{"id":28323,"date":"2026-09-03T18:16:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T12:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/?p=28323"},"modified":"2026-09-03T18:16:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T12:46:15","slug":"the-new-channels-amazon-sellers-are-betting-on-after-the-2026-commission-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/the-new-channels-amazon-sellers-are-betting-on-after-the-2026-commission-cuts\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Channels Amazon Sellers Are Betting On After the 2026 Commission Cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"lead\">This is a follow-up to our earlier breakdown of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/amazon-affiliate-commission-cuts-2026-what-changed-and-what-it-means-for-advertisers\/\">what the Amazon Associates cuts mean for advertisers<\/a>. Here we look specifically at why Google Ads is becoming the default paid answer, and what it actually takes to run it well alongside Amazon PPC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:10px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Affiliate-driven traffic was valuable to sellers precisely because it was free at the point of click \u2014 publishers only got paid when a sale happened. Commission cuts and reduced attribution windows mean fewer publishers are willing to keep sending that traffic. Sellers who want to replace it with something they control have three practical options: spend more on Amazon Ads, spend more on Google Ads, or build owned\/organic channels slowly over time. Google Ads is the one that scales fastest, because the demand \u2014 people actively searching for a product \u2014 already exists on Google; the seller just has to capture it before it defaults to an Amazon organic or sponsored result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>First, an important clarification: this isn&#8217;t entirely new<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A common assumption is that Google Ads traffic has to land on a seller&#8217;s own site before eventually reaching Amazon. That&#8217;s only true for part of Google Ads \u2014 and it&#8217;s worth being precise about which part, because it changes what &#8220;shifting to Google Ads&#8221; actually means in practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So a seller who was already running Google Search ads straight to their Amazon listing and earning BRB credit isn&#8217;t doing anything new. <strong>What&#8217;s changed is the <em>reason<\/em> to do it <\/strong>\u2014 replacing traffic that used to arrive for free from affiliates, rather than treating it as an optional margin-recovery tactic \u2014 and the fact that PMax, which now carries the bulk of most sellers&#8217; Shopping budget, doesn&#8217;t have the same direct-link option Search ads do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-what-opting-into-google-ads-actually-means-depending-on-where-you-re-starting\">What &#8220;opting into Google Ads&#8221; actually means, depending on where you&#8217;re starting?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Should sellers use Google Ads&#8221; isn&#8217;t a single question with a single answer, because most sellers already have some Google Ads footprint. What&#8217;s actually being decided differs by starting position:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Amazon-only sellers with no Google Ads account at all.<\/strong> For this group, it genuinely is new. There was previously no clean reason to bid on Google, since there was nowhere for that click to land that converted \u2014 or they simply didn&#8217;t know Attribution and BRB existed as a way to point that traffic at Amazon. The decision here is a real build: new account, new tagging setup, new budget line.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Sellers already running Google Ads for a DTC or Shopify site.<\/strong> The channel isn&#8217;t new to them at all. What&#8217;s new is standing up a <em>separate<\/em> set of Search campaigns, tagged with Amazon Attribution links, specifically to recapture demand that used to arrive free from affiliates \u2014 rather than running DTC-only campaigns and letting Amazon rely solely on its own PPC and organic ranking. This is a campaign-structure and budget-allocation decision, not a &#8220;should we adopt Google Ads&#8221; decision.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Sellers who already had Attribution and BRB set up, but treated it as marginal.<\/strong> A handful of brand-defense campaigns catching stray traffic, rarely checked, credit barely tracked. What&#8217;s changing for this group is scale and priority \u2014 it moves from &#8220;a small credit we don&#8217;t think about&#8221; to a line item that has to replace real volume, which means it needs a real budget, dedicated reporting, and someone actually managing it on an ongoing basis.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The honest one-line version: most sellers have already opted into Google Ads in some form. What&#8217;s shifting is whether Amazon-directed Search campaigns get treated as a deliberate, budgeted replacement for lost affiliate traffic \u2014 or stay a side experiment nobody&#8217;s actively managing.Why Google Ads, specifically?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:10px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-3.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"471\" src=\"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-3-1024x471.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-28355\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-3-1024x471.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-3-300x138.png 300w, https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-3-768x353.png 768w, https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-3-1536x707.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-3.png 2000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-should-you-actually-do-this\">Should you actually do this?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>A few honest questions determine whether it&#8217;s worth the setup effort:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Can your fulfillment keep up?<\/strong> External campaigns that convert well can deplete FBA inventory faster than expected, which stalls the organic ranking benefit that made the traffic valuable in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Are you Brand Registered?<\/strong> BRB requires it. Without Brand Registry, direct-to-Amazon Google Ads traffic gets no fee offset \u2014 the economics look very different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Do you have a domain you control?