A Beginner’s Guide to Amazon’s Top Conversion Paths

March 25, 2025
By The Badger

In this post, we’re diving into one of the newest features inside Amazon Advertising—Conversion Paths. It’s a game-changer in how advertisers can understand customer behavior across multiple touchpoints.

To help us break it all down, we’re joined by Mansour from Incrementum Digital, a seasoned expert in eCommerce advertising and someone who’s been closely following the evolution of Amazon’s ad platform.

You might be wondering, “What exactly are Conversion Paths, and why should I care?”

That’s exactly what we’ll explore here.

Conversion Paths give us a clearer picture of how different ad types—like Sponsored Products, Sponsored Display, and Sponsored Brands—work together to influence a purchase.

And while Amazon still relies heavily on last-click attribution, this new report offers a first step toward understanding the bigger story behind each sale.

In this post, we’ll walk through what the report shows, what it leaves out, and why this marks a significant shift in how brands should approach campaign strategy.

Introducing Conversion Paths in Amazon Advertising

Let’s start with the big update—Conversion Paths, now available right inside Amazon’s Campaign Manager.

If you’ve logged into your Amazon Advertising account recently, you may have noticed this new section sitting prominently on the landing page of your campaign dashboard. It’s hard to miss—and for good reason.

This feature sheds light on something advertisers have been craving for years: a better understanding of how different ad types work together along the customer journey.

Instead of showing isolated, last-click data, Conversion Paths connect the dots between multiple touchpoints—like when a shopper sees a Sponsored Product ad, later views a Sponsored Display, and finally purchases after clicking on a Sponsored Brand ad.

Amazon summarizes this journey in a simplified visual format, making it easier to see not just which ad led to the sale but which ads contributed along the way. It’s a powerful shift in perspective, moving away from analyzing ads in silos and toward viewing them as part of a connected ecosystem.

This tool is still in its early stages, but it’s already a huge step toward more intelligent and data-driven advertising on Amazon.

Understanding it now will give you a strategic edge as the platform evolves—and this post will guide you through how it works, what to watch out for, and what it means for your campaigns going forward.

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How Conversion Paths Work: Multiple Touchpoints Before the Purchase

We all know that shoppers rarely buy something the first time they see it.

They might browse, compare, come back later, or click around on different ads before finally making a decision. This is exactly what Conversion Paths are designed to reveal.

At its core, the Conversion Path report maps out the sequence of ad interactions a customer goes through before purchasing.

These touchpoints could include a Sponsored Product ad, followed by a Sponsored Display, and maybe even a Sponsored Video ad before the final click that leads to a sale.

It’s Amazon’s way of saying: “Hey, this wasn’t a one-click journey—here’s everything that happened along the way.”

For example, imagine a customer first sees a Sponsored Product ad while browsing.

They don’t click, but a few days later, they see a Sponsored Display ad while scrolling through product pages. That catches their attention. Then, while watching a review video, they’re hit with a Sponsored Video ad for the same product.

Now they’re ready. They go back, click on another Sponsored Product ad, and make the purchase.

Traditionally, only that last click—the final Sponsored Product ad—would get credit. But with Conversion Paths, you can now see the entire chain of influence and begin to understand which ad types are helping move customers closer to buying, even if they didn’t make the final sale.

Knowing which ad combinations actually work together helps you build a stronger, more intentional strategy across your campaigns.

Why Multi-Touch Attribution Matters

For years, Amazon advertisers have relied on a last-click attribution model—meaning only the final ad a customer clicked on before making a purchase gets the credit.

While that might seem straightforward, it leaves out a huge part of the story.

Think about it: if a shopper saw three of your ads over the span of a week, interacted with two of them, and only converted on the last one, was it really just that final ad that made the difference?

Of course not. ❌

Each of those touchpoints played a role in guiding the customer toward the sale.

That’s where multi-touch attribution comes in—and why the new Conversion Paths report is such a big deal. It helps you see that full journey.

