Helium 10 Buzz 4/19/24: Amazon Prime Day 2024 Dates | Sponsored Brands Update

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, interview someone you need to hear from and provide a training tip for the week.

Amazon Live introduces an interactive and shoppable channel on Prime Video and Amazon Freevee
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/entertainment/amazon-live-free-channel-prime-video-freevee-shopping

Amazon says ‘Project Curiosity’ wasn’t a secret operation to spy on rivals
https://qz.com/amazon-project-curiosity-spying-report-1851420549

Join us for to the Helium 10 Elite / AVASK Plus Madrid Seller Workshop!
https://h10.me/elitespain

9 unique ways Amazon packages are delivered around the world, from e-bikes to mules

https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/transportation/unique-amazon-delivery-methods

Lastly, Bradley has the deets on Helium 10’s latest updates, from deep-diving analytics on the Profits tool to the game-changing Review Analyzer Pro that digs into customer sentiments like a pro. Plus, we’ll play around with the new AI Image Generator inside our Listing Builder tool – the virtual artist that’s about to transform your product images from meh to mesmerizing. This new tool generates a variety of themed images to visually enhance your listing images, A+ Content, Amazon Posts, and more!

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

• 00:44 – Prime Day 2024 Dates Announced?
• 02:54 – Amazon Live x Prime Video
• 05:15 – Sponsored Brands Update
• 06:10 – Amazon Spies?
• 08:42 – Battery Compliance
• 09:57 – Helium 10 Spain Event
• 10:42 – Prime Donkey Delivery
• 12:46 – Follow Helium 10 On TikTok
• 13:37 – Helium 10 New Features

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Amazon Prime Day 2024 dates announced. New sponsor brand targeting available. Did you know that there are Amazon Prime delivery donkeys? These and more news stories on today’s Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m 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 that are going on in the Amazon, Walmart, e-commerce world. We also let you know what new tools and features Helium 10 has. That will be sure to give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let’s see what’s buzzing.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, first news article of the day. First got to admit a little bit, a little bit of clickbait here. Amazon hasn’t necessarily announced the new prime day, but I’m like 95% sure I was able to figure out when it’s going to be All right, so bear with me. Here’s why I think that and, by the way, spoiler alert, I think it’s going to be July 16 and 17. That’s just my rough guess, but watch this. Amazon today, or a couple of days ago, actually announced that hey, you’ve got to get your FBA inventory into fulfillment centers for Prime Day by June 20th All right, so that’s a key day to think about. It also says you’ve got to create your deals by May 3rd to participate in the Prime Day sale All right, so make sure to go ahead and start creating your deals if you want to participate in these. Now, why from this do I think I know when Amazon Prime Day 2024 is? Well, if you look back at our Weekly Buzz last year, they announced that you have to create your deals by April 28th 2023. They announced that you have to create your deals by April 28th 2023. And then they also said you have to have the products in the fulfillment centers by June 15th 2023. Now, what is the difference in days from that last year? It’s 48 days, all right. The difference between when you have to have your deals done with when you have to have the inventory in. What about this year? Those two dates? They gave it’s 48 days. So, if we assume that all things are equal, from the date last year that Amazon said you had to have your inventory in and your deals, it was 26 days and 74 days respectively. So if we take that to this year and if we see, if we think that Amazon is going to do the same schedule again. Well, that’s going to go ahead and bring prime day 2024 to July 16 and 17. I don’t know any more than you guys do. This was just my little detective work based on that press release. But looks like guaranteed it’s going on that press release but looks like guaranteed it’s going to be in July. But if I had to put money on it, July 16 and 17 is my estimate for when it’s going to be All right.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article, also from Amazon here and you know me guys, here in the Weekly Buzz, I, probably more than anybody else, I’ve always been talking about Amazon Live and how I’m like I just can’t understand why Amazon Live doesn’t take off. Well, amazon is still trying and their latest thing here on this article from about Amazon is it’s entitled Amazon Live introduces an interactive and shoppable channel on Prime Video and Amazon Freebie. All right. So now it’s going to be available on these, these apps and, who knows, maybe in more of a tv setting, which is what live, you know, shopping, you know was born in the united states on like shows, like QVC, right and stuff like that. So who knows, maybe this is something that’s going to help it, but basically this is called the new fast channel and then, with the app, amazon prime members or freebie viewers are going to be able to see, either on their mobile device or even their TV screen, the Amazon live streams live shopping streams. Now, even though we haven’t had a lot of traction on live, amazon reports that there’s actually more than 1 billion customers in the US and India watch Amazon live streams I think more in India than the USA.

