Top Amazon News & Updates for Sellers (August Edition)

Posted by Jimi Patel | September 1, 2020

Walmart is closing stores on Thanksgiving, Amazon is continually making tweaks in its advertising formats and for the first time, Prosper Show is happening virtually. Learn about these and a lot more in the August edition of our Amazon seller updates.

#1: Attending Amazon events in the “new normal”

Attending Amazon events in the new normal

Remember the good ol’ time when Amazon sellers used to meet in seminars and conferences? Now, it’s back. It’s the new normal and now the events are all taking place virtually. Virtual events are not just safer, but they are a lot more cost-effective because you can cut down all the travel, hotel and food expenses and just pay for the ticket. One of the major events that are happening virtually is the Prosper Show 2020. It’s happening on October 27th and 28th, so make sure to book your tickets now!

#2: Negative product targeting introduced in Sponsored Product Ads

Negative product targeting introduced in Sponsored Product Ads

In addition to the negative keywords, advertisers can also add negative products to reduce irrelevant clicks and spend. Just like you will add a search query/keyword in the blacklist, you can now add a product detail page in the blacklist by negatively targeting the ASIN. The feature is available for only automatic campaigns in all the marketplaces. The new update allows advertisers to optimize the performance of the campaign and reduce ACOS. They can also use negative product targeting to protect their brand image by preventing their ad from showing on contexts that are not aligned with values associated with their brand. If your ACOS is way too high, ask your Amazon PPC consultants to add negative product targeting in your campaigns.

#3: Amazon Posts just got a convenience upgrade

Amazon recently introduced three new updates in Posts. Sellers can now add multiple ASINs, schedule their Posts and download reports to analyze how your posts are performing. Let us understand each of them in detail:

    • Add more than one ASIN in Posts: You can either showcase product collection or variation by tagging a single post to multiple ASINs. Shoppers can scroll and explore more from your posts. You can also add more ASINs in the existing posts or create new posts.

Amazon Posts just got a convenience upgrade
Image reference: Amazon

    • Advanced scheduling: Want your posts to go live on a specific date? This new update allows you to. Just like you schedule your storefronts, now you can also schedule posts to go live on a future date. While you create a new post, just select the “Scheduling” option and set your desired date and time. You can check the scheduled posts under “Post Status” in the posts dashboard.

Amazon Posts
Image reference: Amazon

  • Detailed metrics & analytics: You can download a report from your posts dashboard and analyze the trends in impressions and engagement over time. The other metrics also include clicks to your brand feed, product detail page, or related feed, as well as clicks to show the product or expand the caption.

To know more about Amazon Posts, please view our article:

#4: Amazon Attribution (beta) available on the Amazon Advertising API

Amazon Attribution is a free beta tool that helps brands measure the impact of their off-Amazon marketing and advertising campaigns on their Amazon sales and shopping activity. Recently Amazon announced that Amazon Attribution is now available in Amazon API. This allows professional sellers and vendors to seamlessly view their metrics and analytics in their familiar console. It can be difficult to juggle multiple analytics tools and create unique measurement tags for every campaign. But with the new changes, Amazon has streamlined the operations by providing sellers access to Amazon Attribution metrics within the tool they’re already using to manage their campaigns. Moreover, it has also made it possible to launch campaign measurement in just a few clicks so that advertisers spend less time on manual operations and more time on optimizing strategies for growth.

#5: Changes to Sponsored Display Ads creatives

Sponsored Display ads were launched exactly a year ago on September 1, 2019. For those new to Sponsored Display ads, it can help brands to target, retarget and engage potential customers on Amazon detail pages and its affiliated sites. To be eligible to run Sponsored Display Ad, you need to be a seller or vendor and must-have brand registry. Recently, the retail giant has made minor tweaks in the look and feel of Sponsored Display ads to make it shopper-friendly and eye-catching:

    • Ability to add headline & logo: Advertisers in the U.S. can now customize their Sponsored Display Ads by adding their company logo and a creative tagline (50 character limit). This helps the advertisers to better communicate their brand message to the shoppers. The ads can appear alongside product description pages, customer reviews, shopping results pages, or under the featured offer.

Advertisers in the U.S.
Image reference: Amazon

Ability to add headline & logo
Image reference: Amazon

    • Display of deals and savings badge: Those little deals and saving badges work wonders in increasing conversion and sales. Amazon is very well aware of that and so it now displays deals or savings badges in the ad. Any product that has active promotion be it deal of the day, lightning deal, or best deal promotion, will be automatically displayed on the ad. According to Amazon, the badges have been shown to accelerate click-through rates by up to nearly 42%. So any product that is currently having promotion will be an eligible candidate for the Sponsored Display campaign.

