How PixelMe’s New Amazon SMID Feature Stops Traffic Hijacking

As an Amazon seller, you invest significant time and money in driving external traffic to your product pages from sources like Google ads, Meta ads, influencer campaigns, and email marketing. But what if a large portion of that hard-earned traffic results in sales for your competitors?

This costly issue, often called traffic hijacking, happens silently and can undermine your entire marketing strategy. It occurs when a customer clicks your link but lands on a product page where another seller holds the Buy Box. The sale goes to them, and your ad spend is wasted.

The key to preventing this is a small but powerful part of your product URL: the Amazon SMID.

What is an Amazon SMID?

A SMID, which stands for Seller ID (also known as a Merchant Token), is a unique code that attaches your seller identity to a product URL. When you include your SMID in a link, you create a seller-specific URL that directs customers to your specific offer on a product detail page.

Without a SMID, a standard Amazon URL (amazon.com/dp/ASIN) will show the customer whichever seller is currently in the Buy Box. If that’s not you, you’ve just paid to send a customer directly to your competition!

By simply adding ?smid=YOUR-SELLER-ID to the end of the URL, you ensure that your offer is the one presented, effectively blocking out competitors from stealing the sale.

Stop Leaking Sales: PixelMe’s Automated SMID Protection

Manually adding a SMID to every link is tedious and prone to error. That’s why PixelMe is proud to announce our new automated SMID feature, designed to protect your traffic, secure your conversions, and boost campaign performance—effortlessly.

Our platform now ensures every dollar you spend on marketing benefits your store. We do this in two key ways:

1. Alerts for Existing Campaigns

For your live campaigns, PixelMe will automatically detect any product URLs that are missing a SMID or contain an incorrect one. When we find one, a simple alert will appear in your notification center.

Clicking the alert opens a modal that explains the issue and, with your consent, fixes the links to include the correct SMID, instantly protecting your ongoing campaigns.

2. Auto-Append for New Campaigns

Moving forward, you won’t have to think about SMIDs at all. For any new campaign you create in PixelMe, our system automatically appends the correct SMID to every Amazon product URL. If you don’t have a SMID stored, we’ll prompt you to connect your SP-API to retrieve it. This proactive automation means your traffic is protected from day one.

The Real-World Impact: Protect Ad Spend and Boost Performance

By ensuring your traffic always leads to your offer, the benefits go far beyond just securing a single sale.

• Maximize ROAS: Get the full return on your ad spend. Whether you are running Google Ads for Amazon or other off-platform campaigns, you can now be confident your budget is generating sales for you, not your competitors.
• Boost Organic Rankings: More sales attributed directly to you increases your sales velocity, a key factor in improving your organic search position. This leads to better Data-Driven Amazon SERP Optimization and a positive feedback loop of visibility and sales.
• Secure Your Conversions: You did the work to attract a customer. This feature ensures you reap the reward, preventing last-minute losses to hijackers or lower-priced offers in the Buy Box.

This new feature reinforces PixelMe’s commitment to being a trusted growth partner for Amazon sellers, handling the technical details behind the scenes so you can focus on scaling your business.

Drive High-Converting Traffic with PixelMe

Drive high-converting external traffic to your Amazon listings with PixelMe, our external traffic solution. Boost your organic rank, maximize ROAS, and unlock Amazon’s Brand Referral Bonus program. Get your free ASIN audit now.