Bradley Sutton:

Now this new channel is going to feature Amazon’s stop the show technology that enables customers to seamlessly browse, shop, engage with content. They’re watching the TV screen. All right, we saw a little bit of this, I think what was it during the super bowl or during Pro Bowl or some kind of like sporting event, where you could see the ad Right, and then you could actually click through to go on your phone to see the products that were showing up on your TV screen. And that’s what Amazon is announcing here. It says, while watching the new fast channel, customers can open the Amazon shopping app on their phone type stop the show into the search bar and they’re instantly going to be directed to a shopping carousel highlighting the featured products that they see on TV in real time. So you’ll be able to shop on your TV today by going to the live TV tab on Prime Video Fire TV or through the freebie app, and it’s also available at Amazon.com forward slash live. So, who knows, maybe we’ll see Gracie, who’s been on our podcast before, all of a sudden now on Amazon Prime doing her lives.

Bradley Sutton:

Now. The next article is from the advertising API report from Amazon, and this just came out this month, and it says sponsored brand will be introducing two new campaign goals acquire new customers and drive ad views and it says that each of these will have a unique set of campaign controls that can help achieve the goal of acquiring new customers or driving ad views. The acquire new customers goal, it says, can be measured using the new to brand purchases metric, can be measured using the new to brand purchases metric, and this is going to help advertisers drive sales from customers who haven’t purchased a brand product in a one year look back period. And then the drive ad views goal, it says, can be measured using the viewable impressions metric, and then this is going to help Amazon sellers reach and engage audiences across shopping and entertainment context. So if you are a hardcore Amazon advertising. You might be excited about this coming to your sponsor brand, hopefully soon. Next article is from a website called qz.com.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, this was interesting. It gave me a little chuckle. Right, it’s entitled Amazon says Project Curiosity wasn’t a secret operation to spy on rivals. So, first of all, if it wasn’t, that’s just kind of like a funny name to call their initiative Project Curiosity, all right. But basically Amazon report to this there’s some like expose report, supposedly like in the Wall Street Journal or something and said how Amazon used this shell company called Big River Services to spy on its rivals, including eBay, fedex and Walmart. But Amazon replied and said, no, that is not the case. They first of all changed the name from Project Curiosity to a less conspicuous name called Small Business Insights. Much better if you’re trying to stay under the radar, I guess.

Bradley Sutton:

But they’re saying, hey, we were not trying to snoop on competitors with this project. You know this was started like almost 10 years ago, and it was. They say it was meant to compare the experience of third party sellers on Amazon to third party or e-commerce rivals out there. Now, what Amazon said was that no, it wasn’t to try and spy on their competitors, but they wanted to better understand how experience on other platforms compared to Amazon. And it said that, hey, 70% of the revenue that came from this initiative actually came from Amazon stores. Right, like this Big River company was actually selling the products mainly on Amazon. And then it kind of clapped back and says you know what? So I was scared. Amazon says that Walmart, FedEx, eBay, shoplifty and Target they all have employees who are spying on Amazon potentially, and they’ve got over 200 seller accounts. Well, they didn’t say that they’re spying, they just said, hey, Walmart employees, et cetera, FedEx have 200 seller accounts that they’ve noticed on the Amazon platform. So it’s like, hey, this is something everybody, I guess, kind of uh kind of does. But anyways, this is just like you know, sometimes the drama that goes on in the e-commerce world is is kind of funny. But you some of you Amazon sellers are you know we do similar stuff. Like how many of us like buy our competitors products and unbox it and see what the shipping experience like what, what kind of, uh, what kind of insert cards are our competitors doing? What kind of shipping times do they have? What kind of customer service? We all do it right, there’s nothing illegal about that kind of stuff. You’re just doing competitor research. It looks like Amazon, Walmart and all of them are doing the same thing, which is interesting to see the bickering go back and forth and the accusations Next news article more serious here, nothing too serious, but there’s some new requirements If you are selling products with button cell or coin batteries.

