Conversion source is a dimension in Amazon Ads unified reporting that records which system or integration told Amazon a conversion had happened. It exists because a growing share of the outcomes Amazon reports on happen outside its store. A purchase on Amazon.com is observed directly. A sign-up on a brand's website, an install of a mobile app or a sale in a physical shop is not, and reaches Amazon only when something reports it: a tag on a web page, a server-to-server feed, a mobile measurement partner or an offline data upload. The conversion source dimension lets an advertiser split conversion results by that reporting channel. Amazon's Support Center describes it, in the wording quoted by PPC Land, as the system or integration that reported conversions to Amazon Ads.

Where the field sits

Unified reporting is the single report builder Amazon introduced to replace separate report pages for sponsored ads and for its display, video and audio buying tool, formerly Amazon DSP (demand-side platform) and renamed DVA on September 29, 2026. It entered beta at Amazon's unBoxed conference in November 2025 and left beta on June 8, 2026. Amazon's launch post that day said the system brought "standardized metrics, dimensions and attribution methodology" across ad products.

The dimension list behind it is long. Amazon's dimensions page, updated on November 11, 2026, lists 156 attributes in 11 categories, which PPC Land counted by ad product: 137 apply to DVA+, 85 to Sponsored Products, 81 to Sponsored Display and 73 to Sponsored Brands. Conversion source belongs to a conversion category of seven attributes. All seven are marked for every ad product. The same page states that the conversion fields "primarily apply to off-Amazon conversions provided through advertiser or partner integrations."

That qualification matters in practice. A Sponsored Products campaign optimised to Amazon store purchases has no external integration feeding it, so the field may carry nothing useful for those rows. Amazon's documentation says dimensions that do not apply to a given row return null.

The seven conversion attributes

Conversion source anchors a small family of fields.

  • Conversion source names the reporting system or integration.
  • Conversion source owner identifies who operates that source. A third-party connector built on Amazon's reporting API, Adverity, describes the underlying field (conversionSourceOwnerDimension) as indicating whether the source is Amazon or an Amazon partner.
  • Conversion source environment describes where the source operates. Amazon's public material reviewed for this article does not list its values.
  • Conversion source attribution type records, in Amazon's wording, "the organization whose attribution logic is applied to the conversions". Adverity's documentation frames it as Amazon versus third party.
  • Scaled flags whether a source has scaled its data "to represent a larger population", meaning a panel or sample has been projected upward rather than every conversion counted.
  • Conversion definition (off-Amazon) and conversion type (off-Amazon) describe the event itself: the advertiser-named action being counted, and its category.

In the reporting API the main field appears as conversionSourceNameDimension, according to Adverity's connector reference, which is why some third-party tools label the column "conversion source name". Conversion definition answers "what was counted"; conversion source answers "who said so".

How a source gets into a report

The chain starts outside Amazon. An advertiser sets up an off-Amazon conversion, for example a newsletter sign-up, a lead form or an app purchase, and chooses how evidence of it will reach Amazon.

Amazon Ad Tag (AAT) is the browser-side option: a JavaScript snippet on the advertiser's website that fires when the event happens. Conversions API (CAPI) is the server-side equivalent, sending the same event from the advertiser's server to Amazon. According to server-side tagging vendor Stape, in an October 2025 guide, CAPI "supports the same events and event parameters as Amazon Ad Tag" and is less exposed to ad blockers and browser cookie limits. Matching to Amazon users relies on hashed personal data such as email addresses or phone numbers, or on cookies where available.

Mobile measurement partners (MMPs) handle apps. Amazon's Events Manager, introduced at unBoxed 2023 as a central place in Amazon DSP to pass back events "happening outside the Amazon store", added MMP integrations in February 2024, naming Adjust, Kochava and Singular. A March 18, 2024 Amazon announcement extended imports of Android and Fire OS app conversions from those partners to the US, Canada, Mexico and Brazil.

Offline and partner feeds cover stores and call centres. LiveRamp said in October 2024 that Amazon's events manager lets marketers measure "website conversions, advertiser-owned apps, as well as offline sales."

Once an event arrives, Amazon matches it to a person who saw or clicked an ad, applies an attribution rule and writes the credited conversion into reporting, keeping the origin label. A single DVA+ campaign can therefore show, in one report, conversions reported by the website tag, by CAPI and by an MMP, each on its own row.

Why the field matters

Amazon's advertising business increasingly sells to brands that do not trade on Amazon at all. DVA+, the objective-led campaign type announced on September 29, 2026, asks such brands to supply a landing page and define a conversion event on their own site. For those advertisers, every conversion in a report comes from an external source, and the quality of that source sets the quality of the optimisation.

The field also exposes measurement gaps that blended totals hide. A drop in conversions might reflect weaker campaign performance, or a broken tag, a lapsed CAPI connection or an MMP postback that stopped firing. Splitting by source makes the second set of explanations visible. It also helps reconcile Amazon's numbers with an MMP dashboard or the advertiser's own analytics.

Regulation added a further reason. PPC Land reported that from June 30, 2026, Amazon would require a valid consent signal and a country code on data about UK and European Economic Area (EEA) users. Accepted signals are the IAB Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF), the Global Privacy Platform (GPP) or Amazon's own consent specification, and requirements differ by tool: AAT needs a consent management platform, CAPI must pass one of the three signals, and an Events API in open beta carries a consent object in each event. Sources that fail the check stop contributing, which shows up first as a fall in one source's rows.

