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Helium 10 Buzz 10/17/24: Amazon Unboxed Recap | Banned On Etsy! | Amazon Bundling Change

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.

TikTok wants to turn millions of Americans into paid shopping influencers
https://restofworld.org/2024/tiktok-shop-influencers-us/

Amazon bundles online shopping of groceries and nonfood items
https://www.retaildive.com/news/amazon-fresh-whole-foods-ecommerce-delivery-pickup-automated-micro-fulfillment/729619/

Amazon Unboxed Updates:
Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) eligibility expanded to sponsored ads advertisers (through partners)
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/expanding-amc-eligibility-to-advertisers-and-partners/?ref_=a20m_us_wn_gw

Increase engagement through audience bid boosting for Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/unboxed-audience-bid-boosting/?ref_=a20m_us_wn_gw

Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) Audiences can now be used in Sponsored Ads
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/amc-audiences-for-sponsored-ads/?ref_=a20m_us_wn_gw

Increase engagement through audience bid boosting for Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/unboxed-audience-bid-boosting/?ref_=a20m_us_wn_gw

New Sponsored TV releases make it easier than ever to reach relevant audiences and measure performance
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/amazon-ads-new-sponsored-tv-releases/?ref_=a20m_us_wn_gw

Deliver more relevant ads everywhere, independent of ad ids, with Ad Relevance
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/ad-relevance/?ref_=a20m_us_wn_gw

Understand the top combinations of ad touchpoints that drive conversions
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/ad-touchpoints-drive-sales-with-conversion-path-reporting/?ref_=a20m_us_wn_gw

Build a holistic first-party data strategy with Ads data manager
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/ads-data-manager-beta/?ref_=a20m_us_wn_gw

Amazon DSP launches Performance+ tactics into beta
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/amazon-dsp-launches-performance-plus-tactics/?ref_=a20m_us_wn_gw

Create impactful interactive audio ads in just a few clicks with Audio generator
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/audio-generator/?ref_=a20m_us_wn_gw

Create high-quality AI-generated videos in minutes
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/create-high-quality-ai-generated-videos-in-minutes/?ref_=a20m_us_wn_gw
Make creative development a breeze with AI creative studio (beta)
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/unboxed-ai-creative-studio/?ref_=a20m_us_wn_gw

Interactive ads expand availability across streaming TV into Prime Video
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/interactive-ads-expand-across-streaming-tv-into-prime-video/?ref_=a20m_us_wn_gw

Understand the value of new-to-brand shoppers beyond immediate sales
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/long-term-sales/?ref_=a20m_us_wn_gw

Maximize your campaign impact with the new Amazon DSP experience
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/new-amazon-dsp-experience/?ref_=a20m_us_wn_gw

Don’t miss out on the details of upcoming online and in-person events designed to sharpen your e-commerce strategies:

Whether you’re new to Amazon or running large-scale brands, these updates are sure to provide valuable insights and opportunities for growth. Listen in as I break down these developments and what they mean for you as a seller.

In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers:

  • 01:07 – Etsy is THE WORST!
  • 05:38 – Amazon Bundling Change
  • 06:44 – TikTok Influencers
  • 08:23 – Amazon Shopping Test
  • 09:59 – Compliance Fast Track
  • 10:31 – FBA New Selection Perk
  • 11:30 – Large & Heavy Returns
  • 12:15 – Online Events
  • 15:19 – Sydney, Australia
  • 15:49 – Milan, Italy
  • 16:30 – Dubai, UAE
  • 16:51 – Amazon Unboxed Recap

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

The Project X account was unceremoniously booted from Etsy this week. There’s been a huge change. For those who do bundling on Amazon, a complete guide of the 15 updates announced at Amazon Box this week. This and more on this week’s Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the news stories and goings on in the Amazon and e-commerce world. We also give you training tips of the week and give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let’s see what’s buzzing. Today is going to be almost all news, guys, because we’ve got like 24 different news articles to talk about due to the Unboxed conference that was held this week, and we’re going to get to pretty much every single announcement that was done at Unboxed. And also we got some cool online events that you guys might want to participate in, so make sure to stay tuned for that. Let’s go ahead and hop right into the news.