Sponsored Display campaign
Image reference: Amazon

To know about Sponsored Display Ad, read our article:

#6: Sponsored Display Ads now available in new marketplaces

Another update on Sponsored Display Ads. Just in, Amazon announced that S.D. ads will now be available for vendors and sellers in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates on the ad console and Amazon Advertising API. Until now, it was just available in the U.S. and C.A. sellers, but now the sellers selling in the above-mentioned marketplaces can also take advantage of the retargeting based ad.

#7: New tall product grid option available in Amazon seller storefront

The product grid option in your stores is a no-fuss way to showcase the products in your catalog. Traditionally the grid uses images with a square aspect ratio only. Because of this, sellers were forced to fit their taller products in the square images, which often led to suboptimal display. This was especially an issue for the clothing category where the images with models had naturally taller images. The new feature rolled out by Amazon solved this problem. To switch to tall product grids, hover over the “stores” tab and click on “manage stores.” Click on edit store and go to “store settings”. Scroll down and change the grid type from standard to tall. That’s it! Your images will now look bigger, better and optically pleasing.

New tall product grid option available in Amazon seller storefront

#8: Amazon makes it easy for the shoppers to reach your brand store

Amazon makes it easy for the shoppers to reach your brand store

Amazon is making every effort to give brand stores the attention they need and deserve. Recently Amazon introduced Store Spotlight for advertisers who have a complex, multi-page storefront. Now Amazon has made the storefront more apparent on your product detail page. In the past, the brand name was displayed below the product title on the detail page and clicking on the brand name would lead the shoppers to the brand store. Not many shoppers would bother clicking on the link because they weren’t aware of the fact that clicking on the brand name will take them to the storefront. Now Amazon has added: “Visit the [Brand] store” below the title. Although the change looks minor, it is not. It will dramatically increase the number of visits to the storefront. With more traffic coming to your storefront, it is essential that you have a well-crafted Amazon storefront design that offers a website-like branded shopping experience to the shoppers.

#9: Amazon brand store now added to the search

Amazon brand store now added to the search

Yet another attempt by Amazon to increase the visibility of your brand store. Previously branded searches used to be branded stores in the suggestions. For example, if you search for “Nike shoes,” the search result option would also have “Nike store on Amazon” in the suggestions. But now normal and unbranded searches like “Men’s running shoes” will also be a suggested brand store in the suggestions. It is not clear whether which brands will show and what is the algorithm on the basis of which Amazon decides to feature a store. Amazon brand stores were introduced in 2017, but up until now, they had no discovery. The only way through which the shoppers can visit the brand store was if they searched directly on Google or clicked on the brand name on the product detail page. But with these two changes, brand stores will be more accessible than ever!

#10: Walmart closes stores on Thanksgiving this year

Walmart closes stores on Thanksgiving this year

For the first time in 30 years, Walmart has decided to keep its stores shut on Thanksgiving, thereby ending its years old tradition to kick-off the Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving. John Furner, CEO of Walmart U.S., said in a statement that “We know this has been a trying year, and our associates have stepped up. We hope they will enjoy a special Thanksgiving Day at home with their loved ones”. The closure will positively affect Amazon as shoppers who wanted a jump start on buying gifts after the scrumptious meal will now be inclined towards buying from online retailers. There is sure going to be a surge in demand in the Thanksgiving-Black Friday weekend so it would be best to sit with your Amazon seller consultant and devise an action plan.

New content from eStore Factory:

Top 10 Amazon enhanced brand content
Prepping for prime day & Q4 2020 in the “new normal”

Staying updated is as easy as reading our blogs

There are so many updates every day; it’s hard to keep up. But with our updated blog, you can stay on top of all Amazon developments and changes. Every month we round up the most important and need-to-know updates for and relating to Amazon sellers. Check-in here every month and catch up on what’s making news on Amazon lately.

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Published by Jimi Patel

Jimi Patel, is a Co-founder and CEO at eStore Factory, an Amazon SPN certified agency that serves as a one-stop solution for all your Amazon business needs. Having helped countless brands increase sales and grow their footprint on Amazon, Jimi provides the most practical and effective solutions for your business. He is highly skilled in developing and executing plans that align with your specific business goals and objectives. When not working, Jimi enjoys practicing yoga and traveling to new places. He is an avid reader and enjoys staying up-to-date on the latest trends and developments in the e-commerce industry.

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