Bradley Sutton:

I don’t even know what the heck that means. I guess those coin batteries are those batteries that are like a circle, looks like a coin and like going, like watches and stuff like that. I’m not sure, but I don’t sell any products that have these things. If you guys do, you know exactly what I’m talking about when I say button seller, coin batteries. Now, before, back in the day, you only had to have some kind of compliance certification if you were selling the battery itself, right, like your Duracell or something you’re selling, whatever size watch battery, right. But now, if you have a product that has these batteries in it, now you have to get this proof of compliance from a certain lab and a certificate of conformity that has some kind of compliance thing on there. So again, most of us, like myself, might have no idea what like, what the heck this is, but I guarantee those who are selling products that have this. You know exactly what this is, so make sure to go check if this affects you and how you can get this, this compliance, before Amazon shuts it down because it says we will suppress listings if valid compliance documents are not provided.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is not really an article but just an announcement. Helium 10 is going to have its very first ever event, in-person event conference in Spain. All right. So we had one in Germany, our first ever in Germany. Now our first ever one in Spain. It’s going to be in Madrid on May the 28th, open to everybody. All right, it’s open to be in Madrid on May the 28th, open to everybody. It’s open to everybody. Tickets are 83 euros each. We’ve got a full day of activities. There’s some activities the night before the night of Amazing speakers like Leo Segovia, Carrie Miller is going to be there, Alina from AZ Rank is going to be there and we’re going to have like three, four, five other speakers. All the event right there in Madrid. If you guys want tickets, go h10.me/elitespain

Bradley Sutton:

Last news article of the day actually comes from Amazon and yes, there are Amazon prime. I said donkey here, but mules, to be specific, delivering packages. Did you know that there’s like more than just the trucks that you see? What kind of vehicles are Amazon using for delivery around the world? Well, one maybe do you have this in your area E-cargo bikes. This article had some pictures of some bikes that have a lot of cargo, somehow, like I don’t even know how these bicycles can carry all these Amazon packages, but I’ve never seen one myself. Maybe in your area, if you’ve seen that, uh, the one that we’ve probably seen is the Rivian electric vans. We see those all over the place now. So we knew about that one. Uh, another delivery method is the mules. I said, all right, so in the Grand Canyon, you get your Amazon prime deliveries on mules. Believe it or not, that’s kind of crazy. Motorbikes. I don’t see that here in the United States. Maybe that’s in other countries, but Amazon delivers on motorbikes in some areas.

Bradley Sutton:

Here’s one blast from the past In this island called Mackinac Island, motor vehicles are banned since the end of the 19th century. So this is this island in Michigan. Do you know how you get your Amazon Prime deliveries On horse and carriage? All right, so you literally get your deliveries on horse and carriage, other forms of delivery, on foot deliveries from these push carts. So they don’t even have, you know, they don’t even have like a electric vehicle, but you have to push around a big cart and that’s how you get your packages. And then, of course, here in California and Texas, there is now drone deliveries as well. And then the last one is there are snow vehicles out in Yosemite delivering your Amazon products. Oh, one more there’s pictures here of Amazon boats that deliver your Amazon Prime packages. So if you just want to see some cool pictures of Amazon delivery vehicles that you probably never realized existed, make sure to check the link in the description.