Bradley Sutton:

I wanted to tell you a story. I got this email this week from Etsy for the Project X account. So you guys know Project X is where we sell coffin shelves and egg trays and you know these. Actually, most of the products qualify for Etsy. All right, because you’ve got to either design it in the USA and slash or it’s not. It doesn’t have to be both. Or have you know a member of your own shop is the one who is putting it together and it’s not like you know mass production, you know line and the products on project X that qualify.

Bradley Sutton:

Um, I’ve been selling on Etsy for like five years. You’ve probably heard me talk about it, sold maybe a hundred thousand dollars worth over the years, and so what happened was I got this email this week and it said the following hey, how cool is that store? We’ve reached out that you’ve got listings that were not in line with eBay’s creativity standards. All right, blah, blah, blah, blah, your account has been permanently suspended. I’m like what? Like? First of all, you guys should know who we are. We’re Helium 10, guys Like we’re not trying to like game the system or something. We’re trying to like actually promote Etsy by having an account. We’re not trying to make money, we’re trying to like, promote people to sell on Etsy Now, of course, and so you should let us do whatever we want. No, but we’re 100% in compliance.

Bradley Sutton:

And they just send this list like nonstop or this just like big long thing of can’t sell on Etsy anymore. You can still ship pending orders. You may see a delay of getting paid up to 180 days and at the very end it says if you think there’s a mistake, duh, you may be able to file an appeal with Etsy. Here’s how it works. So, of course, I filed appeal and then I went through the questionnaire. I send them video proof. I’m like, guys, we have not violated one policy. I mean, there’s thousands, tens of thousands of products on Etsy that are clearly not in policy. Not how, not how cool is that project X stuff? So, uh, you know, I I showed them details, like showed that it was our shop making it.

Bradley Sutton:

You know, like even videos of myself. Uh, you know, I showed them details, like showed that it was our shop making it. You know, like even videos of myself, you know, helping to make some of the products. I actually showed the original Project X videos. I was like, hey, we actually did a reality TV shows that shows when we’re designing this product in the USA. You know, kind of like your policy says got to be designed in the USA. Here’s some proof of that.

Bradley Sutton:

And then I told them I was like no, maybe you didn’t know, but like we’re an educational platform here, we don’t make tools for Etsy at Helium 10, but we liked helping people to sell online, submitted it and then two days later get this message. It says this is Etsy’s trust and safety team and we’re like Etsy’s dumb and dumber team. But anyways, we appreciate you taking the time to file an appeal. No, no, you really don’t. After careful consideration, no, I’m pretty sure you did not carefully consider anything. We’ve determined your account does not qualify for reinstatement. We performed a comprehensive review. No, you did not and we’re unable to further reconsider. You know they don’t allow me to say anything. I can’t talk to anybody. There’s like no, but no customer support to reach out to discuss I mean this whole process of this, not one person to reach out. So, anyways, my point is yeah, you’re not going to see me here promoting etsy to for you guys to sell on etsy. I’ve done that before. But then also those of you who are selling on ety and you do get, like these notification warnings. You know, maybe do a little bit more than me as far as trying to get somebody on the line to talk to you to see why in the world you’re getting these notifications when you’re if you’re fully in line with their requirements.

Bradley Sutton:

Who have bad? You know, I hear bad experiences all the time with Walmart, amazon customer service. Everybody always has complaints. Guys, it could be worse, right? I’ve not seen a worse experience with customer service than Etsy. It was kind of funny. At the bottom of the email it says their address and I was like wait a minute, 117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, new York. I looked it up Sure enough. Coincidentally, 27 years ago when I lived in New York, I actually worked down the street there in Brooklyn Heights and in that building, 117 Adams, where Etsy’s headquarters is I used to give tours at that building. That was part of my job. It was a printery in those days and I’m like, wow, what are the odds of that? I live in California, that’s on the other side, anyways, I digress. Wow, what are the odds of that? I live in California, that’s on the other side, anyways, I digress, that doesn’t even matter, I’d love to give a tour there. Now, look at this here we have customer service representatives who have no idea what Etsy’s policies are. No, I’m sorry, I’m just a little bit bitter here, but anyways, let’s move on to other news here, the first article of the day.

