Amazon Briefing: As the Economics Get More Difficult, Agencies Are Marketing Profitability Over Sales
- As fees for both first-party and third-party sellers on Amazon continue to rise, agencies are shifting their focus towards helping brands improve their profitability. Full-service agencies are working on providing their clients with more visibility into all monthly costs and suggesting alternative ways to lower costs, such as using cheaper advertising units like Amazon Posts or Amazon Live instead of relying solely on pay-to-play search. While full-service agencies can point to other ways to lower costs, players in the marketing space are finding themselves in a bind. According to Dan Klein, the vp of e-commerce and Amazon strategy at Upstream, 1P companies are feeling the profitability crunch more than 3P brands, and as a result, his agency has tweaked some of its offerings to highlight the ways it can help brands transition from 1P to 3P. Ultimately, the goal for agencies is to create a way for brands to get as much visibility into their balance sheets as possible and market services that better highlight that.
Biased Graph Sampling for Better Related-Product Recommendation
- Biased Graph Sampling is a new method for graph sampling that has been proposed to improve product recommendations on Amazon. The method considers both the similarity between nodes and their popularity, which aims to create a more representative sample of the overall graph. The idea is that by sampling a more representative subset of the graph, the recommendation algorithm can better capture the underlying relationships between products and provide more accurate recommendations. The method was tested against existing sampling methods and found to outperform them in terms of recommendation accuracy. Additionally, the authors suggest that this approach could have potential benefits for other recommendation systems beyond Amazon, such as movie or music recommendations. Thank you
- The use of biased graph sampling could have a significant impact on recommendation systems, which are used by many businesses to improve the customer experience and drive sales. By improving the accuracy of recommendations, companies can increase customer satisfaction and engagement, which in turn can lead to increased revenue. Overall, the proposed method is a promising new approach to graph sampling that could have a significant impact on recommendation systems across a range of industries.
- Amazon is launching a new issue resolution workflow that allows you to select new options which will provide you with more information on why your images may not be showing on the product detail page. This new process will have two image-specific options that align with the most common requests from sellers:
- “Remove images” will allow you to submit abuse escalation if images on the detail page do not align with Amazon Product Guidelines.
- “Dispute main detail page image” allows you to open a case to investigate further why your image contributions are not showing on the detail page.
- The updated workflow will also better support brand owners, as it will allow Amazon associates to quickly and accurately investigate and resolve image related issues.
- Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has announced that the company will lay off around 9,000 employees, adding to the 18,000 layoffs announced in November, mainly affecting retail, devices, recruiting and human resources groups. Amazon aims to streamline its costs due to uncertainty in the near future. Jassy said that the latest cuts would mainly impact Amazon’s cloud computing, human resources, advertising and Twitch livestreaming businesses. Amazon froze hiring in its corporate workforce, axed some experimental projects, and slowed warehouse expansion. The company aims to operate leaner this year, but Jassy remains optimistic about the company’s “largest businesses” – retail and Amazon Web Services.
Amazon, Other Retailers Revamp ‘Free’ Shipping as Costs Soar
- The cost-cutting is also being pushed down to consumers in the form of shipping costs increase. Major retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target are revamping their free shipping policies as logistics costs continue to rise. Amazon, for example, is reportedly testing a program that would offer free shipping for Prime members on select items that are more expensive to ship, while also increasing the minimum purchase requirement for free shipping on other items. Walmart is planning to launch a new loyalty program called Walmart+, which would offer free shipping and other perks for a fee, while Target is raising the minimum purchase requirement for free shipping to $35. These changes come as retailers struggle to keep up with the rising costs of labor, transportation, and packaging.
- Amazon has a new program to help you list new products faster called Explore Brand Selection.
- It’s free to participate, but you must enroll in the program (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gc/brandselectionmanager/)to get the benefits.
- After you enroll, Amazon can identify products from your own website and create draft listings for your review and approval. On average, we can pre-fill 59% of the required listing attributes which saves you time compared to starting from scratch. There is no obligation to list any new products, and you remain in control of what is made available in the Amazon store at all times.
Program benefits
- List products faster with less attributes to complete – on average we can pre-fill 59% of required attributes.
- Fewer submission errors – we will transform data into Amazon’s required format.
- Optimize existing listings – we can help backfill missing information to improve your current listings.
- Increase selection – we can monitor your website on a recurring basis and notify you of any items that may not be in the Amazon store.
- Free to participate – this program is free and won’t cost you anything to sign up.
- You remain in control – you get to choose whether to add a product or not and can modify the content before submitting it.
- Opt out at anytime – If you no longer wish to participate you can opt out at anytime
P.S. Space for enrollment is limited
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