Bradley Sutton:

One quick thing I want you guys to do is go to this link here and sign up or follow us on h10.me/tiktok. It’s going to take you to this exact page, one of these funny videos that I just did, and what I want you guys to do is comment on this video. Make sure to follow us, so make sure to follow Helium 10 on TikTok and then comment on this video. And I have Lailama, who’s our social media manager, going to pick a couple of you out so that you can go ahead and have a one-on-one, private one-on-one consultation with me. All right, so the way you get eligible, go to this link h10.me/tiktok. Find my crazy video where I’m singing in Chinese. Comment on there saying that you heard it from the Weekly Buzz and you’ll be entered to win a one-on-one with me. All right, that’s it for the news this week.

Bradley Sutton:

Now let’s go over to the Helium 10 new feature alerts and, goodness gracious, we’ve got a lot of feature alerts. I mean, like each week, it seems like we come up with more features than some tools have altogether in their entire history. So this week is no exception. The first minor update is in the Helium 10 Profits app. This is one of the most asked things from our sellers is hey, we want to see our profits information based on, like the, either the child level or the ASIN level, or the parent level or the SKU level, want to have that ability. Well now, guys, if you go into your Helium 10 Profits and then you go to product performance on the right hand side, you are going to go ahead and be able to group and view your product by SKU, parent or child a child meaning ASIN right, so you’re going to be able to like, say, you’ve got five coffin shelves different colors. Now you can see it on one line item to see what your overall coffin shelves are doing, if you’re selling coffin shelves, like I am. The next thing is a brand new tool. This is right now available only to Helium 10 elite members, but you know, eventually it’s going to be in the next coming weeks, going to be available to other levels, including platinum and diamond as well, and this is a brand new tool called Review Analyzer Pro Wrap. I guess for sure. Maybe I should have come up with a wrap for this. Anyways, this tool is like review analysis on ridiculous steroids it just takes the reviews to another level. So this really works well.

Bradley Sutton:

If you’re selling in very competitive niche, you’re a large seller and you’ve got products that have thousands of reviews, you’re going to get some next level insights thanks to AI on these reviews. So here’s an example here of some coffee products. Right, I entered in a whole bunch of SKUs or ASINs, I should say of coffee products that are on Amazon, and these had a lot of reviews, and first of all, you’re going to see some some just generalized summaries, right, like, hey, these products receive 3000 reviews in the last 60 days. 52% of these reviews are positive, 35% are negative or positive reviews increased 7% and says negative reviews decreased 4%. So that’s interesting. You’re going to see this graph. You’re going to see the top 10 mentioned aspects All right, so this is something completely new.

Bradley Sutton:

Like, for example, for this coffee maker niche. You can see that there are 3,856 reviews that mentioned brew quality All right, that was 22% of the reviews mentioned the brew quality. Another one was water reservoir All right, so a lot of reviews were talking about the water reservoir. Uh, cleaning and maintenance was mentioned in 8% of the reviews. Value for the price was mentioned in 10%.

Bradley Sutton:

And then you’re going to have this like plotted chart here of how these topics kind of like relate to the rating. Like, if it, if it was a negative or positive view. So like, for example, one of these issues was it’s called machine performance issues and this machine performance issue 5% of the reviews mentioned it and it was a 2.4 stars. Here’s another one here specific brand and customer misconceptions all right, that got a 2.3 star. And then here on the right-hand side, you’re going to see a plot of all the positive reviews and what kind of effect it had overall on the reviews. And on this page you are going to see something, for example, attribute comparison. So it’s going to show you even the images of all the main products that you just entered in here, details on the reviews, details on their product, and then you’ll also see here something called sentiment comparison. Okay, so under sentiment comparison it’s again plotting out a lot of these main topics, such as a coffee temperature, and then you can see individually who has a good, you know who has overall good reviews that have to do with the coffee temperature and who’s got bad reviews. So really, really interesting and very detailed stuff available on this chart.