Bradley Sutton:

This is kind of big actually for a lot of people who do bundling. It says updated product bundling policy for consumables. All right, so, effective October 14th, you can only list bundles that are created and offered by the original manufacturer. So what does that mean? Let’s say I’ve got a blue diamond almonds here and I’ve got Wetzel’s pretzel nuts or pretzels, something right. Well, what you could do in the old days was you could go and put them and make a new bundle, all right, like Blue Diamond Almonds and Pretzels, and this is my Bradley’s Amazing Snack Box brand, and there’s no problem, I can have products. But now you can no longer do that going forward. All right, this was a big strategy by people who do bundles and didn’t want to like have to compete with just the blue diamond. You know, uh, the blue diamond brand, right, you just put under your own brand and differentiate yourself by maybe offering other products. But you are no longer going to be able to do that. So check your seller central dashboard. That’s kind of going to affect a lot of people out there who do, uh, certain kind of bundling.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is from restoftheworld.org and it’s entitled TikTok wants to turn millions of Americans into paid shopping influencers Super interesting article that talks about the promotions that TikTok is doing to get more influencers out there. And guys, let me just tell you that this thing works from sellers. It was funny. I was talking to my family the other day. I had set up a TikTok shop account on the Project 5K Not even the Project X one, my Project 5K Amazon account or products and I only put one on there and I just wanted to go through the process. It was like a month ago and I sent our product like a sample to some influencers. I chose maybe like a maximum of like eight different people, maybe it was only five and then I forgot about it. Right, I was just like, okay, whatever. Now again, as you guys know, I don’t ship my own products for my factory, my family or my factory, my warehouse, my family handles all of that. And then I was just looking at some report and the TikTok was like what? We sold 23 of these products in the last couple of weeks. I didn’t promote it at all, other than sending it out to these influencers on TikTok. So again, that is, the way to success on TikTok shop is through influencer marketing. It’s kind of an interesting article that talks about that. There’s going to be stuff you know from Helium 10. Look forward to that. That might help with that in the future, not only for TikTok but also Amazon influencers too. It’s a great way to make extra money yourself as sellers or newer sellers trying to make extra money, or you’re an experienced seller and you want to. You know you should want to reach out to these influencers that are on Amazon. They can make unboxing videos and things and other UGC for your products, all right.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is from retail dive.com and it’s entitled Amazon bundles online shopping of grocery and non food items. All right, so this is a test that they’re doing. I think it was in Arizona where you could like actually order Amazon fresh products, whole foods and your Amazon in one shopping cart experience and then get like everything like a couple hours. Now, you know you might think, well, how does this? How is this going to affect me? I don’t sell in Whole Foods, right, but it’s an interesting advantage for Prime members and another benefit of being a Prime member. You know, in the past you’d have to physically go to Whole Foods perhaps. Maybe use the Amazon Fresh subsection to make just an Amazon Fresh grocery order. And then your third thing would be hey, let me order a couple of things from the Amazon Prime app, and then now there’s three different deliveries and so Amazon is testing. Hey, can we give Prime members who live in certain regions the ability to just do it all in one shopping experience, saving customer time and money? This, I think, would be good for us Amazon sellers. Obviously, we’re not selling Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods, but how many of orders maybe the person decided you know what? I’m just going to go in person to whole foods and let me just get my other items, like the snacks that maybe they could have gotten on Amazon, that maybe you carry. Or you know what? I’m going to go to a whole foods and let me go next door to Walmart to pick up. You know the toilet paper I need, right, maybe you sell toilet paper, but now your Amazon Prime order might get the order because people are trying to buy in this little bundle. So you know, this is not a hashtag game changer or anything like that, but I think, a good move by Amazon that will help sellers down the road if it’s picked up by customers.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is from your Seller Central dashboard and it’s entitled Make Product Compliance Easier with Compliance Fast Track. We talked about this. This is one of those announcements at Amazon Accelerate, and now this is one of those ones that’s now available. So check your dashboard, because now in such product categories as electronics, arts and crafts, you are now going to be able to get your compliance documentation in a more automated way instead of having to one by one do it. So for more information, if you’re in one of those categories, make sure to check that on your dashboard.

