New Prime Day 2023 Breaks Records

• New record on Prime Day 2023
• Temu merchants steal photos and texts from Amazon
• After Zalando: Amazon challenges DSA classification
• EU Commission investigates Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot
• Amazon lowers FBA fees for low-priced products

Further E-Commerce News:

• U.S. e-commerce sales in June rose 10% YoY

What Caught Our Attention

With the release of the new Barbie movie, we noticed a personalized brand store page on Amazon.de. Customers can book movie seats directly via the site, as well as view the entire trailer for the film. We have not yet discovered such large-scale efforts to utilize a brand store, and we see exciting potential for brands. 

In Amazon Vendor Central, we discovered the new “Real-Time Sales” feature. With this beta version, users can view real-time sales data from the last 24 hours. This feature, however, is currently only able to analyze one ASIN at a time.

It is now possible to create DSP Creatives in other languages (e.g. English on non-English language marketplaces). The feature can also already be used in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands. To create the English creatives, the original can simply be copied in the DSP console and changed to the desired language. In Germany, about 9% of customers use Amazon in a different language, most of them in English. The new feature thus offers a way to get more placements for a favorable thousand-contact price (CPM); especially when working with Responsive Creatives (RECs) without their own image.

Companies can now direct customers to their own website via the Amazon DSP – even for products sold on Amazon. This was previously only possible for products that were not sold directly on Amazon. This feature allows businesses to manage their direct sales to customers while benefiting from Amazon’s enormous audience.

In order to increase the transparency of advertisements, Amazon has started to require sellers to make information such as the name of the advertiser (advertiser name) and the person who paid for the advertisement (payer name) visible to customers on the Amazon website. This change began last week, in accordance with the EU Digital Service Act (DSA). Sellers can make changes to this information via the advertising console.

Updates: Amazon

New Record on Prime Day 2023

With 375 million items sold and a 6.1% increase in sales, this year’s Prime Day set a new record despite high inflation and economic uncertainty, and was Amazon’s highest selling day ever on its first day of sales.

• Instead of making major purchases, customers stocked up primarily on everyday items, saving more than $2.5 billion worldwide. According to Adobe, the most important marketing channel for event promotion was e-mail.
• On both Prime Day days, U.S. online sales rose 6% to $12.7 billion, not only on Amazon, but online in general.
• Prime Day-related content on TikTok was viewed hundreds of millions of times during the two days – although it’s not news, this fact again points towards TikTok experimenting with being a retailer and sourcing goods directly.

Serious Accusations Against Temu: Photos and Texts Stolen from Amazon

Temu is facing copyright infringement lawsuits after sellers allegedly stole photos and text from Amazon to sell cheap product clones. WIRED has investigated dozens of cases: it turns out the allegations are true.

• It seems Temu’s advantage over other online retailers due to both their innovative methods and their ruthless predatory marketing .
• Amazon spokesperson Mira Dix strongly condemned the Temu merchants’ actions, and encouraged affected brands to contact their Counterfeit Crimes Unit.
• So far, there has been no statement from Temu on the matter.

Following Zalando: Amazon Challenges DSA Classification

The dispute over the Digital Service Act has now moved on to the next level: After Zalando, Amazon is now also challenging the DSA classification. The EU law imposes additional obligations on large technology companies to deal with online disinformation and hate speech.

• Amazon is fighting back against its classification as a “very large online platform” and filed a petition with a court in Luxembourg to have it declared invalid
• The company argues, for example, that it generates the majority of its revenue from retail and not from advertising.

EU Commission Investigates Takeover of iRobot by Amazon

Amazon announced its intention to acquire the vacuum cleaner company iRobot for $1.7 billion in August last year, a move that has sparked an investigation by the EU Commission.

• A preliminary investigation found that this acquisition may give Amazon the ability to “degrade” the capacity for competing manufacturers to sell robotic vacuum cleaners on the Amazon marketplace
• Furthermore, there is good reason to be concerned that the acquisition would enable the internet giant to gather more information about, for example, iRobot users’ homes
• The European Commission has until November 15th to decide whether to block the acquisition

Updates: E-Commerce

U.S. E-Commerce Sales in June Rose 10% YoY

These numbers come from the June 2023 E-commerce Pulse report by Signify. The report shows that June marked the biggest monthly YoY increase in e-commerce growth in 2023 so far. The data also indicates that Father’s Day sales boosted e-commerce performance across most verticals.

• Electronics sales rose 7% YoY, while sporting goods were up 6%
• Buy now, pay later (BNPL) sales in the U.S. decreased by 16% YoY
• E-Commerce in Germany is not doing so well: sales have decreased by 12 %

Commentary: Advertising on Prime Day

We have analyzed the Amazon advertising data from the two days of Prime Day on the EU5 marketplaces and compared it with an average day from the previous month. Here are our key findings at a glance:

Day one was more successful than day two:

• In terms of all advertising KPIs, the first deal day was more successful on all Amazon marketplaces studied. More impressions, more clicks, more conversions and, above all, more ad sales (+ 597 %* on PD1 vs. + 387 %* on PD2) were generated.
• Ad spend was also significantly higher on the first day (+ 522 %* vs. + 467 %*) – probably a consequence of the higher traffic on Amazon on the first deal day.

Clicks were more expensive on day two:

• The average CPC on the EU5 marketplaces rose up to €0.77 during Prime Day – an increase of 72%*.
• This price increase took place on day two; on day one, the CPC was €0.71, 60%* higher than an average June day. The CPC increased the most on day two on the Spanish Amazon marketplace with an increase of + 120 %*.

The largest sales uplift was in Spain:

• The Spanish Amazon marketplace saw the highest ad sales increase on the first day of Prime Day with + 821 %*. The corresponding increase in ad spend was + 645 %*.
• After Spain comes the UK, with an average of + 765 %* ad sales, then the German marketplace with +588 %* ad sales and the Italian marketplace with + 517 %* ad sales.
• The French Amazon marketplace saw the smallest increase in sales in comparison. Here, there were “only” 338 %* more ad sales on average on the first Prime Day.

*compared to an average day in June 2023

Did you know?

Global online spending in the course of Amazon Prime Day is increasing from year to year. While it was only 0.9 billion US dollars on Prime Day in 2015, 7 years later it is a full 12 billion US dollars. And this year, Amazon once again set a new record: U.S. shoppers alone spent $12.7 billion on both Prime Days.

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Top 5 Amazon Keywords

These are the top 5 most searched keywords by country from July 9 – 15, 2023.

Prime Day on July 11 and 12 boosted the search for Amazon technology gadgets such as Alexa and Kindle. Fans and air conditioners remained in high demand in Germany, France, Italy and, above all, Spain. Furthermore, the popularity of air fryers increased in the USA, the UK, and Italy.

In Case You Missed it

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