You begin to understand how different ad types support one another, and how earlier interactions might warm up a shopper long before they’re ready to buy.

The problem with sticking to last-click data is that it can lead to misinformed decisions.

For instance, a Sponsored Product ad that consistently drives traffic but rarely gets the final click might look like it’s underperforming—when in reality, it’s playing a crucial supporting role in many conversions.

Without visibility into that, advertisers might pause or underfund effective campaigns simply because they don’t see the full picture.

Conversion Paths opens the door to smarter attribution—not just measuring what converted, but how it converted.

It encourages advertisers to think holistically and to start valuing the entire funnel, not just the final step.

And as we move into more advanced tools like Amazon Marketing Cloud, this shift in mindset becomes essential.

What the Report Shows — and What It Doesn’t

The Conversion Paths report offers valuable new insights, but like any tool, it comes with limitations.

First, let’s talk about what the report does show.

You’ll see metrics like total sales generated per path, new-to-brand sales, purchase counts, and even the percentage of total sales each conversion path contributes to.

You’ll also notice that Amazon de-duplicates touchpoints of the same type. For instance, if a customer clicks on multiple Sponsored Product ads, they’re all grouped into one “Sponsored Product” touchpoint.

It simplifies the path but also means you don’t get a granular view of each individual interaction within that ad type.

Now, here’s what the report doesn’t show—and this is important. 🚨

First, it completely excludes organic interactions.

If someone first finds your product through a search result or an influencer link and then clicks on a paid ad, that organic step won’t be reflected in the path.

This can skew your understanding of how customers are truly discovering your brand.

Second, you won’t see the number of unique users per path. That means you can’t calculate conversion rates for each journey or fully understand how frequently certain paths lead to purchases.

For example, you might know that a Sponsored Product → Sponsored Display → Purchase path generated $10,000 in sales—but you don’t know how many people traveled that path, or how many dropped off along the way.

The lack of spend data per step is another gap.

Without knowing how much you spent on each ad type along the way, you can’t calculate a true ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sales) across the full journey. You’re still left optimizing based on final-touch metrics.

In short, this report is a huge step forward—but it’s not the full story.

Think of it as a starting point for shifting your mindset toward multi-touch attribution. The real power comes when you pair it with deeper tools like Amazon Marketing Cloud, where you can access more granular data and build your own attribution models.

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Calculating True ACOS and the Role of Assisted Sales

One of the biggest limitations in Amazon’s current reporting is how it calculates ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sales)—it’s entirely based on the last-click model.

That means only the final ad interaction gets credit for the sale, and all the other ads that played a role? They’re left out of the equation.

But in reality, a customer’s journey is rarely that simple.

And if we’re only measuring ACOS based on the final step, we’re missing the full impact of our campaigns. That’s where the idea of assisted sales comes into play.

Assisted sales refer to those moments when an ad was part of the customer journey—but didn’t get direct attribution.

For example, a Sponsored Product ad may have been the first touchpoint, but the final sale happened after the customer clicked on a Sponsored Display ad. The Sponsored Product ad assisted in the sale, but it won’t show any revenue in your campaign manager.

This gap in data can lead to poor decisions. Advertisers might pause or reduce spend on campaigns that seem unprofitable—when in fact, those campaigns are working behind the scenes to drive revenue.

To bridge this gap, some advanced advertisers have started building internal dashboards.

At Incrementum Digital, they’ve created one called Data Owl, which includes a custom metric called assisted sales. This metric tracks how much total revenue was influenced when a specific ad type or campaign was part of the journey, even if it wasn’t the last click.

With this kind of data, you can start to calculate a more realistic ACOS or ROAS—one that reflects the true contribution of your campaigns across the full funnel. Instead of just asking, “Did this ad close the deal?”, you start asking, “How much did this ad help get the deal done?”

And that’s a powerful shift in mindset.