Bradley Sutton:

Another program that you might not be aware of is called the FBA New Selection, and now there’s a new benefit from this program and, effective last month, they’re going to offer now a 25% discount. I don’t know why they’re just mentioning it now it was available last month, but it just got announced yesterday or day before where you can get a 25% discount on Vine for your eligible new products If you are in FBA new selection. Now I would go into that article and it actually links to the knowledge base about FBA new selection, like wait, who qualifies for FBA new selection? What are the other benefits? There’s actually a lot of other benefits, more than just a discount on Vine. You can actually get a 10% rebate for sales on eligible ASINs. You can get free monthly storage, and so this is a program. If you have not heard about it, check your Seller Central dashboard. Go through to the knowledge base article on Amazon Seller Central about that and get some more information. Next article going back to the seller central dashboard, again, a seller fulfilled prepaid returns are now offered through UPS for large and heavy items, right, so that wasn’t available to do UPS before, and so if you are selling a large and heavy item, make sure to check this article on your dashboard. This is like a product that weighs more than 90 pounds, et cetera. Check this article on your dashboard. This is like a product that weighs more than 90 pounds, et cetera. Amazon has some new programs in place that you need to be aware about, because now buyers are going to automatically be able to trigger some of these returns, and so you might all of a sudden start ending up with, you know, with like 50 refrigerators. If you sell refrigerators in your warehouse, you’re like, where did all these return refrigerators come from? I never got returns before, but it might be part of this new program, so make sure to check that out if it affects you.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, before we get into Amazon Unbox, a few on and offline events I think are really good for you guys to know. About the online ones, obviously, anybody can register for All right. The first event is actually tomorrow, the 18th, at 11 am. It’s going to be a our monthly freedom to get workshop where Kevin King brings on an expert to do an advanced training for Amazon sellers, and this one is going to be entitled why Branding has Always Been your Biggest Marketing Problem and how AI Will Solve it All right, so, completely free workshop. If you guys want to register and watch it live, completely free workshop. Um, if you guys want to register and watch it live, uh, you can go to h10.me/ftoctober. F T for freedom ticket.

Bradley Sutton:

Next online event is something I haven’t done in years. How many of you guys out there remember Meganar? You guys remember that I did like a Meganar. It’s like a mega webinar years ago. It’s probably been like five years where I went live for 16 hours straight. It was insane. They wouldn’t let me go live 16 hours again. But this Monday I am going to go live, this time with the help of Carrie and Shivali and others, and I’m going to have maybe 10, 20 guests on the show. We’re going to go live from 7 am all the way into 2 pm Pacific time. So we tried to pick some times where different people can hop in, hop off, and the basic theme of it is tips from top sellers that we’re going to be inviting on on how to really have a great Q4, have a great Black Friday to Cyber Monday, cyber Weekend, cyber 5, and some tips that are really going to help you in the coming weeks. I’ve invited a really wide variety of sellers with different experiences that they’re going to be giving their top tips throughout that. We’re also going to be trying to get money live back from Amazon because, remember, the deadline is going to be in a couple of days for that. So we’re going to be doing some of that, like we’re trying to get up to maybe $500,000 back. We’re going to have prizes, like like trivias and giveaways with swag. It is going to be a fun time. So to register for that, go to h10.me/meganar.

Bradley Sutton:

All right One. The very next day, on Tuesday, we are going to have a special workshop with Destiny about AI advertising, something new that Helium 10 has, and Destiny has helped optimize a little bit and she has some cool templates that are going to help for Q4. So it’s kind of like continuing the conversation about Q4 and how to get your advertising ready coming up, how you can now set up campaigns in seconds with a new tool that you might not know is available to you without even having to buy this tool separately. So it’s going to be pretty cool. That’s going to be Tuesday of next week. If you want to join that, go to h10.me/adsoctober.

Bradley Sutton:

Now some in-person events that I think are, uh, you should go to. I’ll be at almost all of these and would love to meet you guys and hang out. The first one is coming up is going to be October 31st this month. I think that’s Halloween. I’m not sure if they do Halloween in Australia, but it’s October 31st in Sydney, Australia. Uh, I would love to see you guys there. It’s an Amazon event, all right, this is like made by Amazon corporate in Australia, h10.me/sydney. If you guys are interested in going, I think it’s a free event, all right. So would love to meet and hang out with you guys there my very first ever trip down under, so it’ll be great to go there.

