Delayed Prime Day and new anti-counterfeit measures

General Updates

Amazon Delays Prime Day until October

Delaying the event yet again this year, Amazon has now pushed back Prime Day for at least another month. According to an email to third-party sellers, there is no set date yet, but October 5th can be treated as a “placeholder date” for now.

Jeff Bezos’s Wealth Soars to $171.6 Billion to Top Pre-Divorce Record

About a year after his costly divorce from ex-wife Mackenzie, Jeff Bezos is richer than ever before. A surge of the Amazon stock price in recent weeks increased Bezos’ net worth to a staggering $171.6 Billion on July 1st.

Uber vs. Amazon and Instakart: $2.65B Postmates Deal Shows Appetite for Broader Delivery Market

With its all-stock acquisition of Postmates, Uber is looking to expand its delivery business beyond restaurant-to-consumer trips into broader categories such as grocery deliveries. “This is a business that Amazon is in. […]. I do think that the category and the markets are going to start overlapping with a lot of players,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi stated on a conference call discussing the deal.

Amazon Shares Just Hit an All-Time High

Tech stocks have led the US stock market’s rebound after Covid-induced lows in March and have kept rising kept rising since. Amazon is now worth more than $1.5 trillion, reaching a share price of above $3000 for the first time ever.

Amazon launches Counterfeit Crimes Unit to Fight Knockoffs on its store

In an effort to prevent counterfeiting on its site, Amazon has announced the launch of a Counterfeit Crimes Unit consisting of former federal prosecutors, experienced investigators, and data analysts. The team will assist Amazon in working with law enforcement and taking proactive measures against counterfeiters rather than simply reacting and deleting fraudulent listings.

Changes that caught our attention

Amazon is piloting a new forward looking order workflow (FLOW) starting from mid-July to reduce out-of-stock issues and make Purchase Orders more plannable. The pilot is invite-only and an exact launch date has not been communicated yet.

The Born to Run program, which enables Vendors to initiate orders, has been reactivated in France and Italy

Relevant Market Research

The Bundesverband E-Commerce und Versandhandel (bevh), a German e-commerce association, regularly analyzes current trends and developments in the German E-Commerce landscape. Some key findings from their newest study include:

• After initially stagnating numbers in Q1, e-commerce growth amounted to overall 9.2 % in the first 6 months of 2020
   
• Groceries and household replenishables saw the biggest increase in demand, with growth rates of 35.7 % and 51.2 % for Q1 and Q2, respectively
   
• 53.6 % of surveyed consumers stated that they are planning to order online more frequently in the future

Lifestyle Creatives for Sponsored Brands

There is a new update in the world of Amazon Advertising again.
You are now able to use lifestyle creatives in your sponsored brand ads, which can include the product in use or context and can help customers familiarize themselves with the product and your brand.

How does it work?
You can set it up easily in the creative settings by adding a custom image “for supported placements”. It includes a custom image, a brand logo, headline, and the product images. Also, it is still possible to feature up to 3 ASINs. Right now it is a top of search placement and mobile only. However, our sources have stated that it is coming for desktop as well (on product detail pages).

What do we expect?
We expect more traffic on the Brand Stores as well as a higher CTRs for the campaigns with the lifestyle image. (First tests from our side led to around 3x higher CTR).
We highly recommend using the lifestyle creatives, as they make the ads more noticeable (it takes more than 50% of the SERP above the fold) and it is more visually appealing to the consumer. See an example of before and after below:

Top 5 Amazon Keywords

All the best and stay healthy,

Your Team at Remazing

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