How successful was Amazon’s Q2 2021 really?

After Prime Day in June, Amazon is now already in the starting blocks with the next sales event: Beginning at the end of August, the ‘End of Summer Sale’ 2021 will start on the various marketplaces with a slightly different timing.

In the US, Amazon now wants to deliver their parcels directly to the apartment door with its digital ‘Key for Business’ system. Additionally, the e-com giant was sentenced to almost $890 million in fines in Luxembourg due to data rights violations.

General Updates

Amazon grows 27% in Q2 2021

Last week, the company published its results from the second quarter. With revenues of $113 billion and a remarkable 27% growth compared to Q2 2020, Amazon still fell short of experts’ expectations. At 87%, the advertising business grew significantly faster than revenue – read more in Hannes Detjen’s comment further down.

Amazon’s ‘End of Summer Sale’ 2021

The End of Summer Sale event takes place at a different time in each Amazon marketplace – in Germany, it’s the week of September 6-14. The submission of Lightning Deals and 7-Day Deals is now possible until 2 weeks before the start of the End of Summer Sale. We have compiled the key dates and framework on LinkedIn.

Amazon delivers directly to the doorstep with ‘Key for Business’

In the US, thousands of apartment buildings are already equipped with Amazon’s digital solution, which allows delivery people to leave packages in the hallway without having to ring the doorbell or have a key. This is primarily intended to prevent package theft. Amazon is currently promoting its ‘Key for Business’ more intensively in the US and in some cases is even offering landlords financial incentives if they have the system installed. Data protection experts are very critical of the digital door opener via mobile device.

Record fine for Amazon because of data breach?

Luxembourg’s data protection authority CNPD is demanding a fine of €746 million from Amazon for violations of the European General Data Protection Regulation. The e-commerce giant’s European headquarters are located in Luxembourg. Amazon says it plans to appeal the decision – the group stresses that no personal data was misused or passed on to third parties.

Amazon is most searched online retailer on Google

With 133 million Google searches monthly, Amazon is the most searched e-commerce platform in the US. That’s according to a study by deal site DealDrop. Competitor Walmart makes it to 2nd place with 6.85 million monthly searches – followed by Home Depot, Target and Best Buy. In the study, 21.8% of participants also said they prefer to store on Amazon rather than another site.

Alibaba makes 34% more revenue than in the same quarter last year

Shortly after Amazon, China’s Alibaba Group also released its quarterly figures – by its own count from Q1 2021. Revenue increased by 34% YOY to the equivalent of $31.9 billion. Especially internationally, the group recorded strong growth with its marketplaces AliExpress and Lazada: Both platforms grew more than 50% YOY.

Online shopping is booming in the UK and Europe

According to Pattern’s “UK Shopper Report 2021”, 93% of Brits shopped on Amazon in 2020, and 50% have an Amazon Prime account. 58% of respondents plan to spend as much money on Amazon in 2021 as they did the previous year, and 30% plan to spend more. 89% of Britons surveyed plan to shop online as much or more overall this year than in 2020. Things also look positive for the European e-commerce industry as a whole: It is expected that there will be more than 500 million e-commerce users in Europe in 2021 – up from 480 million users in 2020.

Amazon won’t accept bitcoin after all

Based on a job posting for a ‘crypto expert with financial knowledge’, there has been speculation about whether Amazon will soon offer payment with Bitcoin. A company spokesman denied the rumors, but nevertheless they are interested in cryptocurrencies and are looking into the topic. After the statement, the Bitcoin price plummeted.

What caught our attention

In the Store Builder, the mobile view can now be selected directly during creation. This way, the brand store layout can be checked for compatibility with mobile devices even without the preview check.

A/B Tests are now available not only for sellers, but also for vendors on the European Amazon marketplaces. The feature allows two versions of the title and main image of a PDP to be tested against each other.

As of now, Amazon says it will be possible to use Lifestyle Creatives in Sponsored Display Ads. Until now, the use of this type of image was reserved for ADSP campaigns.

Comment: Amazon’s Q2 2021 results

Amazon released its Q2 results last week:

• Net sales grew 27% year over year from $89 billion in Q2 2020 to $113 billion in Q2 2021.

But most of the comments focused on the fact that “Amazon failed expectations”: The revenue was $2 billion back behind the expected number of $115 billion.

To keep in mind: Q2 is the first quarter that was heavily influenced by COVID in 2020, e-commerce sales began skyrocketing back then. We expected that Amazon’s YOY growth would be slower now than in the quarters before.

But now that lockdowns are over in most core markets and retail stores have opened again, we are impressed that Amazon still grew by 27%.

• Amazon’s ad revenue grew 87% YOY from $4.2 billion in Q2 2020 to $7.9 billion in Q2 2021.

Amazon’s advertising business is growing faster than its revenue – and also faster than the AWS business (+37% YOY)! The e-commerce giant is slowly catching up to Google (+69% YOY) and Facebook (+56% YOY), which are the big players in the online advertising business.

Reasons for the strong growth are for sure Prime Day in Q2 and more advertising possibilities on Amazon.

• Amazon’s international net sales grew more than the US sales: 36% international vs. 22% in the US.

International sales grew even more than total sales – seems like there is a lot more potential for Amazon outside of the US.  

Remdash: Amazon Label Tracking

With Remdash, you can track your current status and historical development for different labels:

• Amazon Bestseller
• Amazon’s Choice
• Climate Pledge Friendly
• Energy Efficient
• Plus Product

Interested in Remdash? Schedule your personal product demo here!

Top 5 Amazon Keywords

COVID-related keywords are again not found among the top 5 search terms on Amazon. Instead, the fidget toy ‘Pop it’ and the Playstation 5 continue to be in high demand on almost all marketplaces. In addition, it is striking that in the U.S., the brand Apple is searched for in technical products – in contrast to the ‘not branded search’ in the other countries.