Bradley Sutton:

Next event will be in Milan, Italy, November 11th. This is an elite workshop, but it’s open to everybody. Elite members go free, but instead of $400, we are doing a special where anybody can go to this high-end elite workshop for only 89 euros. It’s going to be in Milan, Italy, h10.me/milan. It’s going to be with Avast. We’re going to have some great speakers. I’ll be speaking there my first time speaking at Elite Workshop this year. We’ll have Mansour from Incrementum Digital coming from Canada, We’ll have George from ClearAds coming from the UK, Jana from Serbia we have a very international speaking group and I definitely think you guys, um, should make it out to that one. And then last will be a December, the 4th I believe and fifth in Dubai. I’ll be speaking at a pretty big event over there and that is h10.me/dubai. It’s called World EF, Dubai event, so there’s going to be a bunch of people speaking there. It’d be great to meet you there.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, now let’s get into Amazon Unboxed and this is probably going to be your biggest or the most comprehensive recap. I hope so. I wasn’t even there, but I really tried to read up on all the articles and what people were writing to get a good kind of like picture of what happened at Amazon Unboxed. I was able to go last year, but this year didn’t make it. So let’s go ahead and hop into it. Some of this stuff, guys, is a little bit in the weeds. It’s a little over my head, like I’m not a professional advertiser. Obviously, I spend $100,000 a year on advertising, but I don’t consider myself, like you know, some advanced person who does DSP and all these things. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I spend a hundred thousand dollars more. I’m probably down to like $70,000 this year. But anyways, let’s go ahead and hop into it.

Bradley Sutton:

The very first announcement was Amazon Marketing Cloud, AMC. The next few ones are going to be all about AMC. That was like a big theme of. Unbox says AMC eligibility expanded to sponsored ads advertisers Me I have never used AMC Before. You would have to have DSP to be able to use that or work at an advanced agency and things. That wasn’t me. Helium 10 didn’t have AMC before. Helium 10 is going to have AMC, so be looking forward to that. But basically, what AMC is? We’re going to have some training on it at that Destiny workshop for PPC next week.

Bradley Sutton:

It says AMC is a secure, privacy, safe and cloud-based clean room solution. Like you might be a clean room solution, what the heck I? My room is clean. It’s not that kind of clean room, all right, so this is like I said. It’s going to get into the weeds here for some of you, but make sure to stick through all of these announcements because they’re important. A clean room solution in which advertisers can easily perform analytics and blind audience across. They’re using like fancy language here pseudonymized. I love it. See, is that a word, guys? Pseudonymized. Come on, amazon, with your press releases. You got to use better words than this. Like us, illiterate, not well-educated people like myself don’t understand words like pseudonymized signals, including Amazon ad signals as well as their own input.

Bradley Sutton:

But this is going to be interesting, guys, because, like here in this article, it says why is this important? It says with this launch, we’re democratizing AMC insights and actions, because before it used to only be available in DSP, but now, basically, you guys are going to understand the buyer journey a lot more and it’s going to allow you for different targeting. Speaking of AMC, another article that they announced was AMC marketing cloud audiences can now be used in sponsor ads. So that’s critical. Like I said before, you could only use it for, like, DSP and things like that, or just, just, you know, like for data gathering, but now, uh, you’re going to be able to take the audiences that come from AMC and actually use it as a target audience in sponsored ad campaigns. All right, so make sure to check, by the way, every single one of these articles I’m doing. I have linked in the comments below to the specific article where Amazon goes a little bit deeper into it. So make sure to read it.

Bradley Sutton:

But why? Amazon says it’s important, says, with AMC, advertisers are going to get an in-depth understanding of customers journeys across Amazon ads, media and channels. This launch helps advertisers take action on these insights across Amazon ads versus media and channels. This launch helps advertisers take action on these insights across Amazon ads, versus previously only in Amazon DSP. It says, for example, an advertiser can build an audience similar to their high value shoppers to expand the reach of their campaigns or to re-engage audiences reached through Amazon streaming TV campaigns. Through this launch reach through Amazon streaming TV campaigns. Through this launch, advertisers can leverage granular AMC insights to more efficiently move customers along their journey down the funnel.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, so, again, like I said, some of this stuff might be a little bit over your head, some of it’s over my head, but this is something that we’re going to break down for you guys. We’re going to be educating you guys a lot about what exactly is AMC, how can it be used, even by, you know, smaller sellers out there, where before it was only used by, like, very big companies? Next, unbox release increase engagement through audience bid boosting for sponsored products and sponsored brands All right, so this will allow advertisers to reach and engage audiences that they define and create. So, for example, you are going to be able to create custom audiences that you were not able to do before, such as shoppers who have not previously purchased their product, shoppers who are exposed to a streaming TV campaign. You’re going to be able to adjust bids just like you would like in a regular campaign, and so this bid boosting is going to again be tapped. This is another one of those AMC announcements. This is part of this whole AMC. Remember, AMC is not just about this clean room thing, but it’s about it’s about, you know, seeing people throughout the funnel. All right, so I’m not going to go too much more in depth in this article. If you want to learn about all of these AMC stuff, make sure to check out the article that’s linked to below.

