Black Friday Tips & Amazon Advertising Updates

With Brand Metrics (still in beta), Amazon has released a major advertising update that allows brands to see their performance across categories and compare themselves to other brands. Visible metrics in Brand Metrics include the number of Brand Shoppers, Engaged Shopper Rate, Customer Conversion Rate, and the percentage of New-to-Brand Sales per category. In addition, one’s own performance can be viewed in terms of awareness, consideration and purchase.

Amazon launches “Product Opportunity Explorer”

A new feature, which is still in beta, is designed to help retailers on Amazon with product development. The “Product Opportunity Explorer” provides insights into which products customers are searching for, clicking on and buying on the platform, based on search volumes, sales histories and price trends. The tool is to be rolled out to all sellers in 2022.

Online retailers copy Amazon’s “Search Advertising”

The success of Amazon’s advertising strategy with ads in search results can be seen in imitators. More and more large online retailers in the US are relying on “search advertising”. According to a study by Profitero, the number of ads displayed has also risen steadily. Once again, Amazon has set the standard here – and is already another step ahead of the competition with its ADSP console.

Amazon has 21% share of the US parcel market

In the US, Amazon has reached a 21% share of the parcel market in 2020 – overtaking FedEx. The e-commerce giant doubled the number of packages it shipped year-over-year to 4.2 billion. But now, customers will soon be able to pick up their own orders theirselves from small businesses in the US: According to its own information, Amazon wants to use the logistics network of the sellers and become more sustainable – or simply relieve its own warehouses?

Accusations against Amazon in India: manipulation and copying

Amazon is alleged to have manipulated searches on its Indian marketplace in favor of its own products and copied products from sellers with its own brand. To do this, the teams allegedly used internal data in a prohibited manner, giving Amazon a competitive advantage on its own platform. Small sellers in particular are suffering as a result. The company denies the accusations, but the demands for consequences are getting louder.

Cooperation between Amazon and Starbucks?

There are rumors about a new store concept in which Amazon’s Go technology is combined with a Starbucks café. As has now been confirmed, there were already talks in 2020 about the so-called “Verde” stores, in which the coffee specialties are to be paid for automatically via a registered customer account, just like in Amazon’s own supermarkets. However, due to the long time span since then, the project may no longer even be current. None of the two companies involved commented on it.

Weak e-commerce growth expected during the holiday season

Current forecasts predict a sales growth of only 10% year-over-year during the US holiday season. That would be the slowest growth since 2015 – by comparison, last year, sales increased by 33% year-over-year. One reason for this is the halting supply chains around the world. This could lead to many customers trying to circumvent long delivery times by buying products at traditional retail stores.

Importance of shopping via social media is growing

According to a study, the number of shoppers who purchase a product via social media platform will increase by 12.9% to 90.4 million in the US this year. 38% of respondents also said they had purchased a product they had seen on social media in the past 30 days; 44% discovered new brands there. This makes social networks an important marketing channel, especially for the upcoming Holiday Season in Europe and the US.

Alibaba’s share of the Chinese e-commerce market has plummeted

In 2015, Alibaba dominated Chinese e-commerce with a 78% market share. This year, it’s down to 51%, according to recent forecasts. The leading online marketplace in China is losing its customers mainly due to a change in user behavior: Many are more likely to come across products by chance while browsing popular apps such as WeChat or Pinduoduo than to search for them specifically on Taobao or Tmall.

With ADSP it is now possible to retarget customers who have visited any Amazon Brand Store.

Brand Store Retargeting can be easily selected when creating a new audience in the ADSP console. Here, the choice is given whether to select the entire Brand Store or only specific subpages.

The new audience is especially exciting in view of the upcoming Black Friday (November 26) and Cyber Monday (November 29), as the products of the own deals subpage can be used by the Brand Store for retargeting.