It transforms how you allocate budget, how you value different ad types, and how you measure success across your account.

Brand Analysis: Simple vs. Complex Paths to Purchase

One of the most insightful parts of using the Conversion Paths report is comparing how different brands drive their sales.

A great example comes from the comparison between Brand 1 📦and Brand 2 📦📦, each with very different customer journeys—and very different strategies.

Brand 1 had just 14 conversion paths in total, yet it generated twice as much revenue as Brand 2. The majority of its sales—around 88%—came from a single ad type: Sponsored Products. This tells us a lot. Brand 1’s customer journey is more direct and transactional. Shoppers see an ad, click, and buy.

For a brand like this, the optimization strategy is pretty straightforward:
Double down on Sponsored Products. Expand keyword targeting, adjust bids on high-converting terms, and test variations that push performance even further. Experimenting with other ad types might uncover new growth, but the current strategy is clearly working.

Now compare that to Brand 2, which had 28 unique conversion paths—double the complexity. This tells a very different story. Shoppers are seeing multiple ad types before they make a purchase: Sponsored Display, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Video… the full mix. That suggests Brand 2’s product requires more consideration, or that customers need more touches before they’re ready to convert.

For Brand 2, the takeaway is all about leaning into the multi-touch journey. They should ensure they’re investing in every part of the funnel—building awareness with Sponsored Brands, staying top of mind with Sponsored Display, and closing the sale with high-intent Sponsored Product ads. They should also look at purchase rates for different ad combinations to understand which sequences are most effective.

In short, Brand 1 wins on simplicity and precision, while Brand 2 thrives on a more layered, full-funnel strategy. Neither is right or wrong—they’re just different. The key is understanding which model fits your product and then optimizing accordingly.

What’s Next: AMC, AI, and the Future of Attribution

As useful as the Conversion Paths report is, it’s still just the beginning.

For advertisers who are ready to go deeper, the next frontier is Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC)—a much more powerful analytics environment that allows you to build custom attribution models, analyze user-level journeys, and unlock data that goes far beyond what’s available in Campaign Manager.

Right now, AMC can feel a bit technical and out of reach for many brands, but the expectation is clear: Amazon is moving toward bringing more of this advanced data directly into the ad console.

Over time, features like assisted sales, spend-per-path, and custom attribution modeling—first-touch, linear, time-decay—could become standard. And that’s a game-changer.

We’re also entering a phase where AI and automation will play a larger role in attribution and optimization.

Imagine AI-powered recommendations that tell you not just which ad performed best but which combination of ads moved the needle. Or tools that dynamically adjust bids and budgets based on full-funnel performance, not just the last click.

Ad Badger is already moving in this direction, building tools that help advertisers go beyond last-click data to understand full-funnel performance and optimize bids intelligently across the entire customer journey.

Until that’s fully integrated, your best move is to use Conversion Paths as your training ground. Get comfortable with the idea of multi-touch attribution. Notice where your ads are influencing decisions, even if they’re not getting the final sale.

And where possible, start building internal dashboards or exploring AMC to push your analysis further.

Summary

The Conversion Paths report marks a significant step forward in how Amazon helps advertisers understand the full customer journey.

Instead of focusing solely on last-click attribution, this report sheds light on the multiple ad touchpoints that influence a purchase—whether it’s Sponsored Products, Sponsored Display, Sponsored Brands, or Sponsored Video.

It reminds us that a single ad rarely does all the work. Customers often interact with your brand multiple times before they buy, and if you’re only tracking that final click, you’re missing the bigger picture.

While the report isn’t perfect—it lacks spend data per step, doesn’t account for organic traffic, and doesn’t show unique user counts—it challenges us to think differently.

For new advertisers, this is the ideal place to start shifting your mindset beyond basic metrics. For more advanced teams, it’s a stepping stone to tools like Amazon Marketing Cloud, where deeper, custom attribution modeling becomes possible.