Bradley Sutton:

Next one is introducing new product campaigns from Amazon ads now available in the U S. All right. Uh, it says brands selling on Amazon now have full funnel advertising solution to quickly introduce their latest product innovations to customers. So another way they referred to this, I guess that unbox was kind of like. This is a like a product launch, kind of like a campaign, and it says this managed service provides data driven media plans leveraging a curated set of 1P and 3P audio video device and display inventory. All right, so this is not for the faint at heart or for me. Maybe you know launching a coffin shelf that I want to sell maybe 10 units a day of no, this is obviously for bigger customers.

Bradley Sutton:

Now look, if you just look at this visual example those of you watching on YouTube you’ll see here, here is this kitchen smart coffee maker, and then you see a huge ad, like on the Amazon homepage, right, and then now you see a ESPN app where you’re going to see an ad. You can you can barely see it there, but you can see there’s Caitlin Clark doing some kind of highlight right, and then right above that, you see an ad for this coffee maker. And then you see the ESPN desktop app on a computer and the customer is seeing that same ad. And then now it looks like somebody’s watching streaming TV maybe Amazon Prime Video or something and then they see a full 15 second ad of this kitchen smart ad. And then to the right, now you see this Alexa device and that same ad is coming up there. And then, uh, the last one here. This looks like I guess it’s like Twitch or something, so maybe they’re watching a Twitch streamer and then they see that same ad. So now this is going to like be this, this, this thing that Amazon is like providing as a solution where you don’t have to come up with. Hey, what, what’s my strategy for getting my initial push out there. We’re going to go ahead and handle all of that for you. So, again, if you want more information on that, make sure to check the article that is linked to below.

Bradley Sutton:

Speaking of sponsored TV, a new sponsored TV releases make it easier than ever to reach relevant audiences and measure performance. Was this next announcement All right? So last year at Unbox, they really talked about sponsored TV a lot, and now we’re about a year into sponsored TV and now there’s more features that are coming up here. So the new thing is that now there’s going to be lifestyle and life stage audiences that advertisers are going to be able to use, audiences that advertisers are going to be able to use. So it’s not like hey, let me just make an ad and let me just target replays of the walking dead or something like that. No, like, amazon has all these audiences that they have based on all their information. For example, a couple of things that they give here is like outdoor enthusiasts or environmentally conscious shoppers they give us an example of, and so it’s not just a matter of like, hey, let me just throw up this TV ad and target TV shows. But then it’s like let me target these TV shows, but then only the people watching it that are outdoor enthusiasts, right, so there’s gonna be some really interesting stuff, as Amazon kind of like makes media advertising digital media advertising, uh, tv media, uh a little bit more accessible to the common folk like me. I’m still not sure I’m ready for that yet, but Amazon’s getting it closer to make that more accessible to me.

Bradley Sutton:

Next one is deliver more relevant ads everywhere, independent of ad IDs, with ad relevance All right. So it says ad relevance. What is that? It’s an innovative approach to deliver relevant ads for all products and services advertised through the Amazon. DSP All right. So since this is about DSP and I don’t know too much about DSP and not many of you are using it, I’m not going to go too in depth here, but anybody who is using DSP out there make sure to check the article about some of the details on this one, because there are some new enhancements, definitely for you.

Bradley Sutton:

Next one here I think a lot of you might find interesting. It says understand the top combinations of ad touch points that drive conversions. All right, that’s something I think everybody wants to know about. All right. So conversion path reporting shows the ad touch points on the customer’s 30 day path path to conversion, starting with purchases. It’s going to be available in both sponsored ads and DSP, all right, so it’s going to be able to allow you to see the most frequent and efficient customer paths.

