Account health and policy notifications
  • Category style guide requirements

Questions it answers

  • Which listings are suppressed, stranded or incomplete against their category requirements, and what is each one costing?
  • Which variation families are broken, and how much traffic is being lost to detached children?
  • Which attributes are missing across the catalogue, and which of those affect search eligibility?
  • What changed on the catalogue this week that nobody on our side made?

Inventory and demand

Stock cover read against forecast demand and advertising plans, so the three are not planned separately.

Amazon data sources

  • FBA inventory and inbound shipment data
  • Inventory Performance Index and capacity limits
  • Business Reports: units ordered and sell-through rate
  • Subscribe & Save subscription volumes

Questions it answers

  • What is stock cover by ASIN against forecast demand, and where does that fall inside the replenishment lead time?
  • Which ASINs are at risk of stock-out during a period they are being advertised into?
  • What is the sell-through rate, and how does it compare to the capacity limits that follow from it?
  • How much of the demand is Subscribe & Save, and how predictable does that make the rest?

Customer behaviour

Which products acquire customers and which retain them. That distinction changes what each one is worth.

Amazon data sources

  • Brand Analytics: Repeat Purchase Behavior
  • Brand Analytics: Demographics, where available
  • Subscribe & Save cohort data
  • New-to-brand metrics from advertising reports

Questions it answers

  • Which ASINs generate repeat purchases, and over what interval?
  • Which products acquire new-to-brand customers, even at a poor immediate return?
  • What is the repeat rate by cohort, and is it improving?
  • Does the range have an obvious entry product, and is it priced and advertised as one?

Delivery

How the reporting reaches you

  • A scheduled report on an agreed cycle, with written commentary explaining what moved and why. Not a dashboard you are left to interpret.
  • Reporting is built around the commercial questions agreed at the start of the engagement, and reviewed periodically as those questions change.
  • Figures are reconciled onto a common basis before they are compared, so two numbers from two Amazon reports are not silently measuring different things.
  • One-off analysis is available for specific decisions such as range rationalisation, pricing position, or assessing a new marketplace before you commit to it.
  • You can export your own data at any time, and request deletion of everything held.

The application

The tooling behind the reporting

iCommerceteam Marketplace Insights

A reporting application that consolidates Amazon Brand Analytics, sales, advertising and inventory data into scheduled reporting for the selling partner who authorises it.

Full application detail

Data access

Selling Partner API roles used for this reporting

Access is granted by the selling partner and limited to the roles below. Each is used for the stated purpose and nothing else.

RoleWhy the reporting needs it
Brand AnalyticsTo retrieve Search Query Performance, Search Catalog Performance, Market Basket Analysis, Item Comparison and Alternate Purchase Behavior, and Repeat Purchase Behavior for the authorising selling partner's own brand. This is the basis of the brand presence, competition, market share and customer behaviour reporting described above.
Selling Partner InsightsTo retrieve sales and traffic data used alongside Brand Analytics data, so brand performance is read against total account performance rather than in isolation.
Inventory and Order TrackingTo retrieve inventory position and order data, so reporting reflects stock availability during the period analysed and demand forecasting has a basis.
Product ListingTo read catalogue and listing state for the catalogue health reporting, including attribute completeness and variation structure.

A selling partner can withdraw this authorisation at any time through Amazon, which stops collection immediately. See our data protection page for how the data is stored, used and deleted, including the commitment that one client’s data is never aggregated into anything made available to another.

Training and monitoring

Or we train your team and review their reporting

Where a brand wants to read this data themselves, we train their team on what each Amazon report actually measures and how to build a reporting cycle from it, then review their work on a schedule.

Most of the value here is definitional. A great deal of confusion in Amazon reporting comes from two reports using the same word for different things, or from comparing figures drawn over different date ranges.

Brand Analytics training

What Search Query Performance, Market Basket Analysis, Item Comparison and Repeat Purchase Behavior each measure, and the questions each can and cannot answer.

Business Reports and advertising reporting training

Reconciling Sales and Traffic with advertising reports, and reading advertising cost of sale against total advertising cost of sale.

Building a reporting cycle

Choosing what to report weekly against monthly, setting thresholds worth acting on, and writing commentary that supports a decision.

Ongoing review

Scheduled review of the in-house team's reporting, with written findings on anything being measured or interpreted incorrectly.

Pricing

What this costs

Charged as a monthly subscription covering report delivery and written commentary. The fee depends on catalogue size, marketplace count and reporting frequency. One-off analysis for a specific decision is quoted per project.

How pricing worksBook a call