Modelled and scaled conversions

Not every conversion in an off-Amazon report was observed. From August 16, 2024, Amazon DSP began using statistical modelling for off-Amazon conversions that could not be measured directly, for US advertisers. Amazon's announcement stated that "directly measured conversions and modeled conversions are reported together as a combined result."

The scaled attribute addresses a related but separate case: a source that projects from a sample. Amazon's Omnichannel Metrics, for instance, rely on the Amazon Shopper Panel, a receipt-upload app launched in the US in October 2020, combined with unnamed third-party signals. In July 2026 Amazon began breaking those beyond-Amazon sales down by retailer, using exposure-based attribution. Amazon's dimensions page does not say which sources scale their data.

Limitations and open questions

The first limitation is documentation. Amazon's help pages for unified reporting render through JavaScript, and the public descriptions of the seven conversion attributes are a sentence each. As of November 2026, Amazon has not published, in material reviewed for this article, a list of possible values for conversion source, owner, environment or attribution type.

The second is comparability. Different sources apply different attribution logic, which is the reason the attribution type attribute exists. A conversion credited under an MMP's rules is not the same quantity as one credited under Amazon's, and adding them in a single total mixes methods. Amazon's own logic has also moved: from January 1, 2026, view-based campaigns serving Amazon store inventory switched to shopping-signal enhanced last-touch attribution, with the older 14-day figures kept under "all views" metrics. Unified reporting itself moved from conversion-based to traffic-based attribution, according to Amazon's June 2026 launch post.

The third is verification. Amazon sells the media, runs the matching and, for modelled or scaled figures, estimates part of the result. The source label says where an event came from; it does not show how many reported events Amazon failed to match, or how a scaled source was projected.

Commonly confused terms

Conversion definition. The event being counted, named by the advertiser. Conversion source is the channel that reported it. One definition, such as "purchase", can arrive through several sources.

Supply source. A separate unified reporting dimension describing where an ad was served, such as Amazon-owned sites or third-party exchanges. It concerns inventory, not conversion data.

Amazon Attribution. Amazon's free tool for measuring how ads on other platforms, such as search or social, drive sales on Amazon, using tagged click-through URLs on a 14-day, last-click basis. It measures traffic into Amazon; conversion source concerns conversions reported from outside it.

Source in web analytics. In tools such as Google Analytics, "source" usually means the referrer of a visit, for example a search engine or newsletter. That is a traffic source, not a reporting integration.

Recent developments

Amazon updated its unified reporting dimensions page on November 11, 2026, the page from which PPC Land counted 156 attributes and seven conversion fields. The same page states that Sponsored TV, Amazon's self-service streaming TV format, is not yet supported, even though many attributes carry its marker. The legacy sponsored ads and DSP report pages were originally due to close on December 31, 2026; a later Amazon migration page, cited by PPC Land, moved the cut-off to January 31, 2027. DVA+ remains in extended closed beta in the US, with general availability in 35 markets expected in the first quarter of 2027.

Timeline

  • October 2020 - Amazon launches the Amazon Shopper Panel in the US.
  • 2023 - Amazon introduces Events Manager in Amazon DSP at unBoxed for passing back off-Amazon conversions.
  • February 13, 2024 - Events Manager beta expands to mobile measurement partners Adjust, Kochava and Singular.
  • March 18, 2024 - Android and Fire OS app conversions from MMPs importable in the US, Canada, Mexico and Brazil.
  • August 16, 2024 - Amazon DSP adds modelled off-Amazon conversions for US advertisers, reported together with measured ones.
  • November 2025 - Unified reporting enters beta at unBoxed.
  • January 1, 2026 - Shopping-signal enhanced last-touch attribution applies to view-based store campaigns.
  • June 8, 2026 - Unified reporting becomes generally available.
  • June 30, 2026 - Consent signal and country code required for UK and EEA conversion data.
  • July 7, 2026 - Omnichannel Metrics begin reporting beyond-Amazon sales by retailer.
  • September 29, 2026 - Amazon DSP renamed DVA; DVA+ announced.
  • November 11, 2026 - Amazon updates its unified reporting dimensions page, listing seven conversion attributes.
  • January 31, 2027 - Scheduled cut-off for legacy report pages.

Summary

Who: Amazon Ads defines and populates the field; advertisers, agencies and the partners that send conversion data, including website tags, server-side integrations, mobile measurement partners and offline data providers, supply the events it labels.

What: A unified reporting dimension that names the system or integration that reported a conversion to Amazon Ads, one of seven conversion attributes alongside owner, environment, attribution type, scaled, and off-Amazon conversion definition and type.

When: Unified reporting entered beta in November 2025 and became generally available on June 8, 2026; Amazon's dimensions page listing the conversion attributes was last updated on November 11, 2026.

Where: In the Amazon Ads unified report builder and reporting API, across DVA+, Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display, applying mainly to conversions that happen off Amazon.

Why: Off-Amazon conversions reach Amazon through different channels with different coverage and attribution rules, and the field lets advertisers separate them, diagnose broken integrations and reconcile Amazon's figures with their own.