Bradley Sutton:

For example, some of the examples it gave was maybe the first time somebody got exposed to your brand was through a streaming TV ad, and then they happen to see next the display ad, and then they saw a sponsored brand video ad and then they saw a sponsor brand video ad and then they saw a sponsored product ad, then they saw a sponsored video display and then they purchased the product. Right? Maybe another kind of like flow is something different. Maybe it was a they only saw a sponsored video ad and then an audio ad from like audible or something, and then boom, went to purchase. Now let’s say that that one was working a lot better. Well, that all of a sudden means like hey, you know what? I’m not going to go spend all this money trying to get that customer through that six stage step of the customer journey. Let me double down on this sponsored brand video to audio DSP ad, because that’s like my quickest way to get to that purchase.

Bradley Sutton:

I mean, that’s just a random example there, but before could, could we see this? No, like we, we we speculate, right, like sometimes, uh, we have sponsored brand video ads or display ads that you know, maybe, uh, RoAS or ACoS and things like that are not that great, right, but we still do it because it’s more of a branding play. We’re like no, I need to get in front of customers more. I want them to see my brand so that by the time they see my sponsored product ad or some like on page ad or just an organic purchase, it makes them more likely to go ahead and purchase my product, because they’ve been conditioned to kind of like, see my brand and think about purchasing it before, right, so, but you didn’t really have visibility as a regular seller, at least we haven’t had visibility to see how that purchase journey works through the ads, and so this is going to be something cool. I think that will allow us to do that. All right.

Bradley Sutton:

Now the next few. I’m just going to kind of skim over a little bit, because once I got to this stage, maybe your head is hurting as much as mine with some of this, how deep some of this stuff goes. But the next announcement was entitled build a holistic first party data strategy with ads data manager. All right, so ADM ads data manager is a new standalone offering that simplifies and streamlines the process of first party data management through Amazon ads tech. All right, um, this is going to be for DSP or AMC. Um, again, most of that doesn’t affect you guys yet, so if you’re interested in that, make sure to check out the article.

Bradley Sutton:

Speaking of DSP, one more article that they had talked about is entitled the Amazon DSP launches performance Plus. It’s a little fancy name. Almost sounds like something that helium 10 would call something. This is your new Performance Plus Cerebro tool, but anyways, amazon took it before us Performance Plus Tactics into Beta. Now, for those of you who are doing display online video or streaming TV, with a conversion KPI of ROAS for endemic advertisers or CPA for non-endemic advertisers, you’re going to have this performance plus tactic available, and if that was just sounded like a whole bunch of gibberish to you, this article is probably not for you, like it’s not for me, but for those of you, I know we’ve got some nine figure sellers out there that are really into this stuff. Make sure to check out the article link to for that I wanted to make sure to include everything, because I know we have listeners out there that are brand new on Amazon. Keep listening, guys. We got stuff for you too. We have listeners who are nine figure sellers. I want to make sure I give stuff that is relevant to everybody. More unbox announcements.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, this was interesting and something I hadn’t considered. I alluded to a little bit earlier about audio ads, right, so this is entitled Create Impactful Audio Ads in just a few clicks with Generator. So these next couple announcements have to do kind of like with AI. So Audio Generator leverages generative AI capabilities to turn products into interactive audio ads in minutes for the ad to cart call to action. All right, so you might not have thought about audio ads or thought about adding, you know, like, maybe, fancy audio to your, to your video ads. But with this audio generator, there’s a cool demo here that you guys make sure to click on the article and then go watch this demo here. But you’re going to be able to choose your product and then use AI to generate audio including, like you know, add copy, like you can get somebody with a British accent to read some kind of script that you have and you not have to go like go hire a professional voice actor for some of this stuff. So really interesting stuff.

Bradley Sutton:

Speaking of AI, another thing that Amazon announced uh, this was something that was actually originally announced at Amazon accelerate, so I’m not going to go too deep into this, but it says create high quality AI generated videos in minutes. And it says Amazon ads has introduced a new powered video generator, currently available for use in sponsored brands campaigns. You guys already heard us talk about this at Amazon Accelerate, but another cool demo is on this video in our link below, so make sure to check that out. The last AI update for Unbox is called make creative development a breeze with the AI creative Studiobox. Is called Make Creative Development a Breeze with the AI Creative Studio, which is in beta. So this is AI Creative Studio is a centralized experience that combines AI functionality with expert level controls All right.