Bradley Sutton:

The next chart here is sentiment analysis and this is where it really gets to another level. So it takes out a lot of the main points that are from the reviews. For example, it takes something like design aesthetic. All right, says hey, there’s 347 positive reviews and 15 negative reviews that have to do with design aesthetic. So I can click this and then, based on this, it’s going to show me all of the reviews and I can narrow it down to each product where somebody was reviewing it, based on the design aesthetic. It’s not like review insights, where it only shows where somebody literally mentions design, aesthetic. It’s using AI to understand where somebody was talking about the design of a product and what their overall sentiment was. And so, guys, this is just something that really allows you to dive into what is going on with your, your reviews, your competitive reviews. If you’ve only got 20 reviews 30 reviews, probably not worth it to use this tool. But if you, if you’re one, somebody who’s competing in some pretty competitive niches where products have thousands of reviews or hundreds of reviews, this will be a great tool to use. So right now, elite members have it and it’s going to come out, probably in the next week or so, to Diamond and other members as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Next update is in Blackbox Brand Analytics. All right, so Blackbox Brand Analytics is a tool that we launched a couple months ago, but now, per popular demand, we’ve got a couple of filters. So you already could just search all of brand analytics and look for certain data points that are unique that you couldn’t do in Seller Central, plus combining with Helium 10 data points. But now you have got a couple of new filters, including the category, which is going to tell you like maybe you just want to see keywords that come up where one of the top three click products is in one of the main Amazon categories. But also you’ve got a new filter that you can do that’s a Helium 10 exclusive which is title density. Remember, title density means how many listings on page one have that searched term, that searched keyword, in the title in exact phrase form. So now you could just do some more research when you’re looking for brand analytics keywords and say, hey, I want to see a keyword that meets whatever criteria from brand analytics but has a max title density of three, meaning that it only has only three listings on page one have that search term in the title, meaning that it’s going to be super easy for me to get to page one, theoretically speaking, if I’ve got that keyword in my title. So me to get to page one theoretically speaking if I’ve got that keyword in my title. So that’s a new cool update.

Bradley Sutton:

Last update, another brand new tool. Guys like we’re launching new tools left and right. This one is in Listing Builder. All right, this is an AI image generator. So if you have a diamond planner above, you can go into Listing Builder, go into any of your listings and then hit the generate AI images or add a listing and then there’ll be a button that says generate AI images. And the cool thing about this is you can choose different templates of image sizes and styles. Like, for example, maybe it’s just a regular image in your image stack where it’s 1600 by 1600. It’ll produce that for you. Maybe you want to make an Amazon post which is actually 640 by 640. It’ll make that for you.

Bradley Sutton:

Maybe you’re trying to add to your A+ Content. You know how there’s different modules with different size images in A+ Content. Like, for example, the A plus header. Image header with text is a 970 by 600 pixel image. Well, this AI will go ahead and create one that fits that perfectly, so it can go to A+ Content. Basically, how you use it is you upload your own image white background is best and then you know you can choose different themes. You know, like, like you can say home, and then you can choose cozy kitchen, right. And then what you do is you go ahead and put in a lot of details here. Like here it says product place on a warm, rustic kitchen counter with a hanging copper pots, a steaming mug of coffee and a window view of a sunny garden Right. So then, once you do that, you choose some other options here, so you can see one of them that just pulled up here. Look at this pretty realistic picture here. You can also do like cartoonish style pictures that maybe you want to use for lifestyle or infographics.

Bradley Sutton:

But again, a great way to get started with using AI and being able to create different options for your product images or your A+ Content, your lifestyle images, et cetera. So, again, this is Listing Builder. Well, that’s it for the new feature alerts and the news. This week we had a lot going on. Hope you guys found some benefit. Don’t forget to tune in next week to see what’s buzzing.

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