Monthly Amazon Update – April 2018

Amazon recently launched a new corporate website: They also provide insights in a new blog.
Link Website / Link Blog

Amazon owns almost half of German e-commerce: In 2017, amazon.de marketplace had a 25% and amazon.de a 21% share of total e-commerce sales.
Link (German)

Amazon increases sales in first quarter by 42%: Sales in Q1 at USD 51 billion with USD 1.63 billion in profit. But increase in e-commerce „only“ at 13%.
Link

Number of orders per customers in 2017 twice as high as 5 years ago: Amazon customers ordered 41 times on average in 2017. Prime members even ordered 61 times in 2017 compared to 27 in 2013.
Link

More than half of the units sold on Amazon worldwide from third-party sellers:

In his letter to shareholders, Jeff Bezos was quite transparent and revealed this interesting fact. The marketplace is of huge importance for Amazon.
Link

Amazon now sells more than 70 of its own private-label brands: Since the start of 2017, Amazon has gone on a private-label rampage, releasing at least 60 of its own brands.
Link

Amazon Marketing Essentials

These three factors play a role for the „Amazon’s Choice“ badge:

• Low Return Rate (rate in comparison to similar products)
• Seller Rank (not necessarily a bestseller)
• Highly Rated (share of 4 or 5 star reviews)

Apparently percentages vary, as you can see in the examples below.

Amazon Ad Platform

Big brands drive Amazon’s ad business: Of the top-ten brands with the greatest ownership of Amazon ads, traditional brands account for 76% of Headline Search Ads and 63% of Sponsored Product ads.
Link

Amazon’s advertising play pays off with $2 billion in the first quarter: Amazon more than doubled its advertising revenue, demonstrating that the e-commerce giant is making an aggressive shift into programmatic digital ad technology.
Link

Voice Search

Echo Kids launched in the US: Now Alexa is a kid-friendly DJ, comedian, and storyteller — and she’s always getting smarter. Just ask and Alexa will play music, answer questions, read stories, tell jokes, and more — all with younger ears in mind.
Link

In the US and Canada, customers can now send voice messages to every Echo device within one household: “Dinner’s ready!” is about as common an exclamation as you’ll hear in the average family household. Now, families that use Alexa devices won’t need to shout because a new “Announcements” feature will let you ask Alexa to spread the word to every Echo device under your roof.
Link