Bradley Sutton:

So this is a new kind of like homepage where you’re going to have the studio, the sandbox and the inspiration gallery In the studio. It says you’re going to gain access to a suite of tools that can be used to transfer your concepts from in progress to design complete. You know, you can like start with a picture of a cup and then, all of a sudden, you put it in this like crazy background and choose different backgrounds you can have different effects and different lightings and then you’re going to be able to generate that image. Now, with the sandbox, you’re going to be able to test out new features, like, maybe you take one of those things that was just an image before and then now you’re going to be able to animate the image. You know, like, if you remember, in Accelerate they showed how you can make smoke coming out of a or not smoke, but like steam coming out of, like a teacup or or coffee, right, so that’s kind of cool. And there’s also going to be the inspiration gallery where you’re going to see examples of AI generated content. Uh, and then you can actually like, click these If you like, like, hey, like, I like this vibe right here. I like, I like this, the way that they did this headphones here I want to be able to do that to my product. And then you’re going to be able to like, choose these kinds of like templated things or examples and then apply it to your own products. All right, so this is one of those ones. Guys, you do need to click into the article where this was announced, because I got the link for you in order. If you want to join the wait list, all right if you want to join the wait list for this AI creative studio, because not everybody’s going to be able to get into this right away. So make sure to find whatever article this is about the AI creative studio in the comments below and check it out.

Bradley Sutton:

Only a couple more uh unbox announcements. Uh, the next one is called interactive ads expand availability across streaming TV into prime video. Right, this was, uh, we had an article about this before in the weekly buzz. But you know, sometimes you might think of when you see commercials on TV regular TV, right, that’s all. It is a commercial, like a Superbowl commercial. You see a GoDaddy website, or you see you know, chips, or Michael Cera showing his CeraVe lotion, or whatever, right, but what, what does? How does that help the advertiser? Well, the only way it helps lead, leading to an immediate sale, is maybe they go on Amazon or they go somewhere else to the store later on the day and they go buy that product. Right, but now, on prime video, you still can do just generic ads, but now there’s going to be shoppable ads, all right, so you can see a 15 second ad on prime video as an example here, and then it’ll be like you know you’re not in your computer but it’ll say, hey, just hit OK on your TV remote and you’re going to buy the product, like if it’s connected to your Amazon account. So now, all of a sudden there’s going to be like a direct connection where somebody doesn’t have to go and pause the video to go buy a product. Just by hitting like OK on the remote they’re going to be able to buy some products that you’re advertising on Prime Video. So make sure to check this article. That could make streaming TV a little bit more lucrative for some of you.

Bradley Sutton:

Last couple, I’m just going to breeze through here. There’s a couple new metrics here. One is called long-term sales, and long-term sales RoAS, is the acronym LTS RoAS. I guess they’re getting crazy with these. These acronyms are already, like you know, 10 letters long here. But anyways, this is going to be interesting because it’s a historical 12 month return of a given customer engagement with your brand, right, you know, like there’s an attribution window right when you know like, let’s say, something has a 14 day attribution window.

Bradley Sutton:

Somebody clicks on something on Monday and a week and a half later they buy it. That original click gets attributed with that sale from that ad. Right, but let’s say somebody clicked on it but they don’t buy it in two weeks, maybe they four months later or something. They buy the product. Have you ever had any visibility into that? That purchase can be tied all the way back to that original click. No, you have not been able to do that until now. All right, so this is going to be something cool. This LTS ROAS uh is going to be able to allow you to take a look back even, uh, throughout a year to see, like, how your ads are doing. So make sure to check the article for more information on that.

Bradley Sutton:

And then, last one is DSP has a new experience. So if the whole DSP page for those are like UI of their homepage has been completely redone, I guess I wouldn’t know the difference because I never saw the old DSP page part. But for those of you who use it, go ahead and check it out and see if you like their new UI. That is it. Believe it or not? Guys, for Amazon, unboxed and all of the news and events this week. Obviously no time to do our normal training tip of the week or our new feature alerts. We’ll have to save that for next week. We actually got some pretty amazing things coming for you guys. By the way, as guys hope, you enjoyed this in-depth coverage of all the goings on in the news this week. Make sure to tune in next.


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Director of Training & Chief Evangelist

Bradley is the Director of Training and Chief Evangelist for Helium 10 as well as the host of the most listened to podcast in the world for Amazon sellers, the Serious Sellers Podcast. He has been involved in e-commerce for over 20 years, and before joining Helium 10, launched over 400 products as a consultant for Amazon Sellers.

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