<\/strong> If you want to run Shopping or Performance Max (not just Search), you need a compliant landing page or DTC storefront regardless of Attribution. Without one, PMax is off the table and Search is your only direct option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What&#8217;s your category&#8217;s BRB rate?<\/strong> A 5% category (like some electronics) changes the math a lot less than a 45% category. Check the actual rate in Seller Central before assuming the &#8220;average 10%&#8221; applies to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What to prepare for, operationally<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>If the answer is yes, here&#8217;s what tends to surprise sellers who haven&#8217;t run this before:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Attribution and BRB credit aren&#8217;t instant.<\/strong> Attribution uses a 14-day, last-click window, and BRB credits typically post 60\u201390 days after the qualifying sale \u2014 so weekly performance reviews will show a lag between spend and the fee offset showing up.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>BRB is a fee credit, not cash back on ad spend.<\/strong> It reduces your referral fee on the resulting sale; it doesn&#8217;t show up as a rebate on your Google Ads bill. Track it as a margin adjustment, not a discount on CPC.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Reporting lives in two systems that don&#8217;t reconcile automatically.<\/strong> Google Ads shows clicks and cost; Amazon Attribution shows detail-page views and attributed sales. Getting a single ROAS number means pulling both manually or through a third-party layer.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Search and Shopping\/PMax need different setups.<\/strong> Search campaigns need Attribution tags in the destination URL. Shopping\/PMax campaigns need a compliant product feed and a landing page you own \u2014 effectively two different projects, not one.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Rising Amazon CPCs mean this isn&#8217;t a cheaper alternative, it&#8217;s a second cost center.<\/strong> Sponsored Products CPCs have climbed roughly 30%+ since 2022. Google Ads adds spend on top of that; the BRB credit softens it but doesn&#8217;t offset ad cost directly.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Query-level data becomes more valuable on both sides.<\/strong> Once you&#8217;re running paid demand generation on two platforms, negative keyword hygiene and search term visibility matter more, not less \u2014 and Amazon&#8217;s 60-day cap on search term data in Seller Central is exactly the kind of constraint that makes ongoing archival worth having in place before you scale external spend.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-which-campaign-type-should-carry-the-traffic-and-why\">Which campaign type should carry the traffic, and why?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Not every Google Ads campaign type is equally suited to sending traffic to an Amazon store, and the choice isn&#8217;t just a preference \u2014 it&#8217;s constrained by the policy distinction covered above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Search (manual, keyword-targeted) campaigns are generally the better starting point.<\/strong> They&#8217;re the only format that can link straight to an Amazon product page or Storefront via an Attribution tag, which means no landing page to build or maintain. They also give the most control: exact and phrase match keep spend on queries you&#8217;ve chosen, and 2026&#8217;s expanded negative-keyword limits (plus account-level negative lists) make it easier to keep brand and non-brand traffic cleanly separated \u2014 useful when you want an honest read on whether the spend is earning incremental sales, not just capturing your own brand searches.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Performance Max makes sense once there&#8217;s a reason to use it \u2014 not by default.<\/strong> It&#8217;s the strongest option for reach (Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, Maps from one campaign), and Google&#8217;s 2026 PMax-vs-Shopping experiment tool now makes it possible to test PMax against a standard Shopping campaign with a real 50\/50 split before committing budget. But it only works for Amazon sellers who already have a domain they control to satisfy Merchant Center&#8217;s landing-page requirement \u2014 it can&#8217;t be pointed at Amazon directly, and building a compliant feed and landing page just to unlock PMax is a real project, not a checkbox.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Standard Shopping campaigns sit in between.<\/strong> Same domain-ownership requirement as PMax, but with more manual control over where budget goes \u2014 worth considering for sellers who want Shopping-format visibility without ceding as much control to automation.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Display and Demand Gen are the weakest fit as a primary channel here.<\/strong> They&#8217;re better suited to retargeting an existing audience (ideally back to an owned site) than to cold demand generation aimed at Amazon, where attribution gets noisier and BRB&#8217;s 14-day click window is harder to satisfy from a low-intent impression.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-what-it-actually-takes-to-run-it-well-alongside-amazon-ppc\">What it actually takes to run it well alongside Amazon PPC?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Getting the setup right is a one-time project. Running it well is ongoing, and it looks different from managing Amazon PPC on its own:<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Someone has to own the combined view, not just each platform separately.<\/strong> Google Ads and Amazon Ads each have their own dashboard, their own notion of &#8220;performance,&#8221; and their own optimization suggestions \u2014 neither is built to tell you whether the <em>combination<\/em> is working. Without a person or process responsible for that combined view, both platforms tend to get optimized independently, which can quietly work against each other (e.g., Amazon PPC bidding up the same brand term Google Search is already capturing for free).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Budget pacing has to account for two auctions running on different clocks.<\/strong> Amazon&#8217;s bidding responds within a campaign&#8217;s own budget and dayparting; Google&#8217;s does the same but on entirely separate signals. Treating the combined spend as one pool \u2014 reviewed and paced together, not as two unrelated line items \u2014 is what keeps one platform from quietly overspending while the other sits idle.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Negative keyword hygiene has to happen on both sides, using signal from each other.