If you add up Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display separately and compare that against a combined total, the figures will not always reconcile cleanly. That is expected, and it is Amazon's doing rather than TrackIQ's.
Prefer to watch? Fifty-one seconds on why the totals blend rather than sum.
Different channels, different attribution windows
Amazon credits a sale back to an ad for a fixed period after the click. That period is not the same for every channel:
| Channel | Attribution window |
|---|---|
| Sponsored Products (SP) | 7 days |
| Sponsored Brands (SB) | 14 days |
| Sponsored Display (SD) | 14 days |
So a combined, cross-channel view is a blend of two different windows. Sponsored Brands and Display get a fortnight to claim a sale; Sponsored Products gets a week.
What this means in practice
Do not compare SP efficiency directly against SB or SD efficiency. Sponsored Brands has twice as long to be credited with a conversion. Its ACoS will tend to look better for that reason alone, before any real difference in performance.
Recent days are unstable for SB and SD. A Sponsored Brands campaign from three days ago has eleven days left to accumulate attributed sales. Its ACoS today will improve on its own. Judging a fortnight-window channel on three days of data will make it look far worse than it is.
Totals shift as windows close. A number you screenshotted last week can legitimately be different this week, because sales were still being attributed backwards into it.
The rule of thumb
Compare like with like: SP against SP, SB against SB. When you do need one combined figure — for a monthly total, say — use a period that closed at least two weeks ago, so every channel's window has fully elapsed.
One more thing that trips people up
Campaign views default to showing enabled campaigns only. A month where you paused several campaigns will look like it lost spend that a full view would still show. If a total looks lower than you expect, check whether paused and archived campaigns are being counted.
Amazon DSP is a separate system again, with its own reporting. It is not part of the Sponsored Ads totals at all — see the Amazon DSP section for that.
Related
- Understanding ROAS and Key Amazon Advertising Metrics — the metrics themselves.
- Time to Conversion: Checking Your Attribution Window — the attribution windows behind the overlap.
- Spot Cannibalisation Between Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products — the playbook for testing real overlap.
- Create a Sponsored Brands Video Campaign — the fourth thing people try to add in.
- Ad Type and Placement Mix — rebalancing the mix without adding the ad types together.