How market estimates work
With competition monitoring on, a brand report estimates how much each watched listing sold across every seller, not just you. That's the market a brand wants to know its share of. Amazon doesn't publish other sellers' sales, so SKU.io works the market out from data it does have, and labels every figure Est.
The idea
Most Amazon sales on a listing go to whoever holds the Buy Box at that moment. Amazon tells each seller, for each listing, how many times the page was viewed and what share of those views it held the Buy Box for. So if you held the Buy Box for 30% of a listing's page views and sold 120 units, the listing sold about 400 units in total:
Estimated market units ≈ your units ÷ your Buy Box share
120 units ÷ 30% = about 400 units. Competitors sold about 280, and your share (%Sh) is 30%.
From that:
- Mkt units (Est.) is the estimated total units.
- Mkt $ (Est.) is those units at the period's average Buy Box price, or your own average price if there's no Buy Box price.
- %Sh is your units as a share of the market. Because of how it's worked out, it's close to your Buy Box share.
Your Buy Box share is weighted by page views across the period, so a day with heavy traffic counts for more than a quiet one.
Confidence
Dividing by a small Buy Box share magnifies any error, so every estimate carries a confidence level. Low-confidence estimates aren't printed.
| Confidence | When | Shown as |
|---|---|---|
| High | Buy Box share of at least 40% and at least 20 of your units in the period | The estimate |
| Medium | Buy Box share of at least 15% and at least 5 units | The estimate |
| Low | Anything less, including listings where you have no offer | insufficient signal |
Hover over an estimate to see its confidence and how it was worked out.
Hour by hour
When SKU.io has the listing's page views and its Buy Box holder for almost every hour of the period (at least 90%), it uses a finer method. For each hour a competitor held the Buy Box, it takes that hour's page views at the rate you convert when you hold it. This copes better with a Buy Box that changes hands often, and it estimates units for each competitor, shown in the offer evidence drawer as Estimated units by Buy Box holder.
Filling the gaps with Keepa
For a listing whose estimate would be insufficient signal, SKU.io can use Keepa's figure instead, if you've connected a Keepa key. Keepa's estimate comes from Amazon's own "bought in past month" count and its sales-rank history. Keepa estimates are medium confidence at most, and never less than your own units. See Turn on competition monitoring.
What the estimate can get wrong
These limits are printed in the footer of the brand's copy too:
- It assumes competitors sell like you do. When a competitor holding the Buy Box is much cheaper, they likely convert better than you would, and the market is underestimated.
- Sales outside the Buy Box are partly missed. Your own non-Buy-Box sales are counted, which nudges the estimate up; competitors' aren't, which nudges it down. The two roughly cancel out.
- Amazon's traffic data lags a day or two, so the last days of a period can be incomplete when the report is built. Regenerating later fills them in.
- It's per listing. Products from other brands that compete for the same shoppers aren't counted.
Totals across marketplaces in different currencies are converted to your account's currency with your stored exchange rates. A marketplace with no rate is left out of the total, and the report says so.