<\/strong> A search term burning budget on Amazon Sponsored Products should inform the negative list on the Google side, and vice versa \u2014 otherwise the same wasted query gets paid for twice.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Review cadence needs to match the real reporting lag, not wishful thinking.<\/strong> Because BRB credit posts 60\u201390 days after the sale, judging the tactic on a two-week snapshot will make it look worse than it is. Set the actual review cycle around the real data lag, not the weekly reporting habit built for Amazon PPC alone.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Someone needs to periodically sanity-check that BRB eligibility hasn&#8217;t quietly lapsed.<\/strong> Category rate changes, catalog updates, or a listing falling out of Brand Registry standing can silently cut off the fee credit without an alert \u2014 worth a monthly spot-check rather than assuming it&#8217;s still running as configured.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>None of this is exotic, but it&#8217;s real ongoing work layered on top of managing Amazon PPC \u2014 which is exactly why sellers who treat this as &#8220;turn it on once&#8221; tend to be disappointed with the results a few months in.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-where-karooya-can-guide\">Where Karooya can guide<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Native Amazon Attribution answers the campaign- and ad-group-level question \u2014 &#8220;did this Google Ads effort drive Amazon sales&#8221; \u2014 but it stops there. It doesn&#8217;t break performance down to the keyword level, which is the granularity PPC managers actually need to decide where to raise or cut bids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:10px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/integration-tool-for-amazon-attribution-and-google-ads\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Karooya&#8217;s Attribution integration<\/a> sits on top of Amazon Attribution to close that gap:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Keyword-level tracking.<\/strong> It shows spend and attributed Amazon sales per keyword, not just per campaign or ad group, so you can see which specific search terms are actually converting to Amazon purchases \u2014 and drill into the underlying queries triggering each keyword.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>ROAS-based labeling.<\/strong> Keywords get labeled automatically based on performance (ROAS\/ACoS tiers), so bid decisions don&#8217;t require manually cross-referencing two dashboards.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Portfolio bidding.<\/strong> Where an individual keyword doesn&#8217;t have enough volume to judge on its own, bid decisions can lean on the performance of the broader portfolio it belongs to \u2014 applied manually or automated to hit an ACoS target.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Bulk workflow support.<\/strong> Attribution data can be exported and pushed into bid updates via Google Ads Editor, which matters once a seller is managing this across multiple keywords, campaigns, or marketplaces rather than a handful of manually-tagged links.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:10px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>This is squarely aimed at the reconciliation problem described above: once Google Ads and Amazon Attribution are running side by side, someone has to turn two separate reporting systems into one bidding decision. That&#8217;s the layer Karooya adds \u2014 not a replacement for Amazon Attribution or the Brand Referral Bonus, but the keyword-level detail and bid automation neither of those natively provide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:10px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"739\" src=\"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1-1024x739.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-28350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1-1024x739.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1-300x217.png 300w, https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1-768x554.png 768w, https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1-1536x1109.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1-2048x1478.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">FAQ<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Is sending Google Ads traffic directly to Amazon a new strategy created because of the affiliate commission cuts?<\/strong> No. It&#8217;s existed for years through Amazon Attribution and the Brand Referral Bonus program, both of which are unrelated to and unchanged by the 2026 Associates commission cuts. What&#8217;s new is more sellers treating it as necessary rather than optional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Can all types of Google Ads link directly to an Amazon listing?<\/strong> No. Search (text) ads can, using an Amazon Attribution tag in the destination URL. Shopping and Performance Max ads cannot \u2014 Google Merchant Center policy requires those feed-based formats to point to a site the advertiser owns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Does the Brand Referral Bonus make Google Ads to Amazon effectively free?<\/strong> No. It offsets part of the referral fee on the resulting sale \u2014 averaging around 10%, depending on category \u2014 but the seller still pays full price for the Google Ads click itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Related Reads<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/amazon-affiliate-commission-cuts-2026-what-changed-and-what-it-means-for-advertisers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Amazon Affiliate Commission Cuts (2026): What Changed and What It Means for Advertisers<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/is-your-brand-set-up-to-benefit-from-amazons-brand-referral-bonus\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Is Your Brand Set Up to Benefit from Amazon&#8217;s Brand Referral Bonus?<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a follow-up to our earlier breakdown of what the Amazon Associates cuts mean for advertisers. Here we look specifically at why Google Ads is becoming the default paid answer, and what it actually takes to run it well alongside Amazon PPC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ub_ctt_via":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-googl-search-tips"],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Kirti","author_link":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/author\/kirti\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28323"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28359,"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28323\/revisions\/28359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}